Just Breathe...and Notice

A sweet start...

Rosh Hashanah started last night --- and in keeping with tradition, we gorged ourselves on sweet foods:  honey-roasted chicken soup, brown-sugar braised roast with dried fruit compote, sauteed spinach tossed with oranges, and a flourless chocolate cake made with raw almond meal. 

We eat sweet foods on Rosh Hashanah as a way of setting our intentions for a sweet year.  We eat sweet foods on Rosh Hashanah so that on days when we find ourselves feeling bitter or sour, we can recall the sweetness with which our year began. 

The sweetness of last night's meal was surpassed by something better though --- something sweeter than the honey (or even the cake!). 

Zoe got off the bus in a bit of a funk yesterday --- I tried to get her to tell me about her day but she didn't want to talk.  I let her be  -- we got home and she played with Bodhi and then closed herself in her room for a while.  Then, while I was in frantic "oh-crap-I-have-a-big-meal-to-finish-cooking" mode, she appeared in the kitchen with tears in her eyes and said she wanted to tell me something.  I turned off the mixer and the music and sat down to listen.

It started with a whisper --- the story of the boy on the bus that day.  The story of a boy who wanted to sing. 

The story of the boy on the the bus who, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, just started singing. 

The story continued, still no more than a whisper, about the other kids on the bus who laughed. 

And then booed. 

The boy, whispered Zoe, stopped singing.

Through her tears, Zoe went on to tell me about her confusion on the bus.  She cried and told me how she sat there and listened to the kids laugh and boo.  And then sobbed when she told me how she thought about laughing and booing too -- because everyone else was.

And then, in a whisper, she told me how she didn't laugh.  Or boo.  Because it would have been unkind.

Her tears, she said, were because she was upset with herself for even considering it.  My tears were because of the love and pride I felt for my daughter in that moment.  For her strength to chose sweetness.  For accepting the task of bringing love into the world.

There could never be enough honey to match the sweetness of Zoe's face at that moment and I can't think of a more beautiful beginning to the new year.

Happy New Year to you all.

Take off your shoes

*sometimes I need to be reminded of my own words*

Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday.

There are many ways to read Bible stories -- ranging from fundamentalist literalism to absolute metaphor and symbology.   I tend towards the metaphor/symbology side, but I like to keep a part of my mind open to the possibility that miracles (even the crazy Biblical ones!) could happen.

The story of Passover starts in Egypt, where the Israelites were enslaved by the Pharaoh.  The Pharaoh noticed that the Israelites were having lots of babies (you'd think the long days in the fields would have worn them out...) and ordered all newborn males to be killed.  Jochebed refused to turn her son over to the Egyptians and instead put him in a basket, tossed him in the Nile, and hoped for the best.  That infant was Moses.  Baby Moses, the story goes, was found and adopted by an Egyptian princess and raised as part of the royal family.  Apparently he left as an adult, but I'm fuzzy on the how or why.

According to the Book of Exodus, one day Moses was doing typical Moses-like stuff (plowing, making shoes for his ass, washing his robes...) when he heard a voice.  The voice informed him that he was standing on Holy Ground and commanded him to take off his shoes.  I always picture him scratching his beard and looking around --- waiting for one of the neighbors to pop out from behind a tent, doubled-over with laughter and ready to swipe his just-shod sandals. 

But there he stood.  Bare toes firmly anchored to Holy Ground, staring at a Burning Bush -- a burning bush which was burning without being consumed.  And as if poor Moses wasn't already freaked out enough, this Burning Bush started speaking.  

The most commonly attributed phrase is "be still and know that I am God".  However, the more accurate interpretation of the Hebrew (specifically, the verb rapha) is actually "let go and know that I am God".

Let go and know that I am God.

Moses was more than a little dubious.  Really, can you blame him?  He's standing there without his shoes and having a cryptic conversation with a flaming shrub.  He's probably wondering about those berries he ate for breakfast --- or those prankster neighbors.

"Who, exactly, are you", Moses asks.

"I am that I am" replies the Bush (which can also be translated as "I will be that I will be").

It took a little cajoling and convincing on God's part, and a little letting go on Moses' part -- but they eventually wound up on the same page, with Moses believing he was indeed in the presence of profound divinity.

And, as Moses learned, such profound experiences don't come without profound responsibilities.  The Burning Bush/God informed Moses that he was to lead the Israelites to freedom.  

"Um, yeah....no"  laughed Moses.

"yes", said God.

"I can't"

"You can"

Well -- you know how the story ends.  Moses let go and accepted the responsibility.  He took his great big walking stick (and, hopefully, his shoes), gathered the Israelites, parted the Red Sea, headed to Mt Sinai, received the 10 Commandments, and wrote the Torah.

So much for "I can't".

Do I believe the story actually happened the way it's written in the Bible?  Probably not.  

Does it matter?  Not at all.

Passover has many layers of meaning.  The most obvious is the Seder and the retelling of the story of Exodus -- the transition from slavery to freedom.  We retell the story so we don't forget what it means to be enslaved.  We retell the story so that our children will learn that freedom cannot be taken for granted.  We retell the story to keep our history alive.

But Passover is so much more than simply remembering the Exodus.  Passover starts the moment Moses removed his shoes.

Until that point, Moses was like all of us.  An ordinary man doing ordinary things.  He happened to be watching over some sheep when he heard the call.  But had that call come today, he could have been zipping down I-95 on his way to work.  Or taking out the garbage.  Or at the grocery store.  Or sitting in the kitchen drinking stale coffee and writing in his blog while his sick kids watched cartoons.

Moses heard the command.  He could have ignored it.  He could have just continued to watch the sheep.

But he took off his shoes.  He became still.  He let go.  He allowed himself to be touched by divinity and in doing so, he transformed both himself and his people.

So what does Passover mean to me? 

Passover is a time to remind myself to look for the Burning Bushes in my own life. Those unexpected moments where divinity is begging to be embraced. Sadly, those moments are usually ignored.  There is laundry to do, crumbs to wipe, bank accounts to fret over.  There is so much noise that I can barely hear my own voice, let alone God's. 

Passover is a time to take a lesson from Moses. The Bush commanded action from Moses -- be still, let go, know.  Those are all verbs.  Moses wasn't transformed by divine intervention.  He had to work for it.  He had to take an active role in his own transformation.  So, for me, Passover is a time to remember that, like Moses, I too am responsible for my own transformation.  There are Burning Bushes all around me, yet I will only see them when I make the choice to be still.  To let go.  And to Know.

Passover is a time to be still enough to notice the Burning Bushes all around me.  It's a time to let go of the fear and doubt that keep me from hearing their commands.  It's a time to know that, like Moses, I am capable of far more than I ever imagined.

 

 

Good Friday....(or Saturday. or whenever!).

In my defense, I actually started this post LAST Friday -- 8 whole days ago.  I didn't have time to finish it that morning and then the rest of the week got away from me.  I turned 39 (for the first time!) on Saturday and Mr Kish and some awesome friends threw me a surprise party on Saturday night.  Sunday was LG's birthday party.  I woke up on Monday with a sore throat and chills.  I muscled my way through the week -- never really getting full-on sick, but just feeling run down.  I opted to spend my 5 a.m. hours getting some extra sleep instead of writing.  But I'm all better!  The house is quiet, I'm sipping my coffee and I'm ready to go!!

Except that  I'm too lazy to link the first parts of this story, so just scroll down if you're interested. 

OK, so there I was, regularly attending Mass at a stunningly beautiful Episcopal Cathedral.  The sheer beauty of the surroundings, combined with the awesomeness of the priests was enough to keep me coming back.  Plus there was that time I got to have a rather intimate dinner with Madeline L'Engle .  THAT was awesome!! But that niggling sense of "not quite right" persisted -- it was just easier to ignore when so many other parts of my soul were being fed.

I knew I had a problem when I was no longer able to even mumble my way through the Nicene Creed (a rather important touchstone and profession of Faith).  Mr Kish came along during this time and things between us started to grow more serious.  Lazy Sunday mornings under the covers began to replace Mass and the joy and distraction of new love replaced my spiritual search. 

Given how much I had loved the services at St John's, I was surprised to realize that I didn't feel a sense of loss when I stopped attending.  I missed the beauty, but I actually felt a (rather confusing) sense of freedom.  Again, the distractions and joys of new love made it easy to ignore everything else and, well, that was sort of that for a while. 

About a year or so into our relationship, Mr Kish invited me to Rosh Hashanah dinner with his family, and invitation that included going to services at their synagogue.  I accepted, more out of eagerness to spend time with him than out of any actual interest in Judaism.  

And then it happened.

I was sitting in the synagogue and the rabbi was reading something in Hebrew --- I had no clue what was going on, so I started flipping through the prayer book.  I have never been able to go back and recall the specific reading that struck me -- but the message was so powerful that I almost fell out of my seat.  I was sitting there and reading about how I didn't need to worry about what happened after I died.  I didn't need to worry about a Master Plan.  I didn't have to try to Figure It All Out.  I just needed to live my life.  Do my best.  Be kind.  Love my friends and family.  Strive to be happy.  Those things?  Were enough.  Enough. 

It doesn't sound like a huge or important revelation, does it?  To most people it's probably not.  But I had spent a lifetime being afraid.  Being afraid of getting It wrong.  And being afraid of what would happen to me if I got It wrong. Being afraid of not being enough.   And there I was -- for the first time in my life -- considering the possibility that all my worry had been entirely unnecessary.

The path towards deciding to convert was long --- it was something I thought about for at least a full year before I said anything.  I didn't share my thoughts with anyone, not even Mr Kish.  I read and learned and listened and I did it alone.  I didn't want my decision to be influenced by anyone elses' reaction.  

I'm struggling with how to write about my precise reasons for converting. I haven't figured out how to express the depths of my experience.  I keep typing and deleting and typing and deleting, because everything I write sounds so watered-down and vague.  I suppose I just have to get SOMETHING down....

Tikkun Olam.  Repair of the world.  There is a belief in Judaism that the act of Tikkun Olam is one of our most sacred jobs.  The story goes that, in the creation of the world, God infused his (pronouns used for ease of writing only!!!) spirit into every atom.  Our job was to uncover these sparks of divinity through acts of service, kindness, and love.  As we uncover them, we gain the wisdom that there is no real difference between our world and God's world.  It's a beautiful and mystical process and one that I had longed for the language to express.  The idea of Tikkun Olam is a framework for acknowledging the divinity of the man who gives money to the homeless.  Or the teacher who uses her own money to buy books for her students.  Or the mother who spends endless nights nursing her newborn.  Or the father who works diligently to provide for his family.  Or the friend who is just always there.  Tikkun Olam requires us to look for God everywhere.  To see God everywhere.

Similarly, I also love that there is a prayer for everything.  There is a prayer for waking and a prayer for going to bed.  There is a prayer for traveling.  There is a prayer for beginning a meal.  There is a prayer for being mid-way through a meal.  There is a prayer for using the bathroom.  I don't know any Jew who actually says all these prayers --- but I love the message that is embedded in the fact that they exist.  Like Tikkun Olam, these prayers reflect a belief that everything is sacred.  

I love, too, the fact that I am able to consider Jesus in a way that I'm comfortable with.  I can love and admire him, and even strive to be like him --- but without having to worship him.  I can see the spark of God in him, just like I see the spark of God in the angles all around me.  The Jewish view on the Messiah is sort of a non-view --- it's not something that gets a lot of focus or attention, largely because it is believed that focusing on the coming of a Messiah will distract us from Tikkun Olam.  In a way, I think that the possibility of a Messiah is just a way to remind us to remain open to the divinity in everyone.  Maybe you're the Messiah.  Maybe it's me.  Maybe it's the guy bagging groceries in Publix.  Maybe the Messiah isn't just one person.  Maybe it's the collective love we generate through the practice of Tikkun Olam.  Tradition tells us not to look too hard though.  Don't worry.  Just love and keep looking for those sparks of God.

The practice of Judaism gives me the language to express my belief that God exists everywhere.  God is present even in the most humble and mundane of experiences.  God does not care if we are dirty or confused.  God Simply Is.  Our job in this world is not to discern God's will.  Our job is to bring love. 

I can do that.

Losing my religion...

OK, so both Catholicism and the Ashram were sort of busts, but I am nothing if not tenacious, so I kept looking!!

My next stop was the Unitarian church.  Seemed good in theory -- a bunch of people who believe in God and/or want some sort of spiritual practice but don't want to commit to any centralized dogma or political agendas. Its purpose is to serve as a community for a diverse group of spiritual seekers.  I *really* thought I'd found my niche.  Except that, did you ever pour a glass of wine and get all excited by how pretty and rich it looked, only to take that first sip and discover it was watery and weak?  That's how the Unitarian Church was for me.  Every time I went I just wanted to hear someone (anyone!) actually say that they believed in something (anything!!).  It was a whole lot of "weeeelllll, maaayyybe" and "OK, so IF there's a God" and "Merry Chri.....I mean, Happy Chau......uh, Salome?.  Oh, sorry"  I felt like screaming at the entire congregation to just grow some balls and take a stand on something (anything!).  

Less obsessive seekers might have gone with the 3-strikes-you're-out rule. 

I took a hiatus of sorts when I was in graduate school.  Life in publish-or-perish academia, surrounded by hard-core science types, is an interesting place for someone who holds a deep belief in God.  Grant submissions and statistical analyses are as close as most people get to a spiritual practice.  The academic's feeling about religion was that it was reserved for people who lacked the intellectual sophistication to understand that there was no such thing as God.  We were Scientists!  We knew that only fools believed in things that couldn't be measured.

I never really understood the split between science and God. The further I got in my education, the more I knew about science, the MORE I came to believe in God.  I studied developmental neuroscience -- the growth of the brain from a wee embryo and into adulthood.  I pondered the development of a neuron and how it was affected by its environment.  I had debates about the functional and molecular aspect of neural plasticity.  I marveled at the complexity of the human brain. 

I saw God in every cell. 

Every new research paper I read...  Every bit of data I collected...  Every hypothesis I tested...  They all affirmed my belief in the overwhelming perfection of humanity.  My study of neuroscience granted me an unshakable faith that there is no way that the miraculous perfection of the human brain could spring from anything other than Divinity.  From God. 

But where was the language to express this belief?  I had already learned that, for me, it wasn't the language of Catholicism.  Or the Ashram.  Or the Unitarian Church.  It certainly wasn't the language of science.  

If I were a different person, I might not have needed a language or a community.  Many people create beautiful and solitary spiritual practices and never have a need for the structure of a community.  I am not those people though and I knew I needed something.  So I kept trying.

Next on the list was the Episcopal Church.  The "kinder, gentler" Catholics.  I was living in the greater-NYC area at the time and I was blessed with the opportunity to attend services at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.  Regardless of your religious affiliation (or lack thereof) if you ever have the opportunity to go there, please do.  It's a magical and sacred place.  I cherished every moment I spent there.  The Episcopal Church solved many of the problems I had with the Catholic Church -- women and gays could be priests, divorce was not condemned, Papal authority was not an issue.  St. John's had a wonderful priest and, more often than not, his homilies moved me to tears.  Still though, there was the whole Jesus thing.  I just couldn't get my head around worshiping God as the Trinity.  I couldn't accept that Jesus was any more of an Angel than any of the other Divine souls who have walk (and still walk)this Earth. 

Honestly?  I think I could have let it go.  I think I would have continued to go the Mass every Sunday and bask in the beauty of the homilies and in the sacredness of the Cathedral. 

OK -- time to get the kidlets to bed.  If anyone out there is actually reading this story -- I promise I'll wrap it up in a day or two!!

Smooches!

Still lookin' for some ole' time religion....

So as I was saying before BB and LG started using Wii remotes as weapons of sibling destruction, I had some issues with the Catholic church.

My second issue, after the whole Jesus thing, was the way the Church seemed to subjugate worldly joys and aspirations in favor joy in some contrived utopian afterlife.  Poverty, Chastity, Obedience.  Suffering as a Path to Glory.  Offer up Your Life to the Lord.  Blah, blah, blah.  I eventually wound up feeling tormented by these teachings.  I *love* this world.  I love sex and food and the comforts of prosperity.   I love having my own mind and forging my own path through the world.  I love creating my own fate. And yet, I spent most of my college years fearful, worrying myself sick that my own desires for my life were wrong.  I agonized about how I was supposed to know if I was really doing what God wanted me to do.  I was terrified of getting it wrong.

"Catholicism, meet OCD.  OCD, this is Catholicism.  You guys will REALLY hit it off!"

Now, please.  Pretty please.  Don't take my experience to mean that I am opposed to the Catholic faith.  There are so many wonderful and beautiful things about it.  It just wasn't for the right place for me.

So, onward.  I kept searching and somehow found myself spending my college breaks living at an ashram.  Yoga, chanting, and lots of time sitting cross-legged on hard floors until my ankle bones turned purple.  I got my very own Sanskrit name, meditated upon by my very own guru.  I started wearing a lot of patchouli and going to class barefoot -- which might have been OK had I been and English Lit major, but was sort of frowned upon in the organic chemistry lab.  When it came right down to it though, the Ashram was not all that different from the Catholic church.  The Jesus problem was solved and there was less focus on sin, but a life of deprivation and austerity was still considered a noble path to God.  Instead of worrying about spending eternity in Hell, I was worried about being re-incarnated as a palmetto bug.  Plus, my ankles really hurt.  Namaste though, I really liked the Namaste.

OK -- off to the salt mines!  More tonight...

Apostasy, Renewal, and Reconstruction.

Sounds like a pretty heady topic, no?

I am a Jew-by-Choice.  Like all good spiritual journeys, the path to my conversion to Judaism was circuitous and filled with unexpected detours and occasional dark and scary nights.  It's also far from over.

When people hear that I converted, they typically assume that I converted because of Mr Kish, who grew up a conservative Jew.  I suppose, at some level, this might be true, as it was Mr Kish who first exposed me to the Jewish faith.  The exposure was nothing more than a way to share part of his life with me, I don't think he ever even considered the possibility that I would wind up converting.  I actually remember the night I told him I was considering it -- we had recently moved in together and were eating dinner at home.  He nearly choked on a scallop.  Ah, the irony.

I was raised without much thought of God.  I was baptized into the Catholic church and my family identified culturally as Christians.  We decorated for Christmas and got baskets of candy on Easter morning,  but we never went to church and God was never discussed.  My  mother had her own sense of spirituality which, at the time, was not something she shared with me.  My step-father probably considered God to be a can of Tab and a Bruce Lee movie.  So yeah, I really didn't get a lot of guidance.

I have vivid memories of an overwhelming sense of conflict during my childhood.  I remember feeling that I wasn't supposed to believe in God -- that it wasn't something our family did.  Yet, I also remember a tremendous sense of longing.  I wanted.....something.  Honestly, when I was really young I don't know if my longing was really for a connection to God or a desire to be part of a group.  As I got older though, my need for a connection to God became more and more acute and I become more and more confused. 

I started going to church when I was a freshman in college.  The Catholic church seemed like a logical place to start, since my baptism conferred an automatic membership.  Faith-by-technicality, the cornerstone of any good religious practice!  The priest was awesome -- both funny and compassionate (not to mention a source of good whiskey and an awesome poker player).  He was a former NYPD officer who became a priest after a rather frightening encounter on the streets of NYC.  He's since left the priesthood to live a secular life as a recovering alcoholic and an openly gay man.  He was an great guy and I wish I still knew him.

Despite my relatively good experience with my college priest, I was never able to sincerely embrace the Catholic faith.  Still, I loved the depth and beauty of the rituals.  My favorite thing about Catholicism was transubstantiation -- the belief that, by some mysterious and alchemical process, communion bread and wine are converted, literally, into the body and blood of Christ.  I loved the idea that the collective faith and passion of a group of believers could transform something as mundane as bread and wine into something as holy as the body and  blood of Christ.  And despite my scientific and data-driven personality, I found myself believing in the literal nature of the transformation.  Transubstantiation opened my mind and heart to the limitless power of faith, especially collective faith.   It made me believe that we all have the power to manifest divinity from the whatever lies around us --- Church-sanction communion wafers or piles of dirty laundry. 

There were "things" though, things that kept me from really being a Catholic.  Some of those things were related to Church politics -- rejection of homosexuality, birth control, and divorce, to name a few.  I think I could have lived with the Church's stance on those things though. There are enough "cafeteria Catholics" out there that I could have found a community. 

My real problems?  I think they can be boiled down to two. 

The first was Jesus -- a  big problem to have when you're a Christian.  Don't get me wrong, I believe in Jesus.  I think he was an awesome, wonderful, and holy man.  If being Catholic (or any kind of Christian) was really just about trying to live as Jesus lived, I'd be first in line to sign up.  My difficulty was in "worshiping" Jesus.  In believing he was anything other than an extraordinary and beautiful man.  I was never able to shift my believe to accept that he was any more the child of God than any of the other extraordinary and beautiful people who walked the earth.   Why was I being asked to worship Jesus and not also Ghandi, and Mother Teresa, and the Dali Lama, and Martin Luther King, and Albert Schweitzer, and Elie Weisel.  Or for that matter, the guy who brings lunch to the homeless woman every day, and the teacher who uses money from her own meager paycheck to make sure her students have books, and the children who sell lemonade to raise money for a sick schoolmate.  There are Angels all around us.  There is God all around us.  Why was I supposed to focus all my reverence on Jesus?

I should probably stop here...... this is getting long and if BB and LG play Wii for one more second someone might call CPS on me!!! 

More soon and Happy Sunday!