January, 2024 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
Six decades ago, more or less, Mickey’s girlfriend went to Israel for the summer. Apparently, in those days you could just show up and find a place to volunteer and be housed and fed. On her flight, M was seated next to a woman who was moving to Kibbutz Gal-On to marry her fiancé. They got to talking, and the seat mate encouraged M to check out Gal-On. M did, spent the summer there, had a fabulous time, and returned to Mickey. They got married and moved to Gal-On, planning to spend their lives as kibbutzniks.
The marriage, alas, did not work out. After they broke up (and many interim adventures), Mickey met C, a new volunteer at Gal-On. They fell in love. Circumstances eventually were such that they decided to return to the U.S. C’s grandmother had a piece of land in Gualala so Mickey and C made their home in Gualala. Years later their marriage ended as well. Sometime after, Mickey heard about a Hanukkah party up in Mendocino. He came to the party and won a raffle prize, a pie to be baked by the rabbi. The rest, as they say, is history.
I think now and then about this chain of events, especially about that original plane trip and the randomness of a seat assignment. What if M had been seated elsewhere? Who might she have talked to then? Where might she have ended up? How did C end up in Gal-On? Causality is so mysterious.
For some time now I have been trying to resist the temptation to speculate—or to give credence to other people’s speculations—about how things will turn out. There are so many polls and editorials and studies that predict how politics, climate, wars, legal cases, social and artistic trends, the fortunes of the Golden State Warriors, and those of other teams will trend in years to come. Especially now, when things seem dire on many important fronts, it is easy to think that, with all this information, I can see the future. And I still can’t. So I try to avoid conjectural thinking, my own or others’.
Rebecca Solnit, a writer who thinks about futures, writes:
My favorite comment about political change comes from Zhou En-Lai, a high-ranking member of Chairman Mao’s government. Asked, in the early 1970’s, about his opinion of the French Revolution, he answered, “Too soon to tell.” Some argue that he was talking about the insurrections of 1968, not the monarchy-toppling of 1789, but even then it demonstrates a generous and expansive perspective. To retain a sense that even four years later the verdict isn’t in is to live with more open-minded uncertainty than most people can now tolerate (Hope in the Dark, p. XX).
“Open-minded uncertainty” isn’t the same as assuming that things will be fine or ignoring the future. Nor does it mean doom-thinking. It means genuinely not knowing.
Here’s a tiny example (though not to me): my fabulous, larger-than-life cat has been missing for the past two weeks. It’s likely that he met his end from a larger predator, but one does hear of cats gone AWOL who return weeks and months later. What do I do with this in my own heart? I’ve done due-diligence, checked in with the neighbors and the Humane Society, posted signs, walked the woods…. I can hold tight to those stories of amazing cat reappearances, or I can put away his kibble and his scratching posts and grieve and mope. And/or I can not-know.
My favorite morning blessing: Baruch ata… rokah ha-aretz al hamayim. “Blessed is God, Who stretches out the earth on the waters.” Life is wobbly. Uncertain. Constantly shifting, both at the micro-level of girlfriends on airplanes and missing cats and at the macro level of climate and geopolitics.
What effect does it have on me to think I know what will happen in my own life? In the lives of people and creatures I love? In our world? It can motivate me, I suppose (though how often does it, really?) to prepare for the worst. Or to savor the best. More typically for me, it justifies despondency and resignation.
I think here about aging. At one level we know the end of the story: that we will each die as will everyone we love. But what will it be like? And what of the (indeterminate number of) days leading up to death? How will our bodies and minds change? Who will we meet along the way? What will we learn? What will surprise us? Inspire us? Crush us? Open-minded uncertainty.
We are coming up to Tu B’Shevat, a beautiful and profound teaching about not knowing what will happen. We are taught that there is a Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. In the winter months, deep underground, at the root of the Tree, long before we can see any evidence on the surface of the ground, the frozen sap begins to thaw and stir and rise, bringing another year of life to the Tree and to the planet. But this is never guaranteed, so on the full moon of the month of Shevat, we gather and bless the fruits of the prior year and pray and hope for another year of fruition.
More than ever, we now know that one of these years the sap may not rise in the Tree, and life as we know it will end. Unimaginable. But so far so good. Life has continued—always, I think, by means of millions of small, nearly invisible gestures and actions, none of which may seem consequential by themselves. A fruitful conversation, a dream, a seat on a plane.
I think that what matters is not what we think we know about the outcome of the story, but what we do while not knowing, while bobbing on this wobbly planet. What we think matters may not turn out to be what mattered in the long run. So we take one step at a time; we have good conversations with whomever we sit next to, follow inspirations, try things out, gather with friends and community, bless and eat fruit, pray and wonder.
What was the outcome of the French Revolution anyhow? New kinds of governments were formed and fell; people were killed and saved; books were written, read, forgotten; art was created, bought, sold, stolen; fashions changed; places on the globe were colonized and threw off colonization. Are there really outcomes? Or is there an endless flow of events, actions and inactions, decisions and experiments, wobbling along, each leading to the next moment in mysterious and unpredictable ways?
May the sap rise year after year, for as long as it possibly can—in the Tree of Life and in each of our own souls. And, whatever the outcome, may we gather, bless, eat, contemplate, love, create and breathe in life while we have it.
PAIGE NOTES
Happy 2024! We enter into this Gregorian new year as the full moon of the Hebrew month of Tevet wanes toward a quarter. Our Hebrew calendar doesn’t pretend we’re happy all the time; it acknowledges our need for the full spectrum of emotions, including anger. Our Hanukkah 5Rhythms practice did the same. As an intentional movement practice, it guided us through the five musical rhythms of flowing, staccato, chaotic, lyrical, and still. Chaotic gave us the opportunity to release any anger, to move it through our bodies as dance moves, rather than as violence. Many community members who attended this Hanukkah Havdallah gathering mentioned how supportive this practice felt for them, even if they don’t usually like dancing!
Similarly, the month of Tevet gives us the opportunity to mindfully touch our anger, to listen to what it might be here to teach us. We intentionally do this during the darker, more introspective part of the year, when the joy of the Festival of Light has passed, yet the early sunset takes us home with many hours before sleep, to do the real inner work. If anger doesn’t feel present at this time, the month can also be a general invitation to be with what is. I constantly return to the meditative notion of “being with what is.” It feels like a positive reframing of “not resisting” or “surrendering.” May this moon cycle be one of not combating the coldness or darkness, but rather consciously choosing to be with it. What a journey it will be to see what comes from that.
with love,
rabbi paige
