The BEST girl-friend trip EVER

If you like to walk and love the beach, then this is the trip for you.
 http://slowadventure.us/

I cannot say enough wonderful things about the Slow Adventure trip. We started in Santa Cruz and walked to Monterey, around the bay. The shortest walk was 8 miles and the longest was a bit over 13. Margaret, the lead adventurer, transports the luggage, so we only had to carry a day pack. Breakfast and lunch were included and different every day. The views were amazing, the weather was perfect, and the support was superb.

We took the time to tour the Elkhorn Slough with Whisper charters, and again, this was superb. Brian knows the slough inside and out, and had the coffee ready when we arrived. This was more than worth the time and money 

I have not been to the mikveh since the wedding, since by law there is no reason for me to do so. I wondered if anyone else felt a bit left out of the ritual and found this wonderful article by Mayim Bialik

http://www.kveller.com/mayim-bialik/since-my-divorce-im-missing-the-mikveh/

I think we are related

Both my mother and father were born in St Louis and left behind many cousins when their families moved to Los Angeles. I visited there once years ago
but have not been back for years. Expect for the past
two years in which I bagged three visits. Most recently I helped surprise my cousin Donna (center bottom row) on her birthday. First her son showed up on Friday night, then her daughter+fiance on Saturday morning. I followed on Saturday afternoon, and her best friend capped the day when she arrived in time for dinner. 

The surprise continued the next day at a local winery. OK...call me a Cali girl...but I had no idea that there was wine in Missouri. 

I also had no idea how many ways I could be related to people in St Louis. OK...I have been discovering this over the past several years, but it still amazes me. 

It amazes me even more how similar we are. There are shared values and shared problems. We have different backgrounds, but in many ways similar experiences. We have started in different places and face different challenges, and even have made different choices, but there seems to be a connection. Perhaps simply the focus on those we love.

 And on fun. I am not sure how this wild mixture of
Jewish friends and family can laugh for hours and hours. 
 Even in the middle of a serious conversation there was laughter. I wonder it that is part of what has kept the Jewish people alive and connected...laughter in the face of all serious issues. 

The weekly parsha (torah reading) was about Korach, the man who lead a rebellion against Moses. The story captures the sense of heaviness that many of the Israelites must have felt as they camped in the desert. But I have to wonder...was everyone grumpy? How could they have survived?
Clearly somewhere in the crowd there had to be
a group of comics...a family that laughed over everything and made jokes with each other about the manna and the sand and the heat. Maybe these were vintners who carried grapes and manged to make wine while in camp. There had to be one family who through a party each week, complete with some sort of pot luck and group game.

And there had to be a few stand up comics, or playwrights who turn
the entire experience into a musical before Cecil B De Mill

 And I be some relative of mine wandered around with the shawl she have brought with her...her wedding shawl...and poised in the many picturesque locations. Perhaps an artist captured her image and wrote her story which was later told around the fires in the evening. I am sure that stories were told, songs were sung and jokes were made. I know because these were my very distant cousins and their bloodline is alive and well in my family. We were the jokers and jesters, singers and writers who kept everyone walking. And laughing and joking and playing Jewish geography and keeping the rest of the extended clan happy.

People do ask me if Jews are an ethnic group or a race, or what. The answer is that we are a family, one that creates events and opportunities for laughter.  

Heart's Desire

Do you ever find your heart's desire calling you out to sea? There you are...running on the shore...quite happy with knowing where your next foot is going to land...and then you hear the siren song coming from out at sea. That voice you ignored as a child, the one that would not go away until you locked it in a closet and threw away the key, seems to have checked out a sail boat and is chasing you. And it is gaining.

So what do we do? Continue that lovely run, humming a tune to block out the song of our dreams, hoping that the wind will die and the sails will empty, and our dream will go away.

 Hoping that our dream will go away.

Or do we turn into the ocean and swim out to the dream, stretching our arms and kicking our legs with all that is in us for a second chance to be who we hoped to be. 

Which I will do? 

Which would you do?

Shavuot

Shavuot is the day that the Israelites stood at the base of Sinai and received G-d's Torah. There are SO many stories about this moment. There is a custom of staying up all night to study so that we do not miss the giving of Torah, to make up for the Jews who slept through the night and had to be awakened by a shaking earthquake, thunderous and fiery skies, and the blowing of a shofar. Let me just say that I have never made it. I would have been that one snoozing soul who needed to be awakened. 

And perhaps that is really who I am...a soul who needs to be awakened to the wisdom around me. This past week I found myself in the company of wise women...quite by accident. At a fund-raising gala, that I attended very last minute, I ran into a woman that I had studied with a few years ago. She lost her husband during that time to a horrible disease, but through it all the two of them continued to live a life worth examining...or reading about. There she was, chatting about her experience while 2600 people swirled around us. She talked about volunteering with Hospice and awoke my desire to do the same.

Exactly a week later I found myself at another event with 300 women watching a kosher cooking demonstration. I was sitting next to a dear friend who I had not seen in months. We talked about her son's wedding, about acceptance and change and trying to stay healthy AND honoring Jewish traditions around food, all the while reading recipes. I awoke to the comfort of being surrounded by my "tribe" even if we have different ways of honoring our traditions. I awoke to the desire to actually spend time with those I love.

The next week continued the theme with a visit to a concert at my temple. Rabbi Joe Black talked about a song in which G-d asks Adam "where are you." Clearly G-d new where Adam was...but did Adam? Are we awake enough to know where and who we are, or are we sleeping through life waiting for the volcano to awaken us? Is the holiday of Shavuot really just a call to "wake up" and listen to the still small voice...that at times needs to thunder to get our attention>

I feel awake for  that first time in several weeks, which is odd since I did not know i was sleeping. Let me try this as a goal for summer...stay awake to who and what and where and why I am.