Grow Together

Originally posted May 15, 2010

Today after prayer services at my synagogue, I headed to a church for a graduation ceremony for one of my best friends. My friend Samira had earned her masters in divinity. Samira grew up in Iran, a Muslim, had once tried to convert to Judaism, felt a deep connection to Sufism, converted to Christianity, became a devoted Baptist, and is now about to be ordained as an Episcopalian priest. When Samira and I met, I was a devoted Baptist, had become involved with Sufism, and five years ago, I converted to Judaism.

Samira's and my paths have diverged wildly as we've searched for our spiritual homes, yet we remain very close friends. A couple of months ago, her mom was visiting from Iran, and the three of us had lunch, Samira translating, since her mom and I don't know each other's languages. Samira and I meet for lunch or dinner, chat on the phone, say "I love you" before we hang up, and attend each other's life-changing events. Next month, I'll be at her ordination when she becomes an Episcopalian priest, and I'm so intensely happy for her.

So many recent events, including my friendship with Samira, have me thinking about relationships. I have friends from high school, grade school, even from church nursery! Several friends from junior high are like sisters to me. There is little I wouldn't do for them.

I've been to two graduations and parties for one of my nieces in the past few months. Technically, she's my ex-husband's niece, but outside of this blog, she's simply my niece - and one of my closest ones. We text, meet regularly for lunches and dinners, remember each other's birthdays, and love each other with an affection and devotion that we don't feel for everyone.

When I divorced and remarried, my husband Joe's family became my own, deeply and sincerely. I loved my stepchildren and grandchildren immediately and completely. In fact, every person in Joe's family has found a special place in my heart. They didn't replace anyone, and I didn't have to shove anyone out of my heart to let them in. The heart is expandable like that.

Of course, love isn't always returned. Sometimes people I love the most simply don't love me back.

But does that hurt me?

Oh yeah. Badly. And it has a domino effect. It hurts other people, too, and those hurts can last a lifetime.

When that happens, I'm tempted to close my heart, even if it's just a tad, because I really don't want to subject myself to more pain. But I know if I do that, it will close a little more the next time someone hurts me, and a little more the time after that. And that just isn't worth it, to me or to the people who might be affected by my withdrawal.

So if you're in my life, know that I love you. It doesn't matter to me how widely divergent our spiritual paths might be. It doesn't matter that years might separate our visits (as happens with some of my childhood friends), and it doesn't matter if we don't talk every day, or even every week. My heart remains open to you and I love you - sincerely and completely.

Mary

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

The other day, during prayer, my heart suddenly became immersed in an amazing realization, the realization that every single moment of my conscious life has been marked by the Presence of God. Even before I had self-awareness, God enshrouded me. As the Psalmist writes, "you knit me together in my mother's womb. I am awesomely, wondrously fashioned {by God}." Many of my earliest memories center on God. This Divine Being has been the consuming Force of my life, cradling me through heartache, giving me occasional, ecstatically close moments that have remained with me and enabled me to become a better person.

You often told me, Mom, that from the moment you found out you were pregnant with me, you rose each and every morning, drove to the First Baptist Church, knelt at the altar, and dedicated me to God. You often reminded me of the time, when I was three, when you stood watching me ride my tricycle from one end of the block to the other, and then you asked who I was waving at. "God," I told you. When I rebelled and did some pretty horrible things, you told me God loves me unconditionally, and that nothing I could ever do would separate me from that love. Your greatest desire for me was that I never forsake God.

In the decades that have passed, my ideas about God have changed drastically, but my connection to God has only become more intense, deeper, stronger. A week ago I had one of those occasional, ecstatic moments of connection to God which affected my sight spiritually, emotionally and physically. As a result, I've finally gotten a grip on some of my emotional struggles. I've spiritually broken through barriers I'd erected in prayer. And yes, I'm even visually noticing amazing details of all the life in motion around me.

I want more of God. I long for more of the Divine. And my longing makes the Divine accessible, immanent.

A little more than a year ago, you left the earth to be with God and I'm wondering at this moment where you are in your journey. Recently, at kallah, we chanted parts of the kaddish, and were told to chant it not as a personal praise, but as an awareness of our deceased loved ones singing these words of praise

through

us. When I left that room, I was unable to speak for an hour. This was the moment I just wrote about, the moment I felt and saw sparks of the Divine in everything around me - the foliage and sky and even a pile of rocks emanating life. And I know that wherever you are in your journey, you are experiencing that ecstasy 1,000 times beyond this. Your being sings the same essential praise to God that I sang for you and dad last week. Your being

is

the same essence as that of the Divine.

I know that as I begin my studies to become a rabbi, it isn't what you thought would happen to me. You never even knew that six years ago, I became a Jew. I could never tell you because you had grown old, were entering senility, and I couldn't let you leave this world fearing for me, heartbroken that I no longer believed in the Jesus of your religion. But I think you know now that I'm vastly beyond OK. You know now that we're serving the same

Echad, and

that all of our theology is beyond the Being of God. You were the first to teach me of that encompassing love.

Thank you for dedicating me to God.

Love,

Mary

Tree of Life

I've never blogged about a movie - but then no movie has evoked so much thought, imagination and discussion for me. Through a mesmerizing array of dazzling images and a captivating story line, the ultimate question arises: why, with all the chaos and pain and cruelty we face, do we continue to believe in God?

The cinematography of

Tree of Life

is beyond stunning. I could have watched the movie just for its image. But the real purpose behind the imagery is its juxtaposition of beauty and destruction, of good and evil. And each image is a larger portrayal of the struggle of a young boy - and I believe of many of us.

The movie presents us with images of the chaotic and random beginnings of the universe and of life. One cataclysmic implosion begins the evolutionary process. One sperm survives and brings with it a particular life. An abandoned pet, ravaged by a horrible disease appears in this film, followed by a long, flowing image of a vividly blooming magnolia bush. A school of jelly fish float by and we're captivated by their beauty while remaining aware that their poison can paralyze. The ocean is serene... until it isn't. An animal lies helpless and we're certain it's about to be another animal's next meal, but the healthy one trots away without reason, possibly making room for the evolution of a new species.

This is the bigger picture of a particular child's life. Jack is born and knows only his parents' love and the simple desire to be good. "God, help me not to lie and help me not to be mean," he prays beside his bed. But new siblings arrive and Jack discovers jealousy. His daddy loves him, then becomes violent and distant, then tells him that he's all that matters, then ignores his little successes, back and forth, on and on.

"Father, you will always struggle inside me," whispers Jack.

On a particularly fun day swimming a child dies in front of him.

"Why should I be good when you aren't?" he asks God (for me, the most poignant line in the entire movie).

He watches an old man cross the street, and sees an emaciated man taken away by the police. Did his mother really give the man a drink of water or was that in Jack's imagination? How is it that one grows up an angry criminal and another grows up in order to take angry criminals out of society? And did that drink of water - if it was real - affect that man's life? We don't know. Do we ever know?

Jack sneaks into a home and does no harm but he's wracked with terror and guilt over his petty theft of an inexpensive item he finds beautiful and fascinating. The beautiful object swirls away in a torrential river.

He wishes his father dead then folds without resistance into his arms.

He "tortures" his brother as older brothers often do, but cradles him when he cries over leaving their home.

He "loves" the little girl at the desk next to him, follows her home.... does she slow down to let him catch up to her? The image vanishes and doesn't reappear.

Did this childhood moment affect him? Do all moments of our childhood affect us in some way?

What happens in the attic - a bare and scary and

sun-filled

room - and what does the image of the boy on the bicycle riding there in circles mean? I'm utterly fascinated by the constant juxtapositions.

"God, why can't I be go back to where they are?" Jack asks, looking at the trusting innocence of his two brothers. In the diary I kept at age nine, I wrote, "God, why can't I be good?"

The opening narrative of the movie draws us in: "My brother died when he was 19". Why this brother?

Of course we don't know that answer. And for me, that's the point of the movie and why it so resonated with me. Because while I don't believe in a traditional view of God and I don't believe everything happens for a reason, I have to ask myself the ultimate question:

I see both youth and death. I've known children who are disabled, children who have been raped, children who have died - and I've also known children who have been given the very best in life. I see the cruelty inflicted on animals and the pet who's smothered with affection. I've lain by the serene ocean and I've watched images of its horrific destruction. I carry the conflicts within me of those I love, lost the innocent connection with a God whom I once imagined destroying my demons, been stung by something that appeared beautiful, and survived foolish decisions alongside those who have not.

And yet in spite of all this randomness, I believe.

Why?

Hoping to discuss this movie with some of you....

Mary

Yom haShoah

Yom haShoah (Day of the Holocaust)

This past Sunday Joe and I participated, as we do every year, in a Reading of the Names ceremony at our synagogue, Congregation Beth Torah, in Richardson, Texas. Hundreds of synagogues and Holocaust museums around the world remember the victims of Nazi atrocities on this day in various ceremonies. In Israel, state ceremonies are held, flags are lowered, torches are lit, and sirens blare for two minutes while all cars and individuals stop whatever they're doing to remember those who perished.

Yom haShoah was signed into law in 1953 by Israeli Prime Minister David ben-Gurion and President Yitzhak ben-Zvi. Originally proposed to be commemorated on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (a problem since the date was too close to Passover), it was moved to a date close to Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day.

Ed Matisoff brought this moving memorial to Beth Torah ten years ago by ordering a list of thousands of names of people who perished during Hitler's reign of terror. Individuals volunteer to read one name after the other in 15 minute intervals for a 24-hour period of time.

For every person there is a name.

It isn't enough to say that 7 million Jews died or even that 78% of the 7.3 million Jews who were alive before WW2 were killed by the Nazis. No, they have a name, and it's intensely moving to hear those names read, along with the person's place of birth, a parents' name, if known, their age at death, their location of death.

The tables and podium at Beth Torah are covered in black cloth, lights are dimmed, and candles are lit in a ceremony marking the beginning of the Reading of the Names. As someone takes her turn at the bema, a few people sit in the sanctuary quietly listening or reading the stories of survivors recorded in the back of the siddur (prayer book).

The picture I've shown here represent only a fraction of those who died in the Holocaust. Each page lists dozens of names, line after line. At Beth Torah, people have been reading for a solid 24 hours every year for 10 years -

YET -

the stack pictured above - all of the papers on which those names are written - contains less than 80,000 names.

Look at that stack again. If the name of every Jew who perished in the Holocaust was part of that stack, it would take hundreds of tables. The lists would be spread across the sanctuary, spill into other rooms and hallways.

It will take around

800

years

to finish reading the names of all the Jews whose names are recorded as having perished during the Holocaust.

Nor can we forget others who died - 

gypsies,

 gays, political dissidents, Christians and others who hid or aided Jews in any way. At Beth Torah, this year some of these names were read, also.

Although we can't blare sirens in our country, stopping traffic and activity, my hope is that a worldwide movement will arise in which we pause for a few moments, in synchronicity, to close our eyes, remembering those who died, and taking the opportunity commit to ongoing personal work which furthers peace and justice and ensures the safety of all people.

Mary

A Spiritual Passover

Pesach

(Passover) has always been my least favorite holiday. Cleaning? A housecleaner has always been a necessity for me, not a luxury. Carbohydrate diets belong in hell. And I just have been unable to get beyond the most basic spiritual meaning of the holiday.

Until this year.

This past Monday Joe and I took the day before the first

seder

off. In the morning we put on some Jewish music and cleaned the kitchen together. During breaks I read aloud from the

Ma'yan

haggadah

and Joe and I talked about the rich and meaningful symbolism of all the rituals that surround our remembrance of Jewish liberation from slavery.

Passover is not a Jewish form of lent. It's a time for us as Jews to remember our ancestors and the agonies they endured in captivity, in escaping captivity, and in

adapting

to

freedom. 

But these memories have spiritual meaning for us today. Joe and I read and talked about darkness and change and struggle followed by light and hope and success, of community and compassion towards all beings, of holiness and how the ritual of kashering and doing without bread products for eight days creates a separate, sacred space that makes us more mindful. We read of "blessing our cracked surfaces and sharp edges, unafraid to see our brittleness and brave enough to see our beauty."

"If we speak truthfully about the pain, joys, and contradictions of our lives," the text continues. "If we challenge the absence of women in traditional texts... If we honor our visions more than our fears,

dayeinu v'lo dayeinu.

It will and it will not be enough."

My heart flooded and tears splashed onto the kitchen table. Salt water, another ingredient on the

seder

table. Tears shed during slavery. Yet the

Ma'yan

haggadah

says that by dipping the bitter herb in the salt water, which we do at our

seders

, reminds us "that tears

stop.

Spring comes. And with it the potential for change."

The holiday suddenly took on a new ambience. I found myself thinking about the delicious wholesome food I'd eat, rather than the little bit of which I'd be deprived. I felt a deep gratitude that Joe and I could spend the day together, preparing ourselves for a spiritual and physical cleansing, and that we could look forward to spending the next two evenings with friends whom we've come to love as family. Time slowed and, at age 54, I made my very first cake from scratch, without flour or dairy products, and it turned out to be delicious.

During one final break, Joe and I looked up some texts to deepen the significance of counting the omer, which begins the second night of Pesach, and is a symbolic ritual based on the ancient practice of offering a sacrifice which contained an "omer" (a specific measure) of barley. Each of the 49 days which we count has a specific spiritual energy flowing through it. The culmination is the holiday of Shavuot, the receiving of Torah, and spiritually, just like the days of reflection leading to the High Holy Days, our hearts should rise to a crescendo during these days, making us open to receiving the life-giving mitzvot, ethics, and spiritual and mystical depth of the Torah.

I took a moment to open my heart and make myself receptive, softly singing one of Debbie Friedman's (may her memory be for a blessing) Passover melodies:

"O, Source of compassion,

Through the ages we've been blessed

May we build this city of peace

And may all people make it a place of

peace and freedom..."

Chag Sameach,

Mary

A Meaningful Havdalah

I have friends who enjoy the rush just before Shabbat begins - setting the table, digging out the candles, tidying up, etc. Me, I like starting to wind down mid-day and to move slowly into Shabbat. Yet I'd never given the same loving attention to Havdalah (the ritual concluding Shabbat) until recently.

So recently Joe and I went outside an hour before Shabbat ended, sat in loungers, and watched the sunset. As the stars began to sprinkle across the sky, we didn't hurry inside. Instead, we tried to identify a couple of constellations (unsuccessfully), then just spent a few quiet minutes looking at the sky, engulfed in serenity and stillness.

Back inside, we sang as we put away our Shabbat items and replaced them with our Havdalah candle, spices and wine. Standing side by side, we made a concerted effort to sing more slowly, savoring the sweet period of time we were leaving, and moving slowly - but happily - into a new week. We drank a little more wine after we'd extinguished the candle. We didn't rush to turn our computers and telephones back on.

Finally, we spent a few minutes talking about other traditions we'd like to add to our Havdalah ritual. After kiddush, we plan to walk back into the yard and smell herbs growing fresh in our yard before we come back inside to extinguish the candle. We discussed planting a few additional herbs or even occasionally just picking up fresh ones in the produce department, bypassing the usual spice-in-a-jar aisle.

Although we have travel Shabbat "kits", we can't always use them. If we're staying in a hotel, we can't light the candle. At times, we've forgotten to bring along spices for Havdalah. Also, since we're not rigid about Shabbat, we sometimes leave before Shabbat officially ends so we can meet friends or go to an entertainment event.

In the past, we've chosen either to do Havdalah early or not to do it at all. Now we may do havdalah at our friends' home or we may just go outside and look at the stars and smell the fragrance of the evening.

Recently, we've also been more prone to observing Shabbat until it ends. It's soothing to move out of Shabbat in a relaxed manner. And both sunsets - one moving into and one moving out of Shabbat - have a special holiness about them.

As I move more deeply into my Jewish faith, I continually find that middle ground between mindlessly doing a ritual because I'm "supposed to" do it or doing away with it because I can't find meaning in it.

I've always found Shabbat rituals meaningful and powerful. Now I'm finding that immersing myself in the spirituality of Havdalah allows the sweetness of the previous hours to linger into the week.

Shavua Tov,
Mary

Dayenu

Originally published May 27, 2009


Some months ago I felt a rush of deep joy that I thought I'd lost forever. At that moment, I felt like someone who'd just climbed out of a septic tank into a forest, and I just wanted to sit and inhale the dewy atmosphere of joy. I gasped for it, clung to it.


I've always been a deeply happy, contented person. Then, in my late 40s, I lost my lifelong faith, converted to a new religion, and my husband of nearly 30 years moved out. My writing couldn't support my current lifestyle and the only other work I'd done was for my husband, so I had no real career. My degrees in philosophy and anthropology were worthless. Assuming I'd lose my home, I planned to move into my sister's guest home, which she'd offered me. I figured I'd probably end up working in a convenience store.


Because I knew the importance of not burying grief, I refused medication, so I spent a chunk of each day curled in a fetal position in my office floor, staring up at my computer, unable to work. My husband and I spoke daily, wondering if we'd done the right thing. Once, we tried to stop our divorce proceedings. Several months after our separation, he moved back in with me, but it was disastrous. We clung to each other and sobbed. It was the worst grief I've ever felt. Mike packed his bags and moved out, this time for good.


Three months before Mike and I separated, I'd left my lifelong religion. That had been the last thread that bound my marriage together, and now it was gone. I hadn't been one of those kids who'd questioned her faith; I bought into everything I was taught. Or maybe questions lingered deep inside me that I feared admitting. Fundamentalism bans you from thought, from questions, and from authentic relationships with other people. But an emotionally abusive church I attended in my mid-30s rattled me out of my cocoon, and fifteen years later - it was a long process - I knew my faith was gone. And then so was my husband.


I had two books published during this process of upheaval in my life and I paid dearly for writing them when major changes were taking place in my life. A talk show host hung up on me in the middle of a live radio show because he deemed me a heretic. A neighbor who hadn't been the least bit religious told me outright that I was going to hell. A former friend told me I had "invalidated Christianity". An editor for whom I'd regularly written insinuated that I'd deceived the Christian community.

Yet I hadn't planned a single thing in my life. I thought I was merely opening my heart and mind to life and spiritual explorations. Doing so caused me to lose everything that meant everything to me, and I had no idea how I'd survive, emotionally or financially.


The amazing thing, though, were those moments between my tears, between the gut-wrenching bouts with grief. Somehow I managed to snatch onto those moments, like a person caught in the middle of a disaster who acts instinctively to save her life. For instance, a few people suggested that I take my experiences working for my ex and see what might develop. I made a couple of halfway enthusiastic phone calls and received a more than enthusiastic response. Within six months I'd built a business that allowed me to support myself - and to keep the home I'd lived in for 25 years. The business has continued to grow, and recently has begun to expand nationally. A short time ago, I realized I could write again. The bouts of grief had dissipated.


A little more than a year ago, I remarried. Joe & I met on a Jewish dating site. Both of us had grown up in Christian homes, and we'd entered into Judaism late in life, independently. During Joe's conversion process, he lost his wife to breast cancer. I had lost mine to change. Then we found each other, completed our grieving process together, and begun our journey back to joy.


Life, I've discovered, with all its in-your-face moments, will always grant moments of sustenance and reprieve. I'm embracing each moment of my life with hope and joy and contentment, but if and when I'm faced with new tragedies, I'll remember to capture again the whispers of God's presence. When that's all you can hear, it's still enough.

Gift of Senility

Original post: June 7, 2009

This past Friday I learned that my mom, who resides in an assisted living facility, had been caught heading towards a busy and dangerous highway in her wheelchair. Within a few minutes of the incident, the facility where Mom lives called and said we had 24 hours to move her. When I heard the news, I sat on the couch and sobbed. Then I got up and packed my suitcases, as did my oldest sister, so we could head to Illinois the following morning to join our middle sisters to figure out what to do. With all of us in complete shock, we weren't certain if we'd even be capable of making a rational decision.


For my entire life, I'd had a tumultuous relationship with my mom - as had all three of my sisters. Often, Mom had been emotionally and physically abusive. My journals, kept from the time I could write, reveal that I'd continually struggled with confusion about whether I even loved my mom.


One particularly agonizing memory was the day my mom confided in me, when I was barely an adolescent, that she was in love with another man. I remember coming into the kitchen to get a sandwich and she, on the phone with "him", would lower her voice and ask me to go back to the living room. She taped their conversations and locked them in a small safe in her closet. At the time, I was certain that I hated her, mostly because I worshipped my dad. He exemplified love and kindness, and he adored my mother. How could she possibly be in love with someone else - and how in God's name could she confide in me, her young daughter?


The affair eventually ended, and my parents remained married for 62 years, until my dad passed away. And although Mom's relationship with another man left all of us scarred for a long time, it left her in a permanent state of agony. Mom had always been religious but after the affair, she became fanatically so, deciding that the ailments that frequently come with aging were a "loving" punishment from God. Thirty years (!) after her affair ended, with my mom in her 80s, she believed that her heart problems, osteoporosis and frailties came from a God who punished her to keep her moral.

Yet my mom, now 91, seems to have finally found peace and happiness through senility. How strange, I think. Some people forgive but may never forget. My mom, though, had to forget in order to forgive.


It has been the most bizarre gift my sisters and I have received. Although we've always been close, when my dad passed away eight years ago, my sisters and I disagreed and argued and fought. These past few days, though, as we've faced the agonizing decision to put Mom in a nursing facility, we felt a deep sense of connection, agreeing with each other during our largest and smallest decisions, and joking and enjoying each other as we worked. When I ran across old writings of Mom's and read them aloud, or when one sister would feel herself breaking down from the pain of having to move our mom to a nursing home, we'd step outside and cry together. No animosity or anger, not even a single disagreement.


When we returned to work, Mom sat watching us from her chair, smiling, peaceful, lovely. When we took her to visit the home where we're moving her to, the only decent option available in our small coal-mining community, Mom pushed her wheelchair through the sparse but pretty lobby, declaring she wanted a "clipping" of every plant (they're all artificial), stopping to watch the exotic caged birds build nests, and assuring us she was truly going to like this new home. In her own calm senility, my mom calmed us as a family, enabling us to do the unthinkable.


Most important, though, is that my mom's new demeanor has brought to my sisters and me a sudden adoring astonishment of her. Our family has always been extraordinarily affectionate, but today, we found ourselves taking breaks every few minutes to kiss and pamper and hold onto our mom. She watches us as we work, telling us how much she loves us, and how happy she is that we're here. I've never seen her so content, so uncomplaining, so peaceful. Her eyes glisten with mischievousness and delight. If we stoop over to pick up a napkin she's dropped, she looks at us like we've told her Publishers Clearinghouse has finally shown up. "Thank you. thank you," she says, looking deeply into our eyes. Her gratitude for everything we do for her, for all that we are, overwhelms us. Maybe my sisters and I have simply always wanted her love and acceptance and somehow, in forgetting so much of her past, my mom has finally become capable of giving it to us, fully and without condition. We're absorbing each other like sunburn lapping at a cool cloth, at medicinal relief.


This evening as I read through a few of her old writings, I came across a prayer list where she expressed her love for my dad, and a prayer that they might always be together. It was dated nearly two decades after she'd ended her affair. I found another in which she wrote of how proud she was of her daughters, and how she felt God had blessed her in a unique way with each of us. I clung to the letters for a long while as my sisters continued to work.


Tonight a friend emailed me that senility, she's been told, does away with everything that's extraneous in life, leaving only an authentic heart and core-soul of that human being. I blinked back tears because, since the onset of Mom's senility, it seemed that her deepest and kindest self had emerged and that she'd simply forgotten all of her pain and shortcomings.

As I read those musings from my mom, I knew without a doubt that she loved all of us deeply. And I know with the same certainty how much I've always loved her, too.

Shabbat Shalom

Original post: July 6, 2009

It's Friday, around 4:30pm, and I've spent the day gradually moving into the aura of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. I have friends who love the hectic madness of Friday afternoon, preparing for Shabbat, but I love the slow movement into this sacred time, beginning in the morning when I first wake up through the end of the day, when I begin shutting off my telephones and computer. Yet for me, this withdrawal is all about what begins to take place in my soul.

Joe and I have chosen to observe Shabbat in some basic ways - we turn off all of our telephones, we don't watch television or go to movies, and we don't turn on our computers. Concerning work, it's not that we simply don't do any, we also don't talk or think about it. We don't run errands, shop, work in the yard or clean the pool. And I not only don't feel deprived, I feel utterly relaxed and withdrawn from the busyness of life. For me, it's one of the greatest gifts Judaism has given me.

Although it's traditional for the man and woman to have different ritual responsibilities to usher in Shabbat, Joe & I choose to share all of them. With the house free of the distractions of electronic devices, we sit together, waving our hands inward from the flame three times, bringing towards our hearts our readiness for the peace and joy of Shabbat. After saying the blessings over the bread and wine, we sing, sometimes dance, sit on the back deck, play games, and/or lie on the bed and talk about the good things in our lives. It's often the only time during the week that we're not rushing. I remove my watch until the end of Shabbat and rarely look at the clock. We graze through time.

In the morning we drive to services at Congregation Beth Torah. If I need extra sleep, I'll go to bed earlier the night before rather than sleeping in on Saturday morning, because Saturday, for me, is never the same if I haven't prayed with the people I so quickly have grown to love. I'm still surprised by the way I can be moved to tears, unexpectedly, by some beautiful ritual I'm noticing in a new or deeper way each week. After the service, we share a quick l'chaim (can you imagine what that means to a Southern Baptist convert - that we have a ritual liquor committee???), then we have lunch together - every week - then we bentch, singing the after-meal blessings. Several of us keep flipping through our small, blue B'kol Echad, singing and banging tables until we've grown hoarse. Occasionally I can convince one or two people to dance with me.

At home, Joe and I nap, float in the pool with a good book, sit in the hot tub, take walks, feed the ducks at the nearby lake, ride our bikes, and enjoy our time together, still uninterrupted by phone calls, business stress, inane television shows, or the relentless chatter of online networking. Yes, we sometimes feel a bit restless, but we treat it the same way we treat our minds when we're trying to pray or meditate - acknowledge the feeling of restlessness or boredom, then relax back into the inner tranquility of the day.

In addition, I attempt to take a rest from griping, impatience, and anger, things I struggle intensely with all week long. Amazingly, though, I've not found it terribly difficult to give up a few negative qualities for Shabbat, undoubtedly because the lifestyle my husband and I have created isn't one that's fertile for negativity.

Joe & I aren't Orthodox and we're not entirely observant. Sometimes we drive several blocks across town and buy a snowcone in the summer. Several weeks ago we paid the fee to get into the Japanese gardens to take a stroll. We heat food in the microwave if we get hungry. Our general rule for ourselves, however, is that what we do has to be interactive and peaceful. In those ways, our "rigidity" exists only to create the space to allow our souls to breathe.

Is there a mad scramble to catch up on Sunday? No. Joe & I made a decision long ago to take on only what we can handle in order to fully enjoy and honor Shabbat. That isn't easy, but it's worth it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason why I wake up most Mondays feeling excited about my goals and hopes for the new week. Mondays for me represent a new chance to create a little better "me" and a little better world. Maybe it's a Shabbat hangover, not alcohol induced, but simply the sheer delight of Shabbat lingering into each new week.

Singing My Prayers

Originally posted June 3, 2009

This morning I sang all of my prayers, as I always do. That's one of the loveliest aspects of Judaism, I think - that we sing our prayers. Most Jews don't sing all their prayers, but I do. Every single one of them. I use both modern and traditional tunes. Before I wrap myself in my tallit (prayer shawl), I sing both a meditation and the blessing. I go slowly and I begin to feel enshrouded in the Presence of God the moment I begin.

Some Jews rush through these prayers and it's said to have the same effect as a chant or mantra or meditation, but I want to savor each word. Once, I expressed my worries to one of my teachers, Reb Zalman, that I didn't make it through all the spiritual realms symbolized in the progression of prayers in our siddur (prayer book). "My dear," he said to me, "stay in the Presence." So I do. It doesn't matter that I only make it through some of the prayers. It matters that the prayers I do offer emerge from my heart.

As I stand on my back deck, birds swoop down all around me, pecking at bird seed, and a sparrow puts the finishing touches on a nest it's building in one of Joe's sculptures just behind me. Facing East, I look out on an expanse of green - huge trees, a lush lawn, bushes that line the creek running behind my house.

When my longing for God feels tangible, I'm able to progressively move more deeply into an altered state of mind. In the first of the four realms, the physical, in which I pray, I sing the modah ani, a song of gratitude that I've "arrived" safely to greet another morning.

The second realm is one of emotion and praise, and I can't doubt that it's true because it's here where my heart breaks open and I begin to cry. Here are the first few lines of my favorite prayer, which I sing both in Hebrew and English:

"Melodies I weave, songs I sweetly sing:
longing for Your Presence, to You I yearn to cling.

In Your shelter would my soul delight to dwell,
to grasp Your mystery, captured by Your spell.

Whenever I speak of Your glory so resplendent,
my heart yearns deeply for Your love transcendent.

Two worlds remain - one in which I begin to feel at one with God, and the final in which my soul melts into that of the Divine. At the end, I take three steps back, re-entering the world of everyday life, and as I do, I sing a song of peace, bowing to the left (towards my Christian neighbors), to the right (towards my Muslim neighbors) and forward (towards my atheist neighbors).

As I finished these prayers this morning, I came inside and sat down to write about one of the many posts that's been buzzing through my head all week, but instead, I wrote this one, still fresh in my heart. It allowed me to bring into my home and into my everyday life what I just experienced in my prayers.

Mary