Stillness (Tiferet)

Stillness is a deep breath. The air comes into my body and fills my chest. The oxygen awakens my senses and quiets my mind, inviting me to pay deeper attention to the physical sensations and let go of the thoughts grasping for airtime. The weight of the day lifts, freeing me from the tension I hold, allowing my body to release the shape it has formed around. Stillness invites me to be firm and flexible, not confined to a single shape but not entirely without form. Stillness invites me to hold it all loosely. 

Stillness is a mountain, rising over a forest and reflecting itself in the lake below. Stillness is the air, crisp and clean, open and vast, yet not overwhelming. 

Stillness invites thought and the absence of thought. It holds everything together, making space for anything to happen, and also for no thing to happen. 

Stillness can be scary - alone with my thoughts, alone with myself. And yet, to sink into stillness is the surest, fastest, and cleanest way we can crack ourselves open. 

When my mind and my life and my emotional landscape get too busy, I know that stillness is always there, waiting for me, ready to help bring me back to myself, to my center. Whether I will seek that stillness out, whether I will let it find me… that is the question. 

Today my answer was yes. Today stillness found me on a lake, and up a mountain, and in the breath that I let myself notice. 

Portal (Gevurah)

A Sukkah is a temporary structure that is traditionally built leading up to the holiday of Sukkot - the ancient Jewish festival of harvest and ingathering that has come to represent our people’s history as both agricultural and nomadic people. The Sukkah - like many ritual objects - has a set of parameters it must meet in order to be considered kosher (read: legitimate or “up to snuff”). Amongst other things the Sukkah cannot be a permanent structure, must have at least three walls, and a roof that is made of branches and leaves that allow enough space for the sky to be visible through it. The Sukkah is meant to be decorated with nature's bounty: flowers, gords, and fruit; as well as human (preferable children) made decorations including paper ringlets and other arts & craft projects that can hang from the roof. 

Once constructed the Sukkah becomes the center of our activity for the week. We eat our meals in it, we sleep in it, and we perform rituals in it. But there is more. It is not simply a structure, a semi-outdoor room, a temporary dwelling. It is a portal. 

The Sukkah is a place with transformational properties. Its porous nature blurs the boundaries of space as well as time. The Sukkah is neither indoors nor outdoors, enclosed nor open, not quite a public space yet not entirely private. The Sukkah’s temporary nature creates defined space where at other times the space it occupies is undefined, leaving the spiritual outline of a container long past the time in which it actually stands. 

Like any portal, the Sukkah transports us out of the mundanity of our regular lives and into moments where more and, perhaps most importantly, different things are possible. In the Sukkah a regular meal amongst family and friends can turn into an opportunity to speak about loved ones who have passed by inviting them to join us in our ritual meal. In the Sukkah we can take turns breathing in the fragrance of seasonal fruits and plants while attuning ourselves to the entirety of the world we stand on, all under the loving gaze of our community without the kind of self-consciousness that sort of thing would normally evoke. In the Sukkah we can find ourselves discussing the great mysteries of life and the vastness of the unknowns without the impulse to flee from such discomfort into the numbing allure of our phones. In the Sukkah we can change our relationship with time, drop fully into our bodies, and experience the fullness of the present moment… even if only for a moment. 

A portal is porous. Its strength comes from having a boundary that is clear and yet a little open. It is the doorway not the wall. It holds the paradox of structure and movement. It allows us to stay in our own bodies while also connecting to the greater body, to be ourselves while also seeing each other. 

Forgiveness (Chesed)

It wasn’t a fight. In some ways Curtis and I had been fighting for weeks. It was a fairly typical feud between two not yet eleven-year-old boys who were adjusting to suddenly finding themselves in middle school: bickering, teasing each other, a snide comment here and there. A few times over the first weeks of the school year  there was a more direct confrontation, but the conflict had not yet gotten physical. 

On this particular day I’m pretty sure I was the one who started it. It was a rainy day in early October so we had indoor recess in our homerooms. The substitute teacher was passing out lunch calendars for the month and I made a stupid comment about our upcoming birthdays. I might have proclaimed that they were serving a better lunch on my birthday, I might have simply noted that I was a couple days older than him. Whatever I said, it got us going at each other again. 

The sub, not knowing either of us or the dynamic that had been brewing for the past month, was unable to settle either of us down and, as the period was ending, our verbal sparring turned into some shoving that resulted in lots of books and papers being knocked to the ground, and my nearly eleven-year-old body shaking and holding back tears - overcome by an emotional cocktail of rage, embarrassment, and adrenaline that was new and confusing. 

Half an hour later, in the middle of band class, I was still shaking to the point that I could barely hold the drumsticks steady in my hands when I was called into the Vice Principal’s office. He had heard about what happened from the sub and decided that we had gotten into a fight and therefore would each receive a two day suspension. Suddenly on the same side we tried to argue, it wasn’t a fight we both said, but there was no arguing to be had, no negotiation, no pleading of our case. The Vice Principal had made his ruling, it was a fight, and the sentence for a fight was suspension. 

It was a two day suspension but because of the quirks of the calendar and the Jewish holidays, it would be nearly a week before I could return to school. Generally a week off school is not something I would have been upset about, but this felt different - there was an injustice at play, and no matter how much I didn’t like school, I liked the idea of being subject to mandatory sentencing policies and authoritarian rule even less. 

But there was something else at play as well, something that lived underneath my mask of righteous indignation, justified as it was. I felt bad about the fight. Not the specific moment that the teacher and Vice Principal called a fight, but the entire conflict. I felt bad that I had been feuding with this other kid. I felt bad that I didn’t know why we were fighting, why we weren’t getting along. I didn’t like being in conflict, I didn’t like the fact that there was no opportunity to get to the bottom of the conflict, I didn’t like not being able to find resolution. 

Two days later, standing outside a Synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, I suddenly got very upset. It took me a minute to understand what I was so upset about and I’m not sure I actually told anyone what I was feeling. 

Yom Kippur is the day in the Jewish Calendar when we are supposed to ask forgiveness from all the people we have wronged in the past year.  I was not going to be able to do that. My fight with Curtis from just a few days before was going to remain unresolved. I was going to enter the new year without having apologized for my part in the conflict we had been subsumed by. It was a devastating feeling. 

Recounting this story thirty-five years later, I want to hold that younger version of myself close. I admire his integrity. I admire the seriousness with which he took the idea of forgiveness, the idea that living up to his best self required reconciliation with those he had harmed. And I want to invite him to perhaps hold it all a little more loosely, to be a little less hard on himself, to give himself a little grace for the ways that he was unable to live up to that best self.

I hope, as I prepare to enter Yom Kippur this evening, that I have the courage to face the ways I have not lived up to my best self in this past year and ask forgiveness from the people I have harmed. I hope I have the grace to forgive the people who have harmed me. And I hope I have the wisdom to find forgiveness for all the ways that I continue not living up to that best version of myself.

Aspirational Self (Malkhut / Shechinah)

Yesterday, I stood at the edge of Manhattan on the banks of what the first people to live here called the great waters in constant motion.  I held in my palm a handful of small pebbles. One at a time I pulled a pebble out of my palm, held it to my lips, breathed into it a “sin” that I carry, and - in an act of spiritual and symbolic release - threw it into the water. As I watched each pebble splash and sink into the choppy water, I took in a deep breath and imagined what it might actually feel like to live without the weight of that “sin” in my body. 

The Jewish interpretation of sin as I understand it is simply a descriptor of the moments in which I am not showing up as my best self. The sins that I carry, that I am hoping to release myself from in this Rosh Hashanah ritual that I have inherited, are the times in this past year that I did not act from the place of my best self. My sins are the habits that block me from being my best self, and my hope in performing this ritual is that by naming those habits, by naming the moments that those habits showed up to block me from acting in the way that I aspire to act, I will be able to build up the muscles required to override those habits and decrease the times that they block me from showing up in alignment with my values and the way of being to which I aspire. 

And while this particular ritual is about what I want to let go of, what I want to release, the other side of it is to think about what it is that I am reaching towards, who it is that I aspire to be, how it is that I aspire to act. 

For me, the question of my aspirational self begins (and quite possibly ends) with the question of my core values and what it looks and feels like to make those values manifest in my actions, in the ways that I show up to myself, my relationships, and the situations I find myself in. 

The self to which I aspire is clear and calm, kind to himself and others, steady in action and presence, joyful and open with the love he has to share. The self to which I aspire centers his ability to imagine beyond what feels possible, accepts the truth of how little he can control, and embraces paradox as the only way to understand reality. The self to which I aspire has the courage to confront the chaos and uncertainty of the world, face the moments of tension and conflict that show up in his life, and take accountability for the moments he does not live up to these aspirations.

Core Self (Yesod)

Of all the people in my life, it might be a rock that knows me best. This rock that I know sits twenty feet high with a footprint around sixty square feet. It holds the shape of a mound with cracked lines cutting across its face and small crevices carving out gaps and holes - some of which make great seats for the people like me who come to visit. The rock sits in a sparse forest of gentle trees, half of whom will lose their leaves over the coming month. To the north of this rock there is a small local road, to the south a bike trail. Each of these paths wind their way through the trees and marsh where, half a mile to the east, they will meet up at the ocean. 

The first time I met this rock I was five years old. I can still feel in my body the excitement that came as I rode onto the bike trail from the welcome center parking lot. I could feel the thick and hot summer air begin to make way for something different. The cover of the trees around and above me brought shade and a cool breeze that was invigorating. Pumping my pedals as fast as I could I zipped around the first bend, up a small incline, and zoomed straight ahead. My father trailed behind, giving me space to explore, to feel like I was out on my own. 

After the second turn there was what felt to my five year old self like a sharp downhill that exhilarated and also scared me a little. And then, in a matter of moments, all of that energy, all of that excitement, disappeared and was replaced with the tedious agony of trying to pedal up an incline that I simply did not have the strength to match. About halfway up what felt like a giant hill I could no longer get the pedals to move so I got off and walked my bike the rest of the way. 

I remember the physical sensation of not being able to make it all the way up this hill but I don’t quite remember the emotional experience that went with it. I think I was still at a point in my life where my inability to do something was met more by determination than by defeat. I am sure I didn’t like not being able to make it all the way up the hill. I remember being upset that I had to get off my bike, but I didn’t let that upset deter me. I got right back on my bike determined to make it up the next hill. And I did. 

Just after that next hill, there was an offshoot that my father wanted to explore. After a mile on the trail we were all ready for a little rest, and that is how I came to first meet this rock. It was, in my estimation, the biggest rock I had ever seen, and it was perfect for climbing. I immediately put my bike down and ran up to the rock. I was excited and a little bit intimidated. 

I remember walking around the base of the rock, touching it, feeling it, noticing the shapes carved into its face, noticing the different ways I could imagine climbing to the top. I spent many years of my childhood returning to this rock, exploring those new paths, learning its features, testing my own abilities. As I grew I would notice the changes in the immediate surroundings of the rock. A tree that grew so close to the rock that they were almost touching died one winter, changing much of what I remember about the way the rock looked, the way it felt to be in the rock’s space. The feeling of the space changed again when I returned to the rock in my late adolescence and as a young adult. The rock felt smaller than I remembered it. But each time I would walk around its base as though reintroducing myself to an old friend, or a relative I hadn’t seen in a long time. And then I would drop in, I would find that familiar sense of steadiness the rock offered me in all those times we met. 

This rock has known me through forty years of life, has seen me through some of my most beautiful moments and has been a place I have come to in the hard moments - in moments of grief and loss, in moments of uncertainty. This rock has been a place that I can return to when I need to return to myself. Many times I have dragged myself here when I don’t know what else to do. I come up to the rock, walk a circle around it, make my way up to the top, and sit there… sometimes in meditation, sometimes I write, sometimes I just cry. And always, after a little while, I begin again to breathe. I allow myself to sink in, to actually feel this friend beneath me, let my breath match the slow and steady energy of this ancient being. Eventually, my mind will stop racing and I will remember myself. I will remember that at my core I am a child who loves to bike through the woods, who loves to push himself towards the next challenge, who smiles when there’s something he can’t do and gets ready to try again, who finds joy in the simplicity of spending time in a beautiful place with people he loves, while challenging himself to do a little better next time.

The Unknown (Hod)

I have always had a paradoxical relationship with the unknown. My favorite movies are the ones with the best twists, the unexpected plot developments that seem to come out of nowhere but were actually hinted at all along. From these movies I learned how exciting it is to be taken along on a journey that unfolds in front of me, unaware of what is to come. My favorite way to walk into a movie theater is to know nothing about the film I’m about to experience, to not even have seen a trailer, because I want to have the full experience of the journey. Having a movie spoiled feels like a deep betrayal, like I have been robbed of something true and pure, like having a part of my life stolen. And yet, I am rarely as proud of myself as when I figure out the twist before it is revealed. I love not knowing, but I really want to know… or perhaps I really just want to figure it out for myself.

In many ways this relationship I have with plot twists in movies mirrors the relationship I have with life itself. To the age old question, would you want to know when you are going to die, I say, absolutely not. I would hate it if someone told me anything about my future. The notion that the outcomes of my life can be known is deeply disturbing to me. I believe in the great mystery. I am skeptical of the desire to know one’s future, or claims that we can know what happens when we die. I embrace the unknowability of life’s greatest questions. And yet, I have spent a lot of my life trying not only to figure out the twists before they are revealed, but to write them myself. 

I spent the decade of my twenties on the visionary’s track. I was obsessed with creation, with bringing forth into the world visions that lived first in my mind. I wrote five year plans and ten year plans. I knew the life I wanted to live and I worked tirelessly in an effort to make it so. My confrontations with death, with the great unknown, with the reality of how little control we have over the big questions did nothing to deter me from trying to map out and exert control over all of the little things, all of the things that seemed like they could be known.

When the power of my will was exhausted, when I reached the limit of my capacity to make things so simply by the force of my desire and determination, I fell down. It was a hard fall, a long fall. It took many years before I could get back up. It was not a pleasant time but it gave me a chance to rebuild my relationship with the unknown. 

I remember, early on in this years-long fall, looking around and having what felt like the strangest thought: I am not anywhere that I want to be. None of the aspects of my life are what I envisioned or what I wanted. I am not happy with where I am. But… I stand by every choice I made that got me here. It was the kind of thought that struck me at the time as being important, but I don’t think I could have known then just how central that thought, that realization would be for the way I would rebuild and continue living my life from that moment forward. 

The idea that I was not in control of the outcomes in my life was not new to me. I have long known that the circumstances of our lives are not ours to control. But this was a slightly different lesson. This was not about the circumstances I was born into, or the conditions of the world around me. This was not even about the fleeting and unknowable nature of life and death. This was about actions and choices. This was about accepting the actions I had taken in my life regardless of their outcome, this was about celebrating myself for making choices that felt right despite the fact that those choices did not lead me to the place I imagined they would. Eventually this thought would return to teach me that holding on to a vision too tightly can turn that vision into a trap, into a debt. 

Today, as I continue my lifelong project of embracing the unknown, I am seeking out the joy in knowing that I don’t know what’s around the next bend, I am working to embrace my own smallness and not be afraid of it, and I am most excited about the space I am leaving open in my life for that which might emerge. 

Grief (Netzach)

Twenty years ago today I was standing beside the hospital bed my father was about to die in. He was not awake but he was breathing. And then he wasn’t. I was standing there looking at him. And then I wasn’t. Within moments of his last breath I found myself on the hospital floor, just across the hall from the entrance to his room. I was curled up with my grandfather. We were holding each other, we were crying, we were shaking, we were unable to contain ourselves. 

In the shock of losing my father, I reached out towards him and held his father as close as I could. In the shock of losing his son, my grandfather reached out towards him and held his son as close as he could too. We sat there like that, on the hospital floor, holding each other as close as possible until we each stopped shaking, until we had each shed the first round of our tears, until we each could breathe with a little more ease. 

That first wave of grief stayed with me for a very long time. For years I could call it up immediately, project myself right back to that hospital floor, call up the exact feelings and bodily sensations that took me over in that moment. Over time those feelings made their way through and eventually out of my body. I am no longer as close to that manifestation of my grief. In the twenty years since my father died my grief has shifted and changed, it has moved through cycles and it has taken many forms. 

Sometimes, even to this day, it shows up in that debilitating form, bringing me right back to that moment of loss, calling up the full depth of emotion that overcame me in that moment: flooding my eyes with tears, filling my throat with bile, sending blood rushing up and down my body, speeding up my heart rate, tying my stomach in knots, shortening my breath to the point that I am gasping, that I am shaking, that I am wailing and flailing, until all of the built up energy releases from my body and I collapse as a puddle on the floor.  

Other times my grief is somber, a deep sadness, a wave of lethargy washing over me, slowing my movements, dampening my color pallet, adding weight to my limbs and chest and head, as I sink into nothingness. In those moments I have learned to accept the invitation into slowness. I have learned that my body needs to allow the sadness in, that I need to let myself be still, that I need to let myself cry, that I need to let myself just be sad.

There are also are the times that my grief has been motivational, a driving force of desire to live out my life, to not “waste time” perseverating, to get out of my own way, to live up to the person my father knew I could be, the person I see myself as, the version of myself that I aspire towards. In those moments I need to remember to check in with myself, to be sure that the motivation doesn’t turn into obsession, that the drive to be doing isn’t masking an avoidance of feeling. 

And then there are days like today - which happens to be the twentieth anniversary of his death - when I wake up feeling clear and solid, missing him but also knowing that he is here with me, sad that he has not been able to enjoy this life with me but grateful for who he was, for what he continues to be for me. On days like today my grief manifests as joy and ease - qualities that my father sometimes had and always aspired towards. On days like today my grief manifests as wholeness, as a sense that I am fully connected, not just to my father, but to everything. On days like today my grief reminds me that I don’t have to force things, that I don’t have to try so hard, that I don’t have to be right, or do better, or even be good, that all I have to do is live and feel connected. 

In this way I understand grief to be a kind of time machine, a mechanism through which I can connect not only with the past that my father ties me to, but the future in which the essence of who he was will be remembered not only by those who remember him, but by those who will remember me. 

In our grief we remember the people we loved. We remember who they were, we remember what they valued, how they lived, what they taught us. In remembering them we connect ourselves to the past in which they lived, the past that led to their lives and to ours. And in remembering them we also take them in as part of us, we carry them on past the years that they lived into the future that they will continue to influence, through us and through those who will come after.