Miryam's Space

It’s not an easy thing demanded of us  at this awesome time of year, to be open, to look within, to change. For me, I know if I’m worried, or stressed, it may not even be possible. So T’shuva , returning, or repentance, has got to begin with putting on my  own oxygen mask before attending to others.  All week, since S’lichot, I’ve been obsessed with a powerful song by Dan Nichols, I Found my Love, because I finally saw this mysterious song as an incredible personal journey of T’shuva, of finding a way from anxiety to a sense of love and peace. And I am drawn to these images of the waves, and the sounds of this song, and to a shared journey. May we all find that sense of peace and love this Rosh Hashanah, and may it open our hearts to the possibility of change.

Dan Nichols’ I Found My Love

And the waves come crashing in.

I got away for a couple of days; shut my mouth and opened up to the waves.

A gentle reminder, in the hush of the foam; that the waters inside you, pour it out and come home;

And the waves come crashing in, and the waves come crashing in.

The moment is here, and the moment is gone;  the peace I crave comes when now is my song

releasing the fear, and the lump in my throat; to dive in the deep space between every note.

And the waves come crashing in, and the waves come crashing in.

With my confessions crashing on the beach, I find the peace in me within my reach;

With every honest wave that washed ashore, I found my love….I found my love

And the waves come crashing in…. (It ends and begins with love).

Families! It happens sometimes, that one parent or sibling chooses to outcast another….

There’s a wonderful story, about families, confusion, and choices that bring blessing or curse. As you read this story, notice how many characters face crossroads and choose a fateful path. This story is adapted from Laura Simms telling of Flowering Words, from the book Mitzvah Stories http://reclaimingjudaism.org/

In the land of Kurdistan, there once lived a Jewish King and Queen who had three daughters. The king wanted his daughters to marry wealthy princes, and the two eldest did. But the youngest daughter fell in love with a poor man, and married him against her parents’ wishes. The king, displeased, banished her from the kingdom.

Soon afterwards, the king awoke blind one morning (of course he did, he banished his daughter!) Doctors could not heal him. But one doctor knew of a tree with magic healing leaves which could restore sight. The tree, however, grew in a distant and dangerous land, from which no one returned.  The king commanded his son-in-laws to make the perilous journey. He told them that if they returned with the leaves, he would reward them with wealth and power. If however, they returned without the leaves, they would be killed. Having no choice, they left with strong horses, gold and food. The youngest daughter begged her husband to go, though they were banished. She wanted to help heal her father. So the poor husband willingly set out on an old mare. He carried with him only the desire to heal his father-in-law. He agreed to the same conditions as the others.

The two princes came to the border of the Land of No Return, where a guard described the awful things they would face and the gruesome dangers ahead. Terrified, they turned around and fled for their lives. They knew they could not return, so they opened up an inn near the border and remained there.

The third husband came to the same border, and spoke with the same guard, receiving the same dire warnings. But his desire to heal the king was greater than his fear, so he insisted on making the journey. The guard told him that the only one who knew the way to the magic tree was a fierce giant who lived in a house in a nearby valley. The young man reached the house, which was as high as a mountain. When the giant’s wife saw the man, she urged him to leave:  Your life is in danger! she warned. My husband will want to devour you..  The youth insisted that he must finish his quest, and told his story.

As soon as the ravenous giant returned home, his wife fed him.   I smell a man!  roared the giant.  His wife told him of the brave visitor whom she had hidden under the bed. The giant was astonished at the young man’s courage, and his dedication. Since he had already eaten his fill, he told the young man the instructions he needed to reach the tree and its healing leaves.

You are the first human I’ve met who’s not a coward!  he said, and so he told him:  For seven days you must ride until you reach a crossroad,  In one direction is written “Take this road and find safety and happiness’ and in the other is written “Do not take this road. Whoever follows it will not return”  Do not hesitate, Take the

Road of No Return. Travel until the road ends and there is nowhere to go and then say out loud “What a beautiful path” Then the road will continue on.

Next there is a valley filled with poisonous snakes. No human can survive this, so you must call out “What a beautiful valley filled with honey!”  and the snakes will disappear.  After awhile you will come to a valley filled blood and awful beasts. You must call out “What sweet butter” . The valley will empty out and you can continue.

The giant went on:  Pay attention: When you come to a palace guarded by a dragon and a viper, you have arrived. If the creatures’ eyes are open they are sleeping and you can enter, if they are closed, they’re awake. Enter the palace while they’re sleeping and you’ll come to a door guarded by four lions. If their eyes are closed, they’re awake. Wait until their eyes are open, they are sleeping and you may enter. The door has bells, I will give you a cloth to muffle their noise. You will see a queen inside asleep on her bed. When she sleeps, all the creatures sleep with their eyes open. Beside her bed grows the tree with healing leaves. Fill a bag with those leaves and put some in your pocket as well. Carefully exchange rings with her. Then without hesitation, return just as you have come.

The young man did as he was told. retrieving the leaves, exchanging rings, and returning as he’d come. But when he’d crossed the border, he decided to stop at the inn of his brother-in-laws before returning to the king.

The two princes saw the sack he was carrying, and asked about his adventure. The young man told all except for the ring and the leaves in his pocket. Well, that night they fed him poison, threw acid in his eyes to bind him and locked him in a closet. They stole his sack and made their way back to the king to claim their reward.

In the inn the next morning the youth awoke caged and blind. He remembered the leaves in his pocket and healed himself. He broke out of his prison and made his way back to his wife on his slow mare.

He showed her the leaves he had, but she replied  you are too late, my sisters husbands have already healed my father.

Meanwhile in the Land of No Return, the Queen awakened, and saw the ring, and noticed the leaves missing from her tree. She soared on her magic carpet in search of whoever it was that had stolen her ring and leaves. She inquired everywhere until she heard about two princes, now prime ministers, who had healed the king. She travelled to the palace to hear their story. They told her what they recalled, but then said they’d found the leaves in a forest and picked them.

That’s a lie!  she said. The youngest princess’ husband rode to the palace that same day. He recognized the Queen. He showed her the ring, and told her his story, and not only her, but the king and the royal family as well. He told his story in exact detail – all that had happened. Satisfied, the queen took back her ring and returned to her land. The two prime ministers were banished from the kingdom.  Perhaps they will one day learn to tell the truth, and be allowed back.  When the king heard the third husband’s story, he understood all that happened, perhaps even the cause of his own blindness. The third daughter’s husband became a trusted advisor, and they lived happily ever after in the palace.  Perhaps the Queen still lives in her palace in the Land of No Return guarding the magic healing leaves.

Did you notice all the choices? The youngest princess? The Giant’s wife and the Giant? The Queen? Each choice carries with it a motive linked to karma, consequences. The youngest daughter’s husband is moved by pure kindness, giving him incredible courage.  He traverses a scary road to arrive at place of great blessing. His kindness becomes his bridge.  Kol ha-olam kulo gesher tzar m’od, teaches R. Nachman of Breslov: the whole world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to fear.

September is a time of choices and new beginnings. My nephew is beginning his freshman year, my daughter her senior year at university, my son begins high school. We each begin a New Year full of promise And always as we begin September comes this Torah portion, Ki Tavo, where the Israelites are on the border of a new, promised land, where many choices await. How will they know which way to turn? Moses and the elders will teach them!  And I love the way they teach: it encourages me to be AS DRAMATIC AS POSSIBLE in my own teaching! These verses  (Deut 27:2) instruct the people as they cross into the promised land to place the words and commands they heard at Sinai on large stones. OK, those are the rules: so what? Well, there are consequences, Blessings or Curses for choosing, or not choosing rules of kindness and decency. To dramatize these consequences, the Blessings are to be shouted from a beautiful, green mountain with flowing streams, G’rezim, and horrible Curses shouted from a barren rocky peak (Ebal).  Could there be a more dramatic lesson plan?

So we begin our New Year with choices, small and large: what to say, what to eat, who to befriend, how much to drink. Some choices feel really good at first, but may turn out really awful. We tend to rationalize ALL our choices, so how do we really know the blessing choice from the curse one?.

Rabbi Joe Black http://www.rabbijoeBblack.com/ has a wonderful song called The Blessing and the Curse  Some excerpts here:

When you come into the land,

when you cross that sacred stream,

Be careful where you stand,

at Ebal, or at G’rezim…..

…be careful what you gather,

 is it blessing, is it curse?

But who would knowingly gather curses, who would stand at Ebal?

What if it’s hard to tell the difference? So hard that it seems:

the moon will get you thinking the sun can quench your thirst,

be careful what you’re drinking, is it blessing or curse?

Things are seldom the way they seem,

 yesterday’s promise is tomorrow’s dream

Dreams become the glue that binds the universe,

They can help us tell the difference between the blessing and the curse.

So choices are not always labeled. But we choose anyway.  Just as in the story, the chorus of the song suggests that our dreams, our ideals, can be our gyroscope!

But shouldn’t day-to-day choices be made on more practical grounds? That’s what the king and the brother-in-laws thought! But choose a cruel act, or an apathetic one, and the world changes a bit for the worse. Choose kindness, truth, compassion, beauty, and that karma is real too. In the story, redemption is possible even following a King’s misdeed.  But in real life, there are no magic leaves, so I end with a question: what can be those magic leaves in our lives?

Do you remember what your favorite story was when you were four or five years old? My absolutely favorite was Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss The book is about an Elephant named Horton, my hero. Mayzie, a very irresponsible bird, convinces Horton to sit on her egg while she takes a short “break”.  Well, she migrates and parties the whole winter in Miami beach! Horton just stays on that egg. It’s crazy: the sight of an elephant sitting on a nest in a tree! Horton is laughed at by his jungle friends, hammered by bad weather, caged by hunters, forced on a terrible sea voyage, and finally put in a traveling circus. Each time Horton’s laughed at or hurt he says: I meant what I said and I said what I meant, an elephant’s faithful 100%. Finally Mayzie returns for her hatchling. But when the egg hatches, the emerging creature has a trunk and big ears (so much for genetics!)  Mayzie doesn’t want the hatchling, and Horton and the chick return to the jungle together (yachad!) . Why was this story my favorite? Not sure, but the  world is big and scary when you’re five, you might even feel a gawky hatchling, maybe I needed to know I’d be cared for anyway, by the power of promises

.

Another memory, this time 7 years old, perhaps you have a similar story to recall:  summer in the Catskills with my Dad and Grandparents: there was a nest above the doorway to the hotel cottage. One early morning I opened the door to find a scraggly little nestling had fallen, mouth open, helpless and wiggling. My Dad placed it gently back in the nest, while an adult bird swiped by his head. I felt pretty amazed at the whole scene. In Parashat Ki Tetse – there’s this wonderful passage in Deut 22:6 If you come upon bird nest before you on the way, in any tree or on the ground, with nestlings or eggs, and the mother sitting on the eggs or nest, you must not take the mother with her children. Send the mother away and then take the young, to have goodness and long life. The text uses the same words for human mother and child. This passage begs the question why? Is it to preserve our meal ticket, by leaving the mother to lay more eggs?  Is it really an act of kindness, and a recognition of kinship to our feathered friends? I like this answer, but maybe it’s a whole lot more than that, for its reward merits goodness and long life, and the wording whispers etyz chayim tree of life.   Perhaps we’re to really notice the miracles of eggs, hatchlings and Momma birds. Perhaps the nests are like our own “nests”: after all, not all animals look after their young, but birds do it big time: did you see March of the Penguins? It’s so crazy because the devotion of those Dad penguins is the only thing ensuring penguins at all!  The nest and devotion of the parent birds are powerful reminders of family connections that enrich us and along the way, baderech, sustain generations. In my experience of becoming Mom, this connection changes everything – a holy and powerful thing, a gift, this bond! Families may be messy things, babies can be colicky, but this can be pure.

This portion also has much to say about parenthood and promises and memory, and breaking those promises, including this: We must not break our pledged to God: in 23:24: Guard what you speak from your lips and do as you have vowed to Adonai you God, as you pledged from your mouth. The Haftarah flips to the promises of God to us, the last verse reminds me of Gershwin’s Our Love is Here to Stay The mountains may crumble, Gibralter may tumble, (they’re only made of clay) but My love is here to stay. (Isaiah 54:10, sort of)

Here’s a crazy thought: we must chase the bird away out of respect for her instinctive vow to care for her nest, because that vow is life. Among the deepest vows are the ones we make to our children.  We promise on the day our beautiful child is born to protect them, to never let them fall, and then of course,  they do – right out of our arms or off the steps, and  onto the brick or into the swimming pool, and we bring them tearfully to the emergency room.   We promise to always be there, and then miss something important, or maybe we just don’t listen hard enough one day when they need us to hear.  What of our vows? We are moved to protect them, and protect ourselves from the unthinkable loss of them. And if we lose them,  what of God’s vow of eternal love? (this is an unexpected place writing these words took me to – feel free to reply!)  Surely the kindest, most loving act would be not to take nestlings at all! But the world does not, cannot sustain every young life. That promise unfulfilled is the most heartbreaking of all.

And real, potent and through it all, Horton  endures.  The promise that endures in spite of the hunters, and the rain and the mockery is love and life and hope.  What will emerge from the bonds of faith and love we make? New life, the end of loneliness for elephants and hatchlings alike, a kinder world of chesed (loving kindness) and hatchlings that bear our dedication, trunks and ears.

Will we be like Horton this Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?. Will me mean what we say and be faithful 100%?   And what about Kol nidre, that prayer in which we ask that all our vows be absolved – How can that be synched? Feel free to share your thoughts on this too!

Back to Horton and that hatchling, there is a beautiful tradition on erev Shabbat of parents blessing their children with the priestly benediction. In studying that section from Naso this year, I struggled with what gives us the right to bless, and what exactly we want from this blessing for our children: is it the magic of its protection? I don’t know, except that it’s part of the incubation process. We bless as an outlet for our dedication, we mean what we say 100%. We hope our hatchlings will leave our nests influenced to turn around and want to bless others, with the trunk of memory, and the ears to listen (to what, I am not sure) Among the most beautiful versions of the priestly benediction in song, is Sam Glaser’s Blessing, which he wrote as his firstborn approached, this English verse leading into the Hebrew benediction; samglaser.com and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPB0tOxNv8g

May God watch over your soul

Guiding every step along the way

May you know deep in your heart

The love God has given you every day

May the light of heaven above reflect in your eyes

So you see all the wonder in the world!

So, do you have a favorite tree? When I was really small my favorite was a cherry tree in the front yard:  limbs low and easy to climb, pointy leaves made tiny rustling sounds, the bark felt rough, it shaded a cool world with a dirt floor for a little kid. I since have loved lots of trees. A story of trees from Gemara, Taanit 5, adapted from Peninnah Schram’s  Stories One Generation tells another:

Once a storyteller attended the wedding of two friends. Underneath the beautiful chuppa, the bride turned to her friend the storyteller: Please, friend, give us a blessing! Well, when a storyteller gives a blessing, it takes the form of…a story. And so he told the following tale.    A long time ago, a man embarked on a journey across the desert. Weary, dusty and thirsty the man spotted an oasis: a beautiful, leafy tree spread its branches above a flowing stream. Delighted, the man approached the cool shade, drank deeply from the crystal stream, washed, his hands and feet. He listened to the splashing and the song of birds, and inhaled the sweet scented fruit of  its branches. After he ate the traveler fell asleep beneath the branches. Awakening refreshed, the he felt strong and ready to journey on. Feeling grateful to the tree he looked up and asked it Elan, Elan, Oh tree, oh tree, bameh averechehca? How can I bless you? I cannot say “May your fruit be sweet” because you already have fruit dripping with nectar. I cannot say “May you have flowing water” because you already have this beautiful stream to nourish you. I cannot say “may you have the shelter of shade” because you already have a leafy canopy. So I will say this: May it be God’s will that the shoots arising from you be like you!  The storyteller turned to the bride and groom and asked bemeh averechecha: with what can I bless you today? You have so many blessings: the fruit of your love for one another, as I have seen you help and support each other the sheltering arms of friends and companions who have gathered here today, the flowing water of wisdom and spirit. This then: May it be God’s will that the children that you love and guide together, and the works that you dedicate your lives to, may these offshoots be like you!

The Torah has some amazing words about trees in parashat Shoftim, Deut. chapter 20, verse 19. This parashah is all about a world of justice, of right, even in the worst times, or especially then, like times war. In verse 19, it tells of a seige to a walled city, and around this city are trees of the field. The text says, it’s  fine to eat from those trees during the seige, but you must not waste them, Lo Tashchit, or cut them down.  Why not? well, here’s where it’s interesting: the text is ki ha-adam eytz hasadeh, which means “because an earthling is a tree of the field”. Now there certainly could be a question mark here: Is a tree a human, who can run away before your seige? But either way it forms a powerful connection between trees and human beings. If you think about it there are LOTS of ways trees are like people!

Standing on the horizon, straight and strong a tree kind looks like person braving life. We come from the adamah, the earth and the root for adam, noun chosen here for human. We have a tough bark,  require water (symbol of wisdom and spirit) air (or inspiration), We may yield sweet fruit: our creations, life’s works, children. We must be rooted, but be brave enough to stretch out our branches.  We are connected to one another – through community, and connected to the generations – through roots and seeds.  (note the 2^nd largest creature on earth is the Aspen forest of Colorodo – a single macroorganism connected beneath the surface! ) And we must NOT CUT ONE  another down. It is not surprising that the next verses are about murder, a man cut down in a field (!), and no culprit in sight. Then those judges from the first verses of the parashah must come in – to  account for this life, an unclaimed body of the field.

Humans, trees, all connected by justice, so all connected to Torah, which is also called eytz chayim, tree of life. So, how is Torah like a Tree, like a person?  Torah also links the generations, creates community, has sweet fruit, wisdom = flowing water, inspiration = air.   My favorite song to really bring the Torah connection home is – Eitz chayim hi by Dan nichols http://www.jewishrock.com/index.asp  The inspired English verse to this setting:

And the roots of that Tree reach deep into the ground
Cradling the truths our ancestors found
That the Tree is connected to every living soul
And that Peace is made real when we are made whole!

Incredible stuff! Powerful connections. Not our ancestors’ graves in the earth, but the cradle of truths which grow. The word Shalom is from Shalem, wholeness. The wholeness of each soul, bravely standing on the horizon, but connected to one another beneath that ground, and to generations, and to Torah’s rules of decency and justice, can powerfully sprout the seeds of  Peace.