The best of times

On the final day of sailing I felt comfortable enough and courageous enough to skipper the boat dressed in white. I pulled on my mermaid wedding dress and celebrated facing my fears and embracing my dream.

Wow, who knew a wedding dress could be so motivating? Would I have planned so many adventures this year if I did not have a wedding dress to travel with? Maybe that is all we need, an inspiration. 

I had a friend who climbed mountains with a pink plastic flamingo. She took pictures of "pink" in wonderful places and scary places. My friend said that she was never alone, since pink was always at her side. This sounds like the imaginary dog I had as in Arizona and in Santa Barbara....my imaginary protector who traveled everywhere with me. Her name was Shiloh and she was very large. Hmm, I see a pattern here. 

So my parsha is about traveling, but not alone. It is about each of us traveling in a group, a community, with friends and support. We each have to be brave enough to take our own steps forward, to walk into the sea as it splits, to leave our own narrow place behind. But we are surrounded by others who are facing their own fears and taking their own steps. Where I am brave, my friend might be fearful. Together we can step forward. 

Miriam danced at the edge of the sea, but she was surrounded by other women. She lead them in song, but they joined it. Maybe this is the way to build our inner adventuress, to set her free to follow her dreams. We need something that inspires us and helps us realize that we are not alone. It can be a pink flamingo or a mermaid wedding dress or a favorite teddy bear or a good book, or maybe a bucket list. 

We are such interesting creatures, full of dreams fueled by an unquenchable curiosity.  At the same time we have brains wired to prevent loss and to protect ourselves. We long for freedom and we build community. We are clearly dichotomous and paradoxical beings.

And that is part of the story of Bo, my parsha. We crave freedom and are fearful of choosing it. We will fight to go, but then must be told it is time to leave. We wish to fly but must be pushed out of the nest. Even when we suspect that the reward is larger and more powerful than we can imagine. 

So what do you need to inspire and motivate you? I have wedding dress and a parsha. And the wind in my hair and the sound of the sails. Oh...and a few mermaid friends. 

Setting Sail

Much like worshipers in other faiths, Jews read a different chapter of Torah each week. Since there is a regular pattern, we can track back to our birthday and find the parsha, or portion, that was being read during the week we were born. Some people read this parsha when looking for inspiration or guidance. Use this website: Jewish birthday to find your birthday on the Jewish calendar and what parsha was
being read. 
Judaism is about faith as a journey. The work Hebrew, in 
Hebrew is Ivrit which means to cross over, as in crossing a river. Or to wander. Or to journey over and across. Our souls long to move. 

My birth parsha is Bo, which is the parsha in which Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. It is the parsha of a sudden departure after the amazing gift of freedom. There is more to it, but this parsha captures the notion of Judaism as a journey, one from a narrow space to a wide space. 

So maybe this is why I have always, as in always, wanted to run away to sea, to live on a sailboat, and have been obsessed with mermaids. 
Buried in this craving to wander the sea however, is the fear that I will not have the skill or ability to sail. That I will turtle the boat in the first gust of wind. Just like in Bo freedom is linked to fear. The Israelites have been slaves and now have to learn how to be free, and the prospect is terrifying. 

So I decided it was time to leave the narrow place of my fears and explore the freedom of sailing. Ric, my friend Cindy, and the wedding dress, and I headed to San Diego for 5 days of sailing lessons. I knew it was the right place when we walked up to the Kona Kai marina and saw the gates...mermaids! We had to stop and dance with them.

The boat is 40 feet and equipped with two master suites, a kitchen and living area. Plenty of room for three people to spread out for four days, learn to sail and take several written tests.

We headed to the showers on shore every morning, and returned to our lovely floating home, through the mermaid gates, and out to sea for our adventure. 
Maybe that is the message of my parsha, have adventures even if they are a bit scary. Take a chance when adventure knocks and welcome the chance to learn something new. Let the fear of staying in the narrow space chase you into the wide, open, unknown. 

And then love every minute of the experience. We sailed for three days straight....and then on the fourth we pulled out the wedding dress. 

Why we love Halloween

So instead of taking the wedding dress on a trip, we decided to let it celebrate Halloween. This was my favorite holiday for years and years. As a child I would spend a month  planning decorations and costumes. Fall was, and is, my favorite season...and this is the best holiday of fall. 

This year was fun. We handed out candy at work and at home, and tried to explain the process to the newfy (yes kids come to the door, we do not scare them and we give them candy).  We carved pumpkins and cooked the seeds. We laughed about how fun it was to run around in the dark as kids.

This was the closest I ever came to having a religious experience as a child. Halloween comes with rituals and rites of passage that filled me with a sense of overwhelming joy and wonder. I was old enough to run around in the dark dressed in some magical way. The neighborhood  looked different and I felt full of wonder. 

Compare that to what I experienced within my religion. My grandmother made sure that I knew that everything was silly...rabbis were stupid people who made stupid rules for other stupid people. There was no point to any of the rituals or prayers or rites of passage. I asked for a Bat Mitzvah and was told I would have sweet 16. I wanted to learn Hebrew and was told to learn Yiddish, but of course was not taught. I was taken to a few services so that I would not feel strange in temple, but at some point that stopped too. And of course no one told me what was going on in the service, and there was usually a lecture on how silly it all was later.
 Holy days were not holy. They were opportunities for lectures that I tried to hide from. I found ways to crawl inside my head and shut out the loud voices around me. I knew there was more to these days, but I had no way to find it. Even though I longed for something deeper. Even though the voices called me, enticing and inviting me to touch a connection to G-d. But I did not have the language to understand the message.

And so I was left with Halloween and witches and tarot cards and astrology and a belief in magic. I was left to search for an experience of G-d somewhere other than in my faith. Halloween worked. Pagan rituals in the moonlight worked....for a while. 

Maybe that is why so many children and adults have fallen in love with the night. We all need a sense of wonder in our lives, a time to feel profoundly alive. What better way than to try on a new identity in the dark of night. To feel free from the restrictions of real life. To touch the unknown and to survive. 

So this journey is more than just a fun wedding, more than a journey with a dress. It is spiritual journey. A journey to dig deep and find more meaning, and to sink deeply into my own religion same way that I used to sink into Halloween. Prayers that have meaning, rituals that embrace me, rites of passage that change me. Like a chuppa or a mikvah, or a tallit, or a year of Jewish holy days. I still do love Halloween, but really, the year of Jewish holy days beats out this one fun holiday.