Al Het: Seeking Atonement for the Climate Crisis

Sharing an updated version of my Al Het for the Climate Crisis. May your observance of Yom Kippur restore you to greater wholeness, right relationship, and courage.

Here is the pdf version to download.

A Great Dark Dread (Genesis 15:12): Teaching for Meditation

Sharing my teaching from our Tuesday morning Jewish meditation group, one week prior to the presidential election of 2020. Our group began meeting in September 2016 and has been meeting weekly on Tuesday mornings for the past four years. We are cultivating groundedness, heart-opening, and lightness of being as we move through these dark times in loving community. The chant is an original composition, drawn from Genesis 15:1, and the spoken teaching begins about 5 minutes into the recording. In our group, we sit for 20 minutes after the teaching each week. Sitting together in intentional silence, even over Zoom, is a powerful way to build community.

Racial Justice: Taking a Knee

When is it worth venturing out during the age of the coronavirus, if one does not serve on the frontlines?  Over the past almost three months, my immediate family has mostly stayed at home, connecting to the outside world through our computers and phones.  I have taken an occasional distance walk with a friend and made a visit to the grocery store about every 2 weeks.  Most days, my primary trip outside is a solo walk to refresh my spirit, during which I open to the beauty of a flower, a puddle, or a fallen branch.  For the time being, this is our new normal.

Yet today, I was moved to venture a little further from home and show up to a racial justice protest in Centre City Philadelphia, sponsored by POWER Live Free, an organization which focuses on ending police violence and mass incarceration. Philadelphia is one of the cities that has experienced rioting and looting and we have been under 6PM-6AM curfew the past several nights.  The National Guard was called in earlier this week.  Our neighborhood, 20 minutes away, has been mostly quiet, although local businesses were broken into Saturday night.  

It was important for me to witness the homeless men resting in the heat of the day as I parked my car, a visceral reminder of the impact of racism and extreme poverty. It was important for me to witness the National Guard stationed in riot gear next to City Hall and to feel the anger, fear, and confusion that this aroused.  It was important to be present at the protest, which took place on the southwest corner of City Hall at the Octavius Catto Memorial, a Memorial erected in 2017 to honor the memory of an influential 19th century African American educator and civil rights leader.  Due to a helicopter whirring above us, I could not hear the words spoken during the protest , and I mostly stayed on the edges of the group to minimize possible exposure to COVID-19; however, I could feel the powerful energy arising from this group of people of faith who gathered together to call for justice.  When it was time, I took a knee, along with everyone else, and then was moved to bow my head to the ground in humility, in atonement, and in gratitude for life. 

The World will be Saved by Beauty

The world will be saved by beauty (Dostoyevsky)

Open to the beauty around you.  Go to beautiful places.  Create beautiful things.  Make your home beautiful.  Adorn your body with beauty.  Look in the mirror and see your own beauty.  

See the beauty in each of your parents. See the beauty in your beloveds, in your ancestors, and in your descendants.  See the beauty in each encounter with another being, for seeing beauty calls forth the beauty, releasing sparks of primordial light.  If at first you can’t see the beauty, look and look again.  Trust in the presence of the God-spark.   

Listen to the mountains, listen to the oceans, listen to the forests, listen to the lakes.  Plant flowers and rejoice in the innocent beauty they unfurl.  Watch the clouds, each moment a new painting on God’s sky canvas.

Eat foods that bring the beauty of creation within.  Savor their smells and tastes and textures.

Make beautiful music. Dance a beautiful dance.  Be always on the lookout for beauty.  Live in a state of awe and wonder.  

See the beauty in what is yours and rejoice with others for the beauty that is theirs.  

“Beauty is My gift to you,” says the Holy One.  Drink it in!  

Adapted from a piece I wrote in August 2016, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at a retreat with Rabbi Shefa Gold. Our assignment was to write our own version of the 10 Commandments.

A Prayer from the Heart for those Serving our Communities and for those most Vulnerable

We hold in our hearts all who are serving our community to keep us safe, many at risk to their own lives:

those who keep the electricity on and the water flowing

those who provide food for our tables and healthcare for the sick

those who clean and repair and pick up the trash

those working in factories and transporting packages

those who are serving governments around the world in good faith

those developing new vaccines and treatments

those who help to keep the peace and to put out literal and figurative fires

those creatively adapting to teaching students and leading communities

those caring for the dying, the dead, and the bereaved

and those caring for children and elders.

We also hold in our hearts all for whom these times are particularly challenging:

those for whom sheltering at home is a danger 

those who do not have a home

those who cannot go home

those who cannot visit with loved ones

those suffering from debilitating mental illness

those who have lost their sense of purpose

and those who are hungry.

Torah commands us to love the stranger as ourselves, to remember that we were strangers in the land of Egypt.  Even as we shelter at home, may our love and acts of justice extend far beyond our households to support those in need of sustenance, protection, and healing.  

May a Sukkat Shalom— a Shelter of Peace—spread over all of humanity.  And we say, Amen

Crossing the Sea

When you pass through the waters, I am with you, yes, I am with you.
I won’t let the rivers overwhelm you, I will be with you. (Isaiah 43:2, Chant by Rabbi Shefa Gold)

I lead a weekly Jewish meditation group on Tuesday mornings, which includes 20 minutes of silence together. This morning, we opened with chanting Through the Waters, a powerful chant practice for remembering that we are not alone in this journey of embodied life. Here is the teaching I shared before our silence:

We are approaching the final days of Passover.  There is a tradition that on the 7th day of Passover, which begins tonight, the Israelites cross the Sea.  

The Israelites flee Egypt following the 10th plague, the death of the firstborn of Egypt, and we might imagine that this is the dramatic end of the story of the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt, but no!  Pharaoh has another change of heart about releasing them from his service and he and his army pursue the fleeing Israelites with chariots.  

An angel of God intervenes—the pillar of cloud that had been in front of the Israelites, guiding them, shifts from in front to behind them, to separate the Egyptians from the Israelites by a cloud of darkness.   Then a strong east wind blows and turns the sea into dry ground, the waters forming two walls to the right and left, leaving a tunnel, or birth canal, for the Israelites to walk through.   

How do I imagine our experience of crossing the sea?

Here we are, together, in this tunnel in the sea

Nobody talking or singing or even humming

We are silent, together, not knowing what comes next

Will we make it to the other side?

Will the walls close in and drown us all? 

Will there be anyone left to remember us?  

Why did we leave?  Did we have a choice? 

Here we are, together

Future generations will say that we lived through a miracle

When we get to the other side, we will sing and dance

Yet for this moment, here we are, in this tunnel in the sea

Each step, each breath, a miracle