Prepare - Day One Elul

I have to say, I got the list early. At least a month ago. More than enough time to write a few essays, draft a poem or two. More than enough time to, you know, prepare.

Don't get me wrong - I've written some in my head. I would love to say, I've really thought about a few, laid out some mental framework for a bunch. I'd love to, but it's really kinda snarky to lie now, of all times, it being Elul and all. I've thought about this essay, this prompt, none of the others.

At first, all I could think of was Boy Scouts. Obviously, I've never been one. I was a Brownie for a bit of a year, until my mother backed out of being co-leader when she realized that volunteering meant more than offer and want, that showing up was a part of it. I may have no idea what the Brownie or Girl Scott (or Campfire Girls or even Indian Princesses) motto might be, but I know the one for the Boy Scouts: Be Prepared.

Interesting that it's in the passive voice. While I'm sure the message of the motto is fraught with activity, on its face, it is, nevertheless, passive, to be acted upon rather than to be a mover of worlds.

From there, I skipped easily over to Godspell. Of course I skipped there. I can't not hear those opening notes, so pure and unadorned - "Prepare ye, the way of the Lord..." Yes, yes: I know. It is, perhaps, slightly odd to reference that particular musical in this particular context, but it is, to me, perfectly in tune with Elul. Get ready, says the song, there's a God thing about to happen! There is so much quiet joy in this song, that starts with a single voice and build and grows to many. Let's all get get ready, get moving, get mindful, because the time is now, today and then the car broke. Again. And the car needed to be towed. Again. And I had to get the loaner. And then groceries and dishes and sweeping and mopping and I had a date.and the cat needed to play, every time my fingers hit the keyboard and the boy, my beloved boy, he needed dinner and attention and time. And there was something skittering around in my head, about packing and getting ready for a trip and how that was less preparation and more taking a little bit of everything I own, just in case, and there are a few people I need to get back to dammit I forgot to pick up the prescription and

Who the hell has time to prepare?

And so I'm late. As usual. All the prep time in the world, and I come in late. Unfinished, or just barely not. A thousand thoughts swirling in my head, some of them even about Elul and Prepare and this blessed need to stop and breathe and dive in, headlong, prepared or not.

And that's it, really: ready or not, prepared or just barely, this is it. Even in those rare moments when I feel totally prepared, life can so throw me for a loop and send me spinning. This is the prep work, this month, this mindful time, being in it, living and diving and bending the light just so, allowing me to examine the year I have lived, and how I showed up for it (or didn't).

Stop. Breathe. Dive.

Rosh Chodesh Elul sameach.
(grateful for a two day rosh chodesh)
(and now onto Day Two: Act)

#blogelul

Cleaning Up

Something gets dirty, every time I clean.

I will do ten loads of laundry, and the minute I have folded the last pair of jeans and hung the last shirt (and immediately made the beds because folding a fitted sheet, no matter how many times you've asked your mother, no matter how many youtube videos and life hacks you've watched, that particular skill just escapes you even now), there suddenly appears five socks and a washcloth. I wash dishes, and as I'm drying my hands, my son slips a fork into the sink.

For all that something gets dirty every time I clean, I still have to do it. Even when I blink and find another six loads in the basket, there is something so incredibly satisfying about cleaning. I feel so accomplished like I should get a round of applause or a medal. At least a gold star, right?

So why is it that I have such a hard time getting into the Passover cleaning frenzy? So many of my friends seem to have such a healthy love-hate relationship with this ritual. I have a friend who barely does Jewish all year long, but chooses, of all our holidays and celebrations,  to keep Pesach, scouring his kitchen, cleansing it of chametz, readying his home and himself for the holiday. 

I have such a hard time wrapping my head around that. I grew up a deeply superficial Jew. In our family, holidays were less about commandment and God, and much more about the menu. They were joyous affairs, and there was even an occasional prayer that tumbled out, as if by accidental embarrassment, but as with so much else, we tended to slip over the nitty-gritty detail with nonchalant alacrity.

So, Passover meant a last minute trip to the grocery store to find an elusive shank bone, moving the bread to the other side of the shelf to make room for the matzo,  a kitchen that smelled of dill and roasting brisket and heat, and a makeshift seder plate because we were apparently surprised that Pesach came every year, and who knew you needed a Seder plate? While we managed to pull off most of a Seder while my grandparents were around (performing the ritual that I lovingly call Dueling Zaydes), once they were gone, Passover became a wonderful excuse to dust off the soup pot and overtax the refrigerator.

There was no cleaning, other than the normal cleaning done by the housekeeper before guests came to the house. We didn't switch dishes. I could mostly guarantee that we'd at least make it through the two seders without eating bread (we didn't know from chametz so I wouldn't swear by anything there).

I'd love to claim my disconnected puzzlement with the whole concept of cleaning for Pesach the result of my mostly secular upbringing. And these days, I could use my changing and challenging health stuff as an easy excuse to merely theorize about cleaning and kashering. Either reason would be awesome. Both would be wrong.  I've become more and more observant over time. I've dived into my Judaism with joy and intention. But not in this, and I really have no clue why. Passover is my favorite holiday. With its themes of redemption and freedom and faith, how could it not be? 

So why? Why not dive in here, clean my kitchen, cleanse my home, prepare, at last, for miracles and wonder? Life gets messy; it's time to clean it up.

I have no answer to these questions. I flirt with the idea, stare at my pantry, think how my newly repaired dishwasher might aid in the kashering process.  I mentally gather the dishes in my pie safe, the "good one" that I got from one of my bubbies, and the other ones, the arty ones I bought in San Francisco a thousand years ago that I love, that have gone unused post-child because they were  really expensive and I used to have a disposable income but now not so much, and I could use these for Pesach, right? And I think about hot soapy water and the smell of Pine-Sol, which always meant clean.

So really - why not dive in here? Why not be commanded, not just to tell the story, to act as if I were there, actually there, in the narrow places, being freed, seeing the wonders and the smoke and fire, but follow the commandment to prepare for it as well? Why not?

And I sigh, shrug a little, glance at my kitchen one last time and turn back to whateverthehell I was doing. This year here; next year I will clean.

Once we were slaves, now we are free.

05 Nisan -- Prepare

I am not ready. I'm not close to being prepared. Life. Work. This day. This week nor next. Not ready for parenting (don't even get me started on parenting (let alone single parenting). I would need to climb a very tall ladder to get to the ground floor of unprepared in parenting). I'm so unprepared that this essay was due yesterday. It is now 9:13pm on the sixth of Nisan (though given the Hebrew division of days, it's probably the seventh of Nisan. Oy.).

I have good intentions. I have plans. I make lists. I talk it-- out loud, in my head, alone or in groups-- I understand the concept. Really and truly, I get how much easier, how much smoother life flows when I am prepared. I may even have experienced the whole prepared thing once or twice, somewhere along the line. It felt-- good. Right. It all just fits.

Mostly though, I'm the one who hasn't read the instructions; the one who's forgotten to print the presentation on the day of the big meeting; the one still cleaning the living room even as the doorbell rings. I am grateful for convenience stores in airports, so that I can buy the eleventy sevev items I managed to forget. I would continue in this tirade, but I was running late and left all my notes sitting on the kitchen counter. Or in my car. I think.

Mostly I spend my life winging it. I have become the Master of the ad lib, tge Queen of last minute projects and cramming. I can hit the target 98% of the time when shooting from the hip.

I am NOT ready. Ever. I am not prepared.

So what?

What difference does it make if I'm prepared or not? I'm not hurting anyone. Well-- not really. I'm the one who is frazzled. It is my life that's in (total) disarray. I am not a Boy Scout (for several obvious reasons), although I was a Girl Scout, but I was a horrible and unprepared Girl Scout, if preparedness is even a thing for them.

So what?

It's Passover. Or close to it. It's the season, the celebration of our redemption. And there is something important, something sacred and holy about preparing for these days.

As I begin with the physical tasks of preparation-- cleaning out the cabinets, polishing the silver, figuring out the menu (because all of that is part of the holiness of preparation) all of that creates a shift-- from the physical to the spiritual. I am changed. I move into a slightly different rhythms. There is a purpose, a minfulness, a thoughtfulness that washes over me, so that I become ready for Passover-- not just my house, but my heart.

I don't always finish the physical stuff, the cleaning and polishing, the cooking. I'm still, you know, me. Chances are I will have started late, with no real plan in mind, other than some vague, inchoate and amorphous idea that I should host a seder and invite a bunch of people.

But my heart-- my heart changes, quiets, is so much more present. And it changes enough, exactly enough, for me to enter into that holy andsacred place joyously, mindfully grateful that once we were slaves now we are free.

#blogExodus #Exodusgram

c stacey zisook robinson
05 April 2014

01 Tishrei 5774: Happy New Year

I got used to writing and posting every day during Elul. I resented it, and felt under the gun and annoyed, in a free-floating annoyance kind of way, since no one was pushing me to do it except for me. I had made the commitment to myself, thinking it would be a gentle walk in the park. I was (honesty being called for, i suppose, especially today) wrong. Frankly, it would have been much more satisfying to take out my annoyance on You. As it was, I grumbled and had many manic thoughts of chucking the project, more than a handful of times, especially near the end.

I finished, despite my resentment. And now, not a day later, I kinda miss it.

"Hey," I feel like saying, "we made it-- it's a new day, a new year. Wow. We are on the other side. Ta da." And then i toss the glitter and confetti high into the air. Ta da indeed.

So I was thinking-- and you don't have to play if you don't feel like it-- I was thinking that Elul was an astounding thing, the act of preparation, with prompts and a guide (thank you to my friend, Rabbi Phyllis Sommer). Why not continue, through the Yamim Nora'im-- the Days of Awe, these ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

What better time than now, to reflect and prepare, than when the Gates are flung wide and the Book of Life and Death is unsealed? I know, I know-- "now" is always the right time, but spiritual f wonkiness aside, this now seems quite apropos.

And forgive me, but I don't have a premade list that someone has so kindly bequeathed me (or the world). So I will have to make it up, right now. I hope you don't mind. I'll try it, see how it goes. Like Scheherazade's King in the Thousand and One Nights, I can always change my mind tomorrow.

Happy new year, my friends, whether you play or not. May the year to come be filled with blessings and light, sweetness, healing and peace. 

Here's my list. Let me know if you like it, and certainly if you think of any other principles that might be good to reflect upon as we gather at the Gates.

01 Tishrei   Celebrate

02 Tishrei   Wonder

03 Tishrei   Yearn

04 Tishrei   Wholeness

05 Tishrei   Peace

06 Tishrei   Ready

07 Tishrei   Fear

08 Tishrei   Mercy

09 Tishrei   Justice

10 Tishrei   Awe