Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 170

Readiness

The first creative act of the new year: I find an empty manila folder, uncap a blue pen with a thick nib, and inscribe the tab with "POEMS 2014."

It's the first poetry-related creative act, anyway. I wrote a d'var Torah last week, beginning 2014 not with poetry but with prose.

That's not surprising. I can't remember a year when I began writing new poems as soon as the calendar page had turned. Poetry doesn't require the kind of temporal spaciousness needed for writing a novel; it's something I can work on in fits and starts, an hour here, an afternoon there. But it does require emotional and spiritual spaciousness. And that's usually in short supply around the start of January.

Since late November, I've juggled Thanksgiving, our son's birthday, Chanukah, a family simcha on the other side of the state, a visit to my family in Texas, Christmas, school break, winter storms, New Year's, and more houseguests than I can count. Also synagogue work in all of its usual forms. There's been a lot of wonderful! But precious little normalcy: the usual flow of weekdays and Shabbat, workdays and childcare, meditation and prayer.

Poetry -- my poetry, anyway -- requires emotional and spiritual breathing room.

January seventh. The old year is really and truly behind us. 2014 stretches ahead. And now my POEMS 2014 folder waits to receive the first slim draft.

I won't write a poem today. I probably won't write a poem this week. But my desk is tidied. The holiday wrapping paper which had taken up temporary residence on the floor has been cleared away. I've re-hung the poems and my Bennington diploma on the newly-repainted wall of my study. When I stop typing, all I can hear is quiet. These are first steps.

Many years ago, when I worked for the artist Jenny Holzer, I typed up the following quote on a piece of brown paper and hung it over my desk:

I do not write every day, I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognize in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness. A writer lives in a constant state of readiness. (-- Jeanette Winterson)

Readiness. One breath after the next. Breathing in; breathing out. Right here; right now. The manila folder of my year is open. Receptive. Ready.

Bo: the Calling to Serve

Here's the d'var Torah I meant to offer today at my shul, until services were cancelled on account of dangerously low temperatures. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.) Stay warm and safe, y'all!

This week's Torah portion, Bo, contains one of my favorite verses in Torah: va'anachnu lo neda mah na'avod et Adonai ad bo'enu shamah, "And we shall not know with what we are to serve Adonai until we get there."

In context, it's speaking about animal sacrifice. Moses and Aaron have come before Pharaoh to ask permission for all of the Israelites to travel into the wilderness in order to pray to our God, and in that era, prayer meant sacrificing animals on the altar.

But in our own post-sacrificial era, a deeper meaning comes through. We never know with what we will be called to serve God until we "get there," wherever "there" is. This moment. The next moment. The moment after that.

I love this verse in part because it was one of the themes of my ordination ceremony. The ten of us who received smicha together offered divrei Torah, words of Torah, in the middle of the ceremony. We wove together the stories in Bo and Beshalach -- preparing to depart from Mitzrayim, and the Exodus into the unknown -- with our own journeys from yearning to ordination, to this new mantle of service which we were about to take on.

Some of my classmates offered prose. Others, music. I offered poetry. Poetry about taking the leap into the unknown, even when you don't feel ready. Poetry about trusting that there will be enough -- that you will be enough -- that manna, and Torah, and hope, and love, will continue flowing.

The children of Israel didn't know what they would find in the wilderness. Surely they had no idea that they would wander for forty years in the space in-between where they had left and where they were going. But they trusted -- at least in their better moments! -- that they would find the inner resources they needed.

We don't know what this new year will hold. What will 2014 bring for us? Surely there will be joy, and there will be sorrow. There will be exultation, and there will be grief. Will we be able to face both the bitter and the sweet with kindness and compassion?

We shall not know with what we are to serve Adonai until we get there. Each of us serves in our own way, with the skills and abilities we've been given. In each moment, a new opportunity to serve. And each of us will encounter tasks which we are uniquely suited to perform. The Hasidic masters teach that there are broken places which only you can heal; there are sparks which only you can uplift.

Just before my ordination, one of my dearest teachers blessed me that I might find sustenance in serving the servants of the Most High. I serve God through serving you: my community, those who thirst for Torah and for connection with something greater than themselves. And all of us, as Jews, serve God. With mitzvot -- with good deeds -- with our search for meaning -- with our acts toward healing the world and completing the work of creation.

Serving God isn't something which only rabbis do. It's something we're all called to do. That's what it means to be Jews. Our ancestors left Pharaoh's slavery and embraced covenant with God: not servitude, but service.

We shall not know with what we are to serve Adonai until we get there. We are called to bring all of ourselves, all of our hearts and souls, all of our inner resources to serving the One Who speaks the universe into being. And we each serve in our own unique way.

May we enter into this new year secure in the faith that we'll have the inner resources to serve in whatever ways we are called, to meet whatever challenges lie ahead. We won't know what 2014 will hold until we get there. But in our response to what arises, we can always choose kindness over selfishness, compassion over indifference. We can aspire to serve with all that we are.

 

All of us, bringing our all: a d'var Torah for Bo

Funny story: I went to prepare this Torah portion for services, and gravitated toward these verses. I had these thoughts. I thought, "hm, this seems familiar, have I written about this before?" but I searched my divrei Torah index and there was no d'var Torah on this theme. So I wrote this one. A few days later it occurred to me to go through my archives from last January post by post, and sure enough, in 5773 I wrote a d'var Torah for parashat Bo which works with these very same ideas. Whoops! (I've now edited that index to include last year's d'var Torah.) Anyway, I wrote a new one to offer at shul tomorrow (which will appear here on Sunday.) So here's the d'var Torah I wrote for this week which I'm not going to use!

 

Last week we read about Moses and Aaron going to Pharaoh, asking for permission to take their people into the wilderness to make offerings to Adonai. Pharaoh, not surprisingly, said no. God's response was the first several plagues.

In this week's Torah portion, the plagues continue. And for a moment, Pharaoh relents. "Go worship your God," he snaps to Moses and Aaron. "Who's going with you?"

Moses replies, "We will all go, with our youths and elders; we will go with our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds." The phrase "youths and elders" is a rhetorical figure of speech which uses two extremes to convey a totality. The text says "young and old," and we're meant to fill in "and everyone in between."

The Eskenazi and Weiss translation reads "We will all go, regardless of social station." Rich and poor and everyone in between. Those who had assimilated into Egyptian ways, and those who had retained strong Hebrew practices, and everyone in between. Those who had power, and those who were powerless, and everyone in between.

How powerful that in this moment, as Moses has first taken on the mantle of leading our people out of slavery, he insists that making offerings to Adonai is something which all the people must do.

The Hebrew word עבודה (avodah) means service, as in the service of sacrifices we once offered, now replaced by the service of the heart which is prayer. We will read soon in Torah about how the priestly system of sacrifice began in the wilderness, and then about the priestly apparatus which existed once the Temple is built. But here in this moment before the Exodus, Moses offers a glimpse of a radically egalitarian future in which all of us are called to be servants of the Most High.

Not just the priests. Not just the men. Not just those with social standing. All of us.

Unsurprisingly, Pharaoh balks. "May God be with you the same as I mean to let your descendants go with you," he sneers. He knows that it's not possible to serve two masters, and that if he lets us be in relationship with God, we will no longer be completely under his thumb.

The Hebrew words for slavery and for service come from the same root, ע / ב/ ד. This root is a recurring motif in this week's Torah portion; it appears, in various forms, 21 times (an average of once every three verses!)* In the haggadah we read avadim hayyinu, "we were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt..." And once we enter into covenant with God at Sinai we become avdei Adonai, servants of the Most High. The word denoting service is the same...but who or what are we serving? That's what makes all the difference.

In the Jewish understanding, we don't shrug off Pharaoh's chains in order to be completely unfettered, free of responsibility to anyone or anything. The truest freedom comes in choosing to serve: to serve the greater good, to serve creation, to serve the source of love in the universe. Either our lives belong to Pharaoh -- to overwork, to empire, to power-over, to that force which seeks to dominate and to own us -- or they belong to the Source of all, the Wellspring of creation, the One Who speaks and the world comes into being. 

The gift of Shabbat is that it removes us from Pharaoh's domain every week. No matter what our obligations -- to our jobs, to the bank which holds the mortgage, to social pressures or unrealistic expectations -- on one day each week, we let all of that go. We stop serving our bosses and instead remember that we are truly servants of God, blessed and enlivened by that enduring relationship with something greater than ourselves.

And that is true no matter who we are. Young and old, righteous and wicked, rich and poor, all of these binarisms and everyone in between -- all of us are called to offer our hearts and our hands.

After two more plagues, Pharaoh changes his mind again. "Fine," he says, "all of your people can go, but leave behind your flocks and herds." And Moses says no, we need to take everyone and everything. "We shall not know with what we are to worship God until we get there." The simplest understanding of that line is that he's talking about animals for sacrificing. In those days we offered praise and thanksgiving through animal sacrifice; the Hebrews needed all of their livestock in case God asked for more sheep or goats. But I think this line from Torah has a deeper truth which is clear to us today in our post-sacrificial world: when it comes to divine service, we have to bring all that we are.

We never know which parts of ourselves will be needed, which talents or skills or ideas or yearnings will fit the bill. We won't know, we can't know, how we will serve God until we reach each new moment, each new challenge. That's why we have to bring all of us: not only the whole community, but also all of each individual person's body, mind, heart, and soul.

If we leave any person behind -- if we leave any part of ourselves behind -- we won't be able to serve wholly (or to serve the Holy.) When it comes to serving God, all of us have to bring our all.

 

*The source for the citation on 21 appearances of עבד is this My Jewish Learning commentary.

 

 

Ten favorite poems from 2013

A couple of days ago I posted links to my ten favorite prose posts of the (secular) year now ending. Today I'm sharing links to my ten favorite poems which I posted here this year. They're shared chronologically, starting with a sestina written early in the year, moving through poems about parenting, Shabbat, hope, funerals, the book of Jonah, Sukkot, theology and grief, the coming of evening, and ending with a poem I shared recently about the longest night of the year.

Thanks for reading! I wish you joy as we transition into 2014. See you on the other side.

 

Sestina for a three-year-old - "You can turn anything into a car. / Drive your bread across the bright / expanse of table, look to see/ whether I'm watching, if I'll say no. / Tell me you can do it, you are big/ enough, you know you are three."

Right here, right now - " Powered by an everlasting generator / until bedtime when you shove your fists / into your eyes. Curl beside the giant tiger. / Playgrounds are miraculous. So are trains..."

Saturday afternoon request - " Help me to silence  / my mind's aggravation alarm, / to quiet the voice which says / the to-do list matters, / to temporarily eschew / continuous partial attention..."

Affirmation - " Even when factories explode, / when gun deaths rise / like flood waters, // when long-held prejudices / prove impossible to dislodge, / when there's no way around // admitting that what hurts / isn't going away..."

Funeral after Tisha b'Av - "The windshield wipers sway from side to side / like whip-thin Hasidim shuckeling in prayer. // I traverse Silver and Old Orebed, roads named / after gashes in the flesh of the earth..."

We are Jonah - "In Rabbi Eliezer's vision / Jonah entered the whale's mouth  / as we enter a synagogue. / Light streamed in through its eyes. / Jonah approached the bimah, the whale's head. / Show me wonders, he said, as though / his own life weren't a miracle."

Decoration - " The rainbow foil garlands broke / on the night of heavy rain. /  Slivers of color adorn the lawn. / Your tears fell like willow leaves. //  You insisted we find /  the decoration store..."

Firmanent / Tearing - " Our sages teach: read not 'firmanent' / but 'rupture.' Swap two sounds  / in the original Hebrew
and the vastness of the sky's expanse /  becomes the primal tearing /at creation's birth.."

Autumn nightfall - "You mix the watercolors of the evening / like my son, swishing his brush / until the waters are black with paint..."

The longest night - "We wrest what gifts we can / from the dying days..."

 

 

Happy wishes

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

May your day be merry and bright.

 

(Photo source: my flickr photostream.)

Open hearts, open minds, open Hillel

The Swarthmore chapter of Hillel made headlines recently for declaring itself an "open Hillel," open to diversity of opinion on Israel. They have linked themselves with Open Hillel, a student-run campagn to encourage inclusivity and open discourse at campus Hillels. Open Hillel seeks to change the standards for partnership in Hillel International's guidelines, which exclude certain groups from Hillel based on their views on Israel.

When I was an undergraduate, I attended a small liberal arts college which didn't formally have a Hillel, though we did have a Jewish religious center and student group on campus. I attended Shabbat services there regularly -- until differences of opinion, both ritual and political, drove me to seek my spiritual self-expression through unofficial channels instead. (After that, the Williams College Feminist Seder was my primary mode of communal engagement.) If my student organization had been the kind of "open Hillel" which Swarthmore's organization aspires to become, I might have stayed engaged all the way through.

Here's how the Open Hillel folks describe their position:

Hillel International's current guidelines are counterproductive to creating real conversations about Israel on campus. They prevent campus Hillels from inviting co-sponsorship or dialogue with Palestinians, as almost all Palestinian campus groups support the boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel. They also exclude certain Jewish groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, from the Hillel community. Although individual campus Hillels are not obligated to follow the guidelines, they have been used to pressure Hillels into shutting down open discourse on Israel...

We believe deeply in the ideal, expressed in Hillel International's mission statement, of a vibrant, pluralistic Jewish community on campus, in which all people, regardless of their religious observance, past Jewish experience, or personal beliefs, are welcome. In many ways, Hillel has been remarkably successful at fostering such a pluralistic and inclusive community, bringing together students from different backgrounds to learn from and support one another, as well as to openly debate and discuss their differing views. We believe that this pluralism should be extended to the subject of Israel, and that no Jewish group should be excluded from the community for its political views.

This is very much in line with my own hopes for the post-collegiate Jewish community. I've written before about how frustrating I find it when members of the Jewish community police the speech of other Jews on this issue. (See Wishing for a different communal discourse, 2012.) My Judaism is a pluralistic, inclusive, big-tent Judaism where we interact respectfully and kindly despite our differences -- whether they are denominational, liturgical, practical, or political. Spiritually speaking, I resonate with the haggadah's call "let all who are hungry, come and eat" -- it doesn't say "let all who are Democrats," or "let all who are Republicans," or "let all who support AIPAC" (or JStreet or Jewish Voice for Peace) come and eat.

No one should have to leave part of themselves behind in order to merit a seat at the table. No one should be excluded from the Jewish community because of what they believe -- including their stances on Israel/Palestine. Beyond that, what message do we send when we seek to control the conversation about Israel? What are we afraid of -- that someone might say something with which we don't agree? It seems to me that the correct answer to speech with which one disagrees is not silencing that speech, but rather adding more speech to broaden and enrich the conversation. That's precisely what the Open Hillel movement aims to do.

I know that there are Jewish college students who do not identify as Zionists, or whose relationship with Israel is complicated, or who want to have conversations about targeted BDS (boycotting settlement-made goods.) I want those students to be part of the fabric of Jewish community, not to feel that they have to leave the Jewish community behind in order to ask their questions or articulate their truths. And I know that there are college students whose viewpoints on Israel / Palestine are profoundly Zionist, and I want those students to be part of the fabric of the community, too! (I'm not convinced that those students have as difficult a time safely speaking their truths as do those on the Jewish far left, but that's another conversation.) My point is, I want the Jewish community to be diverse enough to welcome kids with many different opinions, and to include them intentionally and with care.

Tightly guarding the boundaries of who's "in" and who's "out," and policing which opinions are permissible and which are taboo, comes out of old-paradigm thinking. I think that old paradigm has outlived its usefulness. College students today are increasingly aware of intersectionality, of the ways in which different social justice issues and different forms of oppression intersect and interact. Our world is increasingly permeable and interconnected, and so too our Jewish community. A Jewish community which seeks to control the conversation about Israel / Palestine is not going to be vibrant or relevant in this century.

I believe that the Jewish community (like all communities) is strengthened by discussion and debate, as long as that debate is l'shem shamayim, "for the sake of Heaven" rather than for the sake of ego or self-aggrandizement. We should be able to create a container which can safely hold our differences, even our differences on Israel. But I know how difficult it can be to create that container -- and also to be the person who feels excluded from that container and therefore unwelcome within the community, or only welcome if one keeps part of oneself silent and hidden. How wonderful it would be if our campus Jewish communities could model this kind of inclusivity for the rest of the Jewish world. Kol hakavod to Swarthmore Hillel. May others follow!

Also worth reading: my colleague Rabbi Brant Rosen's post On Open Hillel, Open Debate, and Open Minds.

Moses, love, and light (a d'var Torah for Shemot)

Here's the d'var Torah for parashat Shemot which I offered at my shul yesteray morning. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

Talmud teaches (Sotah 12a) that when Moses was born, the house was filled with light. In this week's Torah portion we read that Moses' mother saw that he was good, and in Genesis 1 we read that God saw that the light was good. The same phrase is used to describe both Moses and that primordial light.

Remember that at the beginning of the Torah, God says let there be light, and there is light, and God sees that it is good -- and only some days later does God create sun, moon, and stars.

The light of the first day of creation is not literal light. It is the light of wisdom and insight. The light of love. Today we sang "For with You is the source of light" -- not talking about the sun and moon, but about that primordial light.

In the kabbalistic understanding, that primordial light shines from ein-sof, "without-end," the most infinite, transcendent, ungraspable aspect of God. Using the scientific paradigm, we might call it the light of the Big Bang, still emanating into our expanding universe. Or using Hasidic language, we could call it the light of God's yearning for us.

I love the teaching that God birthed the universe in order to be in relationship. Before there was creation, there was only God; but that was lonely. So God pulled back to make space for something which was not-God, and in that space, creation came into being.

In today's parsha we read about Yocheved birthing Moses. When we bring children into our lives, we too have to pull back to make space for something which is not us. We make room for relationship. It takes intention and awareness to respond to our children as Yocheved did -- to recognize and nurture the light in them.

If you've ever practiced yoga, you may have heard the greeting "namaste," which means "the light in me greets the light in you." The light in me greets the light in you. Maybe that's a glimpse of the first light that God called good, shining within each of us.

Yocheved, mother of Moses, hides him for as long as she can. When she can no longer keep his light under a bushel, she places him in a wicker basket and sets it afloat on the Nile -- the very river in which Pharaoh had commanded that all Hebrew boy-children be drowned.

But instead of the waters of drowning, these are waters of redemption. As his sister Miriam the prophet watches from afar, the daughter of Pharaoh finds him there. Immediately Miriam rushes to her side and offers to hire a Hebrew wet-nurse...which means that Yocheved is able to continue nursing her own child.

For our sages, the love of a mother for her child was symbolized by the act of nursing. And our love is a reflection of God's love, which is also likened to nursing! More than the calf wants to suckle, says the Talmud, the cow yearns to give milk. More than we desire God's blessing, God yearns to bestow blessing upon us. God yearns to bestow love. God yearns to bestow light.

Much later in our story, when Moses comes down from Sinai, Torah teaches that he had to veil himself because he was shining with divine light. His encounter with God was so profound that he came away glowing. Have you ever had an experience of such profound wonder and joy that you came away glowing? That's primordial light, shining through you.

On this Shabbat, may our eyes be opened to see the light in each other. And may our hearts be opened to receive the flow of love and light which God yearns to bestow.

 

Image: an artist's rendering of the Big Bang, from here.

A poem for the winter solstice

THE LONGEST NIGHT

for Phyllis and Michael Sommer

We all tell ourselves stories
about grief to come.
Anticipating the dark
we think, how can I live
without the sun I turn toward?
We wrest what gifts we can
from the dying days.
One morning we wake
and the doorway we most dreaded
is behind us.
The ice may not recede
for months to come
but day by day
may there be more light.

 

As I wrote this poem, I was thinking about the way I brace myself for the long dark nights of winter. Even in high midsummer (maybe especially then), some part of me thinks, "how can we possibly survive with so little light?"

I was thinking about lessons I keep re-learning, about how the anticipation of something scary or painful can sometimes tie me in worse knots than the thing itself when it arrives.

And because I wrote the poem this week, while they were sitting shiva, I was also thinking about R' Phyllis Sommer and R' Michael Sommer, and their children, especially their son Superman Sam (zichrono livracha), whose light shone so very bright. May the increasing (physical) light of the coming days be mirrored with spiritual light to bring comfort to their bruised hearts.

 

 

For those who are interested: this year's September equinox poem and this year's June solstice poem.

Comfort

I'm reading in bed when I hear a cry from your room. I put down my book, tilt my head, and hold perfectly still -- as though any of those would help me hear. When the cry comes again, I head toward it. "Hey, hey, honey, I'm here, what's the matter?"

You are sitting up in your bed, face tear-streaked, worried that it's too late at night and we've missed our chance to do something you really want to do tomorrow. I reassure you that it's okay, we haven't missed anything, it's time to sleep now, we'll do that thing after we wake up. "After this day," you confirm. "Then it will be Wednesday?" I tell you you've got it exactly right, and with a sigh you burrow into my shoulder.

We rock a while in the gliding rocker. You are heavy and warm against my chest and across my lap. I can feel your breathing.

We don't do this very often anymore. My arms don't fit snugly around you the way they used to. You're folded over me like a blanket. To think that you were once the newborn with whom I rocked so many endless hours -- it seems almost impossible, except that I've seen your transformation from then to now.

I am grateful that rocking in my arms still brings you comfort.

I know that someday you will have worries I can't solve with a kiss and a cuddle.

Or -- I hope that you will have those worries. Does that sound strange? What I mean is, I hope and pray that I will have the gift and privilege of supporting you as you navigate growing up, even though growing up will mean that you'll have problems I can't fix. I know there's no guarantee that anyone gets as much time as they dream of. I can't hold you, kiss you, stroke your hair this week without remembering that I have friends who are right now grieving the loss of a child only a few years older than you.

I wish I could bottle up the comfort you find now in my arms, and save it to give to you later in life when a hug from Mom won't have this same magic. I wish I could bottle up the comfort you find in my arms and share it with everyone who needs comfort tonight, including -- especially -- my friends who mourn.

I ask if you're ready for bed, and you nod. "Will you carry me?" I promise you that nothing would make me happier. You're giggling as I deposit you on your bed and tuck your Thomas blanket around your shoulders.

I am so glad to be able to carry you. I will always be carrying you.

Top ten prose posts of 2013

For the last several years, I've taken the time at the end of the (secular / Gregorian calendar) year to reread what I've written here, and chosen ten favorite posts as a retrospective of where the year took me. Here are my prose picks from 2013; in a couple of days I'll share links to my ten favorite poems of the year, too. Enjoy!

 

In which Drew blesses me with peace (after a fashion). "First we play peekaboo with the candles. I cover my eyes, Drew covers his, and we peek at each other and grin. I sing the blessing over the Shabbat candles, sometimes rushing a little bit when Drew imperiously tells me to stop singing now..."

Rabbis Without Borders: Who is your Torah for? "My Torah is for anyone who is thirsty. Anyone who's thirsty for connection, for community, for God. Anyone who wants to make their lives holy or to become more conscious of the holiness in the everyday. Anyone who wants access to the rich toolbox of Jewish wisdom and traditions and ideas which I am blessed to have as my yerusha, my inheritance..."

Dear you, who are feeling sad and afraid --. "A wise friend told me, earlier this week, that her grandmother used to say that the painful things will always pass. I like that way of seeing the world. Yes: the hurt will pass, and things will get better. Though sometimes it's hard to trust that that's true..."

We find God in the helpers. "When something awful happens, I think of the passage from Reverend Kate Braestrup which I shared last fall in a sermon for Shabbat Nachamu. God, she says, is not in the disaster; God is not in the car accident; God is not in the bombing. We find God in the love expressed by those who rush to respond: the helping hands, the caring hearts, the first responders who risk their lives to assist those in need."

God is in the tragedy too. "Human life is marked with sorrow. One natural response to sorrow and tragedy is to demand: where is God in this? As a rabbi, I have been blessed (and painfully challenged) with that question. I remember ministering many years ago to a woman who had suffered a grievous trauma, who turned to me and spat, "Where the F*&! is God in that, huh?" And all I could say, in that moment, was: I hear you. And I honor your pain..."

A delicious mikveh before Shabbat...and a few surprises. "We break into groups of two and three so that each woman can be witnessed by one or two holy spirit sisters as she dunks. We begin sharing quietly with our sisters what we wish to release on our immersions, what we want to wash away (spiritually speaking) in order to greet the Shabbat Bride with a whole and joyful heart. // And then two police cars pull up, lights flashing."

#BlogElul 13: Forgive. "I have a memory from my chaplaincy training at Albany Medical Center. I was sitting with my colleagues, a mixed group of ten clergy and laypeople from a wide variety of traditions, and we were exploring together the question of how to extend pastoral care to someone who had done something terrible. Is it our job, as clergy, to extend forgiveness? What if the patient is near death; does that change anything for us? What if the person to whom we are ministering has done something we feel is unforgivable?"

Susan Katz Miller's Being Both. "An increasing number of Americans are tinkering with religious identity in ways which aren't one-size-fits-all. This might mean bridging or changing within the big tent of a single tradition (e.g. a Jewish family which changes affiliation from one stream of Judaism to another) or across different traditions (as in any interfaith marriage.) Countless Jews and Christians maintain meditation or mindfulness practices, even if they don't self-identify as Buddhists. Religious categories have become more permeable than they used to be. And, as Rabbi Kula notes, this shift brings with it both some loss, and the potential for a 'richer and better world.'..."

On the silencing of Dinah, and rape culture today. "Throughout this narrative, Dinah never speaks once. Her voice is entirely absent from the black fire of our text."

Carving new grooves on heart and mind. "It's always surprising to me -- though it probably shouldn't be -- how easily the mind becomes accustomed to a thought pattern, and gets stuck there. Our repeated thoughts carve grooves on the soft clay of our consciousness, and soon a thought process goes from occasional to regular to habitual..."

 

Image source: a wordle word cloud made from the text in this post, which highlights the most frequently-repeated words.