Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 188

Self-care for clergy

The question was posed on Twitter: what does self-care really mean for clergy? For those of us who dedicate ourselves to taking care of others, it's not always an easy question to answer. But the work of caring for others is never done, and if we allow ourselves to become burnt-out, we're not much help to the people to whom we want to minister. What does it mean to take care of ourselves? This is my list. If you have other items, I welcome them in comments.

Don't forget your own spiritual practices. Prayer, meditation, yoga, walks in the woods -- whatever works. Listen to birdsong. Cuddle with your children. Say thank you a lot.

Make regular time for learning. If there's a particular kind of sacred text which really fills you up, learn that. You need to keep your own wellsprings flowing.

Get enough sleep. No, seriously, I mean it. This really makes a difference.

Cultivate friendships: with fellow clergy who can relate to where you're at, and also with people who have nothing to do with our line of work.

Seek mentors. Be in spiritual direction and in therapy.

Make time for yourself. Also for your spouse/partner and for your child(ren.) But be sure to keep yourself on the list, too.

Treat yourself to an occasional pedicure. (Okay, maybe this one's just me. But I stand by it!)

Love the people you serve. I got this advice years ago from a dear friend when I was just starting rabbinic school, and I return to it often.

And maintain good boundaries. (You may need to keep your cellphone on in case somebody dies during the night, but you don't need to be wholly "on" all the time. If you catch yourself thinking about work at 11pm, notice that, without judgement, and gently push those thoughts aside. They can wait until morning, and you'll return to the work fresher for it.)

Keep a praise file, and when people send kind notes or say nice things, put those things in the file. When you're having a tough day and feeling down about your work, or feeling as though nothing you do makes a difference, reread what's in the praise file.

Be kind to yourself. Even when you feel as though you're not living up to your own expectations. Maybe especially then.

 

In which I compare my monkey mind to Curious George.

MONKEY MIND

Monkey mind looks like
Curious George: hopping
and screeching, animated
with exaggerated expression.

It swings from idea
to idea: Doctor Who, the Arctic,
the Iraqi psalm melody
from last night's dream.

Listen to the birdsong!
How do they do that?
Is it time yet?
What am I forgetting?

Maybe it's not a monkey
but a pinball machine,
flashing with each bounce
and ricochet. And I say

thank you monkey mind.
Thank you pinball machine.
Thank you, synapses firing
to wake me to this day.

Something stills, slightly:
I'm a pond still peppered
with raindrops, but now
I remember and greet

flashes of silvered gratitude
like ponderous ancient koi
doing their slow pirouettes
in my mind's cold depths.

 

 

"Monkey mind" is a common metaphor for the mind's relentless chatter. It derives from the Buddhist idea of the mind monkey. And Curious George is a character in a popular series of kids' books, now also in a PBS cartoon. When I picture my own monkey mind, he's the image that comes immediately to the forefront of my consciousness.

This morning during meditation at my shul I did a variation on this four worlds gratitude practice, and I invited us to thank God for our monkey minds and to thank our monkey minds for doing what they do. (I heard one of my fellow meditators chuckling at that notion.) It is funny to thank God for monkey mind! But when I stopped resisting my mind's spinning and instead said thank you for it and to it, I felt different.

Shabbat shalom to all who celebrate.

 

What are we here for? To love, and to help others love.

The assignment was to "Select a text, any text, and any type of text, that makes you happy," and to bring it to our Rabbis Without Borders Fellows gathering, and to teach it to one person. Since this was a rabbinic gathering, and we can generally assume that everyone in the room shares a certain body of rabbinic knowledge and Torah wisdom, I decided to reach into a different quiver. I brought a beloved poem by Thomas Lux. (Find it in his book Split Horizon, Mariner Books, 1995.)

 

An Horatian Notion

The thing gets made, gets built, and you're the slave

who rolls the log beneath the block, then another,

then pushes the block, then pulls a log

from the rear back to the front

again and then again it goes beneath the block,

and so on.  It's how a thing gets made—not

because you're sensitive, or you get genetic-lucky,

or God says: Here's a nice family,

seven children, let's see: this one in charge

of the village dunghill, these two die of buboes, this one

Kierkegaard, this one a drooling

nincompoop, this one clerk, this one cooper.

You need to love the thing you do—birdhouse building,

painting tulips exclusively, whatever —and then

you do it

so consciously driven

by your unconscious

that the thing becomes a wedge

that splits a stone and between the halves

the wedge then grows, i.e., the thing

is solid but with a soul,

a life of its own.  Inspiration, the donnée,

the gift, the bolt of fire

down the arm that makes the art?

Grow up!  Give me, please, a break!

You make the thing because you love the thing

and you love the thing because someone else loved it

enough to make you love it.

And with that your heart like a tent peg pounded

toward the earth's core.

And with that your heart on a beam burns

through the ionosphere.

And with that you go to work.

—Thomas Lux

For me, the heart of this poem is these three lines: "You make the thing because you love the thing / and you love the thing because someone else loved it / enough to make you love it."

When I first fell in love with this poem, I was pursuing an MFA at Bennington. I loved Lux's articulation that creativity takes work. There's a popular misconception that art, including poetry, is purely a "gift" from beyond. That it just happens like magic for people who are lucky. I'll grant you that there's something occasionally ineffable about art, and that it can impact us like a lightning bolt -- but I'm firmly in the camp which says that poetry, like any art, is also a craft.

These days I relate to this poem both as a poet, and as a rabbi. Here's what I hear Lux saying to me in this poem now: find the work that you love, and do it. And know that the reason you love it is because someone else loved it enough to open it up for you. And know that your job is to inspire someone else to love it -- or to love something else; but to love that thing enough to in turn transmit the love to someone else.

I write poems because I love poems; I love poems because someone else loved them enough to make me love them.

I teach Torah because I love Torah; I love Torah because someone else loved Torah enough to make me love it.

Maybe your art is cooking. You make beautiful meals -- because someone else loved cooking enough to cook a beautiful meal for you, to inspire you. Or, as the poem says, maybe your art is birdhouse building or painting tulips. Whatever it is that you love: you love it because someone else opened it up for you. And because you love it, you can open it up (and open up the whole process of having-something-opened-up) for someone else in turn.

"It's how a thing gets made," writes Lux. "[N]ot / because you're sensitive, or you get genetic lucky[.]" Not because of some magical inspiration from on high, "a bolt of fire / down the arm that makes the art." Making art, being creative, seeking meaning, doing work one feels "called" to do -- these aren't only open to people who are special, people who get inspiration, people who are "religious." This is open to all of us. More: I think it's incumbent on all of us.

The work we do in the world happens because we dedicate ourselves to doing it. It's not a matter of God pulling the strings from on high. Our work in the world is to find a thing we love -- poetry, Torah, parenting, carpentry, whatever that thing is for you -- and to do it, and to share the work and the love with someone else. When we find what we love and share it with others, we inspire them to find what they love and share that in turn.

That's what grounds us in this life, our hearts "like a tent peg pounded toward the earth's core." That's what allows us to soar, our hearts burning "through the ionosphere."

And with that, we go to work. Or, in the language of Jewish tradition, "all the rest is commentary: go and learn."

Find people who love something enough to make you love it. Then teach others to love things as you've been fortunate enough to be taught how to do. That's what we're here for. And that's why this is a text about happiness, for me. I'm a rabbi because I love Judaism, I love Torah, and I love God. I love those things because someone else loved them enough to make me love them -- and now I get to go to work and help other people love them, too.

 

Emilia Zhivotovskaya on cultivating happiness

"Happiness is something more than simply the absence of neurosis or sickness," said Emilia Zhivotovskaya. "To build a flourishing life, you want to minimize -- not eliminate! -- the negative and build the positive." Emiliya spoke with my cohort of Rabbis Without Borders fellows today about positive psychology and about happiness. (Those of you who follow my Twitter stream may have gotten some glimpses of her remarks -- I did a lot of tweeting during her presentation.)

"Practicing lovingkindness meditation actually changes us," Emiliya told us. "When we feel loved, the body calms down, and cardiovascular health improves." (She cited some studies about the vagus nerve, lovingkindness, and compassion.) I can't speak to the science of her claims, but I know that the spiritual practices I've taken on have changed my lived experience of my world; I'm not surprised to hear that practices such as lovingkindness meditation actually change the people who practice them.

She had some interesting things to say about what she called "negativity bias" -- the ways in which we're hardwired to experience negativity differently than positivity. Imagine that you write a blog post or offer a sermon and you get five pleasant comments and one nasty one: what sticks with you more deeply? If you're like me -- like most of us -- you'll remember the negative comment, the nasty email, the hateful review, far longer and in more detail than the positive ones. What's that about? Emilia suggested that evolutionarily we're wired to experience bad more strongly than good. Maybe this goes all the way back to tasting unfamiliar berries on the savannah.

The human brain seems to default to negativity (as she notes, when was the last time you were kept awake at night thinking about things that are awesome?), and overcoming that default state takes some work. Happiness requires effort. Most of what she said here was pretty intuitive to me: "To become happier: consciously practice positive thoughts, feelings, actions." Positive emotions, she argued, broaden and build; negative emotions narrow and focus. So a person who's inhabiting negative emotional space will experience both literal and metaphorical tunnel vision; and a person who's inhabiting a positive emotional space will experience a broadening of perspective, an opening of the heart. Both of these states can be self-reinforcing.

Emiliya noted that "[w]hen people express gratitude before going to bed, they sleep better." (Seriously! Studies have shown!) I love that. Gratitude is probably the practice I've worked the hardest at cultivating in my own life. (See Totally optional poem: Gratitude, 2007; Modah ani with floating rainbows, 2011; this four worlds gratitude practice, 2012; and lessons in gratitude from a three-year-old, 2013.)

I find myself thinking about a lot of these ideas in terms of what kinds of grooves I want to be carving on my heart and in my mind. We're all creatures of habit. I try to cultivate the habit of seeing myself, and seeing everyone around me, through generous eyes. I try to be kind to myself to and to everyone around me. I try to say thank-you to God, at least every morning and every night, for the many blessings in my life. This sounds a little bit corny, I know! But I've found that when I make a practice of saying thank you, when I make a practice of trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, when I stop to notice what's beautiful in my life and in the world, I am calmer and kinder as a result. I am a better person, a better mom, a better rabbi, a better spouse. And the more I do those things, the more well-worn that path becomes in my mind and heart, the easier it is to keep doing those things.

After our day of discussing happiness, meaning, and the searches for both (in our own lives and in the lives of the people we serve), we walked to a Persian restaurant and savored some excellent food and fine conversation. Remembering Emiliya's exhortation to end one's day with gratitude, I'll close with this: I'm grateful for the opportunity to connect with these colleagues; to do this learning; to have off-the-cuff conversations about congregational life, Hasidut, Torah, science fiction; to walk the warm spring streets of this blinking, busy city after a long full day; to retreat to my hushed hotel room for a good night's sleep.

On arriving in the city one last time

One of the things I'll miss about this Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship, when it formally ends after this week, is the routine I developed this year of driving to the train station and taking Amtrak into the city, then walking to the hotel where RWB puts us up. I've loved the feeling of having a regular city routine: I know my way around Penn Station now, I know how to walk to the hotel, I know my way around this hotel, the rooms are familiar...

I lived in this city as a kid, for one year. My parents, bless them, had always wanted to live in Manhattan. And the year I turned ten, they were able to; so we did. One of my brothers stayed in my childhood home and house-sat. We moved into a Manhattan apartment for a year. I attended a posh city girls' school. Our building had a doorman, and an elevator that went very, very high. (Or at least it seemed that way to me; I was nine when we got here, and had lived my whole life in a standalone limestone house with a Spanish tile roof.) New York amazed me then. It still does.

I used to think I would move here when I grew up. And the city is an incredible place, full of life and vibrancy. There are more people on this one island, not to mention in the other boroughs of this vast interconnected cityspace, than I can honestly imagine. I love walking past all of the different restaurants and stores and food carts, the stoops and windows and doors. I love seeing all of the different kinds of people one encounters in any city in the world. I know now that living here isn't my path -- I love my small mountain town too much -- but I always love dipping in to the river of New York.

When I arrived this time, I walked through a corridor of greenery on my way to the hotel. Apparently that block is a floral district of some kind, and now that it is May, the block is fully decked out for spring: standing plants, walls of wooden vases and birchbark flowerpots. I think the greenery is particularly noticeable because it's against the backdrop of all of this noise and exhaust and commotion, these tall buildings stretching toward the clouds. It was funny to suddenly be surrounded by green, just as I am at home at this season.

On the morning of my departure, our son solemnly told me to have a good time in New York City. "Some day I could take you there," I offered. "We could take a train to the big city, and go see some other kids whose mommies are my friends, and then go to a big museum where you can see dinosaur bones." His eyes grew large as saucers. "We can?" he breathed, as though I had just told him we could fly to the Moon. "Really, mommy?" Really, I promised. We really can. Not today, but maybe one day soon.

So I know I'll be back, New York; I've promised my son that I'll show him some of your wonders. (He's actually been here before, twice, but doesn't remember either trip. This time, though, I suspect he'll engage with the city in a whole new way.) For now, I have a couple of days during which I get to relish being part of this fabulous cohort of rabbis from across the different streams of Judaism: two days of conversations, meals, learning, collegiality, and the rare gift -- for the mother of a three year old -- of being entirely on my own, free to peoplewatch, to walk at an adult's pace, and to enjoy the company of colleagues and friends.

A weekend's ordinary joys

A paper-flower crown for Shavuot, featuring three of our son's four names.

A Shabbat service where my community's students -- from first grade through seventh grade -- sang the prayers and songs we'd been practicing, to their parents' obvious delight. The gusto with which they banged on the drums.

A wedding where the couple's visible joy in each other and in the moment illuminated the gauzy white chuppah, the lawn where the chairs were set up, possibly this whole quadrant of the earth.

Opening a Torah scroll for a group of young children, and reading the priestly blessing to them, at which point our son exclaimed, "We say that on Friday nights!" Yes, my little love, indeed we do, and I am so happy that you know that.

Following that up with the making of paper flower crowns, and then with ice cream sundaes -- in celebration of Shavuot (when we eat dairy because the Torah is compared to milk and honey) and the end of the school year.

Hearing from a friend and congregant that she loves hearing me read Torah because I translate as I go, and because my translation is so informal and colloquial that it makes the text feel alive.

Our son pushing his plastic lawnmower around the deck in a light rain while his father mowed the actual lawn. The scent, which I hadn't realized I'd forgotten over the months since the last lawn-mowing, of grass clippings mixed with wild thyme.

 

Tal Ben-Shahar on cultivating happiness

We can always be happier; no person experiences perfect bliss at all times and has nothing more to which he can aspire. Therefore, rather than asking myself whether I am happy or not, a more helpful question is, "How can I become happier?" This question acknowledges the nature of happiness and the fact that its pursuit is an ongoing process best represented by an infinite continuum, not by a finite point.

That's author Tal Ben-Shahar in his book Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment. Intriguingly, this book is the homework for this week's Rabbis Without Borders Fellows meeting. When our cohort of rabbis meets for the final time, we're going to be talking about happiness. I've written before about cultivating joy, but happiness and joy aren't quite the same. This book is the first real reading I've done in the field of hedonics.

What rituals would make you happier? What would you like to introduce to your life?

...In research done by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, those who kept a daily gratitude journal -- writing down at least five things for which they were grateful -- enjoyed higher levels of emotional and physical well-being.

Each night before going to sleep, write down at least five things that made or make you happy -- things for which you are grateful...

When I reached this section, in one of the early chapters, I felt a zing of recognition. Gratitude in each day -- articulating gratitude for the day's blessings -- these are among the most central spiritual practices of my tradition. When I say the modah ani each morning in the shower; when I pray the morning blessings (in either the traditional or alternative form); when I lie in bed at night and silently thank God for my home, my spouse, my child, my family and friends, my meaningful work; when I ask our son at the dinner table what was his favorite thing that happened that day -- these are daily gratitude practices. As far as I'm concerned, Ben-Shahar's right on.

This book does a nice job of balancing citations and references with actual practices for cultivating practices. Among the practices, Ben-Shahar suggests meditation, along with exercises such as mapping one's life (how do I actually spend my time) and creating an integrity mirror (a list of the things which are most meaningful and pleasurable to me, annotated with how much time I actually spend on each of these things each month.) He draws both on Freud (who argued that we are fundamentally driven by the need for pleasure) and on Victor Frankl (who argued that we are motivated by a will to meaning, and that striving to find / make meaning in life is the primary motivating force of human life.) He writes:

While the happy person experiences highs and lows, his overall state of being is positive. Most of the time he is propelled by positive emotions such as joy and affection rather than negative ones such as anger and guilt. Pleasure is the rule; pain, the exception. To be happy, we have to feel that, on the whole, whatever sorrows, trials, and tribulations we may encounter, we still experience the joy of being alive.

Whatever sorrows we may encounter, we still experience the joy of being alive. Yes; I resemble that remark. This is more or less my base state; anything other than this is a deviation, for me. (For instance, those months of postpartum depression early in my journey into motherhood.) On the whole, I operate from a place of good will and good feeling, rather than the opposite. Is this why I feel pretty happy, most of the time? Or do I generally feel happy because I'm operating from a place of good will and good feeling? (Or am I able to operate from that place of good will and good feeling because I'm generally happy?) I'm not sure which way the arrow of causality points, and I'm aware that privilege plays into my ability to feel this way (I don't have to deal, e.g., with being short on spoons.) Regardless, I'm grateful to fit Ben-Shahar's description of someone who's happy.

"The ultimate currency for a human being is happiness," argues Ben-Shahar. "While we are accumulating material wealth, we are nearing bankruptcy in the currency that truly matters." I might have framed that in terms of meaning rather than happiness -- while we're accumulating material wealth (or trying to, anyway), we often run the risk of prioritizing other things over connecting with the source of meaning in our lives -- but I'm open to his assertion that happiness is an ultimate human currency.

He praises the importance of setting goals (striving toward them, he says, is more important than meeting them) and, tongue-in-cheek, nudges us to think in terms of life-lines instead of deadlines. I've been immersing in some mussar texts recently, and it's interesting for me to juxtapose Ben-Shahar's assertion that happiness is the ultimate currency with the mussar ideals of balance, moderation, connection with God, and (in R' Ira Stone's language) "staying awake." I'm not sure I know how to integrate these two approaches yet; I'm hoping that this week's RWB conversations will go there.

He spends a while on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on "flow," that state when one is so at-one with an experience that action and awareness are merged. (See Csikszentmihalyi's TED talk on flow.) And Ben-Shahar argues that if we can learn to see our education and our jobs as privileges, rather than as duties, we may experience those kinds of work in a different way. Reading that, my first thought is: holy wow, I could say the same thing about religious practice. If people saw being part of a religious community (coming to synagogue for prayer, coming to make a minyan so others can say kaddish, observing the holidays, educating their children) as precious privileges rather than as duties, how would that change their experience of doing all of those things?

Ben-Shahar cites Abraham Maslow's dictum that "The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do." (As a rabbi and a writer fortunate enough to be able to do both of these things and to earn a living, I wholeheartedly agree.) And then he says:

Happiness is not merely contingent on what we do or where we are but on what we choose to perceive.

That's a short quote; I ordinarily wouldn't put something so brief into blockquotes, but I wanted to highlight it because I find it so powerful. Happiness is not merely contingent on what we do or where we are -- or what we don't do, or where we manage not to be. Happiness is contingent on what we choose to perceive. This rings true for me, though I would frame it slightly differently. Depending on how I'm feeling and what tools and lenses I'm able to bring to a challenging situation, I'll either experience it as manageable, or as a disaster; as funny, or as unbearable; as exasperating but charming, or as dreadful. So much of my experience of happiness or unhappiness has to do with where I'm at, emotionally and spiritually. It's about what I choose to perceive, and about how skillful I am at maintaining perspective and keeping my focus where I want it to be.

Many people believe that the key to a successful relationship is finding the right partner. In fact, however, the most important and challenging component of a happy relationship is not finding the one right person -- I do not believe that there is just one right person for each of us -- but rather cultivating the one chosen relationship.

Here once again, I agree with his assessment -- and also find myself wanting to apply his metric to spiritual life and religious practice, too. It's possible to spend a lot of time searching for "the right synagogue" (or church or mosque or Zen Center, etc), and I recognize the value in that discernment process. But religious communities aren't perfect. There's always going to be someone who drives you nuts, or a program you think could have been better, or something that doesn't quite meet your expectations. The most important (and challenging) thing is to cultivate that chosen relationship -- to commit to being part of that community, and to invest yourself in helping the community thrive and grow.

Ben-Shahar cites Howard Thurman: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive." Once again, I can't help reading this through the lens of my work as a rabbi. It's arguable that the question isn't what this synagogue, or what this community, or what the broader Jewish community, most needs. We should be asking, rather, what work, what practices, what projects, what passions will make people most come alive? The world needs our aliveness. And if doing something makes us feel more alive, then we'll keep doing it. That's a better motivation than "[the synagogue | the community | whoever] needs you to do it, so you should feel guilty if you don't."

Later in the book, Ben-Shahar writes:

Meaningful and pleasurable activities can function like a candle in a dark room -- and just as it takes a small flame or two to light up an entire physical space, one or two happy experiences during an otherwise uninspiring period can transform our general state. I call these brief but transforming experiences happiness boosters -- activities, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, that provide us with both meaning and pleasure, both future and present benefit.

For many years, going on retreat with my Jewish Renewal community has certainly functioned for me in that way. (That's part of why I can't wait for the ALEPH Kallah this summer.) On a micro-scale, davening -- connecting with God, with music, and with community in prayer -- functions in that way for me. Spending a few hours immersed in creative work functions in that way for me. Cuddling with my son at the end of the day, savoring a delicious meal with good friends -- these function in this way for me. What are the candles which light up your life, the happiness boosters which enliven you?

Ben-Shahar writes about cultivating a sense of inherent worthiness -- understanding that it is right and good for us to accept the blessings of happiness. He suggests a meditation called "Advice from your inner sage" which is a very close variation on the theme of the inner sage / inner elder meditation I was taught to experience and to lead during my training as a spiritual director.

There's a lot of good stuff in this book. These are the bits with which I resonated most; another reader might pull out an entirely different set of quotations and ideas. But this is some of what I found most compelling. I'm looking forward to discussing it with my colleagues in a few days. Here's one last quote:

When the questions that guide our life are about finding more meaning and pleasure (happiness perception) rather than about how we can acquire more money and more possessions (material perception), we are much more likely to derive benefit from the journey as well as from the destination.

Kein yehi ratzon / may it be so!

 

 

An interesting post to read in juxtaposition with this one is my husband Ethan's post Daniel Gilbert on Why It's So Hard to Know What Makes Us Happy, posted back in 2009 but still I think quite relevant and interesting.

Redesign

This blog's first incarnation, in early October of 2003, was on blogspot. I moved to Typepad by late October of that year, and even the Internet Archive / Wayback Machine doesn't have a screencap of what this blog looked like in its very earliest days. Then I started blogging at Typepad, and that's where VR has been housed ever since.

The blog's been cloaked in a few different designs over the years. It's had three designs here at Typepad: one in parchment with brown accents and text, one in shades of grey and blue, one in blues with three columns...And now it has a new design once again.

The new design features a banner image at the top of the page, a crop from one of Ann Silver's fabulous photos from the 2011 ALEPH Kallah. There's also a new navbar at the top with a variety of useful links; the About Me page has been updated; it's easier to find information about my books; the blogroll has been pruned and tidied; and a lot of the chaff which had been cluttering up the sidebars is now gone.

Anyway: I'm still tinkering, so if you see anything broken or odd, please let me know. I've checked the new design in a few different web browsers and on a few mobile devices, but if the new design is difficult for you to read for any reason, please don't hesitate to say so, and I'll do my best to fix things. As always, thanks for reading!

A new poem which takes the form of a psalm

Psalm of parenthood

Mother of all, remake me

in Your image. Make me as noble

as the daffodils nodding graciously.

Root me in my generations.

Help me hold on to the splendor

my son sees when he runs toward me

at the end of a schoolday.

Give me the flannel-soft patience

for one more board book, one more cartoon.

Help me to balance the scales

of work and child

gentleness and strength.

Reinforce my boundaries

so I never confuse my child's issues

with my own. And my heart, God:

enlarge my ribcage

to encompass this overflowing love.

 

 

I've been working lately on some new poems which double as prayers and psalms. Here's one of them, a Psalm of Parenthood. It's structured loosely around the seven lower sefirot, emanations or facets of divinity: malkhut (nobility), yesod (foundation), hod (splendor), netzach (endurance), tiferet (balance), gevurah (boundaries), and chesed (lovingkindness.) These are among God's qualities; they are also among ours, and I think they're some of the qualities that parents need most.

If you like this, you might also like Waiting to Unfold, my new collection of motherhood poems, recently published by Phoenicia Publishing.

Looking even more forward to the 2013 ALEPH Kallah!

To my amazement, my class at this summer's ALEPH Kallah -- "Writing the Psalms of Your Heart" -- has filled up entirely. I set an enrollment cap at 20 people, never imagining for a moment that 20 would actually register for my class -- and they did. Holy wow! I'm humbled and delighted, and getting more excited about this teaching opportunity by the minute. This is going to be a ton of fun.

Anyway, if you were thinking about taking my class and haven't already registered, I'm afraid that window of opportunity has closed! But there are many other fabulous afternoon classes on the program, including one on the Jewish roots of Christianity (taught by R' David Zaslow), one on Eco-Judaism and sustainability (taught by R' Elisheva Brenner), and one called "A Tzaddik in Suburbia" taught by R' Ebn Leader which I would've signed up to take if I weren't teaching during the same slot.

And, of course, there's a full round of morning classes -- and there will be fabulous food, conversations, davening, singing, meditation, yoga, hikes: everything one might yearn for.

You can download a Kallah 2013 brochure, and can register for the gathering, at the Kallah webpage. Hope to see y'all there!