Grief at Nearly Four Months

Writing through the month of November (I completed a draft of a novel for @NaNoWriMo) allowed an outlet for processing the loss of my mother. Writing about building community allowed me moments to reflect on how good my mother was at that, and the value she passed to me about community. Writing about memory was a way of thinking about what an odd and critical thing memory is.

December has been different. I'm still writing every day in memory of Mom, sure. And I'm honored to have passed the practice on to a friend, who is taking on her own practice (not with writing) in memory of her father who died near Thanksgiving. That sharing of grief has been powerful, to me.

As I went through the first Hanukkah without my mother. She made Hanukkah so special. I feel like Hanukkah was definitely missing something this year, like I was just going through the motions, trying to make it special, but not quite succeeding.

Twenty years ago this month, during the holiday of Hanukkah, my brother died. This year I have thought about him and Mom meeting up in Olam Haba, having a conversation, reconnecting, connecting spiritually perhaps in a way they never could in life. My grief for him was enhanced this year by Mom's death, and my memories of and compassion for her deepened as the two losses mingled in my heart.

Today, as I drove through my neighborhood, I remembered a friend who lived a few blocks away, one of Mom's favorite people in the world, someone special to our whole family. She died a few years ago - I can't even remember - and sadly her husband moved out of the neighborhood before we moved in. Today, I imagined Mom and Lois meeting in Olam Haba. Again, a mingling of losses.

So here's my big confession. With all that, I haven't been crying since Mom died. Maybe the first couple of days I cried a little. I have worried at how few tears I have shed - been embarrassed by their absence. I know grief doesn't happen in a certain way. I know I grieved many pieces of the loss before she died - her loss of voice, a loss of relating on a certain level. Still, even as friends and colleagues have counseled me not to, I have felt guilty about not crying.

Yesterday, I cried. It was a silly thing - a friend's post on FB about a mom being surprised by a son returning home, bringing an adopted child, a grandchild. But there I was, in tears - for a good twenty minutes.

I miss my mom. Terribly. I have a hard time looking at her picture, because I miss her so. Writing helps me to hide my grief, to keep me busy, to get me through, as it were, as much as it helps me feel like I am honoring Mom's memory. Indeed, the honor almost comes out as a bit of excuse to write, where the writing itself seems an escape - into characters, ideas, story.

After nearly four months of grief, I sense I am only just beginning. Yes, I have grieved before - I have lost favorite people - friends, a brother, grandparents. Each loss has been different, and grief comes back again in waves, as it did this week for my brother Ben and for my friend Lois. It is sure to be that way as I continue to remember Mom, through this first year without her and in every year to come. Grief simply is.

(Mis)Translations and (Mis)Quotes - Interpreting and Changing Tradition

אמר רבי סימון: אין לך כל עשב ועשב, שאין לו מזל ברקיע, שמכה אותו ואומר לו גדל

Rabbi Simon said: Is it not so that there is not a single blade of grass that does not have its Fortune in heaven striking it and telling it to grow.

I have long struggled with word changes and misquotes of traditional texts, not to mention incorrect citations.

The above translation is what it really says in the original. And yet, I much prefer the more common translation: Behind every blade of grass there is an angel telling it, "Grow! Grow!"  You can find that quote all over the internet - incorrectly attributed to Talmud. It's really in Mishnah Rabba Bereishit (ancient rabbinic commentary on Genesis), 11:6. 

Just instinctively I prefer the gentler version - no hitting.

Recently, I have seen מכה translasted as "tap" - as though the angels are tapping the blades of grass on the shoulder to get their attention. But מכה is the word for striking, for hitting, for giving punishing lashes to someone (as in the tractate of Talmud, מכות makot, in which we learn that one should never merit 50, so the worst punishment is 49 מכות, lashes.

And then there is a traditional interpretation of the original in which the hitting of the grass is meant to teach us that some things need to be hit in order to grow. Tell me how many heder (school) teachers or parents have used that one through the generations to justify striking a child.

And perhaps "change" is less true than borrowing a bunch of sources and putting them together: while the Midrash is based on a statement in Job, there is no mention of an angel. Where does the angel come from? In Sefer Hasidim (12th c.) it says, כי אין דבר שיהיה מלאך ממונה עליו, ואפילו כל עשב ועשב, "there is nothing that doesn't have a guiding angel over it - even grass." I like this version, though it doesn't indicate that the grass is being told to grow.

This also brings up the angel bit. In the Midrash, there is no angel - there is מזל mazal, fortune, or perhaps star or constellation. Yes, this is whence we get mazal (mazel) tov - not "may you have good luck," but "what you have (achieved) is a sign of good fortune," a sign from the stars.

Somehow, we get from Fortune to Angel, as well as from hitting and telling to telling (possibly with a gentle tap to get attention).

Perhaps it is a bit like the game of telephone, whereby a teaching is passed from one generation to the next, and on the way transitions in order to remain relevant, to speak to each successive generation.

Indeed, if we didn't need that, we could all simply sit down and read the Torah and never need the Mishnah, or the Gemarrah, or the Midrash, or the commentaries of Rashi, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Gersonides, Hirsh, Hertz, Eitz Hayim, or all of the rabbis and teachers offering Divrei Torah, interpretive words of Torah, in Jewish communities throughout the world.

There are good reasons to consider all words we wish to pass on, and how we choose to interpret them says something about our values. Some people don't want to talk about angels - ancient rabbis as well as contemporary Jews both. I like to talk about them - I like to think about the role of angels in the world, the angels who sit behind a blade of grass and what they do. Maybe, back in the day, they did hit the grass - and maybe, like we now don't believe in striking our children to get them to learn, just maybe those angels have also changed and don't any longer strike the grass to urge it to grow. Maybe they tap it gently, נגע to touch, just to get its attention. Or maybe they just whisper a little louder, or change their words, or step out in front instead of staying behind - just to get the attention of the grass.

With that in mind, I will stick with:
Behind every blade of grass there is a guiding angel whispering to it, Grow! Grow! 

And I will cite its origin as "Midrash, common interpretation."

Where Have I Been Writing?

Where have I been, dear readers? Where have I been writing?

Three months ago tonight, my mother died. In the turmoil of the week that followed, I struggled with remembering her - with honoring her. In Judaism we typically do this by reciting Kaddish daily - and with an effort and support from other I live in a community where I could do that. But the first handful of times I recited Kaddish it just felt ... powerless. The words are all too familiar, the ideas in it archaic, and most of all the way we recite it - quickly and then on to announcements or wishing each other a good day - seemed to draw me away rather than connect me to my mother's memory, God, a spiritual feeling.

Even without my telling her about this, my boss and colleague suggested study in lieu of (or addition to) whatever Kaddish I could manage to recite. This sounded terrific, and I looked at my bookcases and at texts I have interest in - but nothing caught my fancy.

And then it came to me. My mother is a writer. Was. Sorry, I forgot to say "was." It's only three months, you know.

My mother was a writer, and as I considered whether I could actually finish any of her projects (jury still out, by the way), I realized that what I can do, what I am very well equipped for (not that I'm not equipped for study), is writing. 

I am a writer, and my mother was a writer. And I can write in her memory.

Now, I write every day. I journal for 18 minutes every morning, and I write creatively once a week, and I was doing a pretty good job at keeping this blog up. To honor my mother, I felt like I had to add something. So I added 18 minutes a day of writing - memories, fiction prompts, essay-like things.

I know I stopped writing the blog. I was writing, but I wasn't writing anything I felt I could share. I was in a bit of a block on that front. But I was writing.

And then, on October 26th, in response to a fantasy-like prompt from my writing friend, Sarah Mendonca, I hit upon a short story that, over the next couple of days became a long journey. And so, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, began to outline, and on November 1st began to write in earnest. More than 60,000 words later, on this last day of November, I have a complete draft of a novel and seven short stories based on the novel.

And today, I can come back to you and say, what a WILD experience. The words flowed in November - I didn't really have a plan, I didn't know at all where the story was taking me. I learned about mdy characters as I went, and I became invested in them the same way I get invested as a reader - I didn't want to stop writing the way I can't put down a book.

I won't tell you it's perfect - it's not. It needs a lot of work, now. Because I learned more and more about my characters as I wrote, I know I have to go back and correct things. 

But folks, I wrote a book. I did it on my lunch hour, and in my journal writing time, and in my writing-in-memory-of-mom time, and in my blog time, and in my spare time, and in the middle of the night.

I let go, and a book came through me. My husband said at one point - about his own non-fiction writing and my fiction - that it's like Mom is behind us, out there in Olam Haba (the world to come), urging us to write. 

Tonight, as I put the novel and short stories aside, to be revisited in January (I tell you, I can't wait to meet up with my characters again, but I know it's time to put them away), I am wondering what I will write tomorrow, when I wake up and don't write my novel. A week ago, I already returned to journaling in the morning, since the novel was done and I was working on the short stories. 

Tonight, I return to the blog. I want to tell you I will keep up with it, but I don't know that I will. I want to think you care about this post, that it is meaningful to you. It is meaningful to me - I have been on a journey with my characters, and this blog didn't know. And this blog is a part of my journey as a writer, too. Perhaps I will blog again next week. Or perhaps I will be writing something, somewhere else. I can't promise which. 

I can promise that I will be writing. I am a writer, and I am writing in memory of my mother, Julia, who was a writer.

My Mother Was A Dream Interpreter

Last night I dreamed I was sitting at a table with my mother's "Writing Sisters," a group of women she loved, with whom she workshopped writing, and especially with whom she share a passion for writing.

My mother was a dream interpreter. Like the biblical Joseph she could sometimes be blunt in her interpretations. I can't tell you whether she thought much about her interpretations first. As a mother myself, I can say that she probably didn't - she just spoke the truth that came to her in the moment, when I came to her with my dreams, often waking her from her own.

One particular dream I remember, I must have been eleven or twelve, came after one of our rabbi's rousing, demanding, terrifying sermons against nuclear proliferation (I had several dreams/nightmares after his sermons). 

We were walking in a wasteland, along a bar of sand raised above more sand, as far as the eye could see, to the flat horizon. Only the ridge stood out, and maybe a few broken pieces of metal machinery. I was with my parents. At this point I can't remember whether my brothers were also there, but I think not.

Up over the horizon a few large missiles, blue and silver, rose, veered towards us, and landed - one nose down, tailfins jutting up in the air, very near to the ridge; the next nosecone piercing the ridge we were walking on. I was, naturally, terrified. I guess I turned to my parents for reassurance. My dad said, "it's just a test, don't worry. We are okay." My mom said nothing.

I woke from the dream terrified. I went to my parents bedroom, this time looking for reassurance in a waking state. My mom came out and sat with me, and I told her my dream.

"Oh, that just means he will be in your next life, and I won't," she said, as if it was the truest, most obvious thing about this dream.

Had I asked her why she didn't say anything in the dream? I don't remember. Either way, to this day I find her interpretation not in the least bit reassuring.

In these first few weeks since Mom's death, I have thought often of this dream - and her response. Did she really believe this? In these past years when words were absent from her mouth due to a stroke did she remember, and know how close her interpretation was?

My dad and I carry on. Mom is gone to Olam Haba, and we are here, in Olam Hazeh. For nearly three years, she was unable to speak much, and for the last year really not at all. 

My dad and I live on. We speak to each other. In some ways her loss of speech opened up pathways between him and me that somehow stayed narrow in the time that she and I developed an incredible friendship, starting right after my high school years. 

And now my mom is gone. And in some ways it is like my dad and I are forging a "next life" together. We reassure each other. Is this a test? No - this is life. Eventually we all lose close family 

I'm not sure what Mom would say about last night's dream. Still, her voice lives on in my memories of her, and in her writings - personal and professional. And I will continue to listen, to seek connection to her through those writings. Maybe, just maybe, that's what last night's dream was about - that I, as her writing daughter, am thus kin to her writing sisters. May the Sisters and I continue to write, to honor her memory, and to follow our own passion.

From Shiva A Beginning

Moshe received Torah on Sinai and passed it to Joshua.
Joshua passed it to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and they to the Men of the Great Assembly. And they said, "Don't judge in haste, raise many disciples, and build a fence around Torah." (Avot 1:1)


As I sit in the week of shiva following my mother's death last Monday, I have had many recommendations, and many thoughts, about how to keep time during the process of mourning. Shiva is obvious, mostly - seven days mostly at home, letting community surround me and my family. And I must say the community, composed of people I know who knew my mother, and of people I know who didn't know my mother, and people I hardly know who did or didn't know my mother, has been incredible. I feel comforted. I feel met and honored in my place of mourning.

The custom of saying Kaddish daily is likely to be difficult, given the lack of daily minyan and the inevitable busy life I will be returning to. Someone suggested study, particularly some piece of Torah or Mishnah or other traditional text, as a daily practice. This would surely honor my mother's zest for learning.

Today, though, it came to me. My mother was a writer - and writing is for me a core part of life and living, a passion my mother passed on to me. Recently I read in one of her journals her words praising a piece I had written. Writing is a way to honor my mother's memory - and writing daily with this purpose is also the best way to avoid one of the pitfalls of grief that I could easily fall into - a sort of writer's block.

So I begin a practice today, on the 5th day of sitting shiva for my mother, in which I will write for eighteen minutes -- memories of life with her, reflections on her life and things she taught me, and, when I get stuck, finding a text to learn and reflect on in her memory. This in addition to journaling daily and any other writing I might do.

Today, I begin in reflection on Avot 1:1 (above):

My mother gave me Torah -- she and the people she surrounded herself with.
   She gave me Torah by choosing Judaism for herself and for me.
   She gave me Torah by choosing to send me to the Seattle Hebrew Academy
          for my early education.
   She gave me Torah by joining and becoming an active member of Temple Beth Am, 
         and by joining the choir and being in the synagogue for Shabbat and 
         other events throughout the week.

My mother gave me Torah by pursuing her graduate education, 
         especially because it was in the field of Jewish Studies, 
         but also because it was the pursuit of ongoing, ever growing knowledge.
   She gave me Torah by celebrating Jewish life at home, weekly and through the year, 
         and at personal moments along the way.

My mother gave me Torah by pursuing justice, through giving to diverse organizations,
         and by being an open and gentle and generous person to whomever she encountered.
   She gave me Torah by living her life with verve and with dignity, from difficult beginnings
         as a war orphan to the very end through adversity and illness.
  
My mother gave me Torah by loving me, from the moment she gave life to me, teaching me
         to walk through fears and to face life head on.
   She gave me Torah by holding on tight to life, and by giving to her family in the moment
         she finally let go of her place in this physical world.

Mom. Ma. Ima! I have called you many names. You gave me life. You gave me Torah.
   Your memory will always be a blessing, sweet on my tongue as I share with friends
         with family, and especially with my son.


I invite my readers to write your own reflections. Think of someone who has taught you Torah - who has taught you about life. Maybe this person is deceased, like my mother, but maybe they are still alive (too often we reflect only after someone has gone). How did this person teach you? What did they teach you? What have you received?

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma: Elul and Death-Bed-Side Musings

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma... *
NOTE: This entry was written Saturday, 29 August 2015. In the wee hours of Monday morning, 31 August 2015, my mother died peacefully. I am so grateful for all of the readers - friends and those who don't know us - who honor her and my family by reading this.


My mother has been one of my greatest teachers throughout my entire life. For years, since I got my first email account, twenty-five years ago as a college freshman, my mother and I had a nearly daily (and sometimes multiple times a day) email correspondence. In time, this became a sharing of struggles and mutual support. Always, she shared insights -- about her life, the lives of people we know, and life in general -- that helped me to grow and change inside. Nearly three years ago, that correspondence, and our ability to talk on the phone (we definitely needed bulk long distance in the days before cell phones), disappeared in an instant. She was in the hospital, I called to talk and comfort her, she picked up the phone, and -- with my dad and the doctor in the room there, she suddenly couldn't speak.

Since then, despite her inability to speak, my mother has continued to teach me, day in and day out, about the strength and will to continue to live, to always strive to move forward, to get back up on one's feet literally and figuratively.

And so it breaks my heart that this past Thursday my dad and I finally had to be the ones to say "it's time to let go." She knew, too. I'm sure she did. In her last conscious moments, she looked deeply at each of us gathered in the room. My dad**, my brother, my husband, me.

We continue to watch vigilantly, as her body pulses on.

"If I have done anything to harm you in the past year, please forgive me." My mother taught me to always ask these words out loud, each year in season of Awe. We have usually asked between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

"Repent one day before you die," taught Rabbi Eliezer (Avot). There is no time like the present. I don't expect my mother to live to see Rosh Hashanah, two weeks from now. Right now it is Elul, the month preceding these days -- and a time of preparation for those upcoming days of awe.

Last night I sat by my mother's bed and asked her forgiveness. This is the hardest year, yet. Did I imagine the slight raise of eyebrows, or a minute squeeze from her hand?

I sang to her from Psalms:
עשה עיני אל ההרים מעין יבוא עזרי
I will lift my eyes to the mountains from whence my help comes.
(among others)

 and also from the prayers of forgiveness:

 סלח לנו מחל לנו כפר לנו
Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
(among others)

My mother has taught me to live tradition, not just to know it, by living it herself.

Any sins I commit, by omission, by neglect, or by intent, are my own. And I have plenty.

It occurred to me last night when I returned home, and was trying to find sleep, that there is another way in which my mother has lived that I have not fully lived up to.

I have never once heard my mother say "I don't want to...."
(There is one exception, and it is only in the past year when she has been entirely dependent on other people for nearly every aspect of her life from access to food and entertainment to personal hygiene, and I do not count this as a lapse, but rather as a part of her ongoing desire to have some control and sense of safety in her fragile life during this time.)

I know that I regularly feel that "I don't want to." When I would express this as a kid, my mother would make me do things anyway -- but she always stood behind me, sometimes literally, as I did them. A silly memory of this is when I went to get my driver's permit. I was nervous, it was a new thing, I didn't know what to ask or how. She coached me, but she wouldn't go up to the desk for me and ask for the paperwork -- she made me do it. Nearly thirty years later, I still remember that moment, and am grateful for it. Her coaching from way back continues to guide me when I encounter new things.

But I can be stubborn, and sometimes it takes me a long time to go up to that desk, to step up to the plate as it were.

As my mother lies unconscious, as we watch her body wither, I cannot help but think how I have already missed in the past few years since she lost her ability to speak and write, and how greatly I will miss, her coaching, her conversation, her stamina.

In my mother's honor, I want to strive harder against the "I don't wanna" feeling in my life.

Don't forget to call, talk with, write to, connect with your loved ones. Don't forget to call your Mamma! I'll be sitting by my mother's side as long as I can. I love her more than anything in the world!



Notes:
* Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma...I Wish I Could Call Mine is the title of a book by Lewis Grizzard.I once had all of Grizzard's books, collections of his syndicated newspaper humor column. I laughed heartily through my late teens and my twenties to his work. This is the only book I have kept through the years, though I haven't reread it in at least a dozen.
** For family, and others who wonder or know, he is my step-dad. See my father's day post from this year.

Wake Up, Elul is Here! -- with Writing Prompts

רבי אליעזר אומר, יהי כבוד חברך חביב עליך כשלך, ואל תהי נוח לכעוס, ושוב יום אחד לפני מיתתך

Rabbi Eliezer would say: The honor of your fellow should be as precious to you as your own, and do not be easy to anger. Repent one day before your death. (Sayings of the Fathers (Avot) ch.2)

Asked his disciples: Does a man know on which day he will die? Said he to them: So being the case, he should repent today, for perhaps tomorrow he will die; hence, all his days are passed in a state of repentance. (bShabbat 153a)

Mindfulness is a hot ticket word in contemporary American culture. It goes along with meditation, yoga, contemplative practices. Some of us may roll our eyes at the term, others may say, "yeah, I do that!" and still others — perhaps most of us — have a desire to increase our mindfulness.

In the ancient wisdom of Rabbi Eliezer we find the call to be first of all mindful in our relationships. Hold the honor of our fellows high, and try not to get angry. And, knowing we will err, as surely all humans do, Rabbi Eliezer offers a way out: repent. Now.

But don't we all get caught up in the rush of daily life? Don't we sometimes rush to grumble about the person in front of us on the road, or in a grocery store? Don't we sometimes yell at our children out of exasperation even when we know it won't help anything (I did that the other day at the park, and I'm still thinking how ridiculous I must have looked to all those — one of my less pretty parenting moments)? Aren't we all sometimes selfish, sometimes abrupt, sometimes hot, sometimes judgmental? Haven't we all acted before thinking?

The blasts of the shofar, from this first day of Elul into the coming new year, call us to wake up, to check in with ourselves and see, just how mindful are we? Just how aware are we in our daily lives? 

Even if we have a daily practice of self-reflection and self-improvement — even if that practice has us turning to those we have been angry at, or have judged poorly, in the process of our daily lives — even so, very few of us don't need a reminder.

Elul gives us a month to reflect on the last year and to renew our mindfulness in preparation for the new year, and another ten days to seek forgiveness before we rehearse our death at Yom Kippur. 

Wake Up! shouts the shofar. Pay attention. How are you being in the world?

One of my spiritual teachers regularly asks the question How be you? Sometimes this sets my inner grammar police wriggling uncomfortably. But just now, I'm hearing it differently. "How are you feeling" is not the question she is asking me. Rather, I am sure, she is asking How are you being in the world? How be you?


And this is the question I offer to you. How are you being in the world?


WRITING PROMPT: If you don't have a journal, find some blank paper. Write down the question, How am I being in the world? How was I in my interactions with people today? Now spend 18 minutes (my timer is set there, but chose your amount of time) reflecting on one or more encounters you had with other people today. Focus on how you were in those interactions; let go of how they were, only judging them with honor. 

Repeat this exercise throughout the week. If there are days when you feel like you don't have much to say, reflect backward; is there an experience from the last week, month, year that you are still thinking about, that is still bothering you in some way? Reflect!

Re'eh: Reaping Blessing Through Letting Go

When you do set [your slave] free, do not feel aggrieved; for in the six years s/he has given you double the service of a hired man. Moreover, the Lord your God will bless you in all you do. 
(Deut. 15:18)

I don't keep human slaves, and I don't believe in such keeping, but I do keep material slaves. Beyond the things I have in my life that I put to good use on a daily, weekly, or even annual basis, I keep things far beyond their function to me.

When we moved across the country last summer, I gave away an incredible amount of what my mother taught me to call "junque" when I was a kid, a term she placed on the box of things that didn't fit in any good category but which I refused to part with. Apparently, I have accumulated a lot of junque. Last year I finally got rid of piles of books about topics I have no longer study or work with, furniture and clothing that I rarely or never used, tchatchkes (trinkets - pick your word) that my inner child had forced me to hold onto, and many broken things I kept promising myself I would fix.

I kept a desk. It's a perfectly good desk - a solid top over four sturdy legs, with a single small drawer big enough for a few pencils, a small stapler, and a packet of stamps.

I acquired this desk one summer when someone paid me to clean out and paint their basement. "Get rid of the desk." I brought it home. After all, I was a poor college student, applying at the time for graduate school, and sure to both be poverty stricken and in need of a desk for years to come. 

The irony -- which came to me as an epiphany the other day when I read Stephen King's words On Writing, "It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room" -- is that I don't use a desk.  King uses a desk, and his belongs in the corner, not the middle or the room (he also had an epiphany). My writing space, my working space, is a chair or a couch or often enough sitting up in bed. I use a desk when I have to - at work - but not on my own time.

I didn't know this, though, and I moved the desk from my Ohio undergraduate apartment to my Indiana grad student house, then on to Pennsylvania for rabbinical school. I cannot remember where the desk was in our Philly apartment -- it's possible I stored it those years, because there I acquired an IKEA desk with more drawer space. I took both desks with me to New Hampshire, and the old one had an honored spot in our sunroom, where it rarely accumulated too many stacks, and where my husband frequently sat. I sat next to it in the chaise, as I had the other desk in Philly. And then I moved both desks to Connecticut, where the newer one became a desk I sat at a handful of times, and the old one became my son's changing table. When we moved to Seattle, the IKEA desk went to the curb in the great purge, but this old desk came with, still sturdy and, I thought, functional.

Currently, this desk sits in my living room gathering stacks of things. I have sat at it maybe twice in the year we have been here. At Hanukkah it held our various menorahs. But mostly it has stacks of things that get put there, then buried, deeper and deeper until I am forced into an archaeological dig either by avalanche or by a need to find something.

Still, I haven't decided if or how to get it out of my house. We don't have storage space, and besides, storing it for some theoretical use in some unknown time in the future feels absurd. I know if I put it out on the curb or put a note up on my local "buy-nothing" page, it will be gone in short order, and to someone who will surely put it to good use.

Why is it so hard? This week's Parasha reminds us that the difficulty of letting go is common, but that to do so honors the place that thing, idea, or yes, person, has had in our lives. I am also convinced that letting go makes room in our lives for things, ideas, and people we can't anticipate. 

Yep, the desk I have held onto for more than twenty years, still with names and phone numbers penned on it by the previous owner, is all but gone.

Devarim: Shaking Up Routines

וַנֵּפֶן וַנִּסַּע הַמִּדְבָּרָה
"And we turned and journeyed to the wilderness"
(Deut. 2:1)

This morning I parked in a different place, took the wrong elevator up, then a different (but right) elevator down, got off at the wrong floor, walked back up, used a different restroom, then missed my usual turn. All of which led me to a hug from my dad. And in the end I needed to sit and process, so I stopped at a favorite coffee house I don't ordinarily pass.

In this week's Parashah, Devarim, Moses begins to recount for the Israelites where they have been and what they have done. They have arrived at the border of the Promised Land a second time, nearly 40 years after the first time, and in truth the people who were there, and the actions Moses is referring to, all occurred when those present were either children or not yet born - all except Caleb, Joshua, and Moses himself.

What strikes me here is not so much the place or the people, or even the history lecture from Moses, but the quick recount of the wandering itself. A map of the wandering looks a little like a maze that crosses in and over itself. And the return to the edge of promise comes not after a relatively direct journey from Mitzrayim by way of Sinai, but rather from this loopy roundabout journey.

Just as I have seen my day differently, my mind jogged by my unusual morning route, I am sure this new generation of Israelite adults must have seen their approach to the promise of what lay beyond the Jordan differently than their parents and grandparents had.

Being fully aware sometimes requires a little interruption of routine. My routine this one morning a week has been quite comfortable, in its way, for nearly a year, now - I leave the house early, drive in usually quiet traffic, park in the garage, have breakfast with my mother, read out loud to her, then leave to go to work. Never mind that I have changed jobs, and maybe twice have had to skip a breakfast, it has been very regular routine. This morning, I got a hug from my dad, whom I don't ordinarily see on these early mornings. This morning, I learned a couple of things I didn't know, and I am now thinking of possible support for something. This morning, my transition from breakfast to work was more mindful.

Whether or not the Israelites that stood on the precipice in Deuteronomy were literally a new generation, I can only imagine that they stood there with new eyes, with a new perspective, because of their circuitous journey through the wilderness. Perhaps more than that they would no longer remember slavery personally, which might be a valuable difference, their journey had given them something valuable - had set them up for positive interactions with their neighbors by giving them a tour of the area as a free people.

I am grateful for the periodic diversion from the direct route, for the jog to my mindfulness that comes from shaking up--or being shaken from--my routines. Although I admit - forty years of such diversions might have me throwing up my hands and begging to set down roots. Indeed, while I have traveled across our country, lived in many states, and journeyed internationally - I am so very ready to stay in one place for a very long time. And the timing of this could not be more apt, as we near the first anniversary of my having returned to my "homeland," the city in which I was born and raised, after 24 years of wandering.

Matot-Masei: On Vows and Vowing

Oh, how we try to wriggle out of vows.

I do it as a parent: "If you don't stop, I'm going to take away x." And then I feel guilty, or like it was a harsh punishment, and I find myself backing off. Another parent recently reminded me, "the trick is never to promise or threaten anything you don't intend to follow through on."

I do it as a partner: "I promise I will be better about a." And then I try to narrow the circumstances where a actually applies.

I do it to myself: "I promise to give my body the chance at a full night's sleep." And here I am staying up past my bedtime to write a blog post.

This week's Parashah, the combined Matot-Masei, opens with "If a man makes a vow to God...he shall not break his pledge." (Never mind that it then diminishes a woman's vow, saying her father or husband can negate it, or allow it to stand. I'm going to assume we all agree that men and women are equal, and thus nobody owns the vow of another.)

Torah has plenty to say about vows. Indeed, it is pretty serious about them, especially those in which we obligate ourselves to actions directed at God or in God's name, but also those in which we obligate ourselves to our neighbors, our planet, even ourselves.

Later Jewish custom wriggles, just like we (I) do in everyday life.

Kol nidre (All Vows) - the title prayer of the service that kicks off Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) - asks that our vows be annulled, that every serious oath we have taken be wiped out, that we not be held accountable.

No, Judaism doesn't say we can get out of our obligations so simply. Indeed, there were early concerns about the notion of annulling vows. The Jewish Encyclopedia discusses a medieval change in the prayer:

"An important alteration in the wording of the "Kol Nidre" was made by Rashi's son-in-law, Meïr ben Samuel, who changed the original phrase "from the last Day of Atonement until this one" to "from this Day of Atonement until the next." 

The implication in this change is that we shouldn't be making vows to God in the first place, because we are sure to falter. But while this might be a relief (since we might make vows in the heat of a situation), it does effectively wriggle us out ahead of any actual vow-making. And we might therefore think that we can go ahead and make those heat-of-the-moment vows, and other vows, and not really worry about the consequences.

What I fear (and I am not alone in this fear) is that we lose the meaning of vows, and even smaller promises - to God and to people - when we assume we are free because of a prayer recited months ago.

I see this diminishing vow-lue -- in the person who goes into a marriage saying, "well, if it doesn't work out, we can always get a divorce," and in my own practices of self-care, be it what I feed myself or my lack of exercise. 

The Kol Nidre prayer does not, in fact, ensure us freedom from our vows. Even with the prayer, we must still be careful with our promises, and we must nonetheless atone for our failures before we can expect forgiveness.

A vow is a weighty thing - and it should be. Whether we are promising something to a friend or to God, we should feel the obligation of the relationship. We should not enter in expecting that we can simply wriggle out from under that weight easily, lightly. Still, it's nice to know that, if we make a promise and cannot fulfill it, we can be forgiven, even if it takes some emotional, spiritual, even physical work on our part to get there.

WSP: Writing as Spiritual Practice (1)

Something happens when I write. Actually, a lot of things happen when I write - to varying degrees depending on what, when, even how I am writing.

There are so many categories of writing, and categories within categories. Journal or diary writing varies based on time-of-day as well as what intention (processing, projecting, reporting, etc.) I put into it. Then there is expository writing with the purpose of showing or teaching others about what I am thinking, reading, focused on in life - taking a variety of forms depending on topic and intended audience (call this blog post that sort of writing). And there are all the little bits of writing - email queries and responses, marketing materials, lists, reminders, notes to self or spouse or coworker. And, on the side, I do a little creative, spiritual fiction.

Writing in the morning or evening is very different, in ways partly but not entirely specific to the of the type of writing I am doing. I am very definitely a morning person - I am at my most creative, typically, when the day is barely begun. In the evening, I'm more likely to reflect backwards - and if I'm writing fiction, just as when I'm writing in my journal, that produces a different voice than my morning writing. I can force myself to process in the morning, or to think creatively forward in the evening, but it's far less natural.

Writing by hand is by far my preferred mode. I use it for journaling, for first drafts of sermons and other expository writing, for fiction and creative nonfiction, and still sometimes for letters (I miss formal letter writing - and receiving). I think differently - more slowly (by force), but also in ways I can't quite describe - when I am writing by hand rather than typing. Interestingly, most of my blog posts are written strictly on the computer, and I wonder about that sometimes.

All of these - the what I write, the when I write, and the how I write - move me. Whether journaling in the morning about something I hope to have happen, or creating a fictional scene, writing transforms me in much the same way that reading transports me - I find myself experiencing the world differently than when I don't write. I connect with the world outside of myself, I see myself in the larger picture, I discover how relationships connect or divide.

Writing is a spiritual practice for me, no matter what I am writing. Over the past couple of years, writing has been essential in my journey, offering a place to process and engage change as it has come my way, and providing inspiration to make meaningful transitions - mindfully.

Father's Day Isn't All Happy (but it isn't all sad, either): A Personal Story

Happy Father's Day!
It's all over ads in my email inbox - it's impossible to get away from. My Facebook status update even says, "It's Father's Day, what's on your mind?" and wants me to add a cute little handholding graphic to my update.

And I don't say I want to get away from it. But maybe, a little bit, I do...and if you do, too, I hope you will read through the happy beginning that comes next. Because:

I wish a very Happy Father's Day to my stepfather, who has truly been a Dad to me, throughout most of my life, through thick and think. He has indulged in all the right fatherly moments, and he has been fiercely loving when I needed it - and always. He has stood by my mom in sickness and in health - his love for her is steadfast, and has taught me how I want, how I deserve to be loved in this world. He has loved her, and me, through both storm and sunshine.

I wish a very Happy Father's Day to my husband. It is awesome watching him be Dad to our son, even (or maybe especially) in the moments where we aren't completely on the same page about parenting styles. I am glad for him and for our son that he has had the flexibility in these first few years of parenting to really be available throughout the week, to pick him up after school and take him to the park or other play places. I see father and son learning the world together, teaching each other, playing and reading and snuggling - and it is more beautiful than I could imagine.

And then.

And then, on Father's Day, I inevitably think about my father, the man whose DNA is in mine, who was married to my mother the first handful of years of my life, who lived within spitting distance my entire childhood, whom I saw in the old-fashioned custody arrangement of every other weekend (and who seemed at other hours of the week to be unapproachable).

Somehow, in my childhood, he made me uncomfortable growing into a woman. He left me with vulnerabilities I am still patching over. As an adult, I tried reconciling a couple of times, and each time he, unintentionally I am (fairly) certain, ripped open wounds I thought I had healed, leaving me feeling stupid and insecure. During one of these reconciliation periods he seemed really to want to get to know me - so much that I felt others in my life weren't listening as well as he. And then.

And then.

And then, I forgive and I move on with my life. But I do so without him in it.

And then, I think maybe I should wish him a Happy Father's Day. After all, I really don't think he ever intended to alienate me. I don't think he set out to hurt me or to open up those vulnerabilities that are so fragile in me to this day. I don't think he ever wanted me to feel uncomfortable being a woman in this world, though his actions contributed greatly to my awareness of and distaste for the deep-rooted misogyny in our society.

And then, I wonder how on earth I can wish this man a Happy Father's Day. How could it possibly be happy, even to hear from me? Perhaps he can go on blindly, and not wonder about a possible relationship with me, his daughter, or not grieve my brother, z"l, dead now nearly twenty years, who would have been 48 tomorrow. Perhaps his stepdaughters will wish him a happy father's day, as I will to my stepfather - and perhaps that will bring him joy; I really don't know his relationship with them, as I have had none for more than 30 years. Perhaps. And it really isn't fair for me to imagine him dwelling on what could have been, though I inevitably return to it year after year.

Would it make him happy to hear from me, even if I don't intend more than three words? Does it even make sense to send those three words - "Happy Father's Day" - in an email to a man I don't even know anymore (if I ever did)?

And so - if you, the man I called Dad through my childhood, are reading this - I do think of you, and I sometimes wonder how things could be different. I don't know, after all these years, if it is possible to change the way things are, given the way things have been. As I know you wished me no harm, even when you managed to say and do things that left me very hurt - I wish you no harm, no pain, even though I know simply by not being in your life I must leave you with vulnerabilities. For that, I am sorry.

And so - to all out there who have stories that make Father's Day (or Mother's Day, or any other days like this) difficult, or not particularly "happy" (thanks, Hallmark, for telling us we ought to feel a particular way) - I hope you find strength and support.

And also - to all who have read this all the way through despite having wonderful and deep relationships with your fathers and stepfathers - or despite being incredible fathers or stepfathers who are making your children feel safe and secure - thank you for reading, and most of all, Happy Father's Day.

And to everyone - a very happy Solstice - may this day of long daylight shine light and love and healing throughout our imperfect and sometimes awfully broken world.

Reflections on My Love for Israel

My Grandma Jean, z"l, at Kibbutz 

Gadot with a calf suckling her fingers.  

Also in the picture: my parents, brother, 

and our host Victor, a cousin of sorts.

In 1993, I traveled to Israel for the first time - a young adult - with my brother, parents, and grandmother. It was a wonderful trip, with some of the typical tourist experiences (though I have yet, in many trips since, to make it to the Negev or the Dead Sea), and a handful of the typical "visiting family" experiences. Our most relaxing days were in Haifa and at Kibbutz Gadot in the northern Galilee - precisely because those were moments visiting people rather than places.

A particular event stands out as part of how I, personally, connect with Israel - with the land, with the history, with the state (aside from coming home and declaring my final undergraduate major, in archaeology).

My favorite part of Israel, instantly from the moment we landed that December and to this day, is the sense of history and culture all around. There is energy, flow, emitting from the old walled city of Jerusalem to the tools of war rusting by the roadside; from the great abandoned ruins of Caesaria to the living ancient city of Akko; from Jewish religious sites to the mosques and minarets to the Baha'i gardens of Haifa; from the bustle of the old-style shuk to the more modern Diezengoff of Tel Aviv with its shopping and night clubs.

During our stay at Gadot, we went on a day trip to see local notable places. Just a short distance from the kibbutz, on a hill overlooking the northern Jordan valley and across to the Golan, we stopped for the view. On the hill was a building in ruins, and behind it was a clearly marked mine field. Like all other places with ruins, I felt a strong pull to the building, little more than an outlining foundation with a few wall sections rising angularly. I wanted to spend some time in what shadow it had left to offer.

"It's a recent building," said our host, "nothing interesting." Recent, as in from 1967, when Israel captured the land and occupied the Golan for security purposes. At that time, the hill we were standing on - and the kibbutz behind it - were besieged by weapon fire from the Golan.

We moved on. We saw the view, we noted the trickling Jordan below, recognized the archaeological site alongside it, and moved on.

But the next day, when everyone else climbed into the van to see yet more, I walked back over to that hill, despite a fierce wind. I sat in the shadow of that ruined building. I sat, and I thought, and I let the energy of the past sweep over me.

More than twenty years and multiple trips back to Israel, including significant time spent at Kibbutz Gadot, and that building - its broken walls, its energy, perhaps its hidden and almost forbidden nature - remains a profound symbol of my connection to Israel.

I love the connection to places where things have happened - or where things are said to have happened. The archaeology along that water above Lake Kineret shows preCanaanite cultures - and our history rises up from there. Jewish access to these historical sites should by no means be exclusive - but everyone should have access to this history, to the experiences, to the feelings evoked by historical places and objects that have cultural and ritual significance.

This post, this story, emerged for me when I sat down to reflect on a recent post by Keith Dvorchik, in which he calls on us to Take Back the Words "Zionism" and "Zionist". I wondered, what makes me a Zionist? This is my answer, based on the dictionary definition offered in that post - "Political support for the creation and development of a Jewish homeland in Israel." 

I am a Zionist because I believe that Jews have a strong connection to the land - that a connection to land is a deep Jewish value (note the maintaining of rituals connected to the agricultural cycle of Israel even by people who electively remain in diaspora). I am a Zionist because full access to the land and its history should be available to the Jewish people - as well as to others who have similar connection (Utopianism is perhaps a higher value of mine, if less realizable). I am a Zionist because I love the land of Israel. So even, or especially, when I dissent with certain political moves or election results, I am a Zionist. After all, an election cannot be fair without the ability for people to have voted against the winner, and without the ability to continue to disagree and offer suggestions for change. I am a Zionist because I have a personal connection to the Land of Israel, and I desire the continued development and improvement of the State of Israel.




Note: I don't have a picture of that particular building - at least not accessible digitally at the moment (I took 18 rolls of 36-shot 35mm, some in B&W, that trip, but have only digitized one roll so far). Please enjoy the gratuitous picture of my grandmother, may her memory be a blessing, at Kibbutz Gadot.

To Sing With My Life: Short Thoughts

The Psalmist sang, I will sing to God with my life. My rabbinic classmate and colleague, Rabbi Me'irah Iliinsky, did a beautiful illumination of this verse, which I have framed - and has typically hung next to my rabbinic ordination certificate. I currently have no room for the latter, but have brought the former into my living room space. This morning I was pondering the words.

What does it mean to "sing out to God with my life"?

At first, I thought - well, it has to be a joyous song. I have to live my life in total positivity.

And the words from the Fiddler on the Roof song, To Life, came to me: "God would like us to be thankful even when our hearts lie panting on the floor. How much more could we be thankful when there's really something to be thankful for!"

Be grateful, is the message, no matter what. That's what I hear in the Psalmist's words.

As I think a little deeper, though, I realize that there are a variety of songs that I can sing out with, using my life:

• I can sing a protest song, actively trying to change the world. This may not be a joyous song - indeed, it might be a song that comes from anger about the brokenness. But it is a strong son.
• I can sing a punk song, in which I express my dissatisfaction with the behavior of some people in the world.
• I can sing a dirge, acknowledging the natural course of life as I sit with others at the end of their life, or remember with those who mourn.
• I can sing a children's rhyme, celebrating curiosity and silliness by playing with my son, with my family, or simply being playful.

I feel freed to sing as I make this beginning to the list of how to sing with my life. Yes, I can sing by being joyful and grateful. And I can sing my values and my hopes. The point is to live those values with passion.

What songs do you sing with your life?

How to Teach 2nd Grade From Scratch

As the end of the school year draws near, it's time to reflect on how to teach 2nd grade without an education degree or a teaching certificate.


Step one,

Say yes when the head of school offers you the job. Move right past thinking it is crazy. Never mind what she is thinking offering the job to you - that’s her business. You have to leap at the chance before you think better of it.

Step two,

Call on all that other teaching experience:

Hebrew/Sunday school classes for which you were probably ill-prepared, but there was so little expectation or oversight that it just didn’t matter - and don't forget directing Hebrew schools, including teaching others about how to teach;

College classes for which you prepared detailed syllabi with oodles of reading, and horrid consequences explicitly laid out for plagiarism and cell-phone use in class;

Adult-ed programs for which you prepared too many texts and then wound up relying heavily on student questions.

Take them all, and throw them out the window.

Except maybe the plagiarism consequences, which you might want to save for when a student defies the sign saying “do your best work.”  No - throw out those consequences. They don’t really threaten the college students out of the plagiarism, and you can’t throw a 2nd grader out of class, or the school, for most of that defiant behavior. And trust me, you probably don’t want to. Plus, many second graders can barely read, so the college and adult-ed lessons are pretty useless.

Which brings me to

Step three,

Bring your heart.

Be prepared for it to get broken.

You will fall in love with your students. Really, you must. And if you don’t, then you probably won’t be a great teacher. And if you do, you need the have a great big open mushable, mashable heart, and be prepared for it to be bruised and scratched and torn.

Because content is only part of what you are teaching - and probably the least important part. What you are teaching, what you need to focus on, is character. You are teaching, or better guiding students to push through the hard stuff, to try things they think they can’t do, to get rid of that “can’t do” attitude, to persevere. You are teaching curiosity. No, you can’t teach that.

Nah - forget the word teaching

You are guiding

encouraging

fostering

The students will learn better when you stop teaching. When you see them. When you open the journey to them.

How do you teach 2nd grade? I haven’t a clue. I understand more about how to read a curriculum, how to write goals that I can meet and that students can understand, and how to write and (sort of) stick to a cohesive lesson plan. But teaching day to day? Every day is different, and no matter how well my plans are written, how cohesive and clear they are, I have learned to be flexible and ready for the unexpected.

What I do know, though, is that my students are awesome, and I appreciate every lesson they have for me, planned or otherwise. And I will miss them terribly when the year is over.

Addendum: thoughts that don't quite fit the above narrative
but I want to say them anyway:

• More than a skim of texts about 2nd grade pedagogy, including who 2nd graders are, is actually quite valuable, and probably necessary for sustained work in this field.
• If it weren't for the price many students would have to pay, I would think it valuable for every adult to teach for a year, including all of the preparation involved. As a society, we might respect our teachers more, and possibly compensate them better, recognizing all that they do. And more parents might then approach teachers with a level of compassion and gratitude, out of experience. I know the experience changed how I approach my son's teachers, even when I have a big concern.

St. Helens - I will never forget! 35 years

On top of St. Helens
All covered with ash
We lost Harry Truman
And his 800 cats.
     (sung to the tune of "On Top of Spaghetti")

Thirty five years ago today, Mount St. Helens blew her top. She puffed out ash and smoke, creating beautiful and terrifying visuals for miles to come, leaving anywhere from a dusting of ash here in Seattle and a lot of other places (apparently as far away as Minnesota) to feet of it in the immediate surrounds.

My older brother and I used to sing the little ditty above with a sort of glee, but the truth is that Harry Truman (not the president), refused to evacuate his home on St. Helens prior to the eruption. He and his sixteen cats (okay, our little folk ditty exaggerated a little) died there. One of 57 human and countless animal deaths.

Whenever May 18th rolls around, I find myself reflecting. 

We felt small tremors at our house in Settle - watched the red mushroom lamp swaying on its wire over our kitchen table.

I can still see the ash plume in my mind's eye - I don't need the photographs, though I don't think we could see it from our house (we had a good north view, but not south).

I can remember the dusting of fine ash that was impossible to clean, and stories from family and friends south and east who had a foot or more of fallen ash to contend with. I always thought, if it's so hard for me to clean one little layer, which scratched the heck out of the plexiglass in our front door beyond repair, how much harder for those who had not just the dust but the weight of piled ash.

For years, when we would drive down I-5 to Oregon, we could still see barren hills of ash, pushed off to the side of the road. Eventually, these became fertile, grasses and wildflowers covered them, and eventually trees made them essentially indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape, so that if you don't know where to look you would have no idea what you were seeing. 

Like St. Helens, who has welcomed the return of plants and animals to her reshaped landscape, I too have changed in these past 35 years. Sometimes inside I feel very much like the 9 year old child for whom the above events were so immensely important. But 35 years adds a lot of layers. For St. Helens, a mountain, those layers include the rebuilding of the inner dome and the reshaping of the outer flora and fauna. 

For me, those layers include growing up (still, every day), developing an appreciation for landscapes across our country and, indeed, our world, and learning to welcome the diverse nature of this world into my heart. For me, these 35 years have helped me to deepen the sense of human journey in the world, the way we are drawn from and to places. 

35 years later, May 18th, 2015 - and I have returned to the PNW, where the local news (see here and here, for example) is acknowledging, investigating, and commemorating this event that has been a natural marker in my life, in that "do you remember where you were when" way. In my call to return, throughout the years, I think I can understand a little of Harry Truman's refusal to leave, his willingness to stay in a place where death was almost certain. Where else would he feel so at home?


Note: I can find no reference to the little folk ditty at the top of this post. Did my brother and I make it up? Was it limited to our neighborhood? Did you, my Seattle readers, also sing this?