Thoughts for the ending of a year

I had my new year already -months ago.  So what is the lesson? 

We like to mark time, chop it into manageable chunks that separate one moment from the next: here, on this side, the world is one way; there, on the other side of that narrow, almost invisible line, that hoped-for chasm of change and difference, the world changes, is different. It is newer, freer, happier, brighter.

We hope that our burdens are lighter, our grief is lessened, our joy magnified. We yearn for new  possibilities, to find an array of different, spread before us like a banquet. We imagine that we step over that magic, nearly invisible line that marks one place to the next, with a sense of mindulness and some ceremony.

We mark that magic demarkation with celebration, and say "The before was old. This, now, is new. And into this new, into this vast expanse that is spread before me, all clean and unmarked, I will find and create and do and be and sing and love and experience-- differently. Better. More."

What we don't often stop to realize is that we have this power within us all the time. Like Dorothy and her shoes, we have the power to go home any time we want. We don't need to destroy the witch or bow down to magicians and madmen. We have the chance, no matter the day or the hour, to say "On this side, life and the world are one way. Now, in this moment, this time, from here on out, it is different. It is new and filled with possibility and potential. It is so, because I choose, I decide."

So here we stand, on the edge of a new year, ready to jump, to leap, to shed the old year like we do our winter coats when we finally come in from the cold.

My wish, my prayer for this new year: blessings and joy and wonder and love. And most especially, that we remember that a new year, a new day, doesn't need a calendar. We are given the chance to renew, to reclaim, to begin again always, when we give meaning to the day, when we decide.  We are at Sinai always.  We are blessed and redeemed always. 

The very moment we decide, that we chose it,  we will be carried through, from one moment to the next, to an endless expanse of possibility and promise.

Love and light, to all I hold dear... ♥

Upon the Use of "Thoughts and Prayers" as an effective defense against guns

This was a post I wrote on Facebook, back in June of last year:

Dear God! We are a nation under siege. When is enough enough? How many more people must die or be maimed by gun violence?!

The answer is NOT to put more guns on the streets! Don't quote the 2nd amendment to me - it calls for a well-regulated militia. These terrorists - the white men who believe they are acting for God or race or political bent - who carry semi-automatic rifles that can strafe a plaza - or a baseball field or a church or a business or (pick a place, any place) - and mow down human beings to show their might and power and hatred - these terrorists can pick up their guns and bullets without a care! It is more difficult to get a driver's license than a gun license.

Dear God - when will enough be enough?

Someone I don't know commented on it - "The criminals will get their guns one way or another," implying this was a good reason why gun control won't work and shouldn't be pursued.

Here's the thing - of course criminals will always get their guns! I'M NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE FUCKING CRIMINALS!

- I'm worried about the white supremacist skinhead who can legally buy a gun.

- I'm worried about the nice parents down the block who buy a gun to protect their family whose child ends up dead because said child found the gun - or MY child getting killed by their gun because he was over playing at their house and someone found the gun

- I'm worried about the mentally ill person who can readily buy a gun.

- I'm worried about the guy who’s pissed off at his wife or his girlfriend or boss or co-worker or the world who decides to do something about it

Of course the criminals will get their guns. We have law enforcement to deal with that; it's by no means perfect or even relatively effective. But gun control laws were never meant to deal with that issue!

Good God people! We created this battlefield all by ourselves. This blood is on our hands. Somehow, we deified the NRA and the 2nd amendment, and we build altars to their godhood daily. And you know - it's all of us. We are all culpable in this nloody passion play.

We wring our hands and offer thoughts and prayers as if that were enough. We shake our heads in sorrow, in anger, in bewilderment - and then we go on with our lives, until the next time, and the next time, and the time after that. Because there will always be a next time. And we will be just as culpable and just as sad and bewildered and angry.

Here are some cold hard facts, gleaned from the Center for Disease Control

• On an average day, 93 Americans will be killed with guns
• Those 93 deaths daily? Seven of them will be kids or teens.
• Nearly 12,000 people will die. victims of gun homicide, annually
• For every one person killed by a gun, two more will be injured
• Every month, 50 women will be shot by their intimate partner
• When a gun is present in a situation of domestic violence, the risk of the woman being killed increases fivefold
• The American gun homicide rate is 25 times higher, on average, than other high income countries. The US makes up 42% of the population of that group, but accounts for 82% of the gun deaths.

What will it take?

We thought Columbine would do it, didn’t we? I could have sworn we did. So I went searching, to find out how many mass shootings there had been since that deadly, horrifying kick-you-in-the-gut-and-take-your-breath-away massacre at Columbine High School in April, 1999. Funny thing - my research took me back to 1984 (a prescient year, to be sure; I could have gone further - I chose to stop there). That was the year a man walked into a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California and opened fire, killing 21 and wounding 19.

Between San Ysidro (1984) and Columbine (1999), there were nine other mass shootings - a total of 11 shootings in all at that time. The total number of dead numbered 112. One hundred twelve lives snuffed out, and one hundred fifty-nine wounded - physically. God only knows the countless others whose wounds are not visible to the eye. Angry men. Hurt and damaged boys. Empty people who wanted to punish, who wanted to hurt, who wanted to kill. Who wanted to die. They grabbed a gun - a rifle, a shotgun, a handgun, a semiautomatic rifle - and sprayed bullets and pain and death all around them.

Columbine hit us like a wave of frigid water. It shocked us all. It sickened us all. We wept with all of the families whose worlds were destroyed that day in April. And we swore it would never happen again. Didn't we? Of course we did! We had to have. I mean, this wasn't some gangland war on the mean streets of some city. This wasn't some pissed off guy with a chip on his shoulder who shot up his girlfriend's office in an effort to show her just how much he loved her and what lengths he'd go to make her stay.

This wasn't supposed to happen - not here! This was middle class suburbia, mostly white America. This was a couple of kids! White kids, who, seemingly out of nowhere, walked into their school and opened fire on classmates and teachers alike. It wasn't until later that we found out they had an arsenal of guns at their fingertips, all legally owned by their parents. It wasn't until later that we learned they were Outsiders, bullied and marginalized and unstable.

So we learned. We learned from the harshest teacher, this most brutal lesson. We learned, and so we declared it wouldn't happen again.

Until it did. Three months later, in Atlanta. Two months after that, in Fort Hood. And two more months. And then the next month. Again and again. Over and over. The killings never stopped. People who'd been fired, or passed over, or left - they took it out on the people they worked with or loved or hated or feared. Who the fuck knows?

From Columbine to Virginia Tech - the next of the "big" ones, the shootings that really shook us up. that seem to have a more permanent status in our heads (except, of course, if your world was rocked by one of the "minor" shootings, the ones that faded more quickly from public view) - from April, 1999 - April 2007: 13 mass shootings. Ninety-seven dead, seventy-four walking wounded.

We learned. We learned how to use social media to notify students and faculty that there was a potential madman on the loose. It would have been nice to learn how to keep guns out of the hands of the madmen. Almost a year later (with only one other mass shooting and eight dead along the way), Northern Illinois University was hit by its own disgruntled student. Again, we activated the notification system, keeping those kids not in the lecture hall on lockdown and safe. We lost only five souls that day. It could have been so much worse.

But we learned. And it won't happen again. We won't let it happen again.

Binghamton, NY: April 2009, 13 dead, 4 wounded

Fort Hood, TX: November 2009, 13 dead, 32 wounded

Huntsville, AL: February 2010, 3 dead, 3 wounded

Manchester, CT: August 2010, 8 dead, 2 wounded

Tucson, AZ: August 2011, 6 dead, 11 wounded

Seal Beach, CA: October 2011, 8 dead, 1 wounded

Oakland, CA: April 2012, 7 dead, 3 wounded

Aurora, CO: July 2012 - another one of the "big names" in mass killings. This was the madman who shot up the midnight showing of a Batman movie, killing 12 and wounding 58.

Oak Creak, WI: 6 killed, 3 wounded in a Sikh temple where people were at worship

Minneapolis, MN: September 2012, 6 killed, 2 wounded

Brookfield, WI: October 2012, 3 killed, 4 wounded

Newton, CT: December 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School. This brought a nation to its knees. Stories of courage beyond what anyone could have imagined. The faces of those sweet, sweet kids, getting ready for the holidays. The teachers and administrators who did all that they could, and then did more. The parents whose children died. In all, 27 people - adults and kids - died. Were murdered.

And we declared we had had enough. We declared that this madness would end. We shouted "never again!" to anyone who would listen, and to many who wouldn't. We were done learning these lessons. We got it. Surely Congress would listen now! Surely Congress would no longer bow to the pressure of the NRA and other pro-gun lobbyists, not with all we had been through. Right?

Between Sandy Hook and the Charleston Church shooting almost exactly three years later, there were five gun mass murders, a mere 36 deaths. I mean, really - they should barely count, right?

Except they do count. As do the 13 other mass shootings that happened between then and yesterday, June 14, 2017. On that day, we saw two mass shootings, a continent apart. One in Virginia in, in the shadow of the capitol -where thank God no one was killed! - and San Francisco, where three were killed and two wounded.

In all, from what I thought would be five or six notorious cases of brutality and murder (because who can keep all of that death front and center? Life refuses to stop, or even slow down long enough to process these atrocities in their moments, and after a while, they seem to melt and fuse into one another, because how different are they, when it comes right down to it?) turned into 56 separate incidents of some guy (ok; there were two women who made it on the list; still...), some guy, some kid, some bruised and battered and broken person took out a gun and opened fire to assuage some inner demon.

From 1984 - 2017, 404 people have been killed in a mass shooting. I can't even start on those who've been killed individually. In Chicago alone, there were 762 homicides in 2016; 90% were a result of gun violence. Overall, there were 4,368 shootings here last year. When I wrote this last June, we were almost at 1,000 murders, and we hadn't even hit summer yet, when the temperature and the assault rates rise almost exponentially.

Let me remind you where all of this started: I don't give a flying fuck about criminals and their gins. In almost every single case of these mass shootings, the guns these mass murderers used were purchased legally, owned legally. Could very well have been concealed legally. In the blink of an eye, these sick individuals to their guns and ended the lives of so many.

The blink of an eye.

Do you really think that arming everybody would have stopped these murders? Even in those cases where the Authorities (whomever They may be) had an inkling that something might not be quite right in the head with these murderers, everyone was caught off guard. And no, I don't want to debate how many may have been saved in the seconds that someone on the battlefield may have had a gun, may have had the presence of mind to whip it out in the next blink of an eye, may have known how to use said gun, may have hit their target (the gunman) and not some other innocent who happened to be standing in the way (or close enough to it).

Arming everyone to the teeth is a recipe for disaster. 

We here in America seem to be the jumpy, hair-trigger gun-toting murder capital o the world. Remember that statistic, way up there? The American gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than other high income nations. Last year, the rate of death by gun violence in the US (per 100,000) was 10.2; in the UK, it was .2, 1.1 in Germany, 2.3 in Canada, 2.8 in France (according to a CBS news story).

It's the guns. It's the ease of access to the guns. It's the people who can get the guns, in all their angry, crazy, messed up lives. It's the inconsistencies from state to state. It's the loopholes and work-arounds that make what little control we have immaterial. It's the fucking NRA and their chokehold on Congress. It's the lobbyists and spineless politicians who put money before constituents. It's greed. It's short-sightedness and expediency. It's poverty and lack of education and gangs and ignorance and stupidity and arrogance.

It's death. Ugly, painful, nasty, brutish murder by bullet, and it knows no race, no socio-economic bracket, no gender, no religion, no political party. WE have created this battlefield. WE have condoned this culture. OUR hands are bloody. We cannot point a finger if we do not include ourselves, because we wring our hands and weep and keep these nameless, faceless victims and their families in our thoughts and prayers, and then we go on and live our lives, shifting a bit uncomfortably when we listen to the news, and we shake our heads when we hear about the latest atrocity, and we raise our voices, demanding change.

And nothing really seems to have changed.

I thought we might be finished, when I wrote this essay last year. Not really; I knew there would be more. And there have been. This, gleaned from a Mother Jones article:

·       The massacre in Las Vegas in October – 58 dead, 546 wounded

·       Edgewood  Business Park, MD, 17 days after Las Vegas – 3 dead, 3 wounded

·       A Walmart in suburban Denver, November – 3 dead

·       The massacre at the Texas First Baptist Church, on a beautiful Sunday morning in November, about a month before Christmas – 26 dead, 20 wounded.

·       Rancho Tehama, CA also November – 5 dead, 10 wounded

·       The Pennsylvania Car Wash, January this year (I guess we took a little holiday break from the mass killings) – 4 dead, 1 wounded

·       Stoneman Douglas High School, a Valentine’s Day massacre – 17 dead, 14+ wounded

Since writing last August, we add another 116 murders to the earlier number of 404, which took us through August 2017. Five hundred and twenty – 520 - murders. I’m sure I missed some. Their blood soaks into the ground that rises up in horror. Have we had enough yet? There is a religious tradition – not mine, but the sentiment works here – that the children shall lead us. And they are. Thank God they are! They are organizing and speaking out and demanding that this blood bath end. Now.

Have we had enough, yet> Are we willing to follow our children’s lead, and march with them, organize with them, raise our voices with them? Are we willing to demand that this end now, once and for all?

The Talmud tells us that to take a life is to kill the world entire (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5 in Sanhedrin 37a. The Quran echoes the sentiment in verse 32 of the fifth Sura: whoever kills a person… it is as though he had killed all men. A few centuries later, John Donne, an Anglican cleric in the 16^th Centuury wrote Any man's death diminishes me.

I fear I have almost disappeared under the weight of all this death.

The Sum of all my Baggage

Welcome 2018. Happy new year!

That said. I've already had my New Year, filled with all the pomp and circumstance that Rosh Hashanah can hold. Except this year, I was a little too preoccupied to notice much of anything, except that too-sharp focus of hospital sounds and silences. There was grief to be felt, and family to be held close. There was a miracle of healing, even within that circle of dying. 

Even missing that new year, we Jews do it right and manage to celebrate four new years throughout the course of asingle  365 days plus a smidge cycle. In addition to the hoopla of Rosh Hashanah and the birthday of the world, we celebrate the new year of trees, the reign of kings, and the tithing of cattle. We have a full service concept of years, old and new and everything in between.

Time is less a linear function, and more something with rounded edges. Today may be a beginning, and yesterday an ending, but those concepts tend to be muteable. The line between them is less engraved in stone and much more drawn in pencil. Or eraseable ink.

Never one to waste an opportunity, I will use any excuse for demarcation to, well, mark the journey. I will gladly use these perhaps arbitrary, possibly holy  and certainly randomly awesome moments to do a little diving, a little reflecting. I declare this day, this arbitrary day of firsts, to bend the light a little more, and so enter this new year a little more solidly. A bit more knowingly.

So to begin, at this beginning (at every beginning) I pause, and take a moment or three to ask my favorite question: what do I carry withme , and what do I  leave behind? I am the sum of all my baggage - carried, dragged, dropped. left behind and taken back.

Sometimes the weight of it all is crushing. And sometimes, when the wind is just right, and the scent of green is in the air, and I am feeling brave and grateful daring and fierce and bold (or any combination thereof; you get the point), there's no weight at all. I freely offer much of my baggage, all the weighted measures of stuff and ideas and hurts and pains; lost loves and lost jobs, missed opportunities and failed connections - all of the stuff that binds me, tethers me to a present I can only see through the funhouse mirror of my past (so not really a present at all) - and I let it all go, leaving it lie in a muddled heap.

This is my altar. I'm pretty sure, when I drop it all in that heap, and I set it on fire, it makes a pleasing odor to God. I'm just as sure, when it's time to move on, every single thing that went up in smoke, that released me from the bondage of my self, and my past, it's all there, ready for me to pick up again, just as bright and shiny and unscathed as it was before my metaphorical sacrifice.

It's mine, to carry it all again until the next holy bonfire.

Of course, there's a whole bunch of other stuff I can choose to pick up and carry away - things like faith, or courage, or joy. And yes, there are infinite variations of despair and anger and sundry slings and arrows of cruel misfortune that can be distracting and enticing. And yes, I have gone that route more often than I care to admit. There are times I swear I didn't do the picking, that these nasty little packages leaped up and stuck themselves to me of their own accord, really they did.

If I'm honest - and now's a good time to cop to honesty - I did the picking and the plucking and the sticking, all by myself. Ugh.

Still, there are times I go against type, and I choose the weightlessness of joy!

Things is - all this carrying and leaving and taking away - it's a thing I can do every single day. It's unbounded and knows no season. It's not tied to any new year - or maybe, it's tied to every new year, every new day that dawns begins the cycle of a new year. In every moment, I can choose, again and again and again. I can leave it all, burn it up, dip it in amber, take it with me every single, any single day. These days, this journey is a mindful trudge, and so I make a careful inspection and collection of the junk I lug around with me. I am grateful for the mindfulness. Messy as I am, I like frames, and this is a particularly good one.

So. What is it that I carry with me? What will I leave behind? What will I carry with me as I walk to the next altar, the next mountain? Today - just for this moment, this breath, I will sit for a moment, my treasures laid out before me, a sky of pewter and pearl above me, casting dull shadows on the lot. I will sit, and rest, and hope - hope that when I move on from here, I remember to let slip the boxes of pain and fear, so that I have room for a bit of joy, a bit of beauty, a bit of grace.

Happy new year to all I love and hold so very dear. To beginnings and endings and all this lovely, messy, beautiful middle.

What's the Story?

A Passover writing exercise, offered by my friend, the Rabbi (who is also a writer, and a damned good one): write a short something-or-other, based upon a given prompt, every day for the 15 days of Nisan that lead to the first seder of Passover. I tried, I really did, I tried to write something every day. A noble attempt, but it didn’t happen. Even so, I managed to kick something out for one prompt: Tell. 

Of course, the first thing I thought about, given that Passover prompt, was Chanukah. I just couldn’t get that Chanukah song to stop running through my head. You know the one - "Who can retell the things that befell us...?" (And now it's running through yours as well; no good deed and all). It works, just the same. At least the opening verse. Just substitute Moses and Aaron and Miriam and that cast of hundreds of thousands for all those Maccabees, and you can pretty much retell the story of oppression and slavery and freedom and bloodshed and war and miracles and redemption, there and back again.

That's the part that I get stuck on, the "...and back again." We tell and we tell and we tell. It’s an awesome story, filled with heroes and pyrotechnics that could keep the special effects masters at Industrial Light and Magic on their toes and at their drawing boards for years. Decades. Forever. The stuff of life is present in every word of this story we tell, all the drama and majesty and love and passion and danger and discovery and betrayal and loss.

Tell this story. Tell it to those who ask and those who don't even know there's a story to tell. Tell it as if you were there, part of the original action. Tell it as if you are still there, that we are all still there, living and experiencing it all right now.

Tell it, and tell it again. It is that important.

But here's what I'm thinking these days (as if my statement above were not hint enough): there are far too many "again's" in our story. That is, how many times do we find ourselves in need of heroes and miracles? How many times must we tell the story of soldiers and blood and war and terror?

Yes, and redemption. And yes, God. I love that these are the base of all of the stories we tell.

When, though, do we learn? When do we change? Of course we must tell the story of the Exodus! Of course we must celebrate our journey from the very narrow places into the wide open space of the wilderness where we meet God! Of course we must tell the story of our journey from slavery to freedom.

It just seems that we tell this same story, with only slight variations, of oppression, of idols and enslavement and fear and war in every generation since then. That's a lot of generations, a lot of oppression and fear and bloodshed.

Here's a secret. I love Passover. It’s my favorite holiday. How could it not be? I love that we are commanded to tell this story. As a writer, how could I not? But sometimes, in the quiet, away from the fury of the cleaning and preparing and the cooking, sometimes I wish we could tell the story with a different ending.

I'm a dork. I get that. Sometimes, I wish we could tell the story of a world that, because of our wondrous redemption, there in the wilderness, we needed no heroes, no magic, no soldiers, no war to save us yet again. That the story we tell, year after year after day after month, ever and always is the story of everyday miracles, of peace and wholeness and grace...

Once we were slaves, now we are free.

The darkness did not save me - for Parashat Bo

Darkness was not enough,
not even one I could
touch, a darkness
I could feel,
like a curtain
of silk, light
and smooth
and flowing
like liquid night.
It covered my eyes
and weighed upon me
so I could not move
or change.
Darkness was not enough
to soften my petrified
heart. It drifted, with infinite
slowness
and a glimmer
of God,
And settled there,
between stutterstep beats,
heavier than silence
or time,
Until my heart,
heavy as Darkness
cracked, a lattice work of
Thin lines, though it did
not Break.

Darkness was not enough
to soften my heart,
or free me from the
bondage of my
self. But light shone
through those cracks
Rivers of color
and heat, bathing me
in holiness
and grace.

One Vote

I voted this morning.

I almost didn't. For a split second or three, I actually considered not voting. Because it was out of the way. Because I was running late. Because really, what would my one vote not cast cost?

And I went and voted anyway, because really-- if I didn't, what the hell? Would it really matter? (Never mind that I couldn't think of what I would say to my son, what excuse or lie I might offer him. At fifteen, he is keenly interested in the whole democratic process unfolding before him. History in the making. Democracy in action. We talk politics all the time, my son and I, and seriously, my heart swells several sizes when we do, and I can see him get the issues, when he makes the connections and connects the dots, even if his opinion is not always a parroted version of mine. Especially when his opinion is not a parroted version of mine. I could have fibbed, told him I'd voted, but that lie sounded hollow, even to me, so - what the hell; might as well vote.  Get it over with.)

As I drove to my polling place, really not so much out of the way, a name popped into my head: Mickey Schwerner. And then, almost immediately: Goodman. I couldn't think of his first name (dammit), and it bothered me, teased my brain. What the hell is his first name? And the other guy? Dammit again; I can't ever remember the other guy's name. But for some reason, I always remember Mickey Schwerner.

So I voted, and drove to my next appointment, and went about my day

Mickey Schwerner. James Chaney. Andrew Goodman.  

In 1964, members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) the NAACP - a bunch of college kids, the twenty-somethings of their day - created Freedom Summer. Their goal: register African- American voters in Mississippi. Well over a thousand people, white, black, Christian, Jew, young, old -- it didn't matter. What mattered was that these people saw a broken world, filled with violence and ignorance and hatred, and they believed it was their obligation - their responsibility; their right; their joy and purpose - to heal it.

In mid-June of that year, Schwerner and Goodman headed south from New York, filled with passion and hope. They met up with Chaney, a native of Meridian, Mississippi and fellow civil rights worker. They believed that every person, regardless of the color of their skin, had the right to vote.  

So they started registering voters: men and women who'd been kept from the polls by fear and intimidation and law all their lives.  That's it: registering voters - black voters in the deep South - during the Freedom Summer of 1964.  On June 21, the three of them went to investigate the burning of a black church in Philadelphia, Nashoba County, Mississippi.  In addition to believing that all people had a right to vote, they believed all people had a right to worship and pray as they believed, safe from harm. They were arrested by the police on trumped up charges, held for several hours, and then released, after dark, into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. They were beaten there, somewhere in the dark, beaten and terrorized and murdered by a group of 18 men (though only seven were eventually convicted of conspiracy, eight eventually were acquitted by an all-white jury and three cases ended in mistrials).  

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were beaten and murdered that night by savages rooted in hatred and violence and fear. They were murdered in the dark, alone, because they believed they could heal a broken world. 

The world is still broken. We see evidence of that every day: people in desperate need, driven by poverty or illness or hunger or hatred; a planet that is being choked and starved.  There is greed and ignorance, intolerance and indifference. Even now, access to the polls is being threatened, and there are many who are being deprived of their right to vote.  In 2014.  Not 1964, not 1865 - this year, this week, this day, there are people who are being disenfranchised. There are a thousand thousand ills that plague us - that can break our hearts and cripple our souls. And yet, in the midst of this desperate need, there is light. Kindness. Healing. Small acts - great acts, even - but acts of desperate love that stem the tide of hatred and bring grace and healing.

They changed the world, those murdered men. All of them, all of the bright and brave and hopeful men and women from that Freedom Summer. Not just them, but all of the bright and brave men and women who have fought so valiantly, with courage and conviction and commitment, all of them, from every age-- they gave their lives to change the world. And I? I thought about not voting this morning, because it was inconvenient. Because I was late and it was one vote among millions and really: what would be missed?  

What would be missed?  What would be missed would be my own desperate act of love, to heal a broken world. One person. One vote. One voice. To heal and change and bring light to the darkness. Do I care how you vote, for whom you vote?  Of course I do.  I have my own ideas and visions and beliefs on what is right, what is good (for the community, for the broken, for those who cannot speak, for those I love and those I don't).  What is more important, though, to me, is that you vote.  That matters. Exercise your voice. Make a choice. Demand that you be heard. Your voice, your vote- that desperate act of love matters.

People have died defending the belief that voting matters. People continue to die, every day, for their acts of desperate love and courage and faith, for their belief that they can heal a broken world. And here's the tough part: we may never see the work complete, our world healed. But (and this is the big part, the harder part): we are not excused from starting the work, from committing those desperate acts of love. Our Jewish sages have been teaching this for centuries: Lo alecha ham'lecha ligmor v'lo atah ben chorin l'hitabel mimena. It is not your duty to complete the work; neither are you free to desist from it.  (Pirke Avot 2:16)

Schwerner and Goodman and Chaney. They were murdered in darkness, surrounded by hatred and fear. They were killed for their belief that the world needed healing and their lives - their voices, their ideas, their actions - could heal. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King once said "If you haven't found a cause to die for, you haven't found a reason to live."  These three men, and the countless, nameless hundreds before and after who were murdered and tortured for their own desperate acts of love - from Tienanmen Square to the Berlin Wall, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to any trackless, endless place where there are men and women who demand that they be heard, that their voice - all our voices - be heard, they found their reason to live.  Let us say: zichronam liv'rcha (may their memories be for a blessing).

Let us celebrate their lives. Let us take courage from their faith. Let us vote - and argue and debate and learn and disagree and demand that our voices be heard. Let us commit acts of desperate love, because we can heal our broken world-- one voice, one act, one vote at a time. 

#BlogElul 21 - Change

I am not a fan of change.

But for that matter,
I am not a fan of clinging
as if to save my
Soul,
or shield my
Heart
From something -
anything,
everything -
Some thing, 
that has wrapped itself around me,
Or that perhaps
I may have agreed
(In some way)
To cling
to that thing,
And so not
Change.

I am not a fan of change.

But oh!
I am so tired of
clinging.
My fingers are cramped
and my knuckles
White.
I haven't moved in so very long.
The view from here
is old,
And frayed
around the edges.

I am not a fan of clinging.

And so I think,
maybe -
Just maybe,
If I let go,
Not with a whoosh,
But a whisper,
A breath
of a prayer,
If I let go
Softly,
I can rest,
Just a bit,
And let the change
that I am not a fan of,
That will happen anyway
Maybe I can just
Let the change in.

And in the letting,
In the release,
In that moment,
So be changed.


(c) Stacey Zisook Robinson
2014

Carrying kindness until it is enough

I have learned, over the last decade or three, when I am offered a compliment, to nod and smile and say "Thank you." That's out loud. Internally, there's a whole dialogue of negation that eventually devolves into a spirited and oh-so-mature rendition of "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" If you have the mental image of a small girl-child in pig tails and black patent leather Mary Janes, fingers firmly placed in her ears and eyes squeezed shut, we're on the same page.

I am old plus two, dammit. I gave up pig tales and Mary Janes a long time ago.

I am a successful businessperson. I love telling anyone who asks what I do for a living (and a handful or two of people who don't) that I am a professional Jewish mother who reads spreadsheets. Really. I actually get paid to tell people what to do. I am a trusted advisor, for God's sake, a consultant on some pretty complex stuff that, while it may not have the impact level of, say, stomping out world hunger or curing the common cold, still helps keep the world moving and my clients on track.

I have a son whom I have managed to not break , not even once, since the day he was born, fourteen-and-a-half years ago. While there are times I fear he has been secretly raised in a barn by wolves, while I must, at times, keep myself from lapsing into a rousing chorus of "One boy! Boy for sale! He's going cheap..." from Oliver!, while there are days when I bemoan the fact that there is not enough duct tape in all the world to contain him, I am willing to concede he's a pretty awesome kid who may actually have a few saving graces.

I can raise a child, consult with the C Suite, sing and write and teach and make am amazing pot of homemade vegetable beef soup that would bring tears to gourmand and peasant both. I can carry on lengthy conversations with madmen and God (and do so, regularly), and dance in the palm of God's hand (not quite so regularly, but that's another story for a completely different day). I bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, too, but I hate the thought pf cleaning up all that spatter and grease, so a microwave will have to do. I am, in short, an accomplished, functioning, savvy, multi-tasking, multi-faceted adult woman of the 21st century who can do more things by Tuesday than most people get done by late Wednesday afternoons (I'm just not that energetic in the morning).

What I cannot do, at all, is take a compliment.

Dammit. What the hell is wrong with me? I squirm- literally, my face goes pink and hot and my skin kind of crawls for a second or two. I, the lover of words, the woman whose motto is "Why use ten words when a hundred will do?" and who can't manage to say hello in less than 500 at best- I lose them all: I am speechless and get tongue-tied, both at the same time.  I am a dear in the headlights and a butterfly pinned to black velvet. Pick your own metaphor for that vaguely prickly, mounting feeling of trapped stuckedness. Go ahead; I'll wait. I'm sure I've not yet plumbed the depths of that particular literary device. There are bound to be a few I've yet to overuse. Let me know when you're ready and we'll move on.

Denial. Deflection. Dismissal: I am stopped cold by kindness. Every time.

Ugh.

I learned it from my mother. We would have some huge, extended family dinner for some holiday celebration. As she was carrying in platters overflowing with bountiful goodness, she would begin apologizing: "The seasoning isn't quite right. I'm sorry. The soup is a little salty. I'm sorry. The potatoes aren't really very good. I'm sorry" This, before anyone had lifted a fork to their mouths. When the compliments came - and she's an excellent cook, so there was an excellent chance they would come (and besides, we live in a polite society; complimenting one's hostess is part and parcel of the gathering) - when they came, my mother would slough them off, becoming more and more uncomfortable with every word, until eventually, she walked back into the kitchen to perform some critical task of culinary magic. Basically, she went to hide, until she was sure the uproar of those horrible compliments had died down.

Every holiday. Every dinner. Every time.

There's a part of me, some tiny, daring and dangerous voice, that would really like to accept a compliment or two. Every now and then. I mean, a couple would be okay, right? I can be humble, even if I accepted someone's compliment graciously, maybe even gracefully, couldn't I? And that notion of tempting fate, or the evil eye, or the gods - that's pure nonsense, isn't it? 

There is some part of me, some dangerous voice, that is not daring. Not at all. It is sibilant and officious, and keeps up a steady, whispery conversation (a conversation hat feels exactly like walking through an unseen spider web feels in the dark and dank and narrow passageway, that makes you jump and sputter and feel like bolting), this voice tells me, again and again, ever and always, that I am unworthy of compliments and undeserving of kindness. I don't know that it's the same voice that my mother heard, or her mother before her, a long mine of mothers who learned to deflect and dismiss and deny, and who taught that lesson in every generation. My guess is yes: this is our ancestral voice, the one my family has carried from stetl to stetl and across oceans and time.

I am tired of that voice.

Now, lest you think  this is some cheesy little ploy designed to garner complimentary posts and comments (deflect, dismiss, deny) - it is not. I can think of nothing that would make me feel more uncomfortable than to find myself faced with a barrage (if by "barrage" I mean more than none) of laudatory comments. I know, I know: I post my writing, I announce some cool things that have happened of late. 

Here;s the thing: I don't know what to do with your compliments or kindness. I don't know how to carry that. Lies and shame seem so much easier. But they're not. They are familiar companions, and so feel safe. I cling to them, but what they are, are chains: rusted and biting, they cut into my skin and leave marks. They draw blood. They keep me small and weak and less-than.

Weird, to post and then shrug it off, an odd push-me-pull-you tug of war, a disconnect of small and dangerous;y whispered proportions. But there's that voice, the other one, the slightly daring and kind of dangerous (in a thrilling and adventurous kind of way) that just won't shut up. It just keeps up this excited, manicky  stream of consciousness: a "what if" conversation carried to a staggering limit. 

What if -

What if I just said "thank you" and then smiled? What if I believed it? What if I believed you? What if I took some joy in doing something well? What if I took pride in accomplishing something grand? What if pride were not a dirty word? What if I really were deserving of praise and kindness? What if I treated myself the exact same way I demand people treat one another? What if I defended myself (from myself) the way I defend those who are being treated with cruelty and met with shame?

What if I told that soft and whispery other voice to just shut the fuck up for a while? 

What if, indeed?

28 Elul 5773: Give

"You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give." Winston Churchill

That's what it's about really: not the hokey pokey, but making a life-- one that matters. Why else bother with this exercise in forgiveness and redemption? Why else make this breathtaking journey of diving deeper and bending the light a little differently? Why else gather together at the gates, waiting and expectant, to ask that we be let through, to ask that we find joy and sweetness and life? Why else walk with God, listening for that still, small voice that rises up so gently, to shelter us and give us comfort as we go forward, one breath, one heartbeat, on step at a time?

Why else indeed?

We give of our time. We give of our talents. We give of our treasures. Head, Hands. Heart. We give, and slowly, we build something beautiful-- a kehillah kedosha, a holy community. A life that matters.

There is so much need in this world. One could drown in it. The need is everywhere-- halfway around the world, on the other side of the country next door. It is not bounded by color, or sex, nationality or religion. And the need grows, daily== Hunger. War. Unclean water. Disease. Poverty. Ignorance. Fear. Want. devastation. You know the list as well as I. There are (sadly) no surprises to it. It is a symphony of dissonance and discord, harsh and hurting, played on a very delicate and very human stage. It saps our resources and drains our spirits. 

Lo Alecha ham'lachah ligmor, velo atah ben chorin l'hibatel mimena: we are not required to finish the work; neither are we free to desist from it. (Pirke Avot 2:16). The work is vast. The need an endless chasm. But we give. We build a holy community, we build a life that matters. 

We stand at the gates and we open our hearts. We give, and so we change the world, and so we ourselves are changed. Head. Hands. Heart. B'tzelem elohim, we give, we change, we are redeemed.

21 Elul 5773: Change (part 2)

I turn and churn
and swirl.
a whirling dervish
of motion
emotion
non stop
and restless
skirting
flirting with the
jagged edges of
chaos.

It is an endless
and eternal
dance,
never the same--
not the stream
nor the path
nor the days
with worlds enough
and time.

Never the same
not ever,
and I
skate along the crumbling edge
flirting with the razor-edged rim
slipping,
sliding
again.

But it does not
Change.
Not this dance,
not this slipstream
dream of
sharp edges
and
motion.

To change
is to
stop,
to bow out of
the dance,
To chance
a slow and steady
studied
measure.
One measure
One note
One step
One breath--

One sideways
step
to be

Changed.

18 Elul 5773: Pray

I start with the premise that it's all Torah. All of it, all of us-- we are all wrapped in the scrolls of Torah, playing out the glory of life. And because it's all Torah, I take my truth wherever I find it. I find it everywhere (after all, everywhere is Torah, right?) I just need to notice it, recognize it.

A bunch of years ago, I was locked in fierce combat while angels danced across ladders and I dreamed of God and slept on a rock-strewn bed. The battle raged for a small slice of forever. Sometimes I danced with the angels, sometimes I wrestled with God. It all but consumed me. 

And then: truth. Just like. Truth and I slept and did not dream and found the gates of heaven, and finally knew they'd been there all along. 

Truth then (and now, because this remains the most profound truth I have ever kept, and it has changed my life forever) came from a movie. Shadowlands, to be exact. It's a great movie about the author of the Narnia books (and others),  a flawed man who finds love, and God, and himself. See it, if you haven't. I will not bore you with the details, except to share one scene. C.S. Lewis is leaving his wife's hospital bed. She is dying, and he is bereft. He meets a few colleagues, Oxford dons like himself, who, in a singular act of cruelty and contempt, stop Lewis-- who had made a name for himself as a charismatic Christian, giving lectures throughout England with the basic premise "everything happens because God made it so; therefore, anything that happens must be good and right--  and ask (in effect) "How's that prayer thing working for you now?" Lewis looks up at them, and with profound sadness and weariness, says "Prayer doesn't change God. Prayer changes me."

That simple statement may have saved my life. It certainly changed my life, and changed my relationship to prayer and God. 

I don't pray to a Santa Claus God. I don't pray to a God who may or may not listen, who mostly stays silent and aloof. I can whisper, I can shout, I can raise holy hell in my prayer. I can take God to task, I can plead and question and struggle and doubt. I can even croon a bit, and sing lullabies and love songs to God. Because, what I finally discovered, when I finally heard that truth, that prayer changed me, not God, I realized that it doesn't matter what I pray. What matters, ever and always, is that I pray. Because when I pray, I am changed. The world shifts and the light bends and I can hear God's voice, God's answer. A still small voice deep within me, though more often than not, I hear God's voice in the voices of others.

When I pray, I open myself up to hearing answers and finding comfort.

How do I know this works? Ha. Today, at morning services, I had a tantrum. Not attractive in a woman who is old plus two. People were not behaving the way I thought they should. People were disturbing my prayer, my service, my time with God and the soft, golden light of a Saturday morning. I had, as it were, a fit of pique.

One woman, in particular, was pressing every button, standing on every nerve. This is not new. She is old and mean and demands to be the center of attention, even in the middle of a service. This week's parasha is filled with blessings and curses. I was cursing plenty. And then, in the middle of the Amidah (the silent part), I remembered that this week's Torah portion also reflects on a prayer-- for a heart that knows and eyes that see. So I prayed differently today, and asked for an open heart.

And this is what I saw: an old woman, alone and in desperate, perhaps hopeless spiritual pain. So much so that all she can give to her community is a portion of that pain. How incredibly sad-- to be looked at with pity and disdain by your chosen community. And as so often happens, my prayer did not change God, but , when I ask and seek with even the slightest bit of humility and humanity-- my prayer changes me.

As a result, in the middle of the Amidah, I went from petulant child to something quite different-- I am trying to understand what we as a community, what I as a part of that community, can do to ease her pain. I know that I cannot fix her. That's not my job. But how do I respond to her and her pain? How do I satisfy my need to pray and connect in the face of her rage and despair? 

I'm not trying to be codependent about this, but there has to be a balance-- doesn't there? True, she is disruptive and explosive, she will not listen; nor does she (apparently) care what her actions do to the flow of the service. It is also clear, I think, that she feels apart from, separated from. She feels that she is The Other, the stranger in our midst. We are commanded to remember the stranger, for we were strangers once. We are commanded to care for the stranger, for he is us. 

I fear I did not act very Jewishly in this. I fear I did not act very humanly-- or maybe the problem is that I acted all too humanly. I will pray, and be changed, and I will hear the voice of God. And I will know, when I ask for a heart that knows and eyes that see, I will reach out, b'tzelem elohim - in the image of God - and make a holy space next to me for everyone, even this bitter woman, this stranger who is, after all, me.

16 Elul 5773: Change

When I was in graduate school, I took a seminar in Early Modern French history (hey-- I was fascinated by the subject, but then again, I'm a wonk of the first order). I wrote a critical analysis on Voltaire's use of the words "public" and "public opinion" in both his writings on politics and those regarding theatre (again-- I am a wonk...). What I found was that, in all matters pertaining to theater and culture, Voltaire was a true proletariat, encouraging The Public to weigh in on matters small and large, as was their God-given right.

He cautioned a very different tale when talking about the political arena. Here, The Public were just this side of cretinous boob: small-minded, uninformed, knuckle-dragging inferiors, who should leave governing and politics and law to their betters, who'd had the very good sense to be born into the noble classes.

Same man. Same word. Couldn't be a more different approach, result, outlook if he'd tried (and trust me, he didn't) (he was really okay with inconsistency).

Call me the Voltaire of change.

I am all for social change. World shattering, life altering stuff-- housing is a right, not a privilege. So is food, and access to medical care, living in a safe place, drinking safe water. I left graduate school to work for ACORN back in the eighties, long before it was made into a dirty word by the Tea Baggers. We fought for change. Lived it, organized for it. We took a page from Saul Alinsky and made it into a thing of real and awesome beauty.

When I worked for United Way and helped run corporate giving campaigns, I moved people to action, urging them to give, to get involved, to change the world. And I let them all know that every time they did something, they were, in fact, changing the world. 

I'm all for changing the world. It needs to be changed. 

I'm all for changing you. Not in that icky, co-dependent way of changing you to fit my expectations, but, you know, it's probably not a bad idea for you to, you know, take a look at yourself and do some minor repair work.

It's the changing me piece that I have issues with.

Believe me-- it's not that I think I'm perfect. I so know that I am not. I know all the cute little slogans: if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. If nothing changes, nothing changes. You know what they call someone who does the same thing again and again expecting different results? I'm sure there are more, but I'm typing quickly (it is amazing how fast 24 hours can go by when you've committed to blogging something new every day). You get the picture.

Change is hard.

Change is hard, for me, when I look at it as something I have to do. It is exhausting and daunting and overwhelming and so frikking difficult. And who knows what will happen on the other side? Who knows how the world will look or who I'll be or how I will fit? It's not hard. It's a scary impossibility.

But (there's always a "but"). But I don't need to look at it like that. I don't have to change. How about: I get to change. I am allowed to change, being given the opportunity to do something differently. I don't have to do the same things again and again, and then spend the next slice of eternity kicking myself (or worse) because nothing happened. Nothing was different. Wherever I go, there I am. 

I remember what it was like, who I was. I remember the breathless agony of my life, living in a tiny universe of one, where nothing changed, ever. Where I was lost and alone and broken. All the time, world without end, amen. I remember, when nothing changed and the world stood still, that despair was my stock in trade and hope was a dirty, dangerous secret. I remember when my only prayer was (a much more earthy version of) "Screw you, God!" 

I may or may not have had to change. What I will never forget is that I get to change. Every day. Every day, I have the ability to do something different. To shift my perspective and bend the light and move. Breathe. Change. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's all good. I will get the chance to do something different, to practice change tomorrow. 

A Penny For Your Thoughts

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

Martin Niemoller

A Facebook friend sent out a really disturbing message the other day. Apparently, someone rang her doorbell one night a few nights ago, not long after 10:00 pm. When her husband answered the door, no one was there. What he found, though was a pile of pennies on the doorstep, formed in the shape of a swastika.

The police were called. The pennies were taken into evidence after being photographed. My friend is alerting synagogues and schools in the area. She reached out to us to share her horror, to warn us. Perhaps, she was searching for answers that just aren't there.

I posted this to my own Facebook page, because I wanted to share my outrage and disgust. I was almost speechless in my fury—a fury that is tinged with just a tiny bit of fear-- that this could happen, that it happened so close to home, that there is such senseless hatred still threaded throughout our world. 

Many of my friends posted their own comments, sharing their own outrage, their passionate disgust and calls for action. And then there was this:

Am I surprised? Of course not! [My daughter] was confronted by two boys 4 weeks before the end of school. They yelled at her, calling  "Jew, Jew" and threw pennies at her feet, telling her to pick them up. This happened not once but twice before she told me.

The onlookers only laughed.

We went through the process at school. Kids were dealt with again by the Administration because they have been bullying kids for years. Guess their policies don't work. The school isn't too bothered or outraged, so it seems. But she was harassed again, by the other kids, because she told.

Then at the proof of residency event last week, the same kids saw her and started yelling 'Jew, Jew, there's the Jew!". She came and got me. I confronted the two boys in front of the Principal and the entire population of parents and kids who stood, looking at their schedules, there in the cafeteria, deftly ignoring the situation. I had a meeting with the Principal,  who ended up deciding that the incident was not serious because it still wasn't officially “school.”

 Will this stop for her? No chance. The school really doesn't have decent policies to deal with the situation. No chance they will kick out the bullies because the school doesn't want to lose the money. There’s been lots of talk to my daughter about not being a victim, about fighting back, about being strong and better than them. Next stop: police. Next stop: lawyer. How pathetic. The school administration should be ashamed that they can't keep the kids in a socially safe learning environment. For them, just another day of trying to make do with crap policies that protect no one. For everyone who says we shouldn't stay silent, well, I can't hear you. Sorry for the tirade but this one is just too close to stay off my soap box.

I can't afford to be speechless, to step down off the soapbox-- especially not about this. "We are better than this!" I want to shout, “Haven’t we learned anything?” Hatred lives and thrives in the dark, in the twisted, ugly places that are guarded by fear and envy and ignorance. Shine a light! We must. We must illuminate this pestilence so that it cannot grow and fester.

This is not a matter of “kids will be kids.” We can't afford to pass this off as a prank or fear that we may overreact, or that our reaction is merely feeding their need for attention. What we shouldn't do-- because that does feed their salacious frenzy for attention-- is posture. We cannot wring our hands and shake our heads in worry or resignation. We cannot just post our outrage and then walk away. When I talk about shining a light into the dark-- I mean it actively. What do we, what do I do about this? How do I teach and shine the light and change the world?

I hate to make this into a comparative lesson, but what if, I stead of a swastika, it was a burning cross, or a some ignorant, racist term spray-painted on a garage, or a vicious cartoon aimed at reviling gays—or the disabled, or Muslim, or fill in the blank for any group, anyone who is marginalized or minimized or made to feel less-than for no other reason than that they are Jewish. Or black. Or gay. Or take your pick—the actions of these hate-mongers is cheap and evil and cowardly. And we cannot let it pass.

We are a people who do not sit idly by. We cannot. We must not. We were commanded in last week's parasha to remember Amalek and what he did to us in the desert. If we do nothing-- Amalek wins. Let's make the desert bloom instead, shine our light so brightly that we change the world.

This is a slightly tweaked version of something I posted on my Facebook page the other day. To date, there have been almost 50 comments, all of them echoing outrage, disgust and the need to mobilize. One of the comments suggested that we gather the pennies on the doorstep to the Holocaust Museum. I’m thinking that’s a great idea.