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.