Judah before Joseph

MikketsGen 44:11-17
My mother is Director of Human Resources and legal counsel for the Newtown, CT public schools. This tragedy lands incredibly close to home. Selfishly, I am grateful that she has been home recovering from knee replacement surgery, but I know even from a distance, she and her coworkers are broken open. Numb and devastated, heartbroken and traumatized. They need time and healing and soul food.
The impulse for destruction is the Cain in all of us; the need Joseph's brothers had to plan to kill him, then delay that impulse by selling him into slavery instead. And then there is the unimaginable destruction that can happen when that impulse cannot be quenched.
The chaos that follows, the communal healing healing that must follow, breaks us all open. Our hearts and souls stand as one, bear witness and bow down to hold the communal suffering in Connecticut and other places where we are connected and touched.
We are all strangers in the land of grief. We wander the landscape that we used to know, and it is different now. The people we have known before become unknown to us; foreign.
Where are the touchstones that used to exist? Vanished. Unknown. No longer present.
It's like the world that used to hold color is only shades of gray now. Color no longer exists. We don't know if it will return. We don't know who we will be if it returns.
Grief transforms -- and not just for a magical purpose. We may survive, we may reconstitute ourselves and live, but we can never be the same again. We cannot go back to that "before" person. Part of what we have lost is that self we used to be. The parent, the mother, the father, the sister, the daughter, the brother, the son, the friend we used to be.
After this loss, it is no longer.
It reminds us how precious we each are, how vulnerable we are to randomness, violence, and how much we need each other.
Today, our souls reach out to still be there with patience and kindness. To help bear the ration of pain doled out to the Newtown community, because we are one whole, one being standing together.
May they find nourishment among the grief, soul food when they are hungry, comfort and healing as we stand together, broken open but not alone.May the time pass and grant the quiet restraint of Joseph, the standing-as-one of Judah, the wholeness of our brother and sisterhood of humanity, and the compassion and oneness of healing of Yud Hay Vav Hay, as we all grapple with our individual and communal rations of pain. May we find shalom in our hearts and souls as we stand to heal together.
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How We Grow the Sacred Peace

October 20, 2012
Gen 8: 6-12

Raven
We try the old way. Same dark, same light, same fear, same hope, no change. Same results. A learning.

Dove + No Rest
We try again, something different, and it almost works. There are shifts and changes, but not quite... not quite there yet. This is when we must return to the source, the beginning, go back AGAIN, to pray, hope, wish, think, smile, with the fullness of our souls, the shifting balance of hopes and dreams, of light and dark, day and night. This is when the refinement, the longing, the learning of patience, the growing roots of change, really happens.

We can't skip straight to this step, no matter how practiced we are with our souls, with our failures and hopes. This is the heart of surrender.

Dove 2
We keep going, we don't turn back, we become ourselves again with great devotion. We believe that consciousness and learning, change and faith and patience, goodness and love, are one, and we are one with that oneness. Part of time itself, past, present and future, darkness, light, hope, fear, change, and what must be, and we touch down on the unbefore-sighted-but-imagined peace of holy, solid ground.

The Rock

What a long strange trip its been…

When we go forth each day, we know we’ve done wrong. We know we are imperfect, and even so, there is love available to us each and every moment, no matter what we have done. That is joy.

Think about it. We are flung from the stars into this life. We miss the mark, we hit the mark, we forget the mark, we remember the mark, and through it all, we are loved and we are redirected.

After this time of profound redirection, profound awakening, profound experience, we are rooted in joy, but we must continue to go forth into the oneness of life. Choosing to live in the swirling, moving, ever abiding love that sometimes shakes us to the core and sends us spinning into eddies and rivers where we face rapids we have never faced before, and then gives us gentle springs and floaty days when we really know the bounty and beauty of YHVH unfolding all around and within us.

These are the moments when we know the pain and glory of redemption.

To begin again is to believe in something bigger than we ever imagined. No matter the moment we went astray, the sin we committed, no matter the fault, even when it’s really bad, we can rejoin the flow.

We are part of something bigger than even that big moment in time, and we get to choose again and again and again, each season. We get the chance to demand that YHVH show us the bounty of what is possible, even though…

So guess what? I am choosing the good stuff.

Bring on the harvest, bring on the light, bring on the joy, I’m ready for it. I have spent my time with regret. I know it inside and out, and the only thing I can say is if you house regret in your bones without room for redemption you will sink like a stone.

YHVH wants more for us, shelters us from the searing moments that wrench the soul beyond space and time and then sends us back into our bodies for all we can bear. But here’s the deal: YHVH stands with us. We can bear this immense pain and this capacity for goodness, no matter the past.

This is our hope and our harvest. This is our joy. We have been and we will be sacred, in all lights. We are loved. Remember the mistakes of the past and then let them go. This is a new cycle. We are all lovable. We are all loved. The only true mistake is thinking we are unlovable.

So go forth into the next cycle. Beloved. We face the harvest of what we have sown. But we are all worthy. Every one of us, every moment. Don’t forget. That’s the joy.

Rosh Hashana 5773

O Father, what is this?

He ties me to a sacrificial pyre and he wields the knife -- but I have never loved him more. It is his weakness and his strength, this faith he has in the Oneness of being and becoming, all that is, was and will be, past, present, future all alive in this moment, and I have two choices. I can hate him, or I can forgive him.

This One who calls us to this moment, I have seen him in the gleam and glitter of the knife, the fires my father and I have laid together, and the love that shines in my father's eyes. I know I am beloved. I know this is Yud Hey Vav Hey's (YHVH) will, and my will, and Father's will. So I choose.

I choose life and faith and trust.

In this moment of testing, I will hear. I will love my father and the One with all my heart, soul and might, and I know I will choose life. I know this moment, this call, this knife, will not kill my love for him. I know I will not hate him.

I see his eyes glitter with tears, they are locked on mine and and I feel my own eyes flood with respect and pain and truth. This man is my father, blood of my blood. I have seen him in all of his moments from the day I was born.

We do not lose each other in this moment, but pray mightily for a sign.

The ram is glorious.

My father, my beloved father, stays the knife, unties me, clutches my hand.

"You are my beloved. Forgive me."

I know the truth of this: all that is, was, and will be is contained in this moment. And my father, who was willing to sacrifice his son to God, loves me with all of his heart.

"I do."

Together we are transformed. A people born of light in a moment of obedience and strength, love and truth, given to a God who tests us and loves us, redeems us and grants us hope, even in the darkest moments.

If he had slain me, I would have died with my soul aflame in the truth of love.

Father, bearer of the past, I hold your dreams and darkest fears of rejection in my heart and I love you with the kindness of the world, the glowing future that forgives and redeems.

We will go forth anew. I forgive you.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 9/16/12

Tonight we are moths to flame with wings afire, opened by kindness, the fireflies of forgiveness easing out of the shadows, and still we are aloft, ever higher, many bushes burning, the way we have always been, the way we were born to be.

We return to the light, to the source, and we remember the one home that has never been separate, and the cloud of us, high and burning, sets the night sky to flame and we know the way, it is finally clear. The way that is behind and ahead, the way that is was and will always be, and tonight, bathed in the fire of our divine spark, we dance.

A Restless Heart

Deut 28: 64 - 68
9/8/12

We all have times when we realize the goals we are striving for, the ways we are living, the ways we treat ourselves and others, do not serve us how we had hoped.

We lose our way. We are not serving the god, the path, the universe that sustains us, fulfills us and brings us into the Promised Land. We know we want more, but the more we have been defining for ourselves in not working; it's not useful. So what do we do?

It usually includes some kind of awakening that can look very much like a breakdown. We become lost, we realize that we may never have known the way, but there is a promise here: there is a way. Tried and true. It's not x+y=z, but it is a turning, or returning, to YHVH, all that is, was and will be.

We must find the others who have been scattered. We must gather and seek and heal. Our hearts are heavy, our lives have been spent in exile, long stretches or moments or wrong action, but we do have a home. We've suffered the consequences -- we can see it, no matter how much we have accomplished or acquired, and we live with those consequences. And the road ahead is HARD.

But it is do-able.

You/me/we will spend the rest of our lives doing it, turning and returning, living through our choices and circumstances.

So go forth, no matter how scattered we are, no matter how dire the pain of consequences have been. We can start now. We can do it. There is a home, a way to turn and return, YHVH is there for us. So keep walking. Shift your focus, but keep going -- it's there for us all -- right here, and here, and there. Do-able. Keep walking.

Your heart and soul can heal.

That Guy

Deut 17: 14 - 20
Shoftim
Leaders and Judges

Sometimes, I think, secretly, part of us all wants to be that guy. Chosen by God to lead our compatriots, our kinsmen, our fellow travelers.

We would embody justice, humility, fairness and truth. We would feel sacred and blessed to be in this position. We wouldn't abuse our power, turn to greed, treat some with favor, others with scorn. We would be holy. Not perfect, not without erring or falling, but always learning in our drive to honor and represent this chosenness. To honor the trust and faith others place in us and let all our words, all our works, and all our joys be for peace and goodness in the service of the true king.

But can we see it? Do others? What do we allow ourselves to see, even when it's not what we want? Secretly, whether we know it or not, we are all that capable of seeing.

That guy, that woman, that chosen one. But we must trust. Wholeheartedly, whole soul-edly. And we must hold that sacred truth humbly in our hearts, and as we see Yud Hey Vav Hey unfolding our origami paths, then we must go out there and work. Make our words messages of peace. Make our actions messages of wisdom, our thoughts prayers of gratitude.

We are all that chosen, moving and being and doing in the world. May we all be blessed in our doing and being, choosing our words and our leaders carefully on our paths to justice, humility, and peace.