Tu B'shevat Birthday

This year my birthday feel on the Jewish holiday of Tu B'shevat, the new year of trees. The Jewish calendar actually has four new year celebrations, one for the calendar, one for Kings and festivals, one for tithing, and one for trees. This is actually the birthday of trees, and all trees planted in the past year are now considered to be one year old. A tree must be three years old before we can eat the fruit. Imagine having three years to grow and bloom and stretch before someone prunes, picks, judges, or restrains you. Maybe birds will sing and nest in the branches, drawn by the unpicked fruit. Maybe bees will add the sweetness of the fruit to honey. 

Because the fruit is the focus of the holiday, the Jewish mystics created a "seder" or ordered meal around this holiday. We are told to eat three types of fruits:
     1. Fruits or nuts with an inedible outer shell and an edible inner core, such as an   
         orange or starfruit or almond.
     2.  Fruits with edible outer flesh and pithy, inedible cores, such as olives, dates,    
          apricots, avocados or plums
     3.  Fruits that are edible throughout with no protective shells, such are figs, 

          raspberries, strawberries or grapes. 
The seder uses seven "fruits" from Israel: figs, dates, pomegranates, olives, grapes and wheat. Each type of fruit refers to a kabbalist notion of our relationship with G-d. Some of us have a spiritually hard shell, but are soft and sweet inside. Some of us seem to be open accepting in the outside, but have a hard tough core. Some of us are open inside and out, and still strong enough to live a spiritual life in a harsh world. 

The kabbalists viewed this holiday as a way to heal the mistake made by Adam and Eve, who sought pleasure solely from the gifts on the earth, and not pleasure in relationship with G-d. Here is a great discussion of this.
When we eat the fruits we were commanded to eat we join with G-d in our joy, we have physical, sensual and spiritual joy.

What does this have to do with a wedding dress? Perhaps it is a great lesson for the first few years of a wedding. What if we spent our first few years without "picking any fruit" and finding pleasure in our relationship rather than outside it? What if we appreciated the way each of us as soft and hard elements, and yet can come together leaving our hardness behind? 

What is this time under the Chuppa reminded us that we could nest and sing like birds in the life we have just planted? That we can turn the sweetness of our relationship into honey that will feed us? That to do this we need to let each other grow without pruning or picking or restraining. We need to enjoy growing strong, as the roots of our relationship dig deep and feed the branches of our spiritual life. 

Perhaps a dress is a symbol of that fruit that is soft inside and out, that embraces the sweetness of life without restraint. Perhaps the wedding dress represents a type of love we all wish to share, strong but yielding inside and out, and sewn together with love.

go van gough go

Starry, starry night

This was an amazing way to end the evening. I landed in Denver just back from a wild weekend at Disneyland and went to the Vincent Van Gogh exhibit at the Denver Art museum...with the dress. 

I never took an art history class, and gained any knowledge I have from my many artist friends, and from dropping into art history courses as a Dean. And so I often have not seen any of the work when I enter an exhibit and can be swept away by the colors and motions in the work before me. The colors swirl in a way that traces the motion of the brush and hand. 

For a short time I see the world through different eyes, through the soul of a man driven to express and exclaim and cry out in joy and pain. I see the world through eyes that are exuberant and yet filled with pain. Laughter and tears pouring out of a palette in a way that words on a page never can.

What if I could write in a way that evoked that mysterious yearning in others? Just once, just one paragraph that drove someone to experience the world in a profound way. Just one sentence. Just one word.

But he never knew that he had this power, for he was not a hero in his own time.

But he left us a pathway to follow. Immersion in something we love, something that fills us, something that overtakes us is a form of art. It is art...and adventure. 

Good night Vincent, and thank you. 

disney run fun

The wedding dress, Cindy and I went to Disneyland for the Tinkerbell 1/2 marathon event. The run was fun...wild fun as only a Disney experience can be. We would round a curve and there was a load speaker announcing "caution, the path narrows and turns." We ran passed Micky and Minnie and Pooh and Eeyore and the Incredibles. I was holding out for Alice.

We crossed the finish line, donned medals, grabbed our treat bags and headed back to the hotel for coffee. We had been up since 4:00 and needed serious caffeine and showers. 

Then it was time to grab the dress and head into the park. We had to go through the obligatory bag search, and the wedding dress was discovered. I actually thought about calling ahead and asking what the rules are...but that is so not my style. So I decided to just bluff through any issues.

The wedding dress was spotted and I was told that I was not supposed to take wedding pictures in the park without advance planning. So the wedding dress went on a stealth mission. We decided it was a "princess" dress and that we would sneak our pictures.


We climbed up the Swiss Family Tree house...now called the Tarzan Tree house...and pulled out the dress for a picture. Then we climbed on Tom Sawyer's raft and took a ride over to Pirate's Island and pulled out the dress for some stealth shots.

There was treasure and gold and sometimes an audience, which was really fun. We explained the entire wedding dress adventure to applause.



We waited in line and talked about adventures, and then road all the adventure rides we could find. We wondered how to inspire those around us to see life in the grand way, without worrying about traveling to far distant places. What if all the adventure and inspiration we need is in the attitude we bring to our life?

 
We pulled the dress out in the Small world and in the tea cup chairs in our hotel and wondered about the human need for adventure in other traditions and places. I spent years exploring and studying and searching and looking until a Jewish friend asked me if I had ever tried Judaism before I rejected it. How odd, no, I had not.

So I went back and started over, except I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. I had no idea that I came from a tradition of meditation and song, of ecstatic dance and chant, of mystical exploration and a sense of G-d in nature. I never knew. I was too busy looking for adventure everywhere else; too busy assuming that adventures had to be thrilling and life threatening, happen in a far away land, and be worthy of a movie deal.


I tried to ask Alice when I finally found her, but the mad hatter pulled her away. So we took one last ride down splash mountain and called it a day. We headed back to our room exhausted and had a dinner of potato chips and Rum, sang Pirate songs and watched the fireworks over our headboard. 

Airports and airplanes are supposed to speed us up, moving quickly from Denver to Chicago and back and then on to LA. My experience is exactly the opposite...airports teach me to slow down. I might still stride quickly down a concourse towards my gate, but once I get there I need to slow down and await the bizarre boarding priority dance to unfold. When I manage to claim space for my bag and fall into a seat, complete with a seat belt that will need explaining during the required safety soliloquy, I have to wait for the rest of the plane to board. The door is closed and locked and the plane heads to the runway. And then I sit and wait. And wait. We line up for take off and then spend time sailing through the sky.

We are moving faster than any car or train...or sailboat. But I have to sit and wait. Even more importantly, I have to face the fact that I have no control. I do not control the wind or the flaps, the speed of the plane or the path we take. Much like life, I have less control than I might wish for over the world around me. However, as Victor Frankl pointed out, I always have control over my response to life.

This reflects an interesting aspect of Jewish theology. The world in a huge paradox in which we, humans, have free will. At the same time (here is the paradox) we believe that G-d knows what we are going to do. We live in the space between freedom and connections. This might be the strength of the Jewish way of thinking...it is a world of "yes, and" where many points of view are considered true.

We learned this in the sailboat. There are buoys that mark the sides of the channel, and there are rules about how to stay safe around other vessels. But that is all. Otherwise the channel is open. There is no way the skipper can control the wind or the waves, but there are hundreds of choices and opportunities between the elements that we do not control. 

So airports are places to let go, to let time pass as it will. Being stranded becomes a form of meditation. Speeding up means we need to slow down. Wandering up and down the concourse is exercise and people watching. Waiting for a plane is a lesson in slowing down. Calmly. Quietly. Knowing that I only have control over my choices over what life opens up for me.