Shabbat Quote: Let Your Blessings Catch You

In honor of these two pictures I stumbled across this week, perhaps the favorite of my kids together, a quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

"Shabbat is the day we stand still and let all our blessings catch up with us.”Radical Then, Radical Now p. 134

Stop.

Stand still.

Wait.

Who's trying to catch up with you?

My "Home" Teams

I've lived in Colorado for most of my life. From junior high through college, even when I had moved away from the Rocky Mountain state, my football team was the Denver Broncos, mostly because of this guy:

I wept without embarrassment or shame when he finally got his ring in 1998. By that time I was back in Colorado, hosting a Super Bowl Party at our tiny little apartment on Larpote Ave.

Elway retired in 1999 after winning back-to-back Super Bowls, and then they tore down Mile Hi Stadium and replaced it with another corporate no-personality stadium. The team was lackluster, the quarterbacks unremarkable, and

most of all

they'd become the home team. So I dropped them and added the Patriots to my roster of favorite teams -- the Boston Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins.

When I lived in North Dakota, I looked back at Colorado nostalgically, and the Broncos were part of that. I'd fetishize things like King Soopers brand milk, the mountains, and even the city of Greeley, where I went to high school. Greeley.

Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.” -- Madeline L'Engle

Seeing someone in a store in a Red Sox shirt in Fort Collins, CO is something special. Something to share a "Go Sox!" as you pass by, or a fist pump, or a secret nod. My pharmacist and I have a running conversation because he wears a New York Yankees lanyard for his name tag and I have one for my keys. I don't think he'd ever notice a Rockies key chain, and he'd certainly never comment on it each month. It's our running gag, and a connection I otherwise would not have made.

Maybe that's the secret, then. I wear my love of Boston sports on my car, on my keys, with my hats, shirts, and sweatshirts, o my Facebook wall and on the walls of my cubicle at work. I live my fandom out loud, and I have lost count of the small talk, casual conversations, and even friendships broadcasting those loyalties has let me to. My rivalries are all friendly.

Home is Where...

When people ask me where I'm from, I always say, "Boston originally," even though my time there was relatively short. My family is so Boston, and over the years I've fallen deeply in love with so much of the city.

My fetishized version of it, anyway.

I've long known that living in the Boston area again would immediately ruin it for me, much like having a Dunkin Donuts here in Fort Collins has taken the thrill out of going. It's not, as L'Engle wrote. a glimpse of home that vanishes, and is far less seductive for its staying power.

On GOP Debate Night, I'm Not Sure How to Spin this (disturbing) Haftarah

This week's haftarah is all about prophets and miracles, and I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Since it's taken from II Kings, you probably haven't read it. Here's the nutshell.

Miracle I:

An unnamed widow, heavily in debt, is being threatened by her creditors. They want her two sons as slaves in payment for what she owes. 
Enter Elisha (not Elijah) the prophet, who says, "Well, what else do you have to pay with?"
"Nothing. One vial of oil. That's it"
Elisha tells her to go borrow as many jugs as she can from her neighbors and pour the oil from her vial into the jugs. 
She does and -- miracle!! -- the oil flowed enough to fill all the jugs.
She sells them, repays her debts, and lives comfortably.

There are some pretty clear kernels of wisdom here:

• When you're in need, open your eyes and consider what you already have. 
• Don't dismiss seemingly small things. 
• Stretch, stretch, stretch every little thing to its maximum value.
• Your friends are probably willing to help you out, but you may have to ask them.
• Big jugs are good!
• God loves making a little oil go a long way.

Jug matching.

Miracle II:

Elisha traveled through Shunam a lot.This really cool, older couple would always welcome him, and they even built an addition to their house just for Elisha.The couple didn't have any kids, and when Elisha learned this, he blessed the woman that she should give birth to a child in exactly one year's time. Whaddya know? She does!Then it gets weird...
A few years later the son complained of a headache and died shortly thereafter.
The Shunamit woman laid the lifeless body on the bed in Elisha's designated guest room.
Elisha hurried to the woman's home and miraculously brought the boy back to life, like this:

Elisha came into the house, and there was the boy, laid out dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door behind the two of them, and prayed to the Lord. Then he mounted [the

bed] and placed himself over the child. He put his mouth on its mouth, his eyes on its eyes, and his hands on its hands, as he bent over it. And the body of the child became warm. He stepped down, walked once up and down the room, then mounted and bent over him. Thereupon, the boy sneezed seven times, and the boy opened his eyes. [Elisha] called Gehazi and said, "Call the Shunammite woman," and he called her. When she came to him, he said, "Pick up your son." She came and fell at his feet and bowed low to the ground; then she picked up her son and left.

What are we to make of this? The Stone Chumash, produced by Artscroll, an Orthodox publisher, says that the way Elisha heals the child is "an eternal lesson fr those who wish to inspire and teach and inspire Jewish children -- to breathe life into them. A teacher must give himself over to his charges of he hopes to succeed."

That's a pretty big logical leap from the "facts" of the story.

I'm also so uncomfortable with people in the bible who get their problems solved through miracles while the rest of us in real life just have to tough it out, miracle-free. Personally, since I don't believe in miracles that happen as a result of the will of a supreme being, I don't feel left out when they don't happen to me.

If this nameless woman in the scripture is worthy of her bareness being "cured" by a prophet, why not the woman of faith who is desperate to get pregnant in 2015?

If a prophet can bring a child back to life because the family was especially hospitable, what is the faithful mother who buries a child left to think?

In some ways, life is so much easier when it's random and reason-less. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with that, but paradoxically, studying these stories helps the reconciliation.

What Happened, Lacey?

I cracked open a used book tonight to find this inscription.

The book was published in 2005. Let's assume that Lacey bought it new before giving it to Jill as a gift. I personally would not mind a used book as a gift, but most folks would buy new for gift-giving.

That's ten years ago.

I've got a lot of questions for you girls.

Are you sisters? Friends? Lovers?

Mother and daughter seems unlikely because of the expletive, but it's possible. Not between me and my mother, but between some. Their relationship, whatever it is, is casual enough for Lacey to include not only a swear word, but a smiley face and an exclamation point! And the word love.

So lov-ers, perhaps.

Have they broken up? Was the breakup recent, and I am the first next owner of this text? Or has it been floating from reader to reader, each one as befuddled as I.

Did Jill put the book in a box of belongings she returned to Lacey by dropping it on her doorstep in the middle of the night? Or did she shove it into Lacey's arms as she backed out of their shared studio flat, shocked by Jill's guttural wail: Just! Go!

Was it casually tossed in the "donations" bin long after Lacey/Jill Jill/Lacey agreed to put a little space between them.

Lacey  / Jill
Lacey    /   Jill

Lacey

Jill


Did she, whichever she it was, take one last look at what had been inscribed,
long forgotten,
and try to remember what it was like then.

When exclamation points followed Love You! and not Hate You!
and fucking was an endearment and an invitation,
a promise.

Or did they toss it away together,
shaking their heads and laughing
as one says
"I thought you would like this more. "

Poem: "Power" by Adrienne Rich

That ear pain I wrote about in my last post turned out to be a Eustachian Tube Dysfunction due to a sinus infection. Big words for 'everything in your head is all plugged up,' including my creative flow. I probably exacerbated the entire thing by staying out too late two nights in a row this weekend. (Not sorry.)

Tonight, instead of composing a new blog post,  I'm taking my decongestant, my heating pad, and my cat, and I'm going to sleep. At 9:18 pm. (Sorry, and Not sorry)

Instead I offer this poem, written by the great Adrienne Rich in 1974. The last line changed my life. Some day I'll tell you how.


Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living      in the earth-deposits     of our history

Today a backhoe divulged      out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle      amber      perfect      a hundred-year-old
cure for fever      or melancholy      a tonic
for living on this earth      in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered      from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years    by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin     of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold      a test-tube or a pencil

She died      a famous woman      denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds      came      from the same source as her power

1974