Rosh Hashanah - the "boring" one

"But I don't wanna change."

This is going to be a tricky Jewish New Year around my house. I talked with the children again about Rosh Hashanah, the forgettable Jewish holiday in the worldview of the under 12 set. My offspring value neither apples with honey nor lengthy Hebrew recitations, so Rosh Hashanah is not-too-affectionately known as, "the boring one."

I'd like to chalk it up to their affinity for latkes, nightly candle lighting, building tree shelters, and matzoh ball soup; none of which are associated with this holiday. But the truth is that I have happy children. Change and regret have not become part of their daily lives. They feel no need to ritualize loss and hope. They're happy little Zen masters most hours of every day except when it's time to clean their bodies or their rooms. Or, G-d forbid, they accidentally touch each other. (That's their orthodox streak coming out.)

I love Rosh Hashanah. For years I spent the weeks coming into the holiday with a little book called Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days. I'd meditate and pray and read stuff and be an all around bore about it. Good times.

As I aged and suffered more losses, the metaphor of the books of life and death and who will be inscribed in which became more and more meaningful. The literal image is a nightmare, but coming to an understanding that we all have a limited amount of seasons has been transformative. I enjoy the meditative mood of the holiday, and the days of awe are aptly named for me. But try telling that little soliloquy to 8 and 11 year olds.

So there we were in the chapel where I give all of my spiritual guidance (the car) and I shared with the Buddha babies my incredibly brilliant, thoughtful, and laudable idea to celebrate this year with the kid-appropriate ritual adapted from Tashlikh. Smartly, I didn't put it that way.

"So what we will do is tramp down to the Mighty Mighty James River and write what we want to change about ourselves on biodegradable paper and then we will cast them into the river and watch them float away!"

My son gave his diplomatic nod which means, "I am still young enough to refrain from derisive snorting. Revel in these days, madre."

My daughter declared decisively, "But I don't wanna change."

How is it that the parenting coup of raising happy people from scratch becomes a mega-fail in celebrating my most favorite-ist holiday? Crap. Being a responsible, spiritual adult on my own is hard. Raising up little spiritual chicklets in my personal direction is a bear. Zen masters aren't necessarily good little devout Jews. That's fine with me. Well-adjusted Unitarian Universalist kids.

With that goal in mind I took the puddins to the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Glen Allen yesterday. They had a great program planned and the sermonizer was rumored to be tolerable. You know what that means. Yeah, I was preaching. I led the children's worship talking about Tashlikh and how Rosh Hashanah is happening during the start of the new school year. Thanks to the tepid reaction of my own offspring on the subject, I mixed it up a little for child-relevance sake. I invited the children, of whom my daughter was one, to think of changes in their school life they wish for this year. One wanted to be better in math, another in English. One was positively, absolutely NOT going to be bullied. (Amen to that!) My daughter had her hand up for awhile.

"Yes, madame. What will you be changing this year?"

I'm stumped. Her grades are good. She's a happy puppy and she already has made it clear that change is not on her mind. Then my daydreaming began. Oh, please please please let her vow to become a morning person. Or an overwhelming desire to wash all the dishes from now on. Pleeeeeease.

"I'm going to quit choir this year!" She announced with triumph.

"What? This..." Not mornings. Not dishes. Yes change. Poop. "(Stammer). You... (sputter)," finally I had to drop the Rev. and just be Mama right up in there in front of everyone. "Choir? Really? Darn it. And this is how you tell me? In front of dozens of witnesses. You..." I was thinking how lovely her little voice was practicing "Man in the Mirror" last year. Then I remembered she didn't actually sing half the songs at the concert, just looked nauseous and well-behaved in the front row. Sigh.

"Well played, little bird. Well played. Way to embrace change." I high fived her.

The little church pumpkins then commenced telling scraps of paper their secrets for transformation and metamorphosis and throwing them in a "river" (wheelchair ramp) by the pulpit. I whispered "Fear" into mine as I had told the children I would, and tossed it high. My daughter gleefully threw the choir away. While the others tossed bad grades and bullies down the ramp with flourish, some huzzahs, and even a bit of dancing with celebratory fist pumping, one little curly haired cherub came up to me. I bent down to her and she cupped her hand around my ear, whispering, "I'm not going to be afraid any more either. Just like you." If that isn't an engraved invitation into the days of awe...

So this is how we will be doing Rosh Hashanah this year. I'll be praying in services and my secret prayer spots for two days, then we'll all tramp down to the riverside. I will prayerfully put my hopes for the New Year on a piece of thin paper and ceremoniously toss it in the river. My little imps are welcome to make boats, swans, airplanes, arrows, rockets, or whatever else they desire to celebrate the New Year in whatever way they want. They can include secrets, hopes, pet peeves, or name the projectiles George, as long as they send them soaring. Whatever they choose, I doubt it will be boring. Shanah Tovah, y'all!

Drunk Texting Gene Roddenberry

It happens to all of us. A little beer or other spirits, maybe even just too much caffeine. A moon in a cool summer sky. Then an electronic device with internet or phone connection just a little too close at hand. Suddenly... POW! You've made a memory, baby.

For someone else, that is. Your out-of-it tail doesn't have a clue 'til the bliss clears, the headache starts, and your friends are mocking you mercilessly.

For my friend, whom we will call "Giddy" to protect her dignity (as if), this happened in the form of a Facebook post. The spirit was wine, the moon at about half glory, and Neptune kissingly close. I'm not sure what the occasion was but Giddy is a slight gal and I can't imagine it took much fruit of the vine before she was reaching for her phone, accessing her Facebook account and typing...

STAR TRKK IS THE BEST FIREVER ALWAYS

That's my girl. Kinda brings a tear to my geeky eyes.

I think there must be something in the air this summer: a siren sci fi song that is making mild-mannered retro, steam punk, alternate reality, and time travel loving geekettes get buck wild. This post is my proof but the signs have been multiplying.

Exhibit A: I butt dialed a co-worker while in bed with my children reading China Mieville's Railsea. Twice. She said she screamed my name a few times to shut me up, then finally gave in and listened as I read aloud and the children and I discussed the post-apocalyptic Moby Dick on rails. She's asked to borrow it when we are done.

B: One of my book club homeys begged me to get some saki with him so we could process Freedom TM without book club supervision. Gasp! That means... we could... say... ANYTHING! (Including our true feelings about the appropriateness of Philip K. Dick's name and that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" still makes us cry a little in the same ways as The Smith's "Meat is Murder" album.) As cruel fate would have it, I was called into work and missed that golden opportunity for unfettered cyber armageddon based bacchanalia. But for a few days there that risky business was on this girl's Google calendar. Oh yes it was.

Then... THEN! (Dear heavens I hope you are sitting down for this.) I realized that Red on "Orange is the New Black" is none other than Captain Janeway from "Star Trek: Voyager"! (I know you are perfectly aware who Janeway is, but my mom reads this blog so I do what I can to communicate clearly.) The realization made me sit straight up in bed and frantically email my book club buddies in the dark.

So when Giddy drunkenly took thumb to iPhone and essentially drunk texted Star Trek's progenitor Gene Roddenberry for all to see, I was thrilled to know that it wasn't just me feeling the love.

On a brief tangent, this ain't just about the ladies. My buddy who lets me dip in his deprivation tank every now and again loaned me his copy of Starship Troopers. It had a bite mark on it. Perfect teeth imprint halfway down the pages. I'm not afraid to taunt a benefactor.

"Hey, Dude. You getting a little out of hand in some old school cosplay? I didn't even know they did Heinlein, but it looks like hard core bad boy stuff from the bite mark."

"My dog, you dweeb."

Yeah, right, Big Man. (Mama, I'll explain all this later after I come up with some way to link this to Doc Martin or that Abbey thing you dig.)

Back to STAR TRKK, Giddy inevitably opened the door to trash talk from some backwoods homunculus Facebook friend of hers.

"You misspelled it. That is W-A-R-S," the slug typed with his tiny antennae.

Oh, please. No woman worth her ovaries would ever publicly text George "I am an overgrown Ewok" Lucas on a tipsy summer's night. To quote Giddy herself when I met her years ago: "The prequels were an abomination for which Lucas must forever march in shame and without female companionship."

Not that we don't love those Amidala costumes but, come on, given the choice between Alec Guinness or Patrick Stewart? Exactly.

I'm off to boldly go into the laundry room and start the dryer now. Prepare to find a point in all this... Engage.

Endings

I gave a service in Virginia's beautiful Northern Neck this week. The topic was endings. I was asked to put this excerpt on the blog.

The common thread between our stories is that most everyone I know at some point in the past thought that they would be different at this point now.  I credit that difference to our lives being non-linear, our development coming erratically, and to put it diplomatically: our self-awareness and worldly wisdom being not exactly, well, on point.

I believe the Buddhists really do have an edge on the rest of us. The state of mindfulness takes all the painful zing out of an unexpected ending. If we have been in the moment accepting now for what it is, then the ending is just another version of this moment. When we live in the now and stop the monkey mind from yelling “What if???” and “It’s supposed to be like this not like that!”-then we see that all endings are pretty surprising.

This past week I visited with patients in a large Richmond hospital as part of a continuing education program I am in to become a certified chaplain. I have been there only three weeks and have already given up on the elevators. Taking the stairs is a superb tool for mindfulness training.

When I take the elevators, I walk in the box. The doors of the box close. The doors of the box open. I see a patient or ten. I get back in the box.

The doors of the box close. The doors of the box open. I go down a hall that looks identical to the last. I see another patient or ten. I get back in the box. The doors of the box close. The doors of the box open.

When I take the stairs I have a better understanding of where I am in the labyrinthine hospital layout, and where I am in here {pointing to my heart} and I begin to see patterns that were invisible when I traveled via box.

I leave the chaplain office, climb the stairs three floors, and turn right. There I meet premature infants as little as a pound in size. They live in boxes but the doors neither open nor close. When I step back, turn left, and walk down a hall I meet pregnant women confined to the bed so that they may have infants who are larger than a pound.

They look like sci fi mamas because often they are not allowed to move off their backs so all I see is a head, a belly, and pillows. When I exit and turn left down another hall I meet families who had normal labor and seven pound babies. Sometimes they are mad about hospital food and the sound of construction in halls and often are wondering how their hair looks. I get very confused on the third floor.

I walk up a flight and I turn right where I meet men and women of all ages who are being monitored at all times by machines. They look out their windows as they worry about their families and homes. I met two young men in two rooms who were despondent because each was depressingly certain he was the youngest person on the unit. Their rooms were nineteen steps from each other but they were together in concern and in youthful spirit. I was with each of them when their lovers visited and saw them gaze at their girlfriends as if starlight were trapped in women's bodies.

Nineteen steps down  from them and around a corner is a man in his nineties whom I visit next. He is a bit confused, but when I lean over his bed he reaches up and gently strokes my hair which has fallen over my shoulder. He says, “You are such a pretty girl” and as I look into his face I see the reflection of starlight in his milky blue eyes.

I go back to the stairs and I walk up to the top of the hospital where the intensive care unit sits right beside the psychiatric unit, both closest to heaven. In intensive care I visit with a wife in her 30’s who tells me about how the man in the bed on the ventilator stole her heart when they met and how she asked him, “Why steal it? I would have just given it to you.” He has already spoken his last words but we pray that he will live just one more day. “I just don’t want it to end today,” she says.

I make the few steps next door to the behavioral health unit for a group session where the patients are walking their twelve steps but not with their feet. They have strong bodies and perfectly healthy hearts. “We are dying,” they tell me, each in her or his own way. Their families say they just need to go to church. Or they need to just stop taking those drugs. If I took the elevator I might agree with their families. But I take the stairs and I know that they are dying. There may very well be a cure, but right now they are dying.

There are endings to each of the stories I walk in on in the hospital. I rarely learn the ending to theirs, not that ours are any clearer. As I walk up and down the stairs I think about the endings, all of our endings. I fear some of them. I hope for some of them. I go home and I wonder about all of them.

But I can’t enjoy supper with my kids when I think of all the people I see in a day in terms of endings and beginnings. Such thinking puts a timer on our stories. If when I am sitting with someone in their now... if I am thinking in terms of endings then I can’t concentrate for all that ticking.

While I take the stairs I have been thinking that wherever I am in my life there is someone a few houses down, a few streets over, a couple of seats away in the labyrinth of life struggling with the same thing but calling it by a different name. How our stories will end seems overwhelming but isn't that because we are not the authors? It is not our place to say when the story is over. We can control some of the action, we get to write all of the emotion, but the ending is not ours to know.

What makes not knowing bearable is that in this moment... right here... in the eternal now.... if we are being who we are meant to be... the ending doesn’t matter at all.

May it be so.

L'Shana Tova

Any journey in faith is always an embracing of a very big "what if...". Many of the "what ifs" of the world's religions suggest answers to questions about meaning and purpose within the cycle of life. What if we were created with a purpose? What if the only moment is this moment? What if we will be resurrected when we die? What if we loved all people as if they were our sisters and brothers? What if we spent our energy throughout our lives building the kingdom of heaven on earth?

The High Holy Days changed how I understand the cycle of life forever. I was in seminary. I was learning Hebrew. I was NOT calling the Hebrew Scriptures the Old Testament and so I was feeling a bit out of place among my Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist classmates. I began attending sabbath services at synagogues wherever I could find them. And then came the High Holy Days. I had a fresh brain full of a beautiful new language and I went to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services (after some serious work to get tickets, but that is another story.) The services were so intensely meaningful to me that they changed how I saw ministry, faith, life and death. So year after year I kept going, and if I couldn't go because I was a minister of a congregation I hosted a UU variation on the services.

I think back on all the High Holy Day services I have attended and the variations on them which I have led, and they each serve as a beacon to my better understanding of the intricacies of the phases of life. The High Holy Days are the time for us to look back on what has become of our lives including that which we could control and that which was beyond our control. To borrow from a different tradition, the High Holy Days are a great time for learning the lessons of serenity: accepting the things we can't change, courageously working to change what we can, and becoming wise to the difference between the two. What if we can do it better next year?

I consider this some powerful philosophical and spiritual stuff and I believe it stands in stark contrast to the New Year's observances of December 31 and January 1. When the celebration of a new year is removed from spiritual concerns we seem to find a way to make it about ourselves and not our better selves.

A new year becomes about my house being de-cluttered, about my weight, about my goals, my stuff, my vanity, more of my my my crap. But when the new year is part of a spiritual belief, part of ritual, part of an understanding of oneself in relation to others the focus becomes something beyond my self-interest and my control issues. For me the High Holy Days are about how life works and how it changes depending on where we stand on our lifeline and with whom we stand.

As a young woman, the prayers, rituals, and readings of the High Holy Days taught me the humility to face my own responsibility in relationships needing reconciliation. As a mother who lost a child in pregnancy I learned to think of the cycle of death as a natural part of life and to be observed solemnly but hopefully every year keeping the love for those we have lost alive. As a woman of a unique faith journey (raised Unitarian Universalist by an atheist and a Methodist, attended Presbyterian seminary, being spiritually Jewish and denominationally UU) I was reminded annually that we are all responsible for our own convictions, hopes, and disappointments and how we will allow them to shape what we understand as Truth.

The past three years have been, without exaggeration or maudlin pouting, the worst of my life. But the lessons of Rosh Hashanah are that some years are just like that. Ever notice how the iPod shuffle seems to favor some albums over others? Ever hit five red lights in a row on a stretch when you normally just get one or two? It happens. Life is benign. There will be tragedy. There will be wild success. We have control over some of it but almost always less than we think. What we do have control over year in and out is how we will be with others. How we will get up and brush ourselves off. How we will honor those we have loved and lost. How we will forgive and ask for forgiveness.

We begin Rosh Hashanah again  today. I am not going to any services this year. The Unitarian Universalist churches in town chose not to observe it and it has been too emotional a year in the Book of Life for me to trust myself to be surrounded by strangers in a Jewish community, even though they are always welcoming. I prefer not to sob on strangers. So I am asking my New Year's "what ifs" here.

The year I look back on - I lived in 28 places in the past 395 days. I have not said "Thank You" enough. I have said "I'm sorry" at the wrong times. I have worked for reconciliation in the wrong ways and sometimes for the wrong reasons. I have some tears to shed as I reflect on the past but what if I can do it better? What if I can receive love more willingly? What if I can hear a person's heart in spite of their garbled words? What if I have the power to make a difference in spite of my vast limitations?

This year has been abundant in blessings and signs of hope. I have been written in the Book of Life day after day. I have seen beautiful people begin their lives. I have been able to say goodbye to those who lived full lives and rest peacefully. I have watched my children blossom. I have had the blessings of living parents. I have been embraced by wondrous friends and loved by a huge extended family. I now have a place to live for a more extended stay. What if that is more than enough?

Three years of loss but this is the beginning of a fourth year. My Florida relatives swear the bad streak always ends at three and they have known more tragedy than can be numbered. What if they are right?

I stand in this place - mid-life, going back to school, mom of kids who are growing in independence and wisdom, daughter of parents finding their way into senior years, a divorcing woman - and I wait for the sun to set and the New Year to start, I am content. I am at peace. I have reconciliation to build and dreams to pursue and I am grateful for the days of life in which I get the opportunity to move forward in my journey.

But I didn't write this for me. As the New Year begins, I was also thinking of you because that is what all those High Holy Days services taught me to do: stand on your spot in the life cycle and pay attention to everyone around you. They might need a hand. If your last year has been peachy, maybe you could send this along to someone who has been tripping along with me in the briar patch. (We often can't see each other in there, you know?)

A blessing for Rosh Hashanah:

May your new year be sweet, my friend.
May your pain be brief and may it have a purpose you can grasp.
May your healing come with smiles and wisdom.
May your opportunities be well-marked so you do not pass them by.
May your shame fade in the dusk of every day.
May the love you give and the love you encounter be abundant.
May you learn how to build bridges of reconciliation and hope.
May you trust and be trusted.
May your name be inscribed in the Book of Life so that we may meet on the path this year

Happy New Year or l'shana tova.

In love,
A

Scientists Link Children to Theism in Beflusterformed Parents

I became a praying woman this summer.

"But you are a minister," you say?

Let me rephrase. I became a begging, praying woman this summer.

God, thank you for so many blessings but, babe, these kids gotta go. Somewhere. Anywhere. Preferably a jobs training program, a really intense one. But they gotta go.

Here's the funny thing, at ages 10 and 7 this was one of their best summers ever. They learned how to play together. They weren't whining all the time. They could entertain themselves sometimes. They were funny and happy often.

So what's the problem? I think what got me was the intensity of focus. Those kids spend way too much time staring at me.

"You got something on your lip, Mama." That's a zit, you little twit.

"You sure are white." That's because I don't have adoring grandparents with pool access. And I prefer the term "very light-skinned".

"Your roots are showing." Ok, THAT'S IT! Back to school with you, you little perfectly visioned monster.

It was never ending: You dance funny. Your boobies are ginormous. Your breath smells like raisins and I don't like raisins. Stop falling asleep, I want to tell you something. Rub my back. Scratch my hair. Bake me a cake.

Heh heh. I did bake them cakes. Each odd in its own way. And the little boogers thanked me repeatedly, hugged me, ate every bite, and mourned them when they were gone.

And when they want to tell me something, it is often great. I love the funny little things they tell me about their theories on the origins of humanity. She wants a really big piece of paper to write Earth's family tree on. She says she'll write really really really small. He says she can't because there are several lines of humanity including the crew that came from the mating of the pink-butted with the not-so-hairy primates. Then there are the ones that come from the flat butted and flat forehead mating, and so on.

And I do dance funny, and my roots are showing, and I eat the raisins because no one else will. And we are leaving my breasts out of this.

Aw crapola.

Dear Divine Force, last night he made sure I ate what I needed when I felt hypoglycemic. She brushed my hair. We held hands to share what we were thankful for at supper at 9:30 PM, in my ex-husband's house because my stove won't boil water. And they were thankful for me. Thank you for them.

Truth is, I cry on the first day of school every year. I didn't this year. My car had to go in the shop. My camera broke. My phone shattered. A very important check was delayed in being deposited in my account. She clogged the toilet. He leaves a mess wherever he goes, and he goes in every room in my house. I took them to school. I took pictures with a borrowed camera. I got everyone in classes with great teachers on time. And I bolted to do 10,000 things on a list that I know I put somewhere safe. No tears.

When I picked them up, they smelled like feet and had trouble staying awake. No tears.

I dropped them off on the second day and she blushed when her teacher told her what a lovely girl she is. And he hugged me extra tight.

"I'm so proud of you, baby" I said to him. As a 5'1" 5th grader he didn't even mind I called him baby and he didn't stop hugging me. I started crying right there in the school hall. Lots of tears.

"I'm proud of you, too," he said. "You didn't cry until the second day!"

Hey, Spirit of the Universe, sorry I can be such a dumbass.