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.

Exile

I am an exile from myself,
walking a path of dust and fear
in my seven league boots
shredded by time.

I cannot see my heart.
I cannot feel my breath.

I have drifted through
an endless night.
Stars catch in my hair;
they swing me too close to the moon,
but its light is only reflection;
it cannot hold me.

It's quiet when I drift.
The music of this silence
is so full and big!
Too full, too big for my
unseen heart to bear.

I cannot hear my emptiness
I cannot taste my weariness

But my feet,
bloodied and torn,
feel the weight of sky
and the pull of earth.
My body understands
the loneliness of water
and the longing of wind.

This is the border of my exile,
dust and fear and the drifting of stars.

I have no offering
of emptiness and stars
Still, I draw near,
an exile no more.

Elul Day Three - Search

I write a seder for Passover every year. It is one of my most favorite things to do. Of course, I time it all wrong. I don't pay attention, and wham! There it is, staring me in the face, again. Daring me to cook and clean and write and cook some more, all in record time. And it's not like Pesach is a surprise. It comes, every year, at the exact same time. I know, I know - it  seems to float around the calendar, but really, the date never changes. I just live on one calendar, and Pesach lives on another. Maybe that's what lulls me into a false sense of time, and having enough of it.

Maybe it's just a matter of paying attention.

I don't do that nearly as well as I'd like to. Sometimes, I fear I don't do that nearly at all. I seem to pass through my life (no pun intended), barely touching the surfaces. Any depth only comes through hindsight. Oh! That's what was going on! I say, days or weeks or months later, when something else entirely jogs my memory (tapping me on the metaphorical shoulder, or kicking me in the slightly less metaphorical gut) and transports me back. I get it now. 

And the engines of time start up again, whisking me away to traipse through my days once more.

So I write a seder every year, and I write it for my son. I write it because I am required to tell the story to the one who is too young to even know how to ask what the heck is going on (a paraphrase, I'm sure). The seder has changed year by tear. The story is the same; the way we tell it isn't. One year was sock puppets. One year was a tale of magic and suspense, told by talking birds, and I think a butterfly. There was "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" Seder, and of course, the ever popular write-your-own-adventure seder, where we broke up the story into segments and teams were encourage to act out their section as creatively as possible.

One year, I was inspired. I wrote Game Day Seder - a series of games and quizzes and challenges to tell the story from beginning to end. There were a lot of kids that year, so it was great, good fun. That year, I started with a treasure hunt for chametz. Now, you should know: I don't get rid of chametz - bread and other rising stuff, and stuff that doesn't actually rise but gives the appearance of doing so, and rising stuff you can't even see but someone will know it's there, even if it's only you and God. I don't use it or eat it during Passover, but I also don't scour my house of it. This year I didn't, next year? Maybe.

Even so, we had a treasure hunt. I hid eighteen large croutons around the house, divided the kids into two teams, and armed each team with a feather and a flashlight. I considered a candle, but then, I knew the kids and their clumsy intentions and willingness to throw themselves into the fun. Flashlights were a good choice.

On your marks. Get set. Go.

And they midfully and intentionally went about their way, searching for hidden chametz. Piece by piece, they found all that was hidden, with enthusiasm and frustration and triumph. Every piece accounted for, eventually. All that was hidden, brought to light, then offered, all together, a flaming, smoking pyre atop my grill, sending up a pleasing odor as dusk gathered in the light from the corners of the sky and the first few stars trembled in the heavens.

I love that we are required to search for all that is hidden. I love that we are given so many hints and reminders throughout the year to do so, so that even people like me, who rip and run and race and stumble and fall through the days can still be reminded to pause, long enough to search all those hidden places, to find - with triumph and trepidation and joy - all of the stuff that was hidden.

I think of Elul as another one of those blue threads that reminds us to pay attention, a gift to allow us to bend and dive and search and find all of the things we hid away, to shine a light in the dark and murky corners and sweep it all together with a feather touch, ready to offer it all up and so be made free. And so be made whole.

#blogelul

And fly

Count your things.
Add them up.
Amass a pile of More.

Grab and gather
in forty-nine steps,
the firsts
of your herd,
your horde
your heart.
Count them
in countless succession:

All your best -
Your hopes.
Your sins.
Fill your tent;
load the baskets and bags
with counting
and counted riches that
smell of excess
and succulent
ripeness:
A bursting of Ready,
sweet and sour and sharp
all at once
on your tongue.

Count them all.
Gather them up;
Breathe in
seven breaths of seven
and lay them at
the waiting altar
that stands in the shadow of God.
Lay your counted glory there -
an offering:
a psalm of blessing
and hopeful benediction.

Lay it all down
and fly.

Sanctuary

I counted out the measures
In cubits
and inches
and baskets of grain
And made a sanctuary
From a field of grass
And cornflowers,
And it was pleasing to behold,
And silent.

Beyond those borders,
Beyond the altars and their
Sacred, silent beauty,
Lay the wild lands--
Choked with weeds
And shadows
That stretched in still echoes
Back
Over miles
And unmeasured days,
Leached of color
And light.

They came,
Crossing the wilderness
With steps of infinity,
Measured in endless cubits
And dusty inches,
And gathered here,
In my field of glory,
Carrying baskets laden with their gifts
And sins
And doubt:
Their sacrifice,
Offered in silvered longing.
And laid on that altar
Their gifts and broken burdens,
All together and all at once.

They gathered there
In the field of grass
Bounded by cubits; and inches
and meters and measures
They lifted their voices
In  an endless hosanna
In aching need,
And sang

Hallelujah.

It was benediction--
Prayer,
A bounty of sweet and
splintered offerings.
They sang
Into that holy stillness--
That glorious sanctuary
Of unbounded measure
And sweetly bending grasses,
And mist that hovered
Like the breath of God--

Filled.

Hallelujah.


For the ending of the counting of the Omer
Stacey Zisook Robinson
c 2014

The Holiness of Broken Things: a poem for parashat Ki Tisa

I carry my brokenness with me
It is holy--
as holy as my breath,
my heart,
my wholeness.

It is a part of me, these
scattered pieces
of shattered longing
and battered dreams.
My sins.
All of them.
I carry them--
all of them;
All these broken things
that bend me and bow me,
together with my wholeness,
these holy things.
Idols to my shame,
wrapped in gold and
adorned in abandon.
I fed the fires of that sacred forge
with fear and guilt,
and the altars ran slick with salted tears.
I offered--
offer--
the broken pieces as
my sin offering,
for they are holy,
and I carry them with me,
together with my wholeness.

I carry my brokenness with me--
all my sins
and shame
and salted tears,
and I place them
together with my wholeness
on the sacred altars
holy, holy, holy.
They twine together in red and gold flames,
Broken
and Whole
offered together
and returned to me ,
Whole
and Broken--
Holy still,
carried together
until I reach the next altar.