Category Archives: News

Another partial Reading List, some books from 2010 that I reviewed.

Books & Films Reviewed, News, ,
Bookshelf Heschel quote
One of many bookshelves in my home, complete with children’s art, favorite quote and art by someone I love!

These are mini-reviews of memorable books I read in 2010. If I can’t get through a book, it usually won’t make it onto the list of books for me to review, so all of these were readable and most of them were excellent or worth the time. Please buy your books from a local bookstore or go to the library, if you can! Also, I am very impressionable and become very engaged with whatever I am reading or who I am interacting with, many folks are way more “discerning” than I am or critical, so you have been warned. That said, I am voracious in my reading and my perspective may be helpful to you in choosing which books you engage with.

  1. Flower Children by Maxine SwannA lovely reminiscing of growing up in the 1970’s with hippy, Harvard educated parents. Wild, lyric, sad, beautiful, crazy and communicates well the child’s perspective throughout the whole narrative. Google describes it this way: “Based on the authors own upbringing, Flower Children tells the story of four children growing up in rural Pennsylvania, impossibly at odds with their parents.”
  2. The Saturday Wife by Naomi Ragen: I hated this book, but couldn’t stop reading it. I never liked the main character who is everything I am not, Blond, vapid, money and status and looks obsessed. It’s a sad story full of excess, broken and foolish people. It’s also a satire on multiple levels. I’ll be donating it to my Temple library, which is NOTHING like the synagogues and congregations this book deals with!
  3. All the Twilight Books 1-4. Enjoyed them despite myself. Best one is the last one.
  4. The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen: Set during the mid 16th century the story of a female painter in the court of Queen Elisabeth of Spain. Interesting but not great and similar to other works of its genre. Lots of gossip and ladies in waiting and thwarted love and lust although it is somewhat historical and the artist that is the protagonist is a female painter whose works are just now being properly credited as hers.
  5. Anthropology of An American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann: Painful, intense, well written but very sad for most of the book. It is a very honest look at the life of a very beautiful American woman, complete with body hatred/confusion, sexual complexity, death of beloveds and how that shapes one. Long and engrossing.
  6. Halycon Crane by Wendy Webb: Fiction about a girl/woman uncovering dark and hard mystery of her life based on family history and a nasty ghost. Interesting.
  7. Sexual Metamorphosis edited by Jonathan Ames: Excerpts from the lives of various transgendered folk over the last two hundred years. Very good read.
  8. Blue Nude by Elizabeth Rosner: Israeli & German bound narratives and a very intense, painful and beautiful read about an artist, models, love and war. Excellent! Whether or not you are a painter or an artist, this book evokes process really well and takes you into the lines, colors and feelings of a painting, the painter, the model and the whole cooperative creation of art.
  9. Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong: Fascinating story about a girl who “for as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret).” Quote is from the Random House website about this book. I enjoyed this and it was hard to read because Linda tastes as she talks so sentences have foods/tastes interspersed with them. Not throughout the whole book, but it was a little challenging at times.
  10. Family Album by Penelope Lively-Loved this story about a large British family, out of keeping with the times, six kids. A very powerful mother. Narratives of each character over time except one. Read this book. Very well done.
  11. The Golem A version by Barbara Rogasky illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Excellent version of this story, with amazing illustrations. Very enjoyable and a good book to own.
  12. By Fire By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan: Takes place before 1492 in Spain. Deals with Inquisition, Jews being tortured and then expelled, intrigue, financing of Columbus’ armadas, love, and Jewish life in antiquity. I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books. Wasn’t the best, but intriguing and hard to put down nevertheless.
  13. Right of Thirst by Frank Huyler: Story of a doctor who leaves his home to go “give aid” in very remote mountain country of a small country at war (probably Pakistan or Afghanistan). After his wife dies of cancer Charles, still in shock, decides to go work for an international aid agency, one on the fringes. He leaves behind his adult son and his life as he’s known if for over 40 years. His experiences there are very hard and also help him come to terms with his wife’s death and his life in general. Medically detailed, author is a doctor, very thoughtful and of course painful too.
  14. Woodsburner by John Pipkin: Fictional story of a real fire stared by a young Thoreau. I enjoyed this book, although the spreading of the fire and what it meant was hard to read about, I found the story compelling. Several other characters besides Thoreau and their relationship to the fire are told in this book as well. Here’s a quote from the author in an article about his book. “On April 30, 1844, Thoreau started a blaze in the Concord Woods, scorching a 300-acre swath of earth between Fair Haven Bay and Concord. The fire was an accident, but the destruction of valuable woodland, the loss of firewood and lumber, and the narrowly avoided catastrophe that almost befell Concord itself angered the local residents and nearly ruined Thoreau’s reputation.” ~quote from Globe © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company
  15. Burning Silk by Destiny Kinal: This is definitely erotica/historical fiction/magic lore. Parts of this book were really fascinating and enjoyable, other parts made me uncomfortable, not because I have a problem with erotica, but I never find rape to be erotic and there is some rape in this story. There is also love between women and love between those working together with the silk moth. The story takes place in France and early America around 1829. It is based on the production of silk and the early way silk was processed and the guild of women responsible for helping it come into being. Not sure how much of this is accurate, but it was very compelling and I rarely think about how silk becomes silk, beyond knowing a worm is involved and some mulberry trees. The book goes into the details of silk making in great depth from the perspective of the women as keepers of the moths and as mistresses/channelers/communicators with the moths/worms. Not for everyone, but if you like this kind of book, you will probably enjoy this one.
  16. The False Friend by Myla Goldberg: I consumed this book in a few hours, not able to put it down. Myla Goldberg does that to me. Very well written exploration of a childhood friendship, childhood cruelty/teasing/bullying, other traumas and mistakes and how that unfolds in the lives of our characters shaping their whole lives and personalities. I don’t want to give any of this book away. Just read it. While the content is not happy in much of this book the story is beautifully written and there is healing and honesty here that is refreshing and feels very true.
  17. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin: Story of two boys, one black, one white and their painful complicated stories in a very small Mississippi town. Vivid writing, hard themes of childhood harm, loss, violence, mistaken hatred and how it shapes their lives, and of course, finally some redemption. Hard to read in some places, because I’m a softy, but well-done and lyric writing even about ugly things.
  18. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri: Sad but beautifully written stories about Bengali immigrants to this country and their children’s lives. Very evocative, very sensitive, very honest, very well done.
  19. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova: Slightly too long tome about Vlad Tepes, known as The Impaler and transformed into a real Dracula for this story and the historians trying to both escape and find him. Interesting in parts, but too long and drawn out for my taste. I got a little bored by the end and just wanted it over. Part mystery, part romance, part history.
  20. A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell: So, if I haven’t mentioned this author before, his other book, A Blessing on the Moon is in my TOP TEN. A Blessing on the Moon is a very intense book, Shoah related and takes place post death in emotional and spiritual areas. I saw A Curable Romantic, a huge tome on the Northtown book counter and did a double take, JOSEPH SKIBELL! another book by him. I HAVE TO HAVE IT. I rarely buy hardcover books, but there it was and I HAD to have it. The end of this book is like the redemption of the universe. The rest of the book is amazing and was hard for me to endure. The topics were ones that are close to my heart and I had no perspective on and I was not super fond of the protagonist. I want my heroes to be heroes and this is of course rarely the case. I finished the book while visiting at my rabbi’s home for Shabbat and was laughing and umming and aaaahing for the last three chapters, pretty much every sentence. This book is supremely Jewish, full of themes, concepts, stories (biblical, yiddish and rabbinical). Not sure how someone unversed in these underlying stories will experience this book. It is superbly written, so even if some of the context doesn’t make sense, the writing will take you places.
  21. Devotion by Dani Shapiro: One of my friends in my Mussar group recommended this book. If I had a lot of money I’d buy ten copies and give them to several of my friends. As it is, it will be a birthday present or offering to many of you. A powerful and short and important memoir chronicling the search and hunger for a relationship with holiness from someone who is very modern, very uninterested in cliches or simple solutions, someone Jewish but often mistaken for a non-Jew. A yoga lover and meditator who practices and studies Buddhist teachings and yet grew up in a Yeshiva and with very religious parents. This book is also about relationships that are painful and complex with parents and with illness and loss. It is phenomenal.
  22. Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards: Short, intense story of a woman in the public eye whose life has been full of tragedy, but who is herself heroic and honest. There is pain in this book, but also a real examination of what and how a person handling death of a child, cancer of her body and her husband’s betrayal, can be alive and present, not just shut down and off.
  23. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay: If you like Russian Ballerina narratives, full of Stalin, party politics, body punishing extraordinary beauty, jewels, mystery, love, sex, betrayal, confusion and all the good stuff of a Russian novel, this book is for you. Takes place in modern day Boston and 1950’s Russia. Hard to put down. Not exactly happy but well-wrought.
  24. The Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernieres: Very sad and interesting story told by two people, one a Yugoslavian partisan’s daughter, down on her luck and illegally in London and the other a lonely pharmaceutical rep., hungry for love and connection. Well written and touching as well as tragic.
  25. Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin:Takes place in Budapest, Three folks, three intertwined stories, one a Holocaust survivor and composer, one an African American soldier posted in the city and a violinist in the orchestra performing the composers music. Painful, intense and well wrought. Good read, quick read.
  26. The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Macguire: Painful, beautiful, intense reading. Deals with AIDS, religion, crazy Pentacostals and catholic nuns that are ancient, teenage sexuality, pregnancy and single motherhood. I couldn’t put this book down.
  27. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: I found this to be a good read. I know there are a lot of critics of the commercialization of this book and I agree with them. The book itself though is a very in depth chronicle of one woman’s misery and movement out of misery through her spiritual path and her exploration of self.
  28. Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes: This is one of the books Ethan had to read. I usually read all of them. Story of a crippled teenager during the time of the Revolution with Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party and lots of other historical figures and events. Good read, well written. Newberry Medal book.
  29. The Avion My Uncle Flew by Cyrus Fisher: Another Ethan school book. Takes place after WWII in France. Young boy, intrigue, German spy hiding in the woods kind of thing, with dark drama unfolding and lots of action. Book is in French and English, mostly English, but some French too. Very enjoyable.
  30. The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis: Another Ethan school book, this one features a young girl and her family trying to survive the Taliban in Afghanistan. Poverty, sexism, danger, fear, injustice, cleverness and adventure. Great Read.
  31. Mother of the Believers by Kamran Pasha: Story about the birth of Islam told from perspective of Aisha, one of Mohammed’s wives, supposedly his most beloved. I didn’t feel drawn to any of the characters and they were all compelling folks, so the writing was a little not enough for me. It’s a good book to read if you want a novel telling the story of that time period. Very historically accurate and interesting, just not as enjoyable as it should have been.
  32. The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht: An excellent read. Takes place in the  Balkans about fifteen or twenty years ago, mixing of fairytale/myths with everyday war torn reality. Very well wrought, beautiful even in its severity and not hard to read, even in the hard parts. Have already passed it on to a friend.
  33. Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum: This is the story of a family of four girls and their parents. Each of them separate from the other by many, many layers. It is a story of their secret and yet shared loneliness and longing, their losses and all that they encounter while moving to West Africa to set up a hospital. It is also a story of love, tenderness, confusion and folks coming into themselves in the face of harsh circumstances and truth unfolding. I couldn’t put it down.
  34. The Emperor of All Maladies, A Biography of Cancer by Siddharta  Mukherjee Loving this book (while hating the stories and the reality of Cancer). It is an intense look at the history and life of Cancer and our understanding and knowledge of this “malady” over the last several thousand years. Since I have several friends with cancer, this is a book I very much wanted to read. I will recommend it to all my friends dealing with cancer and to those who want to understand this disease. The book reads like a novel, really well written.

More than One, Fifty years since my sister Paula’s Death, I remember….

Bereavement, News, Relationships, Teachings, , , , , , , , ,
Me, at the age, my sister Paula, died next to her grave in Boulder Colorado
Me, around the same age as my sister Paula when she died. I am sitting next to her grave (called the Lollipop grave) in Boulder, Colorado. This gravestone was commissioned by my parents, because while holding Paula they saw her interest in one of  DeWain Valentine’s watercolors, a heart shaped abstraction hanging in his studio. “Paula pointed to it with great animation and when we recalled that, after her death, we decided to commission DeWain to make it into a sculpture to mark her grave.”

 

Today, May 16, 2014 marks 50 years since my sister Paula died. I was inside my mother’s womb three and a half months from being born on that day. In this picture I am somewhere between two and three. My sister died three months short of her second birthday. Her death has marked my life as well as the lives of all our family. Death is a certainty for all of us, but no one wants a child to die or expects it.

I am truly a child of death, born into the grieving arms of my amazing and brave parents, who had to find love and presence to give me while being devastated about the loss of their firstborn beautiful child.

Every year at this time I light a Yahrzeit candle for her and remember her physical presence on this earth. This Jewish practice is so important to me and gives me a comfort that is beyond words. I feel connected to my sister across time and space and I remember her and honor her and recognize that her short time on this earth was real and deserves honoring.

Yahrzeit Candle and memory altar for Paula on anniversary of her death.
Yahrzeit Candle and memory altar for Paula on anniversary of her death.

My parents have gone through various different ways of mourning her over the last fifty years. There is no way to navigate the territory of the death of a child right or wrong. It is all wrong.

Everything about a child dying feels wrong and those who have to cross that territory know this in a way that others who have not cannot really speak to. I have not lost a child to death and I pray I never do, but that is not within my control. Death is a certainty, there is no way out of it.

The mainstream culture runs kicking and screaming from this reality, racing as fast as they can from the idea that we all have a date stamp on us, one that we don’t know and cannot see.

If you are a practicing Buddhist, you spend a very long time imagining and looking at your own death in all kinds of different scenarios. If you are a Tribally aligned person, from anywhere around the globe, you recognize that the spirits of those who have died are here on this earth either to help or teach or hinder us based on many different factors. If you are an African Dagara Shaman like Malidoma Patrice Somé , you have a frame-work of belief that holds you, as the progeny of an ancestor, responsible for their wrong actions and the beneficiary of their good actions. If you are Hindu, you are engaged in a circle and chain of lives lived across space and time over and over in various forms. If you are Mexican you will make a feast and an altar of memories and offerings for your dead once a year and recognize and remember them together. Here, we just foolishly hope death will go away and try to avoid the topic. I’m summarizing very deep and profound beliefs here and could write many long essays on each of these, and perhaps I will, or as we say in my tradition, “go and study.” If something here stimulates you to learn more or go deeper, maybe even into the burial root ground of your soul.

I have studied and do study death more than most folks in our society. I am a co-founder of our community’s burial society called a Hevra Kadisha. I prepare folks for burial according to Jewish tradition. I have been called by death from within the womb-safe belly of my mother. I met my sister in that liminal space between, before my birth and after her death.

She was my angel in all the dark nights of my childhood, a sweet presence that helped me find hope, or pointed out the right direction.

I visited her grave as a child and have always held a place for her in my heart.

Memoriam Collage by Helen Redman 1995
Memoriam Collage by Helen Redman 1995

When I was a teenager I would visit the graveyard with my friend Gretchen Reinhardt and we would attempt to rescue or put back together gravestones that had been vandalized.

I was never afraid in that graveyard. All those dead were my friends. It was a quiet, calm place where I didn’t have to feel all the pain of those around me. No one was teasing me or hurting me and I never felt like an alien in the cemetery. I was at home there, I still am. Death and I have always been in relationship.

Which is why everyday of my life feels like an amazing gift that I need to live fully and well. I am not running away from the knowledge that I will die, that all those I love and cherish will die. I am acutely aware of this and I know it in my cells and in my blood. My umbilical cord blood was saturated with the pain of my sister’s passing, my very core has been colored by her passing. This is not a sad story though, while at the same time being the saddest story.

I am more than okay now as I round the corner towards fifty and I pass this spot on the calendar and I touch her once again in the cycle of remembering. I know that there is more to death than an end. I know this in my body, heart and mind, in my Lev (Hebrew for Heart/Mind)  and in my soul and it is not just a comfort to me, it is a lifeline and a guiding force in my life.

I know this post will make my mother cry, but she and I have a long and deep understanding about honesty and truth-telling and being real with each other. We both have made and will make mistakes, but we are linked so very deeply in our connection to dealing with death honestly and with whatever we have to bring to the table around it. Others in my family do not often want to talk about Paula, but perhaps they will read this or maybe they won’t. My father used to take me to her grave as a child, this was not something I did with my mother. As an adult when I am in Boulder I visit her grave and place a stone on it.

Jewish folks bring stones to a grave, stones to mark that our memory for those who have left this earth is as long and durable and tangible as that of a stone or a rock. A rock has been around for millenniums and this symbolic act is our way of saying, “YOU are present for us still today.” It reminds us to do good and enact justice for those who are living. It reminds us to not throw stones, but to remember that everyone is precious and will be mourned by someone, so we shouldn’t go around killing folks EVER!

A rock says, I silently mark this territory and bear witness for you, even when you are in the ground yourself, I will still be here as a reminder of your presence on this planet, at this place.

Visiting my sister's grave October 2014, leaving stones and saying prayers and remembering.
Visiting my sister’s grave October 2014, leaving stones and saying prayers and remembering.

I have a mother who is an artist and who has been marking my presence and journey on this earth since before I was born into it. She has marked me with paint and pastel, with pencil and with cloth. Reminding me and anyone brave enough to visit this place of pain, death and life that we are always MORE THAN ONE.

We are all connected one to the other, now and forever and always and always.

I love you mommy and I love you Papa. I grieve for your loss, even still and especially, today fifty years later.

Thank you for loving me so deeply and magnificently!

Here I am, inside my mommy, right before I was born, more than one always!

More than One by Helen Redman, 1964
More than One, by Helen Redman, 1964

 

 

 

“Isn’t it always love…” Twenty Five Years Tomorrow

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Kevin and Nicole May 14, 1989-Wedding Day, Billboard Photoshop made by Helen Redman
May 14, 1989-Wedding Day,                                                                      Billboard Photoshop made by Helen Redman

“Isn’t it always love that makes you hang your head, isn’t it always love that makes you cry and isn’t it always love that takes the tears away and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” –Karla Bonoff

So, tomorrow marks 25 years of being married to the same phenomenal man, my husband, who prefers if I do not talk about him in this public arena. So, I won’t go into the intimate details, but I do have to share a little about what is true for me as I am in this very real moment of my life.

I have been exhausted and overly engaged with the suffering, broken nature, wounding and pain of so many folks and the planet in the last year. Overly engaged is of course a judgment call and a loaded statement, and it’s how I sometimes feel. This morning I woke up feeling so congested with everyone’s pain that I was basically just a large mass of leaky tears. I feel the suffering of others in my body, I always have. I feel their pleasure and delight as well, their anger and their fear. I remember when the Empath character was first introduced on Star Trek and I was so happy to see someone who I could actually feel kinship with, it helped me feel less like an alien. Of course she was an alien, and often I feel like one as well.

“Kirk has suffered a cut on his forehead and when he touches Gem to see if she is all right, she recoils in pain. Gem composes herself and then touches Kirk’s wound. With a flash, the wound is transferred to Gem’s forehead. A doubting Kirk touches her wound and notes the blood on his finger. Suddenly, the wound on Gem’s forehead heals as well. McCoy, observing, is clearly impressed by her ability to heal and surmises that Gem is an Empath. Her emotional system is so sensitive that it feels the pain of another and that pain becomes part of her, before she dissipates it.” – from The Empath Episode

There are days when I wish I didn’t feel so much, didn’t love so much, but mostly

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

So, this morning my husband had to hold me while I cried, something he is very used to and has gotten better at over the years. We had to rouse ourselves to get our youngest son, Ethan, ready for his first IB test (International Baccalaureate). My boy asked me last night if I would make him a hearty and special breakfast. He wanted a home-made mama pancake and some plain yogurt with strawberries, bananas and cashews. So, I moved myself to get out of bed and make his breakfast before his first big major test of the IB.

I asked my husband to put some good music on and Karla Bonoff is who he put on for me. This was a mixed blessing, since every song made me start crying anew. And, yet the excellence of an artist at the top of her game is also something I feel deeply and when I experience beauty and harmony it also moves through me and washes every cell in my body with delight. My husband knows music as medicine and as balm and as stimulus. He knows it in his core and he wields this like a master wields a sword or a paintbrush and colors all of our lives with exactly the right music at the right time.

While endeavoring to do what I needed to do for my son, I was also trying to keep my tears from this lovely seventeen year old boy, who doesn’t need to know about my sadness right now, or ever really. His job is to do well and be well and not to navigate the territory of my empathic nature. It is generally not the job of our children to take care of us, even though sometimes they have to when they are young. When we are old, it will be their duty, but not while they are young, it is not their job. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always allow for this and many of us  take care of our parents or feel their pain in different ways. This is the “tears of love” that one sometimes wishes we didn’t have to feel. Parents should feel the pain of their children, when they know about it. It is NO FUN at all when they are suffering, and it’s what motivates you to keep them from that pain if you can. You don’t have to be an empathic being to feel the fear and hurt of children.

My parents rejoiced deep in their bones when this man came into our lives. They knew he was a good man and that they could worry less about me and my wild and crazy ways. I had found a home, a good home, with a safe and kind man.

So, I bow now, deep and low to my husband, who is not a religious man, who works hard everyday for our family, who loves to joke and who loves music and books and art and all of us. He found me lost with two small children over 25 years ago and something in him said she’s the one. He fell in love also with my first two children, who were four and one at that time, and he took them to raise and be his own. He truly rescued us, and even though most folks don’t believe in fairy tales, I always have and do, and my prince did show up and has consistently shown up for all of us.

My tears have abated now, since I am writing about something truly extraordinary, the beauty and love of my marriage and the long journey of being with one extraordinary person over many years. It feels like five minutes, really. I need another 2,000 years with this man, but I know every day I get with him is a gift. Maybe, if our souls are linked across time, I will have 2,000 more years with him and perhaps I’ve had millions of years with him, I cannot know that.

What I do know is that it takes work and a constant commitment to love and to keep loving through the arguments, disagreements, frustrations, stresses and all the messy territory of sharing your life with another human being who is different from you. But it also takes a very special magic ingredient of overwhelmingly deep love and rightness. I could never have made it through 25 years with one man if he and I weren’t so absolutely right for each other. He is my Beshert, my other half, my soul-mate, my heart-mate, my choice-mate. His presence in my life is purely a gift. I won’t share him with you, but I will wish for all of you, someone like him, someone who makes every day better for you, who comes back to you, who pushes through with you, who tries to improve for you and who commits to you 100%.

 

 

Marathon Mama, sitting by the River in my Heart

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http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/images/Elwha-River-log-Scott-Church-copy.jpg
http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/images/Elwha-River-log-Scott-Church-copy.jpg

Well, here I am again at 4:33 a.m. in the morning, sometimes I just have to get out of bed and start sharing. I had to drag myself out of the kitchen, after the tea water was ready. “I am not putting away dishes now, this is time to write and be creative in.” This is what I was saying to myself, as I walked out of the kitchen, then I saw the cat vomit on the floor, cleaned that up, and now I’m sitting at the computer.

 

My tea is next to me. I don’t really know where to begin, at least not without crying. For the past few days, I’ve been mostly in the body of a little boy who was in a head-on collision with his dad. His name is Chase Jesiah and he has a gorgeous smile and beautiful eyes. Jesiah comes with his grandmother to services I lead at our congregation. My services are always open to children, but most kids don’t feel too inclined to do that kind of thing. He always gives me hugs and thanks me and enriches anything I am doing. He will be okay, I believe this with all my heart. He’s been in Oakland at the children’s hospital there and has had lots of surgeries and doctors and nurses and family around him. He’s also surrounded by the prayers of our community and all the angels I can send his way.

 

His father, Wade, is in critical condition and at another hospital in Santa Rosa and will need a solid year most likely of recovery from his injuries. His father has not been surrounded just by loving kindness, but by judgments and difficulty. He is suffering also. I have only ever known Wade as a kind presence at his mother’s side at the funeral of his grandmother, Jesiah’s great grandmother, or when he has come to a service to pick up his son. I know the grandmother Hadasah best, because she has been a member of our congregation for years and years. Anyone reading this can just imagine the horror of all of this for the entire family and community. Everything else pales in comparison. I also do not know the outcomes for any of the other folks injured in this collision. I have been completely focused on praying for Wade and Jesiah and their family.

 

I’ve also been tending to my husband post his minor surgery and dealing with my own body’s exhaustion, post traveling to DC and helping my daughter recover from her third surgery which happened right before Passover. Then there was making Passover happen, then before that going back eleven months there has been a steady stream of accidents, deaths, financial challenges, friends and family in tremendous pain, illness, confusion and suffering, folks getting divorces, cancer, losing homes and hope. It’s been a really long and hard period of time, a marathon really of epic proportions.

 

I keep asking the Holy One, when will this stop, when will there be a break?

 

Apparently the answer to that question is: There won’t be.

 

So, how does one run a marathon? At full speed all the time, nope I know that doesn’t work. Slow and steady the whole time, well life isn’t like that, sometimes you have to really extend and work super hard to help folks or deal with something and you can’t be slow and steady. Stopping and starting, will that work? No, that doesn’t work either, at least not when it is a race, but I think some combination of all of these are how I am navigating this. And, I’m not running this particular marathon by myself. Everywhere around me is a throng of bodies in motion. We are all running, aiming towards the finish line, hoping it is coming soon, but the rules of this particular jaunt dictate that the finish line keeps being moved.

 

I really just want to curl up under a tree next to a river and not encounter another human being for a VERY long time. I want to cry and sleep and read and swim and watch the fish meander about. I want to listen to the sound of the water as it rushes past the rocks and the wind as it moves gently through the trees. I want to make stick and stone sculptures with whatever is at hand. I want to pray and never stop and not be interrupted. I want to feel the angels that are near me and just be with them in light and praise of the incredible gorgeous beauty of the Holy One and the Creation.

 

At least for this moment I can do that in my mind. I also just want EVERYONE I know and love and encounter everywhere to get it that they are loved and held by the Holy One. I don’t care if they are atheists or scientists or even if they actually belong to a religious community. I just feel that if people could actually see and feel the presence of wonder and holiness everything would be so much better for them. Duh!, but for some reason folks don’t see or feel the Grace and Beauty and Wonder that I do. And I cannot make them feel that, no matter how hard I try. I want to so bad, I want to just be like a magic fairy that waves her wand and makes everything appear golden and laced with mist and jewels and dew so that folks stop their angry responses and their despondency and their criticisms of self and others melts like butter in the sun.

 

I feel like I am the luckiest woman in the world. I have so much goodness and love in my life and even though I am tired and I want a break from all the beautiful people I love and who love me, I still am grateful for them and for all their unfoldings. So, tonight I will lead a healing circle for Jesiah and Wade, for all the folks in our community who have people to pray for, not just these two folks, but lots of others as well. We will imagine all those we love filled with light and being held by our love and prayers and by the angel of healing Raphael.

 

Then I will lay all of my wishing and wanting down and I will light Shabbat candles and usher in 27 hours of PURE MAGIC. It’s my time of prayer and sitting by the river in my heart and just not asking for anything, of trusting and reconnecting with all that is good and right in the world, because along with all the hard stuff, there is soooooooooooooo much that is good and right in the world.

 

Between now and then, I need to get some sleep, cook some food for the potluck meal at the Temple tonight, deal with my desk, plan the service I am leading, try and get a swim in and if I’m lucky have a few moments to just sit on my deck and enjoy the flowers. If I don’t get to that part today, for sure I will tomorrow, since this marathon mama does no running on Shabbat!

Here is the basket of goodies that includes the chain of beads we prayed over and made to send to Jesiah and Wade.
Here is the basket of goodies and cards that includes the chain of beads we prayed over and made to send to Jesiah and Wade.

Pico de Gallo for ShaKia

Food, News, Recipes, Weighty Matters, , , ,
ShaKia my new Granddaughter and I. She loves this recipe and I promised her I'd upload it as soon as I got home.
ShaKia, my newish Granddaughter and I, she loves this recipe and I promised her I’d upload it as soon as I got home from visiting with her and my daughter and her intended.

Fresh Salsa makes any meal much better. This is very easy to make. The trick is to cut everything really tiny and to have the cilantro clean and dry. Prepare the garlic the way I have already outlined multiple times (Perla’s Peppers, Esti’s Parsley Sauce). This Salsa will keep for about two days at the most. It’s really best fresh. If you want to use if for longer, cook up the remainder and blend it up and keep if for a few more days in your refrigerator.

2–4 fresh tomatoes

2–5 serrano or jalapeño peppers

a good bunch of cilantro, well cleaned and fairly dry

one white onion

juice of ½ lemon or lime

4–6 cloves of garlic (with centers removed)

salt and pepper to taste

Chop up the peppers, very finely (it’s best to use a chopper tool if you have one) and put them in a medium size serving bowl. Then chop up the tomatoes and add this to your bowl. Add the chopped onion, lemon juice, pressed garlic, salt and pepper and the chopped cilantro and mix it all up. The spiciness of this salsa depends on the spiciness of the individual peppers you use and the amount. Adjust to taste. I occasionally use habañeros in this salsa, when I know I won’t have visitors who can’t handle that level of heat.

Jewish Mother Warning:

When handling any fresh spicy peppers, wear vinyl/plastic/nitrile gloves (if you have any cuts on your fingers). If you aren’t using gloves, wash your hands two times with warm water and soap, immediately following cutting of peppers. Wash your hands after discarding the gloves as well, because you may not realize you got a drop on your hands. Do not skip this step, it is very important! The oils from the freshly cut peppers are very harmful to your skin and can truly cause terrible pain and if you forget and rub your nose or eyes, you will know what all those attacked by pepper spray know, basically torture that can incapacitate you. If you do forget and rub your eyes by accident, get in a warm shower and open and close your eyes in the stream of water for five to ten minutes until the burning stops. (I learned this from Poison Control, who I called one time, when I myself forgot this step and was suffering mightily.) I have never had this problem again, and the warm water shower solved my problem.

Now, don’t be afraid to make this salsa. It’s worth it. Just WASH YOUR HANDS!