9/10/11 Deuteronomy 22:1-4

We are creatures who are amazingly good at self-deception.

Even now, after all this time, at this age, right now.

God knows this -- it's in our nature.

Remember when you were 14 and you borrowed your friend's sweater to wear because it was perfect with your new outfit and then she forgot to ask for it back and slowly you believed that she didn't want it back, that it was yours, that she gave it to you?

Yeah. Like that.

Or when you had a fight with a loved one and exchanged harsh words that may have been true but were really unnecessary to say, except to hurt them because you were angry or hurt or defensive?

Yeah. Like that.

Or that bill that needed to be paid but you didn't get the invoice so you rationalized that since they forgot to send the bill you really didn't need to pay it -- regardless of whether or not you had the money?

Yeah. That.

We all do it. But that sheep that is your neighbor's -- whether you know him or not -- belongs to God. As does your neighbor. As do you and your friends and family who are all following their own path.

Reminder: Do not deceive yourself about who you are, no matter how the moment unfolds. Are you serving yourself or are you serving God?

The loopholes of temptation, of judgment, unkindness, greed, laziness, are always there. For us all.

When we take them, we deceive ourselves, we forget who we really are -- creatures of God, of the Universe, of the Creator of this crazy world. We are building a legacy of deeds, acts of kindness, moments of truth to follow like breadcrumbs along whatever path we follow. In this way, we honor the fullness of the creatures we can be, the beings of light, the bearers of joy and goodness, walking ourselves about our daily lives, place to place, moment to moment.

So when your neighbor, a stranger, knocks on your door and asks for his sheep back, no matter how much you may want to, no matter how difficult it is to give it up, do not disappear yourself. It's probably best to look him in the eye and humbly say, "I was keeping it for you. I treated your sheep well, as I know you would do for me." and give it back.

Time Lapse

Hi Everyone! It has been an incredibly busy semester for me -- I taught three new writing classes and had an amazing time. But I am behind on the Poet Rabbi updates. Bear with me, I am posting my poems from the last two services. Then I will go back and fill in the gaps.

Your patience is genuinely appreciated.
Sam

Breaking Open

Gen 42:16-21

We are swimming with the snakes, at the bottom of the well. So silent and peaceful in the darkness where we fell. But we are not snakes, and what's more, we never will be. If we stay swimming here forever we will never be free... (Patty Griffin, "Forgiveness")

We all do it. Flip into that hurt, small self that says, "You did this me. I'm going to get you back!" And then we know, that growth requires suspending, noticing, naming, allowing that smaller minded self into the spectrum of who we are called by God to become, and we try -- sometimes more successfully than others -- to integrate, to let that self be present but not run the show. To say inside, I hear you, I love you, and yet there is more... so stand with me as we try something different.

In that stance, in the space between who we have been and who we are becoming, we open into the now moment of forgiveness, the beginning of healing... of ourselves, of others, of everything. We don't abandon that smaller-minded self -- we can't, we are all so human, sometimes it hurts -- but we can add to our wholeness, expand our spectrum, step into the window of light that opens to allow us to see more than what has come before, and in that expansion we become part of the eternal bridge between past, present and future, and we welcome healing, we welcome moving more freely into the fullness of ourselves, our gifts, our divine connection.

And we give thanks. Not for doing it perfectly every time, not for freeing ourselves from our past wounds (are they EVER fully gone?) but for noticing and choosing to move and grow. To hold love closer than pain, to hold wisdom closer than fear, and to see more clearly that in each moment, we have a choice to be closer to the divine.

"It's hard to give, it's hard to get, but everybody needs a little forgiveness."
(Patty Griffin)

Jacob/Israel

We Struggle... and are Forever Changed

We bear the scars, internal and external, of our transformation. For to go unchanged, unmarked, is not the vision that God has for us, is not the sacred task that we have been given. We are Israel... and Ya'akov -- in our moments of doubt, our moments of unseeing, our moments of forgetting our highers selves, our transformed souls, our given names -- the one that changes us forever -- and even so, today, we still flip back and forth with our whole selves -- sometimes Israel, sometimes Ya'akov, and it changes us.

We notice the spaces between, we notice the fullness of the love within the spaces, and we struggle... struggle and go on, marked and changed, moving differently through the world, even as we struggle, even as we notice the luminous and the dark, the right now and the someday, the becoming, becoming, becoming whole that we all struggle with, searching to find our truest face turned toward God. And the times when we find ourselves turned around, to face once again who we have been, even as we wrestle to move ourselves back or forward into the way we are called to become.

And here we are: we are Israel, a people who wrestle with ourselves, with others, and with God, and we are able. Always remember: we are able. So we turn, marked in our way, toward wholeness.

Time After Time: Leich L'cha

Exodus 12:1-9: Go forth...

"Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick and think of you, turning in circles confusion is nothing new. Flashback, warm nights, all I've left behind. Suitcase of memories, time after sometimes..." 

"Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper
Sung by Eva Cassidy

So, here we are again, called forth by love to move beyond where we are stuck.

It's motion that frees us, motion that connects us back to ourselves, back to love, back to God, back to the eternal.

Motion is so easy, but sometimes it seems so hard. We take everything we are with us as we go forward, and inevitably, we find our suitcase full of rocks.

But we can lighten the load. There's no secret.
Or, here's the secret: love the rocks.

When we're in the dry, parched Negev, love the sand, the heat, the steps that brought us here. And remember: no matter how stuck we are, no matter how heavy the load, light always follows dark.

But... Here's the real secret. As Avram had to learn, as we all have to learn -- do not deny the truth of who you are.

We can't if we are to move through, love at our back, at our heels, our hearts calling us forward.

We must be in motion as we are; as who we are.
"That woman, Sarai, she is my wife."

The truth moves us forward with loving kindness, time after time.

I woke this morning with the truth: I'm six months shy of forty, I'm not "young" anymore, not like I used to be. I remembered gifts I was given, the ones who said, "You are beautiful, you are loved..." and I knew they spoke the truth. I believe them.

So when we forget, when the desert storms swirl with sand, listen for the voice of truth and move yourself into the awareness of love.

Lighten your load. Take who you are, the whole truth of who you are, undeniable and shining with the hot sun, even in the darkness, the light of loving kindness, of chesed, is all around. When dawn arrives, walk yourself with awareness into love.

Keep going. We are loved and eternal and moving. Keep moving. We are all here with you, time after time.

"If you're lost, you can look, and you will find me, time after time. If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting, time after time. Time after time..."

A Fall Day of Contemplation and Renewal

This Sunday, October 3 from 11 to 3:30* (please note, this is a time change) 

Please join Samantha Libby as she leads us in a retreat day of contemplation and renewal.

"As Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot wind down, we have been through a process of taking stock, paring down, releasing what is no longer needed, and harvesting what is most precious within us and within community.

On Sunday, we will gather as a group to engage in and continue the practice of opening our hearts to the new season, our present moment, and to what is, was and will be.

We will use prayer and movement, discussion and silence, writing and sharing as the tools in this moment to continue to expand our souls and our sacred community."

Wear comfortable clothing, bring a notebook and a pen, and please bring some food or drink item to share with approximately six to eight people. People outside of Daniel's service circle are MORE than welcome to attend.

For more information, and to RSVP, please contact Sam at samalama@usa.net ***

Can't wait!!
-P.R.



***Please DO RSVP! If you can't make the whole thing, come as you can!

Rosh Hashanah 5771: Exodus 22:1-19

The Binding of Isaac

9/10/10

The willingness to answer the call that we cannot understand (and would not choose).

May I suggest, may I suggest to you

May I suggest this is the best part of your life…

-- Red Molly

Today, we start again.

Let me rephrase that.

Today, we ask ourselves, how willing are we to open? To open to the inside, to the soul, to the community and to god.

Part of us has always known that this is hard. Harder than anything else we might do. We suspect it may have its rewards, its sweetness, its own joy, we see it in the eyes of others who have found it, but we wonder…

...maybe they are just different; maybe it is that way for them and not for me.

We spend a lot of our energy -- our soul -- procrastinating, avoiding, deciding that so many other things are more important right now. And yet, inside, we know.

We know that we all have hard things to do that we don’t want to do, but our soul… it speaks to us. God speaks to us.

Inevitably, when we hear it, we are both overjoyed and terrified, because whatever it is that we must do, that we know in our souls we must do, we don’t want to do it. 

We don’t.

And we do. 

There is no way to reconcile this conflict – we do and we don’t for good reason, we’re humans with lives and fears and baggage, wounds, pain, suffering, flaws, rage, desires, and egos.

Big egos.

Even those of us with small egos, forget how big they are sometimes.

But we know we will do this, even though we don’t want to. Because our soul knows it will. 

There is no other way to explain it. Our soul will do this. We don’t have to like it -- in fact most of the time, all of the time, every step of the way, we won’t like it. But we will do it anyway.

This isn’t “just” a choice. There is no “just” in this choice. There is no choice in this choice. The soul is called to go, and we go.

Imagine… it’s not an either/or choice. Its not like we just won a trip to Hawaii or Cabo and we "just" get to pick which one.

It’s not like god/the universe/your inner speaking soul hands us a stack of cards with different missions printed on the back and we can flip through them saying, "No – not that one. Nah, too hard. Well, ok, maybe that one...but let’s see what this one says."

For Abraham, every card says kill your son.
For us, when we listen, we know what it says.

We keep flipping, hoping for a different card, a different picture -- nothing. They all say the same thing: Do that which we cannot do. Something that will change us, our life, our relationships and the course of history forever…

And we didn’t get to choose it.

Not how we got here, not how this moment arrived, how all the people we know and have known have influenced our lives, our egos, our souls, and now… choiceless.

All we get to do is say "Yes."

We wonder, where is the easier choice that leads to joy? The safer one that doesn’t have to wait for the hand to be stayed?

We want the one that makes sense. And yet, we’re talking outside the box of “sense” -- or actually deep in the box of “sense” if you follow me.

Our souls speak. God calls. We are afraid. We go anyway. Fearless? Foolish? Doesn’t even matter.

We try to go macro – look to the bigger picture. We might hang on to some belief that beyond this little box of "me" standing before you, is a structure I cannot see. 

We might not -- we question. 

Ok. I can live with that. But how does this little box of "me" tumble or erect the larger structure?

We cannot know.

We’re talking thousands of years in which we are a box, a brick, a grain of sand. And still… our soul calls us, the choice is only this:

Live fearlessly with great hope.
Live from that sensing place and trust.

Live and live and live, knowing we will be part of the sands of time, knowing we are only human, there are things we cannot know, and still, we are alive.

We are so alive!

Look what we can do, look who we can be – look around you. Look at the hearts and souls and love in this room, in this world in this life.

We cannot know.
The limit of humanity.

And still, we are so blessed. We are so beautiful.

When we walk into the unknown, terrified and unafraid at the same time, we become mountains, we become the ocean, we become the very fabric of the universe that holds us.

It is so hard… and yet, it is so clearly simple.

We will go. And go. We will hold each other when we cry. We are so unbearably, heartbreakingly, soul-openingly human.

And we are so loved.

"Inside you know, inside you understand, inside you know what's yours to finally set right"