These Days of Awe
My days of late have been less than days of awe, but here we are in two of the highest holy days of people of Jewish faith – Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and I had to take inventory. Of everything.
I woke to my limp, after seriously messing up my piriformis muscle in a hip opener class after returning to yoga for the first time in a year. I went last Thursday and on Friday was aching and so I went dancing Friday night thinking I could hip shake my way out of this problem, only to wake on Saturday partially paralyzed. And so I have been laying low – trying to ice and rest and get this body back to ground zero. I’m not there yet.
My first thought when I woke was of the dream I was having where the love of my life was in a canoe paddling away with a current lover. I watched them from my apartment window and then suddenly the apartment began filling with water and it was rising. The bags of goods I had just put on the sofa were now under water. And all I could say was “dang” even though I was filled with immense sadness at my ex rowing away and indifference about the bags that were now sinking in the muddy water.
But the night before, filled with hope for the new year, Tin and I had baked 36 gluten and dairy free honey cakes to take to his classroom for the New Year – L’shana tova umetuka – may your new year be happy and sweet.
When Tin got up, I served him apples and honey and dipped a few slices myself in the sweet nectar. It’s a brand new year – 5775 – and a new chance to get it right or so the rabbi said.
After some work interviews, I showered, dressed and went to pick up my friend to do a radio interview for the gala that SISTAWorks is having in November. I’m on the board and also the media maven for the organization so we were happy to get a spot on All Things New Orleans on the PBS station. From there, I was pulled to go to my new synagogue. I’m under a new direction which is follow your spirit not your plans and so off I drove to Metairie, to Shir Chadash, where I arrived minutes before they blew the shofar, and I stayed till after the rabbi spoke. He talked about uncertainty and how in biblical times religion was supposed to offer a package of certainty and how in modern times we don’t have that wrapper – we have to learn to live more with humility and quit searching for the certain. As a devotee of seeking the certain, and a student of chaos, I listened intently.
In the prayer book was a quote by Elie Wiesel that said, “In the garden, God told Adam a secret. It was not how to begin, but rather how to begin again.” And that my dear is the reason for the season. These days of awe are intended for us to stop what we are doing and take stock of our core – to peel back all the delusions of certainty – to accept the chaos and to call on what is our God given secret – resilience.
I left the synagogue after having been invited so generously to lunches and came home to do more work, and then to bring the 30 honey cakes (six went to us and friends) to Tin’s class with a little talk on what this day is all about. I brought my shofar – to give the kids a few blasts so they would hear what I hear – the noise blasts that help us stop what we are doing. It sounds different from other things we do and sounds like a wake up call.
When I left the classroom Tin gave me a thumbs up as he scarfed down his honey cake. We eat this honey – in our cake, on our apples – all to be mindful of sweetness and encouraging it in our lives.
The rest of the afternoon was not without effort – do homework, make a chicken in peanut sauce over rice noodles dinner – a dish I intended to make a few days ago, and then wait for the mobile vet to come because Stella has another UTI – the vet said to me that this is unusual – the rate of medical emergencies this dog has had – from the noncontagious mange to the alternate treatment she had to have for it to the first UTI treated for two weeks and now the second one month later, $191 plus $100 plus $191 later, we are looking at the next $100 worth of pills to buy tomorrow. This was the extra money that was paying for the mirror that got slammed off my truck the other day. There is no extra money – forget what you were thinking – it just simply does not exist.
I’m awestruck by the fact that I keep having to learn some of the same lessons I’ve already mastered – it’s as if I am beginning again over and over with no end in sight. I drag the same lovers through the night, I wake to the same dashed hopes, I have the same irritations, and even my injuries are recurring – I keep having to remind myself why I do it.
I reckon I do it because I’ve accepted that “life ain’t no crystal stair” to quote Langston Hughes and yet “still I rise” to quote Maya Angelou. And everything in between. And also because of what Wiesel said – that we were given this incredible secret – resilience – and it would be a shame to squander it.