Soon the Sabbath will be upon us. The Sabbath, among many things, is a damn in the river, a break in the round that would become endless and spin itself into nothing. Day by day more pages of the story come. Three more pages to trickle out tomorrow and then the rest of Sabbath, a rest that, i admit is incompatible with waking up at 8:30, pounding coffee to get ready to head out into the cold for shul, and then into more cold for the bus and to go from the bus to the store. In some ways it is the busiest of days and yet it is a busyness that makes sense and takes me from what would become deadly routine. The other option is sleeping, sleeping late, sitting in the house till twelve, coming back and sleeping till five Masturbating? None of that wss ever any good.

The bulk of my religious growing up was me telling myself all the things I should believe in, repeating over and and over again bits of the Bible I could not yet fully buy. Do not worry, consider the lilies of the field. How one stopped worrying, how one let perfect love cast out all fear, was never fully explained.

Last night when I hear Dick Gregory say: I learned a long time ago that fear and God cannot occupy the same space, it is like at last I am ready to say Amen. All this year I have been under the miracle kiss of this. How full of terrors my life was. God was always there, but he was at a distance and these days he has moved up quicker. He is the first thing I stumble to in the morning, singing his praise, lifted up by his nimble fingers. He is in the lighting of the candles, the baruching of the atah adonoying and then elohaiming of the melech haolams. Gradually, together, as we move through praise and then through solemn memory, and then praise again and dedication and repentance, as we move through the acknowledgement of dark things I do not understand and redemptions not done before we come to asking, day by day, and hour by hour we undo the knots of distrust, of fear, or dis-grace that all the years have weaved.

There was so much to do last night and all the important things done, and still more I wish for. Right now I think of some part of some book to write, but this is not the time. This is early morning time is what this is. I think of all the fears I don't have. Sharon Olds, in a poem, wonder who she will be now that she had forgiven her mother. Now that she is no longer hating, who can she be? That is like me. Now that I am not longer afraid, who can I be? Now that I am not most of the harmful things i was, what can I be? I will have to be made over. Only you can make me over.

Derekh Yeshurin, the way of love and desire. That is my Judaism, reform is just the temple I am in. Should I go somewhere else, my Judaism would be the same, it would be the path of desire, it would be the path of love. This God that I always wanted to love, I am gradually coming to have a crazy love for. This path that I began to tread I am not loving. The people around me I want to love and desire. I want to indulge in how wonderful they are like candy. I want to be lush with life and not tread it day after tiresome day.

I did not even know it was possible, Lord I did not know it

The truth is a thing so seldom required of us that it becomes increasingly difficult to tell. People want to hear what they want to hear. Often they want to reconfirm the lies they have already told themselves. Sadly, people see themselves in your eyes. From the moment your mother says tell the truth, and you do and then she grounds you or your father spanks you, and they continue to insist you tell the truth, you realize, if you have any worldly wisdom about you, that what is required is not honesty or, for that matter, integrity, but merely agreement. I say this is so, you say it is so and all shall go well with you or, at any rate, better than it will if you don't play right.

Now wonder we hardly know what truth is. Rather than go on like some who would convince us that their particular ideas are absolute, I will say that truth is mainly concerned with our honest, or true perception of things around us and in us. By this definition there is no final word and no ultimate truth in this world. Many of us are so out of touch with who we are, though, that to them this last paragraph will mean absolutely nothing. This is what the philosophers call "living in bad faith".

It is all fine and good to talk about rejecting none and embracing all, but his is hard work. I mean just to keep up this desire is hard work. Firstly, let's admit, most people resist embracing. They resist the embrace of each other, they resist the embrace of God, they resist loving themselves. After so much resistance and so long in this world is it any wonder that the soul that has chosen to love is worn out? Add to this that love, which is the most difficult commandment, is one that many religious people think is so simple they have roundly chosen to ignore it.

This morning at prayer I feel the circle of people I pray for widening to those it did not touch before. When I sing Shacharis, the morning prayer, how do I pray for others? It is like a net, or like the wings of the eagle in the psalm, it is like the chuppah in the night prayer spreading over myself, over those in my heart. As my heart widens so does the chuppah, As my heart widens so do I.

Every morning we thank God for his miracles which are with us everyday, and in so doing not only vow to see his hand in all places and things, but pray for this gift of seeing. The first miracle in love is how we become greater, our souls becoming part of the souls of those we lift in our morning prayers.

BEADS

Every morning we are reminded that God himself renews every morning and remakes the world, every morning we are invited by our ancestors who first wrote these prayers to open our eyes to wonders of God. A miracle is not, as I once learned, something that has no other explanation, for in the end all things tend to have their explanation and the jaded heart can find a mundane reason for everything. Rather, the miracle is the seeing ofGod's hand in everything, especially the very ordinary. This is what life is made of anyway. We are invited to see the mriacles he creates everyday, rather that be blind and callous and say that we will acknowldge God, acknowledge the spiritual, change our ways, open out hearts only when God attempts to get our attention, if he does. We reshift our minds every morning and pray that we be drawn to the Torah so that our hearts be changed. Every morning we repent, we renew, we encoutner God anew. I find the people I have dealth with will deal with the fireinds andfamily I shake my head over, going through my mind s I pray. I find all the work I must do in the day going through my head, being blessed and sanctified. The events of the day pass through the fingers of my mind like rosary beads, common and often unlovely things now prayed over and suddenly sanctified.

Oh, Lord the Soul you made in me is a pure one. You have blessed. Amen.

The more I persist in this, the more I am sure that you have always been our only hope and there is no help outside of you, for every hope is you.

unbelief

This morning, praying the Aleinu out of Gates of Prayer, I hear it afresh. One of the things we pray for is an end to unbelief. Here i realize how many of the people in my life have great beliefs about what is important, what isn't, what should be believed in, what should not. Skip the particular--and fairly new--beliefs of various groups of Orthodox Jews, what Jews think is important is belief. We firmly hope for the day when the world is full of presence of God and unbelief-which we equate witha type of blindness-ceases. In Christianity unbelief garners a punishment. If you do not believe, you cannot be saved and then you burn. Your burn forever. There are Chsitians who deny this, but that comes more from a willfui misinterpretation than from anything in the religion, I think.

In Judaism unbelief is its own punishment, It's own torture. God and glory show up where they are invited, and where they are denied, they are restrained so that unfaith creates more unfaith. In the face of unbelief we maintain silence, and so does God. We do believe in the great power of mankind. A torah, which contains the presence of God, is not a Torah unless it is handwritten by a human being. Torah cannot be followed unless in the midst of the people and by people and God cannot exist in our lives unless we invite him. Some people feel this is a rather upbeat belief, but in its own way, I think it's a little scary.

the power of prayers

This morning I set the clock wrong, which means waking up much to late to pray Shaharis on time. Might as well go back to bed, hich I do,and get up at ten. Praying Shaharis at ten in the morning is necessary, but it is not the same as Five A.M. I've been reading Peel A Pom where she talks about the different elements, so often used in the Craft, and how they are used in Judaism. I was reading her article about the void and I realized that, getting up at five is like getting up and praying into the void. That is the most wonderful prayer to start the day. Sharharis, prayed in the darkness has a wonderful power.




Praying in the void of darkness is so powerful that Cistercians do it twice before daylight and once at sunrise. Maybe this is also not only because of how powerful praying in the dark is, but maybe it also has to do with the power of certain prayers. Minha ought to be prayed in the afternoon. Maariv works best at the liminal time between sunset and night.

I haven't looked at the descriptive heading of this blog, which is essentially the descriptive heading of my life, of my practice of Judaism. I think I have moved from a marginal and more far out form to something more conventional. Always I was on the very edges of Christianity. I am so used to having to severely tweak a religion before it can make sense, that this crystallization, this becoming more and more Jewish is new to me. I become more desirous to pray in Hebrew, not less, not curious about the origin of a ritual. The Nekra becomes more and not less sacred. my fellow Jews more and not less important. I steadily find myself rejecting certain things, realizing how much of a Jew I really am, how much of a christian I never was and how much ofone I never want to be. How strange. Is this, too, part of uniting the flower to the bee?