how is a sukkah like a wedding dress?

Much like the famous Mad Hatter riddle "why is a writing table like a raven" this question sounds nonsensical. So I will leave you to ponder it for a day or two. I can add one hint...in the same way that an air flight is like a wedding dress.

To be continued. 

The mermaid gift...much like a sukkah

What is the true mermaid gift? It is the ability to stay fluid in a world of dichotomies.

Fluidity between dichotomies.

The ability to have a hand in both worlds, to see the many sides of a situation and flow between them. To move from paradox to paradox to paradox, and still have faith in the consistency of the sea. To know that speaking the truth is powerful, but knowing how to speak it in a way that is heard is even more powerful. Knowing that success is something to enjoy, and then move beyond. That true greatness come from sharing our gifts so that others around us surpass us as we joyfully celebrate their success.

And then we swim on to the next adventure.

Life is not predictable, nor was it ever meant to be. It was meant to be embraced and explored and celebrated and experienced, while laughing and crying and shouting and finding silence. The tides rise and fall to remind us that there is a consistency in the changes around us. Mermaids know this and stay fluid in the paradoxical world of dichotomies. 

How is this like a Sukkah?

We sit in a "booth" with three sides and a roof open to the sky and thank G-d for safety and protection. We sit in the world, open to all types of weather, and rejoice in the freedom we have to move from place to place and harvest what we have planted. We are nomadic and rooted. We are exposed and protected. We are in transition from one season to the next. Maybe we are mermaids! 

Rosh Hashanah thoughts rebooted

We are told in Exodus that “Six days shall you work, and on the seventh shall you desist.” So we are supposed to work 80% of the time, and rest 20%. How funny that we don’t argue with G-d about this equation. 80% of my time spent working? Why don’t we demand more time to stop? Maybe it is because, according to the sages, we are 80% body and 20% soul. Maybe it is because our brains and bodies evolved as we walked 10 – 15 miles a day across savannahs. Maybe because stopping was dangerous and put us at risk.

We had to stop at night when the moon illuminated the sky, giving us a sense that we were safe in the darkness. Maybe this is the real message of stopping on Shabbat; that we are safe in the darkness of the world that we inhabit on the other 6 days. If we stop we can be illuminated, or perhaps be a light that illuminates and warms other people. After all, lighthouses don’t walk around much.

What if the world stopped for 25 hours every week? No pollution, no war, no competition. Would that 20% be what makes the 80% sustainable? Is this another message of Shabbat? Sustainability comes from stopping.

How funny that I resist stopping on Shabbat, when I beg for it on other days. You know, those times that we wish would last forever, wishing that time would stop and let us hold our memories still in a moment of time. And yet when commanded to stop…I rush on. Maybe if I had to pay for stopping that was disguised as another religion it would be easier to embrace….like a meditative yoga retreat.

My doctor, a traditional Jew, dared me to stop. My orthodox girl friend invited me to stop, saying it would be good for my soul. So what am I afraid of? Self discovery, like that which comes while reciting the Al chets? That I might have to re-define my value in the world? That I might find G-d…..or that G-d might find my hiding place?

Jewish mystics explain that as the sun goes down before Rosh Hashana, the universe goes into a comatose state, it stops. A slumber descends on all existence; everything comes to a standstill in cosmic silence, in apprehension of our contract being renewed. So perhaps I am afraid that stopping might mean G-d will rewrite my contract…that I will need to find a new way of being in the world.

So I tried to stop, but the world moved on. The phone rang, friends invited me out for lunch, my email filled up, the slopes beckoned, and the mall opened early. Wow…this is harder than I thought. I am out of step and out of time with the world around me….but in step and in time with Shabbat and that 20% of me that wishes to illuminate the world for good. Oh cool….in some ways stopping makes me rebellious. OK, I can do that

My goal then this year is to increase the time I stop on Shabbat, second by second. To become Shomer al z’man, a guard of time. Rather than building a fence around Shabbat, I am going to use Shabbat as my fence around stopping.

Shofar blast and broken china

Yom Kippur is over with a final blast of the shofar, a sound powerful enough to bring down the walls of Jericho, and easily break a few china plates. 

This year I needed the 25 hours of fasting and prayer. Hours in which I did not check email, try to multitask, solve anyone's problems, or deal with any projects. I fasted, I prayed, I sang, I fasted, I walked, I added a little yoga...I think I mentioned fasted....and prayed some more. For the first time in months, I felt spiritually full, while hungry and haunted. Some of the prayers grabbed me and and offered to carry me to the sky...did I mention it was raining and thundering and lightning? Some of the songs carried me home to the sea and rocked me in the waves...did I mention the floods in Colorado? And then there were the words that connected the dots of these past hard months.

"We (meaning the Jewish people) found freedom at the sea (as in walking through the reed sea) but found community in the mountains (torah at Sinai)." Wow. There is the tweet version of my life story. Freedom at the sea and community in the mountains.

During Yom Kippur the forces of destruction and creation dance together, showing us the many sides of any power, any action. Our intonation turns a sentence from a demand to a question, from a rebuke to a compliment  from and ending to a beginning. And the shofar, that blast that is meant to wake us from our spiritual slumber and complacent patterns  can frighten or inspire. It is meant to remind us that the forces that destroy can also create.

I felt inspired. I felt full and loved and moved and ready to say "hineni," I am here with all of my being, physically and spiritually, ready to do what I am called to do and fully present in the moment.

And so, of course, the movers called...again...ready to pick up the things that did not belong to us and all items that were trash.

Just in case you have not been following the tale of the mystical move, most of my mom's stuff was scattered across the desert, retrieved and delivered to us in large moving boxes for us to sort. It arrived at late one night right before labor day, and even in the dark it was disturbing. Items that had resembled furniture, things one might have in a house, showed up in sealed boxes.


We spent the next few days sorting her stuff from the other family's stuff....and from the desert trash. Bits of barbed wire shredded lace shirts and sweaters. Chunks of concrete filled what used to be pots and pans. Rocks and sand and sand and rocks were everywhere...along with the scent of a cologne that had spilled in the other family's box. 

 And it was during the sorting and searching that the mysteries emerged. We found broken china...and several salad plates still in their wrappings. We found an artistically mangled candelabra, and all of my mother's miniature tea pot collection. 
 We found mashed and crashed and broken china everywhere, and the suddenly seven perfect plates. 
Glass in frames broken...and perfect picture frames. And somehow, each find was more perfect than it had seemed before. Twelve small plates seem so much more inviting than 12 full place settings.

Destruction and perfection, combined without seeming purpose or sense in boxes filled with other people's clothes and books and memories. The China cabinet was there, but only the shell...no back, no shelves, no drawers. Just the wooden frame that used to house what was now shattered.

Perhaps like the hearts and souls of the Jews standing beneath that fiery mountain in the desert all those centuries ago. Did their hearts shatter....were their old beliefs shredded? Were they awed by what they found in their own tangled and torn and dented and bent selves? Were the items they thought were important, the bits of a past life that they held dear, blasted from them, creating a space for a new beginning? In the end, were they shells open to receive Torah?

And the final irony of it all....the movers were supposed to pick up everything...the other family's stuff, the trash, and my Mom's stuff. They were going to deliver what we had left of mom's and then head west to the company hub. But the truck did not have room. All they could carry was the other families belongings and the trash. And we were back at the beginning....because on the first day of the move back in L.A. the truck was already too full and they could not load everything. Deja vu....or the twilight zone.

And it was raining and the roads leading to my mom's house were flooded and closed. A flood with no room on this ark. That's OK...we will build our own. 

We sent them on their way taking the trash and all those many boxes that did not belong to us...while the lightening and thunder and rain sang them out of town. 

 

High holy days and moving disasters

Close your eyes and imagine a well lived in house, one that has been, lovingly at first, collecting memories and papers and tools and utensils and decorations and books and clothes and shoes and furniture and silk flowers and knick-knacks and cleaning supplies and dishes and linens and pictures...and...and...and for over 50 years. The paper fills filing cabinets and overflows onto desks and counters and tables and nightstands and beds and...and...and. Now imagine having to face sorting and tossing and packing and moving to another state in just over a month. That is how I spend most of my summer, helping my mother take on a new adventure in Colorado.

Sorting and tossing is easier for some of us. I am a tosser...a donator of stuff. I have stopped buying things that need dusting and now limit my souvenirs to small pins that fit on my day pack. Things that are not worn or used in a year move on to new homes. My brother was completely antithetical to this. He bought and stored and packed things around him for comfort and joy and to match his theory that "he who dies with the most toys, wins."

But back to my Mother's house. There was a memory attached to each item, and she made a yeoman's effort at letting go, but we still ended up having the movers take more than she would be able to use. And that is where the wild adventure began.

The first movers did not have room for everything on the first truck. So they told us a second truck would be there in an  hour to pick up the rest of her belongings. My girl friend and I opened some wine and sat in the almost empty house waiting for the next truck. Hours passed. We called the company and hit brick walls and promises. We waited some more. And finally....cheers....the second truck arrived. And...you have to guess at this point...they did not have room for her belongings. As you might imagine a very heated phone conversation followed.

The next day I was on the phone early trying to get an idea if this company could pick up everything they had stranded me with. By the end of the evening I had my answer...no. And of course I only had one more day to get everything out before the new owners took possession. Believe it or not if you google something like emergency movers, there are companies that pop up. I called one and they...miracle of miracles...were there in four hours and packed and loaded and stored everything else with plans to put it on a truck to Denver.

Back to the first movers who had headed down the road with the majority of the contents of the house. What are your guesses? Alien abduction? Highjacked to Canada? Swallowed by a sink hole? No, nothing that good. Just an accident with the truck rolling twice, bursting open and spewing my mom's belongings, all the things she could not bear to part with, across the Mojave desert. Yes...really.

What happens in a situation like this? Well the DOT steps in and calls the shots. Anything blocking the highway is pushed off so that traffic can flow. And what is in one piece is picked up and put in boxes and loaded on a truck and delivered. Everything, even if it is attached to barbed wire or is full of desert rocks. Did I mention that there was more than one family's belongings on the truck and that they mingled wildly has they danced across the sand? 

That is how I came to spend a long Labor Day weekend in a storage unit sorting their stuff from mom's stuff from trash. For hours...and days. In the end we had 25%...one quarter... of the load that we started with. And all of this happening in the month of Elul, just days before Rosh Hashanah. 

I was ready to ask G-d for a sticky note, some detailed explanation of this crazy experience. What was the point? A friend of my, a very religious friend, suggested that I look at this as a blessing from Hashem. This is what was supposed to happen. And so I tried.

And amazingly, it started to make sense. Our memories are not held in our material items, but in the depth of our hearts. The memories we wish to return to are full of love and laughter and tenderness and kindness and humanness...all of which are etched deeply in our minds and souls. We are like pieces of spiritual clay molded by our experiences and memories.

But we are not "done" in the way that a statue or painting is completed at some point. There is always more that we are becoming, that perhaps Hashem is wanting us to become. Holding on tightly to who we were years ago, or even yesterday, keeps us from embracing the next future that is waiting for us. And if that future is challenging and frightening, a few comforting memories will help us, but not the entire collection. I can only cling to one teddy bear at a time. 

And so perhaps this was the lesson, and the reason that some where in the desert a coyote is sitting on a red overstuffed chair wearing an outfit from Chicos, a jaunty men's hat, reading a romance novel and wondering who sent him these wonderful gifts. The old stuff needs to be left behind so that we have room for a new life. We cannot bring all our old memories, good and bad, and expect to build a new future. We cannot cling to what was and become someone profoundly new.

OK, so this is not really such a new lesson. I know that. But wow....this one came with the force of a hurricane or tornado. 

L'shana Tova. May you leave the book of last year behind you and walk bravely into the book of life before you.