New Beginnings, Fresh or Rotten - Your Choice

You know that one moldy strawberry in the box? The one that's touching at least five others? What is your first thought - past the ICK - when you see that mold? Contamination!

Torah speaks of the first days of the world - of the separating of light from darkness and of water from land and air - as a time of completion. Things come into being whole and ready. The herbs and fruits are ready to eat right away, "in the beginning." Adam and Eve are not brought into this world as infants, but as wholly formed adults, walking and speaking and thinking.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates this whole world, the anniversary of that beginning. And that's where we stand now, in the autumn - with a world of abundance, beginning and approaching the harvest season.

Ripe apples and pomegranates for our Rosh Hashanah dinner tables mean that the trees - and the herbs of the field - are about to go dormant, to die their autumnal death. We are entering darkness, brought by the autumnal equinox and the hibernation of plants and animals.

Now, as we leave the light of summer and the growing season behind, we celebrate the abundance of the world Created whole, trees and fields offering up sustenance that we seek to preserve to carry us through the winter.

Now, we want to carry the best of our foods into storage - and we want to carry the best of ourselves into the new year. One moldy strawberry will contaminate the whole container; molds and rot spread. We don't want that - in our food supply, or in our selves.

So we clean out the old - we take inventory of our fruits and herbs, and we take inventory of our souls. We choose what goes into our containers carefully.

We have the opportunity to put an end to behaviors that cause rot, that fester in our relationships. We ask forgiveness, and we search our souls for ways to change our behavior, to be better people in the coming year.

If we choose our fruits well, we can make it through the darkness of winter. We will have healthy food for our bodies -- and we will have clean souls and strong relationships that will carry us through the coming year, whatever it holds for us.

Wishing you good choices, solid forgiveness, and a healthy and sweet new year.

The Gifts of Walking and Writing

Our bodies were made for moving - walking, running, stretching. And our minds/souls were made for creativity. For me, remembering these gifts, and the soul-freedom that comes from them, doesn't always come freely. 

I haven't written a blog post in two months. I started one, shortly after my mother's April heart attack, but I let "life" get in the way. I continue to write in my journal everyday, forcing myself to "stay unblocked," but quite obviously pushing myself some days to keep the flow going. 

In this two months, though, I have relearned the power of walking. It helps that warm weather has returned, and that I've been spurred on by teachers. 

Today, half a mile into my two mile walk I remembered beautiful things from this morning. A mile in, I remembered how critical walking is. This is what happens when I walk, especially when I walk alone or in companionable quite: My mind opens, my thoughts loosen up as my arms and legs limber, and I start to write - in my head, and something on whatever paper or device I can grab. 

Torah is both ancient and contemporary wisdom of storytelling and journey taking, and it reminds me not to forget that both are about life. 

This week's Torah reading, about the death of Korach and his followers, is full of the kind of blindness that gets me in trouble. I stop paying attention to the gifts I have - or I stop using them - and I try to force tight ideas into unreceiving spaces.   

There is a redeeming note in the story if Korach. "Once [things] have been used for offering to the Lord, they have become sacred." And ever more shall be so. 

A colleague this week reminded me to listen to my gut feelings - not to try to force myself into a particular situation that just didn't feel right. Wisdom for Korach. Wisdom for all of us. 

And from that reminder, along with another friend's about the gift of my writing and the above words from Torah, I am trying to connect to the sacred, trying not to let "life" get in the way of living - walking and writing and telling stories of the things that move me spiritually. Like teaching my son this morning to communicate with a caged bird by bobbing and nodding and tilting our heads the way the bird does, and being amazed that it actually calmed the bird, and my son. I almost forgot about that, until half a mile into my solo walk this afternoon. Thank G-d for this body and all the life and sacred, creative energy that flows through it.