June 19, 2011
To everything there is a season, indeed!
I am lucky; but I don’t really believe in luck. Maybe attitude is the key. Maybe it’s all about fine tuning our ability not so much to make lemonade out of lemons but to take those lemons and make something that will speak to who we are and what we need, at any given time: a slightly tart lemon popsicle! A glass of lemonade that is too sweet, but a friend who likes it sweet with whom we can take a few minutes and share it.
Stephen Dunn writes in his poem Before the sky darkens, “Sunsets, incipient storms, the tableaus of melancholy-maybe these are the Saturday night-events to take your best girl to. At least then there might be moments of vanishing beauty before the sky darkens, and the expectation of happiness would hardly exist and therefore might be possible.”
I am a planner, a thinker. I am a feeler, a compassionate listener and a nurturer, more often for others…but in recent years increasingly also for myself. I decided, at the age of 60, to fulfill my lifelong dream to become a Rabbi. I evaluated my life journey to date and made my personal spiritual journey a priority as a part of that adventure. By choice, with purpose and with the (unanticipated but sought after) help of extraordinary friends, teachers, a spiritual director and most of all my own compelling nature as a seeker, I am regularly aware of myself, seatbelt fastened, all protective gear at hand, flying down the highway of life. I feel blessed to see, to hear, to know the presence of God in the tiniest of sounds and sights, far too numerous to mention. AND as is often the case, when we are able to see it as such, my timing was perfect. This Rabbi(t) was diagnosed with breast cancer last week.
At least for now, and that is all that each of us really has, isn’t it, it’s ok. Even as the clouds above me become laden with heavy darkness, the people I’ve always known love me are telling me that. It is a blessing that I am able to bring to their awareness the importance of sharing those words early and often. A team I didn’t know I had came together and went into action, all on my behalf, in God’s office. And more than anything, I am watching my own Torah, my own innermost teaching, evolve and I am present, fully present to witness it. Even without actively sharing it, it is shared. I see its reflection in the faces and hear it in the words, of those around me. It is a precious gift to hear another say Torah. For me, in what most would think is a very dark time in my life, I’m feeling the most extraordinary gift of all: the voice, the music of my Torah is showing itself. I’ve shed a few tears, not of sadness, not of terror, just of a little fear. My heart seems to understand, though I haven’t asked it to. This apparently, is a time for secrets of the heart to unfold and to nourish. My sighs are those of wondering and of hoping and as odd as it feels to me, of gratitude. My life today is a smile and a tear. I am holding both of them with their inherent tension…and with ease. That feels right for me, in this season.
