Hope, enough

I have a friend who is going through some big and scary stuff: life-altering, soul-changing, potentially transformative, and possibly transcendent stuff.   “I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what will happen.  I feel so alone,” she said.   Her pain was palpable.

God, I know that place-- that sticky, scary, prickly place. Crossroads? I wish it were as simple as that! That place isn't a fork in the road; it's a whole damned service for twelve, all jumbled and junk-drawer worthy, a snake pit of messy choice. It isn't dark. Dark implies the possibility of something not-dark. This is the total absence of light. It is a teetering precipice, the pain of the present licking at your feet, coiling upwards, while the fear of the unknown breathes hot and harsh on your skin and presses you down,

This place is alone.

My friend's words take me back to my early days in recovery.  I spent hours in those meeting rooms, on beat-up couches, drinking horrible coffee, breathing in air that reeked of cigarette smoke and bleach and stale sweat.  Hours upon hours of shiny happy people and their endless chatter, who had miraculously been plucked from the depths of their despair and given new life.   New hope.  And they passed it on to me.  Headier than any wine, more intoxicating than any drink I’d ever guzzled.  Hope.  In the telling of their stories, I found hope.

“I’ve been there,”  they all said, in some iteration or other.

No fanfare, no drama.  Just this quiet moment of intimate connection.  They’d all been there— that same place where I had stood, rooted and lost and broken and alone.  It may have looked different from the outside– some talked of boardrooms on Wall Street, others of a gutter in the slums– those exteriors were facades that hid our utter devastation from public view.  How could I not find healing in these words?  How could I not take hope?  They sat pretty comfortably in their own skins, putting one foot in front of the other.  Moving, acting, choosing, deciding.  Feeling.  Feeling everything.  Not drinking.  Not drinking.  And they shared that all, with me, with each other, every day, endlessly, hour after hour.  It got so I believed I could do all that too.

And after the hours and hours of bad coffee and stale smoke and endless, hopeful chatter, they left. And I went home.  Alone. Home, to an empty apartment that echoed.   Home, to sit and think and climb the walls, to feel the silence pound.  While I didn’t crawl into a bottle, I climbed into my head, taking refuge in that nightmare landscape of my own creation, with this chorus singing hollowly, keeping me company: In the end, I stand here alone. For all their laughter and sharing and connection, I come home alone.  And who will be there to catch me when I fall, when I fail?

I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what will happen.  I feel so alone.

That place.  That fear.  That place that is absent of light.  I know thåis place all too well.

In the end, we are all of us alone.  But here’s the miracle, that bit of grace within that singular moment of clarity: there are breadcrumbs.  Strewn along that rocky, tortuous, treacherous path, with all its traps and quicksand and trails that go nowhere and the scary monsters who hide behind the poison-spitting trees, there are breadcrumbs.   There are stories and connections and hope left for us by those who’ve gone before.  And if we’re lucky— really, really lucky— there are hands to hold in the darkness, torches placed along the way.

Yes, I take my leaps alone.  Yes, even now, I can stand rooted in the muddy, messy Middle, unable to go back, afraid to move forward.  But there is hope.  Grace.  Hands to hold, torches that shine.  And should I fail, should I fall, I will be caught.  God, or some Higher Power whose name I don’t yet know, will allow me rest and comfort until I’m ready to go it again.

I’m here, I tell my friend.  Feel free to fly, to fall.  To hope.  I’ve been there my friend.  I’ll be waiting for you, breadcrumbs in hand,  and hope enough to share.

That We All May Rise - a prayer for these days

God of hidden things -
unseen art,
unheard notes,
unfelt touch.
God of fear and hope
and weary, worried hearts,
hear my questions and cries.

The world is heavy now,
and the light arcs
through a glass so darkly.
My soul wanders,
weighted and alone.
Lift me!
Help me rise
and see,
help me rise
And hear,
help me rise
And feel,
so that hope conquers fear,
so that my weary, worried heart opens and pours forth love
like water,
like wine.

Comfort me,
that I may comfort those
who suffer and sigh.
See me,
that my eyes are open
to the world around me.
Lift me,
that we all may rise.

The Shape of Your Despair

I don't know the shape of your despair,
or the sound it makes when it
calls you to draw near.

I don't know its color,
or the shimmer of its dragonfly wings
that catch your gaze and draw you inward,
solitary, silent.
Trapped.

Does it even have wings that flutter and blur
and brush lightly against your skin,
soft, like a kiss, leaving a trail of tears
and tiny scars?

Or is that just the feel of my own?

Let me know it, your despair.
Sing me its siren song
of dissonant notes,
its wordless howl.
Let me know its shape,
and the taste it leaves on your tongue.

I will light a candle, or maybe
just sit in the dark with you
for a while, listening
to the keening wail,
and know you are not alone.

Hope is the Moon

Hope is the moon seen through
skittering clouds
or leaves that have been dusted by Midas,
or maybe by Ms Borgia:
all dusty, almost brittle red and gold.
It waxes and wanes
and hangs smugly
in a charcoal sky,
like the half smile of a
drunken god.

It is nothing like the Sun
that rules in splendor
and burns.

I respond to its tidal rhythms
an eternal dance that moves me,
that batters me and carries me.
Even so, I see it only through
the boughs of trees
and skittering
clouds.

Open the Gates

An alternative reading for Psalm 118

Open the gates of justice.
They are rusted shut
and chained.
Weeds  and brambles
choke the path
that leads there.

Open the gates
and let all enter -
the orphan and the widow,
the poor;
the stranger,
whose heart you know,
for you were once a stranger
in a strange and narrow land.

You were tortured and
enslaved, hunted,
humiliated,
stripped of your humanity
and your lives,

because you were
differently skinned,
otherly colored,
your faith
your ideas
and clothes
and loves
were not the same.

Open the gates
for the despairing and desperate,
for those whose
hope has been stolen.

Oh, My children!
Open the gates that
you have nailed shut.
I beseech you -
I beg you!
Open the gates.
Let the light of justice
shine; let all of
My children. rejoice.

Omer. Day Four

The first shabbos in the wild lands.

I cannot imagine grappling with the enormity of That! I mean, really - first the fleeing, then the Sea, finally on dry land - but with, as I do imagine it (and I'm OK with my own contradictions, thank you) a thousand questions of who and what and where and why. And the kids being kids, and there are animals to be calmed and cared for, and tents to be set up and thank God for the manna - that's one load off the plate! There are creaky joints and calloused feet and tired bodies that really just want to plop down on some ground and sleep for a year or two.

But...shabbos. 

A couple of years ago, someone sent me a video - the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. It was April 20, erev Shabbat. The dead had not all been buried. There were still people dying "in broad daylight" says the narrator. But shabbos was nearing. The British chaplain organized a kabbalat Shabbat service - and for the first time, in perhaps a decade, it could be celebrated without fear. 

At the end of the service, the people there sang Hatikva - The Hope. After all they had been through, all they had suffered and lost, even they could sing about hope and celebrate Shabbat. Amidst all of the horrors of the camp, they could stop - even for a moment, even for a day - to find space within themselves to welcome the Bride. Even then, they could sing.

Once we were slaves. Now we are free.

And so we count four. Shabbat shalom. 

If you'd like to hear this amazing recording, follow this link. https://youtu.be/syUSmEbGLs4

BlogElul - Hope

I find, much to my surprise, that I am, once again, stumped by hope. That is, I'm having a hard time daring to do it. Life is so very fragile, and the world can be so dark. One false move - or, perhaps, any move at all - will upset that delicate balance, which feels too much like the whole of existence dancing on the head of a pin. Hope requires that I move somewhere, anywhere, even a hair's breadth from the spot I am in, but I see that empty, endless expanse laid out all around, and I am afraid I will fall into forever.

That's hope for you: dangerous, and wrapped up into way too many metaphors to do anybody any good. Least of all, me. Here's a secret though, my secret: I so want to hope - fearlessly, courageously, defiantly, in the face of every fear or foe.

But perhaps. Maybe. Just maybe, I got it wrong. That vision, I think, is for the fantasy novel hero, the shield maiden, donning her armor and wielding her sword, stalwart and sure. That's not hope. Not really. That's a fantasy, nothing more. Neither is hope is not a wish, or empty words of hearts filled with thoughts and prayers. Lovely sentiments, to be sure - but these are not hope.

Hope is feeling the dread - that icy lick of fear you get just microseconds after the news of (choose all that apply): the death of a loved one; a difficult (scary) diagnosis; some disaster that is big and huge and all-encompassing. And in spite of all that ice and dread and fear - you move anyway. You hold a hand, comfort an anguished heart, breathe, stand with, witness, give strength, cook a meal, drive a carpool, smile, sing, laugh, talk, listen. And even (I hate to admit this) pray. Because sometimes, that's all that's left, the only thread you have to hold onto: prayer - a conversation with God, even one filled with every swear word you can think of, even one with no words at all.

Hope is an action.

As I said, I've not been practicing much hope these days. Instead, I've been staying a little bit stuck in the icy dread. I don't like it much (although I am quite comfortable staying so stuck; I've had way too much practise here), this precarious perch upon which I've climbed. Frankly, my balance isn't too good these days, and my arms are getting really tired. I need to let go.

An old story keeps running through my head: 

Rabbi, what if I don't feel like praying?

Pray until you do...

Perhaps it is the same with hope. What if I am afraid to hope? What if I'm too stuck? What if I don't feel like I can hope?

Hope until I do.

Until then, I will dance as gracefully as I know how, high up on this pin, and try - with all my might - to fall, to let go - to hope that one day, I will.

#blogelul

Why I'm With Her (even though I wasn't always)

When I was in graduate school, I had, what I have come to believe, a holy experience: I heard God. OK, maybe not God, and not even God's actual voice. Maybe I just heard the word of God, spoken so clearly, so sparely and with such devotion that I could not help but take them in and know that, at last, there was God.

The events that led to my epiphany were profoundly prosaic: a colleague arranged for some hot shot guy from New York to speak on campus. I’d never heard of Michael Harrington before. Then again, I’d never heard of a lot of things. Who knew? Thankfully, I was a fast study.

So, on a spring day in 1985, in a faculty lounge with large casement windows that spilled soft gold light onto plush carpet and stiff-backed chairs scattered haphazardly around the room, I first heard God speak. As a convenience, God used voice of Michael Harrington to make his message heard aloud. Michael Harrington, speaking the truth of God (I swear) had this to say:

We can create a society that is not rooted in inequality and discrimination and power and wealth. We can create a just society, based on the premise that our Founding Fathers meant rather than wrote: that all of us, men and women who are black and brown and yellow and white, who are gay and straight and anything in between, who believe or don’t as they see fit, we are all of us equal, and we have a voice that, when joined with others, will always speak louder than the tyranny of gross power and grosser injustice.

Michael Harrington, a professor of political science at Queens College, and the co-founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, a writer and radical and sometime Voice of God, spoke my truth to me: money may be power, but the people - together - could be more powerful still.

Well sign me up!

I joined DSA then and there. Not surprising, I left graduate school not long after, PhD be damned. I went to work for a national poor people's organization. I was out to fight the good fight, to rouse the rabble and give people a voice.

No, not give. Give is way too condescending and nobless oblige-y. My job was to remind people that their voices, joined together, were a power to be reckoned with. We had all been silent for far too long. Now was the time to be heard.

For five years I fought that battle. I moved 15 times back and forth across the country; everything I owned fit in the trunk of my car. The cause was my world and I thrived in it. Even when I left to wander the halls of Corporate America, I didn’t lose my ideals. If I no longer fought in the trenches, my feet and my hands and my threadbare wallet strived as best they could to keep up and change the world.

You can imagine my delight the first time I heard Senator Bernie Sanders speak. His gravelly voice, and brusque New York accent was beautiful. In it, I heard the Voice of God, just as I had decades ago. Sanders, too, urged us to defend the poor, care for the needy, work to build a society of justice and equality.

I know, I know: Sanders, and Harrington before him, are not the Voice of God. I am being dramatic and somewhat flip. Still, their words, their ideas, their insistence that we are all responsible for one another, that there is an inextricable link between business and people and money and the earth that must be carefully maintained - these seem to me to be an echo of everything I've been taught about God.

I sent in my $27, and wished I could give more. I volunteered. I cast my vote for Sanders in the Illinois primary with such hope! I watched and wondered and cheered him on, and at some point I knew, in that icy pit that resides in my belly, that some invisible corner had been turned, and that sweet moment of victory was all too short-lived. Sanders would not win the nomination.

Ugh.

What to do? What to do?

You must understand: this was never a question! What to do? In the holy words of Michael and Bernie (and paraphrased by me): defend the poor, care for the needy, build a just society.

Look – Michael Harrington wasn’t perfect, nor is Bernie. They aren’t God. I was lucky enough to have heard the voice of God whisper through their words - words, so I believe, so powerful, they have made their way into the DNC platform. What choice is there – really - but Hillary Clinton?

Is Hillary Bernie? No. She has her own voice. She fumbles around, makes mistakes. Sometimes she even cops to them. She’s a politician – just like Bernie. It just so happens I like Bernie’s message more, hear the whisper of God a little louder, look past his foibles a little easier. I’ll tell you, though – have you ever heard the passion and the fire she can kindle when she stops running for President and just talks? God is there, too, when you listen, and she shines. She’s not Bernie. She’s not Michael. She’s not my first choice. And while I think the path towards that just and equitable society will be a little more layered than I’d like, still, I have no doubt that she will walk this path, too.

For all you “Bernie or Bust” folks still out there, now is the time to remember what matters: joined together, our voices will always speak louder than the tyranny of power and injustice. For all of Hillary’s shortcomings and sins (real or imagined) – to vote for anyone else will destroy that vision of a just society. I stand with Hillary because, I believe that my voice, added to hers, and yours, and millions of others, will always be more powerful than insatiable fear and monstrous hate.

I'm with her.

#I'mwithher #hillaryclinton "thankyoubernie #feelthebern

Perhaps

I stand poised -
I've used that line
before, and again
and again and
Again; there is much
comfort in my stasis.

I stand, bound to
the razor-sharpness of
this edge that holds me
delicately,
precariously;
my feet are bloodied.

And still I stand
longing to fall
to let go and
let be and speak my
fear, lay my shame
on altars that
are slick and slippery
with the eternity of sacrifices -
bowed and bent and broken
with desperation.
My eyes burn from
their smoke, ascending,
twisting heavenwards
to please You.

And still I stand,
and I stumble along
this narrow edge
of bloody hope
and I do not fall.
Perhaps I will get it
right this time.
Perhaps I will,
finally.
Perhaps.


For Psalm 51

The Magnetic Attraction of Hope

So you try, even now;
You hope, eyes closed
breath held,
to hold absolutely still,
willing the universe
to somehow overlook you
and pass you by.

Except hope,
you find, too late,
is a magnet,
obeying strict laws of attraction -
the laws that move stars
and iron
and hearts -
it pulls and teases and
grasps everything in its path.
And all those things,
those flurried, fluid things,
they race along the trajectory
of your hope,
flowing at the speed of
your guilt and need,
faster than light,
to leap and cling and
be carried by your longing.

Hope is a trap of magnetic attraction.

But you do it anyway -
inhale and hold on
for dear life,
riding that wave of
your own giddy desire.

Just like hope,
you hold on.
In your stillness,
in your fear.
You hold on.

And God!
You can feel it -
the air, trapped in your lungs,
fluttering wildly,
desperate for release.
You feel its wings like a raven's,
beating madly in your chest.
You feel its wings like a dove's,
frantic -
frenzied -
and you hold on,
tight and grasping,
to keep the all and the everything
close, keep them near -
all those bright and shiny Things
that you have captured,
captivated by their glimmer.
They name you
and claim you.
They have their own laws
of attraction, like stars
and iron
and hearts.
And you are caught and kept
as they are caught
and kept,
caged.

And your wings
beat against the walls
of your chest so madly,
so weary,
and spent,
but still they beat.

And all you need do
to calm those wings
that catch
and clutch
and beat,
that long for
release
in hopeless,
helpless abandon

is breathe.

Seasonally Deluded. Again.

I drove home with the windows rolled down today.  I even complained that the sun was way too bright.  When I got home, I turned off the heat and threw open the windows.  Well, a window, at least.

Dangerous.  There is definite danger here, in all this sun and warmth.  There is a quickening, along with a need to bask.  A contradiction, yes, but both desires fight for an outlet in this suddenly changing and warming world.

There’s more light now, and of a different kind.  Winter light is watery and weak, a pale shade of yellow that barely illuminates a world that has been leached of color.  It is all grays and browns and pale, pale yellow.  Here in March, the light seems to stretch in its intensity.  Sunsets stain the sky with peach and purple and rose-gold; a Maxfield Parrish canvas that glows from within.  There is an impatience this time of year, a hurry-up-gotta-go-gotta-move kind of feeling, a heady mix of rising temperatures, rich, loamy smells and a return of glorious color.

The orange signs are back.  They litter every roadway from here to there, and back again.  They trumpet the return of Chicago’s other season: not winter, but construction.  They promise delay in the guise of improvement.  No matter; with the return of warm weather, the roads are clogged to capacity anyway, a rush of humanity intent on breaking out of their self-imposed hibernation, intent on basking in speed and exhaust and sunlight, grateful to be anywhere that is outside, that is away, that is not layered under mounds of outerwear and cocooned in underwear.

All of a sudden, people once again fill the roads, the parks, the paths and the sidewalks.  Their thoughts turn to visions of growing things and churning rich, black soil, to open flames of gas grills and open windows in cars. They move faster, they smile more.  They talk about spring.  Incessantly.  On and on and on.  They chatter in their excitement, a steady, buzzy drone of the wonders of things to come.

The problem, and it’s one of astronomical proportions, is that it is March.  March, in the Midwest.  It is not spring.  Not here.  And no matter what the calendar says, no matter that the equinox happens on March 20 (give or take), no matter that I drove with the windows rolled down today, it is not spring, and it won’t be for months.

You heard me: months.

This thaw, this blip on the space-time continuum, is nothing more than Mother Nature’s tease.  It happens every year: a thaw, brief and intense and intoxicating as wine, that allows crocuses to bloom and barbeques to smolder, that lulls us into a sense that we have broken the back of winter at last— this thaw comes in on a breeze, leaving us hopeful and stumbling out of our dormancy.  Then, quick as breath, as warmth and light— it’s gone, leaving us once more in the grips of a lingering, bone-chilling winter.

We gasp in disbelief, year after year.  Wait, we cry, it was spring; I swear it was.  I walked without a coat!  I felt the warmth of the sun!  Where the hell did this snow come from? We midwesterners forget the lingering death of winter.  We forget that temperatures will rise and fall on a dime until long after the groundhog checks out its chubby silhouette.  The trees may bud, a thin patina of green may creep stealthily onto dormant shrubs and trees, but leaves don’t burst forth until mid-May.  Tulips and daffodils be damned: spring is still a far distant shore.

And yet: I drove home with the windows rolled down and felt the warmth of the sun on my face.  I know that winter merely plays hide and seek with its cousin spring.  I know that the cold will slither in on bitter winds off the Lake, and snow will again skitter madly down torn-up roads and pile against orange and white construction barrels.

But I’ll take this warmth, this breath of spring.  I’ll store it up, and wait, with growing impatience, like Persephone, until I am released from winter’s captivity to bask briefly in the glory of warmth and light and spring.

#BlogElul 26 - Hope

Hope is the moon seen through
skittering clouds
or leaves that have been dusted
by Midas
or maybe by Ms Borgia:
all dusty,
almost brittle red and gold.
It waxes and wanes
and hangs smugly
in a charcoal sky,
like the half smile of a
drunken god.

It is nothing like the Sun
that rules in splendor
and burns

I respond to its tidal rhythms
An eternal dance
that moves me,
batters me,
carries me.
Even so,
 I see it only through
the boughs of trees
and skittering
clouds.

Waiting for Almost

The ancient Celts had the right idea: it is in the in-between that magic lives. Dawn, not daylight; dusk, not night. Really. Who would have felt the enchantment of Brigadoon if it lay under the bright golden summer blue sky? It was the very fact that it lay shrouded in fog and mist that we could believe in the magic of that place. There is an expectancy, an urgency that goes with that in between and almost time.

In between is all about possibility. It is the infinite and unknown. It is Schroedinger's Cat living large. Or perhaps dead. Or both together. It is where God lives, in the space that exsists between me and you. It is magic and mystery and enchantment.

I am fascinated by the in between, by the infinite.

I just wish I could do them, fit in that space. I have an impossibly difficult time with it. While I sense the majesty and magic, can feel the Almost gather its shape, I feel all lopsided and clumsy and wonky. I do not know how to respond. What I crave is knowing what will happen next. I want the rules, dammit. I want to know what's expected of me. Don't make me guess. I do not know how to relax. I cannot sit comfortably in the dynamic tension of in betweens. I feel it much like a cat or dog feels the tension of a coming earthquake: disaster is just around the corner and I want to bolt before it hits.

And right now, my life feels ruled by the twin novae of In Between and Almost.

It is uncertain and twisty, the path that lies at my feet. There is hidden quicksand, I am sure of it. I cannot see all the traps; there are shadows and menace and probable monsters. There is endless despair and eternal night. It gets worse. I crawl inside my head to escape this uncertainty and the tensions magnify.

My skin buzzes, my foot jiggles, my thoughts skitter, making up the eleventy seven thousand stories that go along with "what if..." In the absence of information, I make stuff up, and it’s never the make believe of happily-ever-after. In my stories, the evil wizard triumphs over good, the dragon eats the princess and the hero gets lost in the woods. And that's the beginning of the story; the end is not nearly so upbeat.

But here's the thing: even in the midst of my almost panic, I remember a grace note of something else, something that may almost be hope. There is this poised expectancy, like the ghostly breath of God that hovers over a field of grass at dawn, waiting for a single breath to give it shape and movement. That is my life: poised, motionless, waiting for a single breath to give it shape. And my instincts scream: run!

But I don't. I don't run. I stay, waiting, skin crawling, watching and waiting for what happens next. It can drive friends and lovers mad. I, myself, am an in between and an almost. I am neither here nor there. I flit and twirl and dance along a razor sharp path to get over the endless chasm of almost.

Relax. Let go. Let be. Just be. Wait.

Do they all not understand, even now, what I wouldn't give to be able to sit in comfort and quiet in the magic of that in between? Do they not know how glorious it would be to breathe and just be?

And I can almost get it. I can almost find that place, poised so exquisitely between the infinite and the possible. And that is the whisper of hope. I am almost, I am in between, and I can breathe. Just breathe. And the wonkiness, the twisty anxiety, they give way, with infinite slowness, to the beauty of almost and in between. And I can sit still, and wait, and go slow: for a moment, a breath, a day, some finite time where I don't have to know.

It is where God exists. It is where love resides and hope is born. It is redemption and grace. It is the place of my heart. Even in my fear, even in my panic and uncertainty, I am given these gifts. And I find peace.

A Prayer for Hope

I sent my hope out into
the Universe.
Whispered and weightless,
I waited.

I waited to be struck whole,
made happy,
healed
By you;
saved
by You.
I waited for peace
to come.

But Hope is an action
And it doesn't wait,
or come when
called.
And you--
and You--
will never save me
or bring me
hope,
lying calm and clean
on platters of silver.

I hope with my feet,
not my head
or my heart,
which lies broken
and bruised
near the graves of
the fallen,
who lie silent
and still
near the fields
where you
and You
once tried to be holy,
once tried to hope,
once waited for peace to
come.

But hope is an action,
and peace is a
verb--
to lift me,
to fill me,
allow me to
soar.
When I hope with my feet
I am saved.
I am healed.
I am made holy
once more.

Stacey Zisook Robinson
(c) 2014

Who Opens the Eyes of the Blind...

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha'olam, pokei'ach ivri'im

Blessed are you, Adonai, Sovereign of the universe, who opens the eyes of the blind.

From Nisim b'chol yom, for daily miracles 

The morning liturgy

I chant this prayer every time I say the morning blessings.  It is not as often as I'd like, but at least every Saturday morning, for Shabbat, I chant it. It's a sacred moment.

At least, it would be if I thought about it. I think moments are not inherently sacred or holy. They become so, with our thought, our mindfulness and intentionality.

Today, as I stood under the rickety, shivering roof of the Sukkah, where  pale morning sky peeked through a roof of haphazardly-laid dried corn stalks, and the light wind presaged the certainty of autumn-to-come (though the valiant sun, not-quite blazing, but shining brightly nonetheless, did a tango with the still-chill air before it started to warm) -- today, wrapped in my tallit and a soft sweater and the holiness of that moment, my voice rose with those other voices of this lovely community, praising God for the miracles of the day.

Praising God for opening the eyes of the blind.

That's when it hit me. Again, after all those other agains, when I've struggled to see my computer screen, and the road just beyond the hood of my car, and the last bit of dried-up milk at the bottom of the glass that my son has left on the counter again (for a whole different tirade of "agains"). More, for the struggle to see the breathtaking beauty of the words of Torah as I lean down to chant their ancient melody. They've worsened, those struggles, steadily, now somewhat exponentially, until today, this moment as I sing out my praise of God for the miracle of sight -- and my vision is a cubist nightmare, a blurred and darkened view of the world around me. Tough to see a miracle right about now.

So this morning, I chanted those words, where I so often sing them rather than pray them, and today they became holy and that moment shifted into rare and exquisite sacredness. And I wept.

I'm terrified that I am going blind.

Before I continue, let me say: my condition is, so my doctors assure me, treatable. Not cureable, but treatable. They may be able to arrest its progression. Or at least slow the pace of it. I may not, in fact, be going blind. Tell that to my fear.

I know, I know-- fear is a liar, and this is Sukkot, the season of joy. So I stood under the shelter of this very tenuous, very temporary shelter that was draped in God's bounty, that was filled to its very edges with prayer and hope and gratitude, and I sang and prayed and tried so desperately to lose myself in my prayer-- or maybe to find myself there, and God and benediction and something holy and pure, something transcendent and free of the fear that lay coiled around me, that bound me and tethered me to its dank lies and dirty promises. I tried so hard to rise with my prayers. 

And when I came to chant from Torah-- and really, not an incredibly inspiring passage, from a particularly troubling parasha, but it is Torah, and the blessing of it is that we are given the whole of the Torah, not just the pretty passages and happy stories, because it is ours to struggle with and dance with and learn from, to teach and carry and study and live-- so I stood at the makeshift bima and I bent to read those silly words, about bullocks and rams and offerings for drink and meals and sin-- and I stumbled and faltered, because although my eyes were open, I could not see.

The service leader was kind-- chanting Torah is difficult under the best of circumstances (considering there are no vowels or punctuation), he explained, but I was laboring under some heavy duty eye problems for which I would be operated on later this week. I walked back to my seat where I proceeded to break down. 

A woman, a friend, came to sit next to me. She put her arm around me, to offer strength and comfort. "What do you need?" she said, and would not accept stiffening shoulders or my mumbled answer of "Nothing. I'm fine." She was merely the first in a parade of others. Some I had known for years, those casual, intimate acquaintances who fill our lives with pleasantries and conversation and shared experience. There were a few I'd never seen before, though their concern was no less sincere. Included in that jumbled mix were a few real friends, people who were part of the regular ebb and flow of my life, whose presence was a steady and shimmering light.

What do you need? What can we do? And then: Never mind; I'll come over. I'll drive you. We'll bring you...

My skin fairly crawled. I am the Fixer of Broken things, I wanted to cry out. I do not get Fixed. I do not get taken care of. I am not fixable, I wanted to whisper. I cannot afford to need.

And in the midst of my fear and pain, draped in my pride-- a miracle. 

My prayer, my blindness: it had nothing to do with sight. It had nothing to do with vision, with rods and cones and color and light. There is holiness in giving, in caring for, in being present for another. There is also a sacredness in accepting that care. Community is about connection, a give and take of love and experience, a binding of joy and sorrow. 

I have no idea what will happen with my eyes. I am still terrified that I will go blind, that something will go wrong with this (fairly routine) operation. That I will not be able to drive, or read or stare in wonder at the color of the sky just as the sun kisses the horizon. Soon, and forever. I am an awfulizer of the first order. My fear is a liar that tells me I will no longer see.

But I will not be blind. How could I be, when I stand with my community, that holy and sacred bunch, under the shelter of heaven, to find strength and compassion and love. 

Blessed are you, God, who opens the eyes of the blind...

Soft Landing

Somewhere in my first year of sobriety, I went through a rough patch. It may be more accurate to say that "somewhere in my first year of sobriety, I found a few seconds of joy and breathless freedom." Those seconds were very few and very far between. The rough and stumbly, broken and prickly moments stretched into days, into weeks, into months. I (still) feel so much more at home in those spaces. I understand the rules there. There may be more pain in that place, but I get its ebb and flow, understand its motion and oddly circuitous paths. 

This time, of all those myriad times, was really pretty rough. Trust me: I know rough.

Now, what they don't tell you, those omnipotent and aloof They who haunt the smoky rooms and dingy halls of recovery, what They don't tell you is just how raw, just how naked, just how vulnerable you can feel when you finally start feeling, and there's nothing standing between you and the rest of the world except you. 

It's just you. And the pain. And the fear.  And the fire that burns inside your head because you just can't stop thinking and you can't stop feeling and the world keeps spinning and you just want to yell "Stop!" or maybe "Wait!" or maybe just hide. Just crawl under the covers and lie in the cool and shadowy dark for a few thousand years, until It's all gone, until you can't even remember what It was to begin with.

I was consumed by that fire. Those flames licked up one side and down the other, dancing along every inch of my skin without cease. Scorched earth policy (or whatever equivalent fits). I held my breath, held it all in, waiting for it to end, for the burning to stop, for the manicky, panicky beating of my heart to quiet. I held myself breathlessly still, hopelessly folded in on myself. 

It was right about then that a friend gave me a card. It was not your typical Hallmark card, replete with hearts and flowers and ooey-gooey sentiment. Nor did it highlight wise, sarcastic characters who made pithy little  remarks that you thought were amusing and yet couldn't recall thirty-seven seconds later. In fact, this card had a cartoon-like (think Keith Harrington-esque rather than Boynton-y) picture of a big city skyline, a suspension bridge in the foreground, and a sunshine yellow taxi clearly falling (at breakneck speed, I imagine) off the edge of the bridge to the depths of whatever it was below, flames shooting out the taxi's windows, and some person, some stick-figure of a person, waited inside, clearly obeying the laws of gravity and motion, clearly at a loss.

The future did not look bright for the taxi or its rider.

On the inside, to the left, were words. Many, many words. Great gobs of words that told the story of how the taxi, and the person inside of it came to be flying off that particular bridge at that particular time. Or maybe, the words told the story of the thoughts and feelings pf that lone and lonely inhabitant as he (or she) plummeted to some cataclysmic crash. Might have been some spiritual allegory. I don't remember. Frankly, I don't really care.

What I remember was the echo I felt of  that figure's resignation and absolute acceptance of the act of free falling in an endless and elegant arc that could only end in-- not death; that would be too clean, too neat-- but more pain. That certainty that this would not end in a bottom but with a trap door.

That was the left-hand side. The right side held a wish. Bold black letters on a blanket of bright white:

I wish for you a soft landing

And at that exact moment, everything started up again. Until that very instant, everything about me had been held in suspended animation, frozen in some weird danse macabre, or a game of statues-- nothing moved, nothing changed, except the fire in my head and the freely-falling bottoming out that I could only watch from 30,000 feet and feel with intimate agony.

A wish. A hope. A prayer that buckled my knees and filled me with breathless wonder. A desperately needed lesson in compassion and love from a friend who knew my heart and cherished my soul (even when I could only find tattered bits (when I bothered to look at all)). She understood that compassion has nothing to do with healing me or changing me. It was not advice or wisdom. Comfort didn't really fit either. I was falling, and nothing she could do would stop the descent.

She didn't watch from a great and safe distance, shielding herself from the the certain wreckage I was about to cause. She didn't demand that I stop and pull myself together, nor did she coddle me and feed me the casual niceties so easily said (and so blithely become merely pleasant noise). 

All she could do was love me and wish for me a soft landing.

These days, my rough patches are not so rough. What seemed so bleak and attenuated now has softly blurred edges and rounded corners. I don't seem to cut myself on my life too often anymore. My head catches fire with stories and words rather than panic and paralysis. Still, I have my moments, and get caught off guard, not by the rawness and the nakedness, but more by despair or grief. Life changes. God, does life change! Thank God that it does, and me along with it.

But for all that it changes, for all that I have been changed, still, one of the dearest prayers I know remains: I wish for you-- for me-- for us all-- a soft landing. No matter our strength or faith or goodness or grace; for all our mended brokenness and razor-edged faults, we all fall sometimes. We all sit in the back of a taxi, hurtling off the bridge at a million miles an hour, falling into forever. 

And as we fall, as we plummet to the surety of a trap door bottom, we can still wish for a soft place to land. And in that landing, that soft and gentle landing, may we find a place to breathe, a spot of rest in the palm of God's hand.

To my dearest Kaelyn-- wishing for you the softest of places to land. xoxo

03 Tishrei 5774: Yearn

I may have mentioned this before, but there are two things that I do well. I admit to this relatively freely, and have only pressed the delete key into service about seventeen times in an effort to either perfect that statement or to quell the squishy, icky, self-conscious feeling I get when I get all braggy and out there. Thing is, I've had independent confirmation of these two things-- even by people who don't know me. I mean, it's one thing when a friend compliments you on something. They kind of have to do that, in that friendly-I-love-you-and-I-support-you kind of way that friends have. But when you get that same compliment from a stranger, or someone you don't know well at all-- it has a sticking power that moves the validity of the compliment up a notch or three.

So-- two things. First is writing. I love to write. I love to put words to the bright and shiny (or dark and twisted) pictures in my head. I love the words-- all of them, and have been known to worry at a particular word or phrase for what seems like forever, in an effort to find the exactly right and perfect word. I listen for the cadence that wraps around my words, adding a resonance that rings true to my ear. I listen for the music of the words, listen for the clear bell tone, like a resolution to an unfinished chord.

Music. My first love, and it gets woven into so much that I do. Even in my writing-- I hear its music, hear the songs pour forth, their rhythms and measures building and flowing. Music is the other thing I do well. Singing, to be exact. I do it a lot. If writing fills my head with sound and gives life to the words that chatter and sing and play there, their notes rising and falling in a waterfall symphony that teaches me the lessons of my heart and illuminates the dark and twisted passages playing hide and seek there, music has always been the one thing that gets me out of my head. 

When I write, I find me.

When I sing, I find God.

This may be the very reason why, when I was twenty or so, and angry, and lost, and filled with existential angst, and broken beyond repair (as I decided I had to be), that I gave up singing. I remember saying to myself "I will never sing again." And I didn't, for a very long time. I may have sung in the shower, or with the radio in my car. But as for singing, real singing that got me to that place-- that transcendent, holy place where the music flowed in me and through me and went upwards and outwards and carried a note and my soul along with it straight to God-- that didn't happen. I shut that down, locked up tight and silent and walked through my days trapped inside my head.

It was noisy in my head, without the music. Noisy and dissonant and jangly. For two decades, I was trapped in my own silence. even when I got sober, even when I went to look for God, I stayed silent. I was afraid to sing, afraid of my voice, what it would sound like after years and years of disuse (not to mention the years and years of abuse. Afraid that even when I sang again, really sang, I would would no longer be able to find God, and would be trapped in my silence forever.

And then, somewhere in there, somewhere in that silence and that fear, I took my son to Sunday School when he was six. While I was in the synagogue, I heard the sound of an Am being played, and I was freed. Okay, not instantly. But that one chord, that melancholy, joyous, yearning chord, found me, found my silence and unlocked the chains I'd so carefully set in place.

Yearning. It is neither want nor need. There is need and desire in it, but it is more a reaching up, a reaching out, in hope, in joy, in despair and desolation. It is a flame that flickers and moves upward, dancing and guttering, and glowing through it all. It is an Am, sweet and knowing and raw. It is a question, a prayer, a fluid and graceful arc. It is the human heart's cry of "Where are you?" and the breathless hope of God's answer "Hineini-- Here I am."

I found my voice, left the silence behind, when I heard the yearning of that music. It was the voice of my own desire. In it, I found benediction. I found blessing. I found God. And when I opened up again, lifted my voice in song again, I found God again-- and God welcomed me home.

29 Elul 5773: Return

So, here's the part where I get a little wonky, a little out there. A little (if I may be so bold) vulnerable. Here's the part where I say: 

We are always at the Gate. 

We are always at Sinai. 

We are always redeemed.

We all-- every one of us-- walk a path with God. We may not recognize it or acknowledge it, but we do. There is beauty and pain and hope and despair in every one of those paths. Percentages may change. How long I choose to walk in despair may change and shift. It is the same for sorrow and wonder and joy. They are all there. It's what we carry and what we take away. It is our breath. Our souls. Our hope and sorrow. It is the Gate. It is Sinai. 

It is, ever and always, our redemption.

The beauty of Elul is the realization that I am there-- right there-- poised at the edge of everything-- always. I have dived and reflected, shined lights and prepared, to stand here-- right here-- with my heart open , eyes wide, filled with blessings and forgiveness, filled with my humanity and acceptance of yours. Ready, so very ready, to step through. To fit, to be, to become. 

Ready.

And the thing I take away from this holy and sacred undertaking (entered into on a lark, carried out reluctantly, resentful of the discipline and formality, and doing it anyway) (and learning and growing and becoming as a result) -- another of those profound, transformative, life-altering truths that I find unlooked for and in odd places-- what I find is this: either every day is holy or no day is.  Today, I choose to live in a world where every day is holy. The gate is always open. I am always there. God is always there, ready to catch me, grab my hand and dance.

Tonight. Tomorrow. Yom Kippur. A week from next Thursday. Either every day is holy or no day is. The gates of repentance are always open. I am returned. I am redeemed. All I have to do is step through.

Thank you for being a part of my journey. Thank you for shining your lights in my darkness, for celebrating my joy and triumph, for teaching me the glory of silence the holiness of community. You brought your songs, your souls your lives and given me welcome/  I have been blessed beyond imagining. 

Shana tova umetukah-- may you have a sweet year, filled with wonder and joy, light and love, healing and wholeness.


Just in case you didn't see this the first time around-- I wrote this as I entered into Elul. It is no less true having walked through these days.


The Edge of Everything

We gathered,

all of us,

having walked this long road

Before.

There is so much I don't

remember of it:

Cold

and dust

and heat-cracked pavement.

And noise!

God, the noise--

It could tear you apart

and get inside your head

and all you want

is just a little piece of

Quiet,

A chance to

Breathe

without feeling like

Everything--

your hope

your fear

your love

and

doubt--

All of it,

All of you

was caught

somewhere in your chest,

or maybe your throat,

And all you want is just one small

Breath

to be easy

and quiet.

So we gathered

there,

Here

at the edge,

the very edge of

Everything;

Stopped in our noise

and our doubt

and fear.

Stopped

at the edge

of love

and hunger:

At the edge of want,

to catch the light

of a thousand suns

and ten thousand moons

and absolute

Stillness.

Glinting of silver

and an infinity of

Blue,

Subtle variations

of color

and depth,

Caught

in the  reflection of

Sky.

Caught,

all along the edges,

with light.

We gathered here,

Together,

at the edge,

bathed in

silence

and bending light,

weary and

ready, 
to leap. 
To dive into that pool
filled to overflowing
with love
and doubt
and hunger 
and hope,
that waiting pool of 
Self.

There, 
And filled now with sudden, shivery

Stillness,

and stars that reel

in mirrored waters.

And so I leap

With the light of

Heaven,

Of earth and sky,

Reflecting

all my doubt

my love

and longing.

And I remember

A road of dust and

Heat-cracked pavement

And I gather in the noise

And light

And breath-stopping fear,

Gather them in, to

Release them

In a single

Graceful sweep:
There is beauty in my pain.
There is more in
Letting go.

And so I breathe:

I am returned

To the edge of my

Beginning.

26 Elul 5773: Hope

I knew I would love The John Laroquette show from the very first episode: a cynical, sarcastic, self-deprecating, trying-to-get/stay-sober alcoholic who had bottomed out after losing everything and was desperately trying to piece his life back together without getting too attached to it, without allowing himself to care too much about it.

Not that I identified in any way to this character setting. Not that I appreciated the gallows humor a little too well. At all. Actually, what drew me in, what made me exhale in easy recognition was a sign that hung on the wall of John's office:

This is a dark ride.

Five words that captured my life, framed everything, in perfect context. You must know (by now) that one of my mottoes is "Why use ten words when a hundred will do?" But there, hanging on the (fake) wall of the (fake) bus station's (fake) night manager's (fake) office was this five-word sign. A sign of absolute and immutable truth: this is a dark ride.

Angels could have sung in twenty-severn part harmony, while demons and dybbuks danced a tarantella and God tossed confetti on the lot of them. My Truth, writ in fake Gothic font on signboard and hung in all its pixellated glory, on the walls of a set for a TV show.

Life before hope. Life, when hope was a dirty little secret, an impotent exercise in futility and failure. Pandora would have been better served had she shut the box lid on Hope's tiny gossamer fairy wings when she had the chance.

And, okay, maybe not life without hope. More life with a hope that was misplaced and passive. I hoped for all the wrong things-- that you would save me, that God would heal me, that life would magically work in my favor. That I would be happy. It's not that these were bad hopes. It's how I went about hoping. 

What I did was exactly nothing. I did not ask, nor pray, nor act, nor choose. I sent my hope out into the universe (my tiny universe of one, that shut out light and air and the voice of God), whispered and weightless, and I waited. I waited to be struck whole. I waited to be made happy. I waited to be saved from myself. With every whispered prayer for hope I released, I got sadder and angrier and more self-righteously justified in my pain and loneliness. 

What I didn't understand-- what took me halfway to forever to learn-- was that hope is an action. I am responsible and obligated to participate in my redemption. You will never save me. You can offer me strength and shine a light on my path-- you can even lend me some hope. But you will not save me. You will not make me happy. You don't have that power (of course, it also means you cannot make me sad, or angry). Those are all inside jobs. 

God will not strike me whole, heal by brokenness, relieve me of my despair. I won't even get into the circular and didactic argument of "Well, God could if S/He wanted..." That's not the point, not in my belief set. I can dance in the palm of God's hand, and find respite and release (and I have). My faith and my prayers change me, give me grace to walk forward in my life, face whatever is in front of me-- the good stuff and the bad. 

Pray to God, but row towards shore. Hope is an action. I have to hope with my feet. If I merely watch from the sidelines of my life, waiting for hope to kick in, life will be an eternally dark ride. Hope, as an action, as a prayer, lifts me and fills me and allows me not just to leap, but to soar.

22 Elul 5773: Dare

On my one year sober anniversary, I felt somewhat at a loss. I mean, really-- how in the world do you celebrate anything, if not with a flute or seven of champagne (merely as a prelude to the serious drinking that was sure to follow)? I went to my regular meeting and announced for all the world to hear (or at least the 27 people who were present): I have one year, today.

I'd seen the drill a thousand times. OK, maybe not a thousand, but at least one or two at every meeting I went to (which was pretty much a daily occurrence), someone announce his or her anniversary. Some counted days. Some, months. There were many of these folks at every meeting. For some, it took months, sometimes years, to put some time together. Often, we'd hear "I have 3 days. Again" or "I'm back. Got two weeks this time." Some iteration of time and desperation and hope.

Incremental anniversaries were announced, but there were always a helluva lot fewer people making these announcements as the years went up. Two years. Three. Seven. Seventeen. With each bigger chunk of time, the number of people to reach those milestones became fewer. One year anniversaries were kinda special. At the one year mark, it was as if you had crossed a magic line-- you'd made it, member of the club. Not that it would be a slam-dunk guarantee of sobriety, forever and ever, world without end, amen. Not that (not ever that). But at a year, there was a recognition that, at the very least, there was a chance that sobriety just might stick. 

So I announcded my anniversary. I felt a little proud; I felt a little lost. There was applause and exclamatory congratulations flew across the room. I got the obligatory "How'd ya do it?" followed quickly with my equally obligatory "With the help of God and the fellowship of this program!" It was a script we'd all played at before, in one role or another. Right at that moment, I didn't believe a word of any of it.

Frankly, I had no idea how the hell I'd stayed sober for a year. 

We went for coffee and to grab a bite after the meeting. No champagne. :) I got a chip-- a brass coin-- embossed with a giant Roman numeral I on one side, and "To thine own self be true" on the other. I got a rose. And I got a card. The front was kinda sappy-- watercolor flowers and "Hooray! Hooray!" Lots of exclamation points. Or at least, it felt like a lot. I opened it. 

This was another of those truth things, found unexpectedly. It hit me between the eyes and took my breath away. Hooray, hooray--

"You did the thing you feared the most!"

And I realized, in that instant, that I had. Sobriety was a terrifying prospect when I was just starting. How in the world can you live without a drink to calm you and protect you and put a glassy, fluid shield between you and the rest of the universe? How in the world do you face life raw and vulnerable? How in the world can anyone dare to hope-- that things will change, the life gets better, that there is forgiveness and perhaps even love? 

How? A day at a time. A day at a time, a minute, an hour, a breath-- you do the thing you fear the most. 

In honor of that long ago moment, that changed my life and opened my heart; in honor of this month of Elul, for today, for this moment, I will dare to live of life of hope. I will dare to trust, and pray, and believe. For today, I will let faith overrule my fear. For this moment, I will brave the shadows. For today, I will reach out to offer strength and kindness, to shine a light in your darkness.

For today, for this moment, in this breath-- this eternal and infinite breath-- I will do the thing I fear the most, and I will dare to leap...