Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 237

On prayer, gratitude, darkness, praise

It is good to give thanks to Adonai, to sing praises to the Most High!

That's a line from the psalm for Shabbat. It's running through my head because I've been practicing the guitar chords for a setting of it which is different from the one we usually use at my shul. And as I hum it, over and over again, I find myself meditating on what it means.

It is good to give thanks to God. Good for whom? Good, I would argue, for us. I don't know what impact -- if any -- our thanks have on the Holy Blessed One. But I know that when I can remember to offer thanks, the act of so doing positions me in a posture of gratitude. And that, in turn, changes how I experience my world.

It is good to give thanks, to sing praises. Good, but not always easy.

We're entering the darkest days of the year. Where I live, the recent clock change (away from Daylight Savings Time) means that the skies are darkening at 4:30pm when I fetch my son from daycare. In return we've received a temporary morning reprieve, though over the next six weeks or so as we spiral down to the winter solstice the days will shorten at both ends.

I've always been sensitive to the changing light. As the days grow colder I curl into myself, soak in hot baths, make endless pots of tea, keep a fire burning. I listen to Värttinä, hoping that in soaking up these Finnish melodies I might also be absorbing some far-northern resilience in the face of the changing season.

Sometimes on a dark and gloomy afternoon, it's hard to sing praises. Sometimes when people around me are quarreling, it's hard to sing praises. When I read awful news stories, when I hear the latest horrifying insult slung in an online battle of perceptions, when my toddler wakes screaming at 4:30am, it's hard to sing praises.

And yet I keep trying. Because my tradition tells me that it is my job to offer praise to the One Who speaks all things into being. Because I know that I am healthier and happier when I remember to say "thank you" and to respond to the world with a feeling of "wow!" And on the days when I can't quite access the praise I know I'm capable of, I try to offer whatever thank-you I can, in hopes that saying thanks will stimulate the gratitude I can't always quite feel.

In one of my old commonplace books, I copied a quote from Julia Cameron about the fallacy that in order to write one needs to be "in the mood." In the case of writing, as in the case of lovemaking (she argues), waiting for "the mood" to strike is a luxury. But if one begins to do the thing in question, the mood will arise. I feel the same way about prayer.

And yet how often do I postpone my own prayer life because there's too much to do or because I just can't seem to feel what I want to feel? This is, I think, how my yetzer ha-ra (my "evil inclination") manifests: by whispering in my ear that I don't have time to pray, or that because I'm not able to access joy or gratitude I can't articulate either one to God.

But I should know better. There is always time enough for prayer. And sometimes the best way to access thankfulness and praise is to offer them, and to hope that as I speak the words, the feeling will come.

Writing a spiritual will

One of the assignments for my class in Sage-ing is to write a spiritual will: a document which outlines what I hope to leave to those I leave behind, not in the tangible sense of possessions or money but in an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual way.

Writing this document -- mine takes the form of a letter to my son -- has been incredibly powerful for me. As it happens, I'm writing this first draft just on the cusp of Drew's second birthday. I hope that I have a long life ahead of me. So as I articulate here what I hope to leave to him, it also becomes a kind of roadmap for how I hope to raise him.

I recommend this exercise highly. If you have a child (or children), what do you hope to pass on to them? And if you don't have progeny, interpret the question more broadly: what do you hope to transmit to your friends, your students, your loved ones? What of you do you hope might live on in them when you are gone?

In case reading my spiritual will might be helpful or inspiring to you, I'm enclosing it below. (And if you do this exercise, and want to share with me/us the results or any insights the process opens up for you, drop a comment!)

The Spiritual Will of Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (2011)

 

Dear Drew.

I am writing the first draft of this spiritual will at thirty-six. I have every hope that a long life stretches ahead of me! But the sages of our tradition tell us to make teshuvah -- to repent, to atone, to clear the spiritual decks -- every day of our lives as though it were our last. We never know what lies ahead. So I write these words to you now, hoping that I will have many opportunities to revise them and add to them in years to come.

There are so many intangible things I hope I can leave to you. I want to give you an awareness of blessing. Life is full of blessings, wonders, unexpected grace. I hope I can awaken that awareness in you.

Following on that, I want to give you a sense of gratitude. I try to begin every day with the modah ani: I am grateful before You, living and enduring God; You have restored my soul to me; great is Your faithfulness! When you're older, maybe you'll learn some different melodies for this prayer. It's not always easy to wake up with gratitude, but I try to maintain that as a practice.

(You have been one of my teachers in this, actually: though you sometimes wake up with shouting, the moment I appear in your doorway, you stop crying and beam at me. Sometimes I too wake up sad, but when I remember that God is standing over me lovingly, I try to let go of my sorrow and to greet God with a smile, just like you greet me from your crib.)

I want to leave you my optimism, my deep-seated belief that we can make the world a better place.

I want to leave you my drive to work toward transforming the world for the better. It's our job to perfect and heal creation, and there are a million ways to take part in that work. What matters to me is this: be someone who builds, not someone who tears down.

I want to leave you my openness to experience. I wish for you many adventures. May you always be open to what the world brings you, and may you greet your adventures with curiosity and joy.

I want to bequeath to you a love of learning. I hope that as you grow and mature, books will become your lifetime companions, as they have been mine. Some of the most important books in my life have been the Torah, The Jew in the Lotus, Jane Kenyon's collected poems. You will find your own texts which hold wisdom, compassion, insight. If you have a book, you are never alone.

I hope to pass on to you my deep love of Judaism, my appreciation for the richness and breadth of Jewish tradition, my desire to live with prayerful consciousness, my yearning for connection with God.

I hope to pass on to you an awareness of your deep roots. In our family, first and foremost: your roots are Barenblat and Zuckerman, and when you go further back, they are also Epstein and Campbell, and further still, and further still. You are rooted on my side in the soil of south Texas where I was born and reared, and in the soil of the Czech Republic and Russia and Poland from which my grandparents came. You are rooted on your dad's side in New York, and in south Boston and Long Island, and in Germany and Newfoundland.

In addition to your Hebrew name (after my grandfather Eppie, of blessed memory) you also have a Ghanaian name, which represents our hope to connect you with Ghana where your dad used to live and work and where part of his heart still dwells. I hope to pass on to you our love of the wide world, our sense of connection to places and people both near and far. I hope your dad and I can pass on to you a certain kind of cosmopolitanism, an awareness that we are all part of the global human community.

I want to give you laughter. Giggles and cackles and deep belly-laughs: we have enjoyed all of these together, and I hope you are always able to find joy and laughter in your life.

I want to give you the knowledge that life won't always be easy. I have walked through the valley of the shadow of deep depression, when I couldn't access hope for healing, when I couldn't even pray. I want to leave you an awareness that there will probably be dark days in your life, difficult days. And I also want to leave you with an awareness that there is healing, and there is hope. May you be blessed, as I have been, with people who are willing and able to help you through whatever dark times are ahead of you. May you always have friends who will care for you.

Be kind to yourself and to others. Be compassionate. Seek to open your heart, even when doing so sometimes hurts. When you reach the end of your life, you may regret being hurtful, but you will never regret having been kind.

Please know that I love you unreasonably and without measure, and I will always love you more than words can say. You probably won't remember the nights I rocked you in my arms, the nights I paced the hallways with you on my shoulder, the times I sang you Shlomo Carlebach's setting of the Angel Song before bed. You may not remember the sound of my voice singing "Sweet Baby Drew," our variation on the James Taylor song, before bed each night. But I hope that the love and care that your dad and I have tried to extend to you during these first two years of your life are soaking into your soul, and that you will always know that you have our love to draw on.

I want to bless you with
delight
gratitude
compassion
companionship
kindness
connection with God
connection with your roots
wings which will take you wherever you want to go
    (I initially mis-typed: wherever you want to God!)
trust in the universe
teachers who will guide you
a heart which is open
the knowledge that you are loved by an unending love.

Love,
Mama

Responding to heartbreak

Some days it is hard to avoid despair. A fellow poet on a poetry email list to which I belong sent the following link this morning: Jesse Kornbluth: The Police Riot at Berkeley: If They'll Beat a Poet Laureate, Will They Kill a Student? The headline looks alarmist, but once I read the story and watched the videos, I understood its tone.

The police attack peaceful protesters who are standing up against, among other things, an 81% tuition hike. The protestors -- poetry graduate students, professors of media studies -- wind up in the hospital with broken ribs. What on earth is wong with my country, that a peaceful protest about economic realities leads to this? Think what you will about the Occupy Wall Street protests; I have some mixed feelings about their ultimate usefulness, myself. But this is police brutality. This is appalling.

That's the heartbreak at the top of my inbox. There are others. Too many to count, once one starts paying attention.

What to do? There's a very real temptation to crawl back into bed, literally or metaphorically -- to say, I can't deal with this today. It hurts too much. And I want to say: if that is where you're at, if that is where I'm at, that's okay. That's a reasonable response. It's a human response. We need to take care of ourselves, and sometimes that means stepping away. Closing the browser window. Retreating to bed, or to a cup of coffee, or to a loving embrace, or to tears. (Or all of the above.)

Sometimes all we can do is weep. Sometimes all we can do is pray. I try to remember that if the sorrow of the world is too much for me to bear, I can always reach inside myself and hand the suffering to God. God can handle it. There is no shame in giving it to God to carry for me.

Sometimes we can take steps to fix the things which are broken. And sometimes the things which are broken are systemic, or seem so far away from us that we can't begin to imagine how we might make them better. I don't know how to impact the police department in Berkeley which is home to the officers who beat a poet and English professor until his ribs broke. I don't know how to help the victims of the Penn State rapes reach healing.

So I do the only things I know how to do. I pray. I ask my heart to open, even though sometimes it opens to realities which hurt. I try to be kind and compassionate in the world. Maybe today I can find someone who needs a kind word, or for whom I can do a small favor, and in that way I can ever-so-slightly tip the worldwide scales toward grace and compassion, just the tiniest bit.

It's not enough. But it's what's in my hands.

Covenant

I promise to try to begin and end each day with gratitude.

I promise to try to remember to say thank you for everything which sustains me: morning shower, cup of coffee, the reheated leftovers of the meal my husband lovingly made last night.

I promise to do my best to pay attention to the world: the illimitable stream of beauties and surprises and sweetness, and the endless unfolding of sorrow and hurt.

I promise to try to find the blessing in everything.

I promise to try to relate to each person everywhere as a holy being who merits my respect.

I promise that I will try to be kind, and I will try to keep my heart open.

I promise that I will try to be compassionate with myself when I fail to live up to these promises, when I have to pick myself up and try again, and again.

In return, God promises me this breath, and the next, and the next -- until such time as my breathing comes to an end. God promises me this moment.

God promises to continue speaking creation into being and breathing life into all things.

God promises to stream blessing into the world.

God promises to take me where I need to be, even if it isn't always where I want to go.

God promises to be in relationship with me always, even though I can hardly grasp what that relationship would mean.

God promises to listen when I speak, even if God can't talk back.

God promises that I will never be alone.

 

This week in our b'nei mitzvah prep program we're studying brit -- covenant. As Jews we understand ourselves always to be in perennial communal covenant with God, a covenant which is symbolized by our keeping Shabbat and practicing brit milah. I believe we're also always in individual covenant with God, too, and I'll be inviting the students to write their own personal brit with God. I didn't want to ask them to do something I hadn't tried first myself, so here is mine.

Because we teach each other: The Deal, a mother poem

THE DEAL

 

Teach me to startle
at the first crow's caw
echoing overhead

to bid farewell
to the bit of snow
along the driveway

to exult in wonder
every time
a schoolbus passes

in return I offer
a word for every thing
in the wide world

rules against hitting
or pouring crackers
on the carpet

a shoulder to rest
your head on, a song
at the end of the day.

I haven't written a mother poem in a while. (Sometimes I can hardly believe I wrote a whole manuscript during the first year of my son's life!)

This one arises out of the experience of parenting an almost-two-year-old. Every day I am amazed by his wonder at the world around us, his eagerness for language...and, okay, yes, also sometimes his age-appropriate temper tantrums!

He does greet schoolbuses, by the by -- I'm not making that up. Probably his longest sentence to date is "Bye, yellow school bus! All gone." It's incredibly charming.

I know he won't remember me singing his goodnight song every night, but I hope I never forget the sensation of his long tall body going still in my arms and his head lowering to my shoulder as I sing to him and dance him over to his crib.

On the sexual abuse story coming out of Penn State

This post may be triggering for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. If that is you, please guard your boundaries carefully, and feel free to skip this one if you need to.

When I hear about a child who is sexually abused, my heart breaks. I am horrified into silence. What can I say in the face of the suffering of a child who is raped by an adult into whose care that child was placed? Whether the abuse is at the hands of a parent, a teacher, a babysitter, a coach, it is unthinkable to me. And if I allow myself to imagine someone hurting my child in this way (God forbid, God forbid, God forbid) I overflow with fear and rage.

Among the circle of people I know and love there are many victims of sexual abuse. Most are women, though some are men. Many were abused by people who were supposed to be taking care of them. One of my dear friends was raped by her father. Another was raped by his babysitter. These stories are real and they are everywhere.

I have some sense of how childhood abuse and sexual assault has hurt, and continues to hurt, these people that I love. And I know that as the story of the allegations of sexual abuse at Penn State unfolds, many survivors of rape and sexual abuse are suffering all over again, remembering their own histories -- and maybe remembering, too, what it was like to be told that this "couldn't" have happened to them or that they "shouldn't" make such accusations about people everyone knew were honorable.

If that is your story: please know that you are in my heart today. Please take care of yourself.

To those at Penn State, and those who have an emotional investment in the football program there, who are feeling anger at the firing of Joe Paterno: I hear your fury. But I ask you to hold your attachment to the Penn State football program up against the pain of eight boys who were sexually abused by someone they trusted. Please don't give those boys, and others like them, any reason to believe that you value Joe Paterno's (or Jerry Sandusky's) reputation more than the integrity of their bodies and their hearts.

Zornberg and a cup of joe

My Wednesday morning clergy Torah study group has begun reading Avivah Zornberg's The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. (There's a terrific review in the Forward -- The Other Side of Silence: Listening Into the Bible.) We meet at the local coffee shop; greet people, order our coffee and bagels, sit down and schmooze a bit about whatever's unfolding in our lives; and then we make the bracha for Torah study and open our books.

Today we read maybe four pages, pausing to talk as we went. Zornberg is an amazing writer, and she frequently offers sentences which take my breath away. Beyond her prose, though, what's really amazing is the breadth and depth of her knowledge. Today we read (and talked) about language acquisition and fragmented consciousness, the birth metaphor in the expulsion from Eden, TS Eliot's J. Edgar Prufrock, Freud and psychoanalysis, connections between poetry and prophecy, the difference between Adam naming the animals (speaking their essence into being) and the kind of speech of which Adam was capable after he had eaten the fruit of the tree, God's desire to enter into language with us. Along the way we made frequent divagations into our own reflections on consciousness, language, childhood, nostalgia, union.

There's something very powerful about studying Zornberg's writings on desire, on language and on the unconscious at this season of mothering an almost-two-year-old. As I watch Drew acquire language, I marvel at the way he is soaking up new words -- and I know that the days of his delicious nonlinguistic babble are numbered. Once we have language, we can't recapture what it was like to be prelinguistic. He still inhabits a state of living entirely in the moment; that, too, is almost impossible to wholly re-enter once one has left it. Zornberg talks about the expulsion from Eden not (as common Christian parlance would have it) as a fall but as a movement-outward, a going-forth. Almost a birthing. "Paradise is lost, but a larger, if more agitated life looms." What a powerful metaphor that is for me.

I feel really fortunate to be part of this group and to have this weekly time set aside for learning Torah lishma, for its own sake. And I can tell that this is a book which will merit not only reading but rereading. "Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it" indeed.

Mourning the mother of a friend

Longtime readers may remember that a few years ago, before we had a child (before we were even trying to conceive), I spent a summer in Jerusalem. I rented an apartment (sublet it, actually) with a friend from the ALEPH rabbinic program; I shared that flat with my friend Yafa, her husband, and their then-four-year-old little girl.

The experience was amazing, profound, powerful, difficult on all sorts of axes. (And I blogged about it extensively in June, July, and early August of 2008.) One of the greatest joys of that summer was the simple fact of spending two months living with one of my classmates. Because ALEPH's ordination programs are low-residency, students and faculty live all over the world. We gather twice a year for intensive residency periods, and between those gatherings, we learn via teleconference and webconference and we learn with teachers in our own communities.

It's an amazing way to study (and clearly one which suits me -- this is how I did my MFA, too) and I love the way it creates a web of community which covers the globe. But what it doesn't offer, generally speaking, is the chance to hang out and cook and drink and schmooze and daven with our fellow students every day. Spending that summer with Yafa, day in and day out, was an incredible gift. I felt, by summer's end, that I had become part of her family.

I also got to know some of her birth family a bit while we were students. Yafa's mom Betsy used to come to smicha students' week, to watch Yafa's little girl while we were in classes. Betsy was always lovely and gracious to me; we had many conversations about Judaism and about her granddaughter and about parenting over the years.

Later this morning I'll drive north into Vermont, through the beautiful Green Mountains now bare of leaves and speckled with snow, to attend Betsy's funeral. It's rare for me these days to attend a funeral rather than conducting it. I didn't know her well, and I won't know the rest of the community. But it feels important for me to be there for Yafa, with whom I was ordained in January -- another experience which makes me feel as though we are sisters! -- and for her husband and daughter who shared my life that summer, too.

I know that even when we are apart, my loved ones and I remain connected. But at moments of great joy and moments of great sorrow, there's a particular blessing in being able to be physically together, to offer a palpable embrace. I can only imagine what it is like to lose one's mother, but I know what it is like to grieve.

Haveil Havalim (Jewish Blog Carnival) #336

Okay, so I hosted Haveil Havalim #36 back in 2005, and then I hosted #326 in August, at which time I promised I wouldn't wait quite so many years before doing it again. Turns out I'm doing it again right now!

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs, a weekly collection of Jewish and Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by a different blogger each week, coordinated by Jack. (The name of the carnival, which means "vanity of vanities," is a quote from Kohelet 1:2 -- "vanity of vanities, all is vanity!")

With no further ado: a roundup of a wide variety of posts from the Jewish blogosphere. Go, read, leave comments, start conversations.

 

Torah

Reb Jeff presents Noah: the Redemption of God at A Rabbi's Search for Jewish Joy.

David Curiel presents Bereshit (and also the parshiyot which have followed it) at 40 Words of Torah.

Batya presents Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, A Cry to Break the Cycle posted at Shiloh Musings.

 

Holidays

Here at Velveteen Rabbi I shared a Sestina for Shemini Atzeret. (This may be the only sestina in the world written for this holiday!)

Rabbi Shulamit Thiede presents Turn it and turn it at Adrenaline Drash.

Tzvi Weissman presents Five "Lunar Lessons" In Honor of the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh -Mar Heshvan) at Jihadi Jew.

 

Jewish life & culture

Reb Jeff presents Shakespeare and Judaism at A Rabbi's Search for Jewish Joy.

Allison Josephs presents I'm Becoming More Observant; Does it Ever Get Easier? posted at Jew in the City.

Michael Merdinger presents Mah Nishtana this past Yom Kippur from all other days of Yom Kippur? posted at Navi and Stuff.

Mordechai Torczyner presents Happy Rabbis!, Sufi Marriage Counseling and Improving our yeshiva day school system posted at The Rebbetzin's Husband.

steve ornstein presents The Ten Commandments – Utterances – Things – What Do They Really Mean Part 1 posted at IsraelSeen.com.

zt presents Jews at OWS: Huge Surprise! at Jewschool.

Esser Agaroth presents Top Ten Words and Phrases of תשע"א/5771 posted at Esser Agaroth.

Here at Velveteen Rabbi I shared Davening hallel with Drew, about praying with my two-year-old son in my arms.

Chaviva presents It's Time for Your Opinion: Conversion for Marriage. posted at Just Call Me Chaviva.

Yosef presents For my friends: Kosher Cooking Carnival posted at This American Bite.

Susan Barnes presents Does it Matter That You're Performing Mitzvot if You Haven't Converted Yet? posted at To Kiss A Mezuzah.

Ariel Ben-Yochanan presents How Can Jews Choose To Live In Berlin Is A Mystery To Me posted at The Torah Revolution: Everything that Hashem has spoken we shall do (Ex. 19:8).

Susan Barnes presents Meir Shalev Doesn't Disappoint With His Latest Book, "My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner" | TC Jewfolk posted at TC Jewfolk.

Rivkah Lambert Adler presents Letter By Letter posted at Bat Aliyah.

 

Israel

Joel Katz presents Religion and State in Israel - October 24, 2011 (Section 1) and Religion and State in Israel - October 24, 2011 (Section 2), as well as Religion and State in Israel - October 31, 2011 (Section 1) and Religion and State in Israel - October 31, 2011 (Section 2), posted at Religion and State in Israel.

Batya presents Another "In The Beginning," The Earth is For Human Use" and Israel's Right to Self-Defense, Lop-Sided Prisoner Exchanges Endanger us posted at Shiloh Musings.

Iris presents A journey into Gush Katif posted at Shiloh Musings.

Emily L. Hauser presents What I mean when I say the two-state solution is dead at Emily L. Hauser - In My Head.

Jacob Richman presents The Noach Page posted at Good News from Israel.

Harry presents An accessible Israeli legend and Art in Umm el-Fahem posted at ISRAELITY.

Jewish Israel presents The Sons of the Foreigners will Plant Strange Worship in Your Land and Prayer for the conversion of Jews at Rick Perry's August 6th 2011 Prayer Rally in Houston posted at Jewish Israel.

Sharon A presents Not this year in Jerusalem posted at The Real Jerusalem Streets.

Rabbi Brant Rosen presents genesis 23:9 by way of leviticus 23:25 by way of john lee hooker at Shalom Rav.

Batya presents Handicapped Accessible Israel posted at Shiloh Musings.

Machon Shilo presents The Gilad Shalit Deal: An (Authentically) Jewish Perspective? posted at Machon Shilo.

Sharon A presents Ready for Winter « The Real Jerusalem Streets posted at The Real Jerusalem Streets.

Eric presents UNESCO Fallout posted at The Israel Situation.

 

Personal life

Mystery Woman presents A Mother's Worry posted at Mystery Woman.

rutimizrachi presents Reason to Rejoice, Permission to Participate posted at Ki Yachol Nuchal!.

Here at Velveteen Rabbi, I shared a nice article about me and my work: Profile in the Berkshire Jewish Voice.

 

Tikkun Olam

Allison Josephs presents The Legacy of Steve Jobs: Is it Jewish to "Think Different?" posted at Jew in the City.

Emily L. Hauser presents The Oakland police and #OccupyOakland at Emily L. Hauser - In My Head.

 

Shviti, a poem about finding God even in what hurts

Shviti

SHVITI

שִׁוִּיתִי יְי לְנֶגְדִּי תָמִיד / I keep God before me always. -- Psalm 16:8

 

Always before me:
in the checkout line
at the pharmacy
where I'm reading mail
on my phone, in the pixels
of my computer screen

in the locked ward
where I never know
who will want
to talk about God
and who will shuffle past
without meeting my eyes

in the stranger
whose barbed words
leave me sick and sad
and in the tallit
I wrap around my shoulders
to hold me together

in my toddler's cries
at four in the morning
in the painful conversation
I don't want to begin
in every ache
help me to find You

The title of this poem is the Hebrew word "Shviti," which means "I have set" (or, more colloquially, "I keep.") It is the first word of the line from psalms which serves as this poem's epigraph. Artistically, a shviti is an image (usually of God's name) designed as a focus for meditation on the presence of the divine. (Here are images of a whole bunch of them.)

The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, teaches that this word is related to the Hebrew word hishtavut, which means "equanimity." When I keep God always before me, then I have equanimity; nothing can shake me. (I posted about this teaching back in 2007.) This is not an easy teaching to embody.

It's easy (for me) to find holiness, and to find God's presence, in the world's beauty: the pink smear of sunrise across the horizon, a child's laughter, the embrace of a friend. It's a lot harder (for me) to recognize the presence of God in suffering and in discord. But even in what hurts, there is opportunity to open the heart to God.

Wishing all of y'all a Shabbat of wholeness and peace.