PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY NINE DID YOU SAY THANK YOU?

Kids get that line a lot, a cultivation of good manners: did you say thank you?  Grown ups, it is presumed, oddly, remember to pause and thank - a compliment, a gesture, gift, favor from friend or stranger or host or lord of hosts. But grown ups too can benefit from such reminders. I know I can.  On this second day of a new year - a focused pause to make a list of thank you's. to focus on what is. 

And not just pause and thank for the good stuff - also pause and say thank you for the hard stuff - the hard lessons, harsh truths, slaps and surprises, critical words and act of betrayal and transgressions: how else would we grow. 

On the river yesterday, discarding the crumbs of the past into the world,  the kids learn how to make little balls from bread and aim into the water as they shout 'goodbye!' and 'thanks!' and 'shana tova!' 

thanks for all the kicking and screaming? yes. 'one must bless the hardship just as one blessed the goodness' said Rabbi Meir back in the dark days of the Talmud, during one of the revolts. There is this way of cultivating gratitude for all that is, and was, sweet and bitter both, honey and onion.  Lofty goal - be grateful for all. 

Out of the blue, in the midst of crumb throwing, one of the kids turns to me and says 'Thank you for my gift! - six hours after getting it. Never too late to melt some one's heart with joy with a sincere thanks for anything or nothing at all. Great way to start a year. 

Many Thanks.

Shabbat Shalom.

To a sweet year, honey, and onions. and more. 

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY EIGHT TRASH?

28/40

boker tov. shana tova!

New contact lenses in my eyes this morning. Out with the old, flush. 

It's a day of replacing old with new, long live the next.

It begins grey today, this new year, thunderstorms expected, rain water coming down from above to meld in nicely with the tears coming down below. I don't know about you but I do get emotional on these days, a lot. Last night, at our beautiful prayers in City Winery, I basically started tearing from the moment the first chord was played, all the way to the end. It felt good, cleansing, releasing, letting some of the pent up emotions go. 

The first day of the new year is about that. Letting go. That's why in the afternoon we go down to the river to shed away the year - not sins exactly, despite the popular belief, but simply, the symbolic trash of our lives. Breadcrumbs are the leftovers of our feasts, the memory of hunger, for more. Each crumb is emotion, hope, regret, mistake, rage, yearning, wrong.

Imagine the flight attendant walking up the aisle with a big plastic bag 'may I take your trash?'

it's the river speaking, the waters of the world, taking our trash, recycling bread crumbs into fish food, into nutrition that will enter our systems and so again. 

The mere act of not just handing the trash over but flinging it, perfect throw, into the water, activates some distant memory of active loss - of determined shedding, of the will to lose this psychic weight and commit to better, lighter, more focused. 

The actual walk to the water - an ancient, pagan, nature driven ritual taking us to the boundary between culture and nature, city and wild, human and beyond. Down to the river, down to where everything begins. 

Like tress in this season of fall, we let our leaves go. Others will grow. And they too will gather. I am the tree, not these leaves, and maybe, maybe not even the tress, just the idea of a being in a bigger dream, inside a river, a single tear drop or a wave crashing into a shore, strewn with the crumbs of the past?

Trash? Shed. 

Tashlich today at a river near you.  (Join me south of Spring St. and the Hudson at about 2pm, rain or shine)

Shed bread. shed tears. Let it go. Start again. 

Shana Tova. Enter in Peace. 

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY SEVEN FORGIVE?

27/40

'I'm sorry' S. said. I believe it. But can I, truly, say "I forgive you?" the most I could - can - say is " I understand'. I can't even say it's OK. It's not. Not yet.

But today is the day of forgiveness - an extra effort at cleaning up the psychic debris, tying up loose ends. 

I want to forgive the hurt. I want to let it go.To open up the options of release, let go of resentment and pain that gets trapped inside when we don't have the words to express raw emotions and hard truths.  

If not fully from the heart - at least in words, in some formulas of release that will help me find more focus, balance, peace. 

 

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." said Reinhold Niebuhr. 

I want to forgive myself for all the stupid stuff and waste of time and worse. forgive myself for not being more careful, more patient, more kind.

I want to forgive those at whom I'm mad, and hurt by, and haven't for what ever reason confronted yet. 

I want to ask forgiveness from those whom I've hurt this past year, in any form, whether I know it or not.

I want to enter the year with these intentions, even if they are far from being completed. I want to pray for the ability to have more room for forgiveness in my life, and more of it on the planet, in each heart. 

In orthodox circles there is a ritual that happens around mid-day today - rosh hashana eve: its the preview of Kol Nidrei - a private, at home, 'annulment of vows' ceremony. In small groups of three, people gather (it's not co-ed, but women do this too) and recite the 'release from vows' formula, serving as each other's witnesses.  The release from vows is one way to ritualize forgiveness, letting go. There are others. Find yours.

 

See  link to the full text of ANNULMENT OF VOWS here:

release of vows ceremony

Enter in peace. Shana Tova. 

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY SIX LOOSE ENDS

26/40

The fringes on my prayer shawl are frayed and coming undone. I bought a new set of linen fringes many months ago, with the intention of replacing the fringes - like strings on a guitar - before the New Year. Deadline. A perfect moment for tying loose ends, completing at least a token of my many goals and intentions this past year. 

The last night of a year is a night of completion.  Like before going on a long journey, tying up loose ends. There's already cooking going on for tomorrow night's dinners, and outfits planned and prepared, and a barrage of emails with the latest in clever shanatova vids - the eyes are on the future. But tonight is one last check out on the past: 5771 is  now becoming year filed under 'history'. 

I want to take a few minutes to sit quietly and think of 5 big moments from this last year, 5 postcards, whatever the memory drudges out, and list them, and note, and learn and reflect and thank and file and save and close and move on. 

And after that I want to wrap up another procrastination or two, send out a few of those long overdue draft emails, make that overdue phone call , deal with two debts. Take the time to honor time and the boundaries and benchmarks that are these high and holy days and just get stuff done. Tonight. Deadlines. 

Not everything can be completed tonight, last night of year or not.  Things break and it's never clean and clear and cut in life - frayed, loose ends of conversations and dreams, goals and desires and failures and triumphs, lots of unfinished business - we carry it all across the threshold of time with us, more to do and perfect and change in the coming year. There are always loose ends, and not all can be attended to - physically, emotionally - perhaps not possible, perhaps not now. 

But still, in some symbolic, elusive mythic way, some sort of personal, private closure, slate cleaning, completion and gratitude for the year that was, for our own survival for another whole year! - seems an appropriate gesture for the night. It feels like an act of kindness.  

Maybe in some way, when we wish each other shana tova we don't just make a wish for the future - but also celebrate - despite it all - our past?

Shana Tova. 

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY FIVE WHERE DOES IT HURT?

Day 25/40

I just checked into 'the heartbreak hotel', far away from Graceland but maybe not that far  from grace. Been here before, may be here again, and, surprise, I am here now, disappointed and bitter and taking it one day at a time. Deep breaths. Deal now, heal later, and maybe figure out what the hell went wrong and what I can do to feel better and avoid this, if possible, from happening again. Is that even possible? 

What's astonishing about heartaches of all kinds is that they actually do hurt  more or less vicinity of the physical heart. I don't know the medical data but I have no doubt that a great many of our physical ills -  including the high rate of heart attacks in the West - are deeply connected to our emotional dis-ease and reflect the hurts, and pains and disappointments that are part of our human diet and modern social reality.  So much loneliness and sadness and rage and quiet despair. 

With two days to go before the new year begins ( I know, GREAT timing) and this PREPENT process under way, my reflection today is on what hurts, and where, and maybe, why. 

And here's what to do with it:

Collect the hurting, the places of pain, list them, name them, thank them, own them - and ask for help in releasing them back into the world. Every pain is a scar - and scars don't vanish - but with time, they hurt less. Nature helps out. 

I don't know who's reading this but I'm pretty sure that being human means collecting scars of all sizes, and hurts of all kinds. 

So to my friends who are reading this I want to suggest that we take comfort in knowing that we are all, in some way, hurting, and that there are, in some way, methods to help us get over it, get better and stronger. 

And one of those ways is asking for help. I don't just mean therapy or a friend with whom to confide, scream, cry and dream. Those are terribly important and I'm grateful for mine. I'm talking about talking with God. If there's ever a time when a one on one conversation is due is when the poop hits the fan and we need answers or at least the excuse to melt down and belt out our woe and needs and pleads and highest hopes. It may just be a glorified and often cheaper form of therapy but I want to suggest that finding comfort in conversation with the unknowable creator with the specific focus of asking for help can be helpful. Not that it takes us off the hook - on the contrary. I take it on myself to do the work (which is what true love and relationship is always about anyway) and commit to being here, ready for the next attempt at love. But I'm not alone, and I can't do it alone, and there is some force in the universe, call it what you want, that is in favor of things working out for the best and happiest and is a source of comfort. I think. Maybe. I hope so anyway.  One of my favorite lines from the psalms is "GOD HEALS THE BROKEN HEARTED AND BINDS THEIR WOUNDS". 

Perhaps it is just about the process of articulating our needs and fears and hurts and perhaps there is nobody out there listening and helping - but even that is a good start - the mere act of conversation, release. So with a heart aching I am getting more prepared for the prayers and liturgies and sweetness (which right now makes me want to vomit) of the holiday, taking stock of all that is hurting in my personal archive - determined to not wallow but move ahead, kinder, stronger, ready for more. 

Poetry, the noble form of prayer, helps a lot too. Here's one of my favorite heartache poems, by the grand lover of soul, Rumi: 

The Guest House 

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent 

as a guide from beyond.

I'm on PBS's short list of NYC’s Hippest Rabbis for the High Holidays. Ha.

Check it out: Too Cool for Shul?: High Holidays with NYC's Hippest Rabbis: 

channel 13's metrofocus on the high-holidays

Join me for Storahtelling's High Holidays 5772 at City Winery

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY FOUR RETAIL THERAPY?

24/40

Attention shoppers: ready for the holidays? It's customary to start the new year with new stuff: a new flavor, fruit or delicacy for the first feast of the year, something new to wear, fresh flowers, gifts to those you love. Doesn't have to be expensive or fancy - it's about the intention. Less is more. 

But this type of holiday shopping doesn't have to be just about 'stuff'. It can also be an opportunity  for healing our relationship with consuming material goods and how bad that relationship sometimes becomes - excess, greed, impulse purchases that accumulate in the back of our closets, more stuff, more guilt.  Can I take this time to think about being a more conscious, responsible consumer?  Is there a spiritual lesson here waiting to be learned? Can this be part of our prepenting process? prep for the holiday with sacred intention - and a dash of sensible style? 

My oft-morose, quite brilliant second cousin Daphne Merkin may kill me for this, but I think that in her 

fabulous article in the NYT Styles Magazine   published yesterday,  she IS talking about the spiritual dimension of shopping. "The poetics of shopping  sing out a song of eternally replenished beginnings...," she writes, describing her summer in Jerusalem, not a shopping Mecca by any means. For Merkin, this provided an opportunity for reflection on what shopping does, or could mean, to the individual  in search of reflection and personal growth, even in unlikely contexts: 

  " I’ve always thought that the prospect of consumption brings a flash of hope to the grayness of the daily grind even more than actually buying something does, when the possibility of disappointment sets in even as you are handing over your credit card or cash to pay for your purchase. The idea of adding something new to your repertory of belongings — be it as tiny as a modish bottle opener or as large as a cashmere winter coat — seems to suggest by some process of osmosis a change bigger than itself: Life might open up with you in possession of this new item, or you yourself might be ever so slightly revised and adopt a whole new worldview."

So. shopping? I am going for a new white shirt, maybe a tie, new plants for the garden, treats for the kids, and lots of little organic honey jars as gifts for friends.  Plan ahead. Less IS more. more or less. enjoy. 

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY THREE HAPPY YET?

23/40

happy yet?

The Bar Mitzvah Boy's grandma is crying this afternoon, mascara running, as he stands up to wear his late grandpa's prayer shawl:"I couldn't be happier!", she sobs. 

The boy, too, once his big performance is over and his tie is loosened is proud and pretty happy. 

funny thing, happiness. 

Can you remember the last time you were simply, capital H Happy? Happy enough to pause and say - yeah! I'm Happy. Not necessarily the big moments of life's transitions. Just a mundane moment of happiness?
 Z. tells me of the cupcake he stopped to buy today, after a gruelling morning, took a bite, and smiled: Happy. 

And I guess I'm thinking more about  happiness tonight perhaps because I'm so aware of it when it's absent. Have had a few of those days now, for reasons that make me think of how and when I'm happy or not and how much this has to do with the love I get - or don't - from others, and some others more than others. 

The goal is more happiness. 

But what does that even mean? 

Assuming that 'happily ever after' mostly works out in fairy tales, many smart people have researched the nature of happiness. just try googling 'happy.' (you'll find for instance, this quick how happy are you quiz. I scored 60%, and rather surprised myself.) One of my recent favorite books on the topic is  The Happiness Project with paradoxical tips as corny and correct as "One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself."

For many observant Jews, tonight's Slichot/Forgiveness service, often held at midnight, is the official start of the High Holidays. With Rosh Hashanna less than a week away,  the inner housekeeping is in full swing on day 23 of prepenting, now focusing on more of the big items on the 'make life better' list. The happiness factor is probably on most of our lists. Am I happy?  How happy have I been this past year? what makes me happy, and what doesn't? what factors in my life support or don't this elusive happiness thing, and what can I do about it this coming year?  

Tonight's a good night to think about this, maybe even a short writing exercise:

The short list: 5 things that make me happy and 5 things that make me unhappy.

The question: what's one thing I can change in my life that will help me be happier?

If not ever after, at least day by day? 

starting, let's say, now. 

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY TWO COM-PROMISE?

Uptown at the UN they are still debating, secret talks and public
statements and no compromise. hard lines in the sand, sacred sand
hardened by too many empty words and too much fear and too much blood.
Why is compromise so hard?

Downtown, here, at home, a long painful night of conversation and hard
truths, and finally, at dawn, perhaps, a compromise.

Trying to be together, people or nations, to live, and thrive and grow
together while retaining a strong self - requires that the 'together'
is defined and redefined, again and again. Without losing sight of our
inner most needs - can we learn to also compromise - towards the
greater good that is larger than the sum of our parts?

It means to 'make a mutual promise', to 'promise together'. Why is it
do hard? What can help us negotiate our truths and needs better?

Is there one area in your life where conflict happens and compromise
could help?

I am entering this third Sabbath of this prepent period of
perfection-of-self with a promise, a com-promise, to try a together.
Outcome unknown, but intention solid.

 Uptown in the UN the conflict continues. Please insert your hopes and
prayers for more compassion, courage and compromise among our leaders
and people, and each of us, for the promise of a better future, peace,
dignity, freedom, for everybody already.

amen.

shabbat shalom.

PREPENT5772 DAY TWENTY ONE ANGRY??

21/40

Angry reactions to Ahmadinejad speech at the UN today, angry reactions to Obama's yesterday, online and on the streets- rage against the occupation wars of the middle east and the occupation of wall street - there's an edge in NYC today, an angry buzz. It's like everyone's playing Angry Birds...

Anger comes up all the time for everyone, everywhere - no?  who doesn't need rage management? how I'm dealing  -or not -with my anger says a lot about how I live my life.  I'd like to deal with it better. Past mid way through this prepent journey, with the eyes on the prize of self improvement and honey cake not too far away, it's time to take out the big guns - the transgressions, public and private, that makes it to most people's  'top ten sins' list. Anger is on my list, for sure.

This morning on the subway, a heavy teen boy spreads over three seats with a big bag and legs wide open, refusing to budge, in a crowded car of cranky passengers. It's a long ride and I'm tired, and got reading to catch up on for class, and I ask him politely, but firmly, if he doesn't mind moving a bit as I sit down, and he moves an inch and glares at me, then looks away. I sit, barely, pissed off, and I almost say something nasty to this kid who is sitting so tight next to me I can actually feel his ribs breathing -  but check myself at the last minute, and let it go, mostly because I'm too tired to deal with it, but also because I pause to think - who knows what his story is, what's pissing him off so much that he needs to take this space in some way place where perhaps he, sort of, can? anyway. anger averted. Not for long. An hour later, in the middle of some email exchange on some crisis I send a quick acerbic note and immediately regret it. too angry, too quick? The indignation was, I think, justified, just the tone.. so easily slips to anger, which is so harder to manage as it snowballs on.

"everyone gets ticked off all the time but we just learned how to internalize and smile our way through it," says my Talmud teacher  (Mordy Schwartz)  in class today, "but sooner or later it's gotta be dealt with." We're reading a Talmudic fragment 

that deals with God's anger management problem and offers a solution that may just work for humans, too.

God, apparently, gets angry only once a day - for a nanosecond, early in the morning, but long enough to make things terrible for the world. Can this rage be curbed? There is a solution - hidden in a story - here's my super-short synopsis and loose adaptation: One year, during the terrible wars of Jerusalem, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest  entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple and saw God. "Bless me, my son", requests God, and the High Priest blesses God poetically,  providing us for posterity with this elegant prayer which is actually a four-steps method for dealing with, and reducing, anger:

1. Use your will to allow compassion to overcome anger  2. Acknowledge, with compassion, all your other voices and needs 3. Deal with others with more compassion 4. go beyond strict justice in your dealings with others.

The High Priest's blessing would become, according to the sages, God's very own prayer, because God, according to their mythic imagining, has very serious anger issues, all the time.  We, in the image of the divine, have the same fantastic challenge, and this fable is a reminder that the key to dealing with the anger is the balance of compassion, or kindness, or mercy, or plain good will.  

Anger is essential for change - but it can channeled creatively, powerfully - not just through kickboxing or heavy metal- and sometimes into public righteous indignation and protests for progress.

My friend Justin Wedes, a local activist now down on Wall Street is one fine example of someone channeling anger into peaceful rage - non violent, armed with compassion.Justin got arrested yesterday, was released  and released a powerful statement about free speech, anger free.  I'm not yet sure I understand all that's going on down there yet - but I do know passion when I see it. This CALL TO ARMS video gives one peek into what's happening on Wall Street right now.  

Angry?  Breath. Deal. etc.

May compassion overcome anger tomorrow in the UN, and in NYC, and everywhere, if only for a moment, right now.