Sometimes, you hear so much weird, wacky and scary stuff concerning religion, one forgets the compassion of faith when separated from fear.
Thus, my friend and mentor, a pedagogical warrior and feminist force of nature, Susan B., on healing the world:
"Holiday in Philly
Yom Kipur remains the most emotional holiday I know, a holiday I remember from the years when I was a tiny child praying with immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants, the young and the very old who had lived through who knows what and refused to talk about it. In my early twenties I ended one Yom Kipur with ceaseless tears, a great letting go with heavy sobs all the way back on public transit home trying to stop and not succeeding. Another Yom Kipur in my early forties I watched the light change through synagogue windows as morning turned to afternoon turned to evening and finally to night.
A few Yom Kipurs I stayed only for an evening service, Kol Nidre, the most sacred night of the year, and decided not to return for the emotional roller coaster of an eleven hour service the next day.
Yom Kipur is the Day of Atonement, a day for getting right with G?d, for counting sins past and blessings present, a day to begin again, to return, as the rabbi sings, to the home of your soul. In yoga, it's like the third eye, the light that shines within, which my NYC yoga teacher has explained, is true nature.
Although I'm rather beyond the point of magical thinking, I do appreciate moments of reflection in times of struggle-- and this year happily brought many amazing opportunities, perhaps the most inspiring of which was when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time in sunlit mid-June. And these last several days in Philly were another.
Yes, there was praying and lots of it-- praying until my heart hurt and praying until my heart seemed to break free of hurt. On the Wednesday evening of Yom Kipur, a congregant whom I did not know, had handed me two Obama stickers with Barak Obama spelled out in Hebrew letters that I was able to read phonetically-- with glee and a rare feeling of ethnic solidarity. On Thursday morning, a bird, a sparrow, had flown in the window of the church where we prayed and moved softly all morning through the sunlight coming in the stain glass windows. By afternoon she was gone.
Steve and I took a break in mid-afternoon to walk outside in the remarkable October blue sky air, leaves changing and autumn flowers opening to the sun. We had broken our fast earlier in the day and enjoyed a late lunch at the cafe up the hill from the church.
We had lived in this neighborhood off and on for five years in the 1990's through summer of 2001 and it has been a second home to us ever since. But the cafe was relatively new to us and we hadn't spent much time there before. The neighborhood had gentrified since we had been away and was wealthier than when we had lived there. On the salaries we made when we lived in Philly, we probably couldn't have afforded to stay.
Back at the church for the late afternoon service, we took part in the traditional reading of the biblical story of Jonah in a most decidedly nontraditional way. The service leaders (the rabbi sat at the side taking a short break from her service-leading marathon day) divided the congregants into five different groups each of whom were responsible for acting out one scene from the story.
Our group performed the scene in which a terrified Jonah is thrown into the storming sea by a group of even more terrified sailors. We acted out our scene to the tune of "what do you do with a drunken sailor." I was Jonah and my role involved singing out a curse that the sailors sang back to me in refrain. Having cursed publicly in synagogue on the holiest day of the year, I was relieved that the audience laughed-- and that I was not struck by lightning.
The rabbi offered a vastly moving commentary on why the story of Jonah points to the necessity of performing Tikun Olam-- the repair of the world. Tikun Olam is the spiritual belief that helped me turn back to the Yom Kipur service this year-- my closest tie to understanding what is beyond my understanding.
After still more prayers and a lighting of candles the service ended and Steve and I stepped into the lobby for a breath of air.In the lobby, a rabbi, an organizer from California for rabbisforobama. org, asked us if we wanted to campaign for Obama in PA the next day. We were thrilled to say yes.
In 2000, we had rallied in Philly during the republican convention with police helicopters hovering over us in the air and a heavy police presence on the ground as well. So having the opportunity to work for Obama in our long ago forsaken city felt particularly gratifying.
The next day we assembled with our cell phones in an inner-ring suburb of Philly to make phone calls. Jan Shikowsky, the Congressional representative from the district I where I spend most of my childhood in Illinois was campaigning for Obama as well and came in to speak with us. After sitting outside in the sun all afternoon making phone calls, we found a ride back to the train with another volunteer with whom we spoke about Obama's chances in PA and in general.
At dusk that evening we walked through the Independence Hall National Park area in Old City and the air was embracing and soft. We went to see "Trouble the Water," an extraordinary documentary about Hurricane Katrina, then took the train back to our friends' home in New Jersey where we were staying. We sat outside with our friends talking in their Sukkah, the open air booth that they had build on their deck for the harvest festival of Sukkot which follows Yom Kipur. We could almost see stars through the corn shuck roof and the light pollution from across the river in Philly.
The next day, our final day there, I woke up early and walked to the farmer's market under the commuter train tracks and bought locally grown pears and locally baked bread. The autumn chill buoyed my steps-- as did the woman who was handing out voter registration forms for the election. Then Steve and I caught a ride back to Philly to take the two connecting commuter trains home to New York.
I know this sounds like Susan's Hippie Heaven Weekend Retreat and it really was. But it was bittersweet too. In addition to the gentrification of our old neighborhood, we saw many folks who truly seemed to be hurting, the real casualties on the front lines of the economic downturn. Macy's, the flagship store in the Gallery-Market East Mall-- in Center City had closed down and the store space was empty. The sign for Strawbridge and Clothier, the locally own department store that had occupied that space for most of the twentieth century, was gone and only a faint imprint remained-- local history erased, living wage jobs abandoned.
Other storefronts on Market Street were empty and compared to the Friday night hustle of New York, the Market East shopping district seemed subdued and abandoned. There were more folks than I remembered on the street, men particularly, ill or hungry, who asked us for money. As elsewhere I've visited in the US this year, the deep divide between the poor and the much wealthier was particularly striking.
I think I had initially seen Philly through the rose-colored lenses of when we last lived there, at the turn of the 21st century, when the economic outlook was more hopeful. But that changed very quickly. The world of hurt that has at last reached the middle class continues to affect the poor with the most difficult struggles of all.
I was moved in Philly-- moved to begin again, as the reflection of Yom Kipur implores us to do.The light is there-- it is hard work to find our way to it-- it hurts us and beckons us at once. The sparrow glides toward the closed window, using her wings to sense the sunlight and to find a way out when there seems to be no way at all. Her fluttering wings beat in rhythm to the prayers of our heart and become one as we learn to make sense of-- and failing at that, to begin to change-- the discordant sounds of worldly fears that cannot now-- not ever-- keep us from moving forward."
Thus, my friend and mentor, a pedagogical warrior and feminist force of nature, Susan B., on healing the world:
"Holiday in Philly
Yom Kipur remains the most emotional holiday I know, a holiday I remember from the years when I was a tiny child praying with immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants, the young and the very old who had lived through who knows what and refused to talk about it. In my early twenties I ended one Yom Kipur with ceaseless tears, a great letting go with heavy sobs all the way back on public transit home trying to stop and not succeeding. Another Yom Kipur in my early forties I watched the light change through synagogue windows as morning turned to afternoon turned to evening and finally to night.
A few Yom Kipurs I stayed only for an evening service, Kol Nidre, the most sacred night of the year, and decided not to return for the emotional roller coaster of an eleven hour service the next day.
Yom Kipur is the Day of Atonement, a day for getting right with G?d, for counting sins past and blessings present, a day to begin again, to return, as the rabbi sings, to the home of your soul. In yoga, it's like the third eye, the light that shines within, which my NYC yoga teacher has explained, is true nature.
Although I'm rather beyond the point of magical thinking, I do appreciate moments of reflection in times of struggle-- and this year happily brought many amazing opportunities, perhaps the most inspiring of which was when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time in sunlit mid-June. And these last several days in Philly were another.
Yes, there was praying and lots of it-- praying until my heart hurt and praying until my heart seemed to break free of hurt. On the Wednesday evening of Yom Kipur, a congregant whom I did not know, had handed me two Obama stickers with Barak Obama spelled out in Hebrew letters that I was able to read phonetically-- with glee and a rare feeling of ethnic solidarity. On Thursday morning, a bird, a sparrow, had flown in the window of the church where we prayed and moved softly all morning through the sunlight coming in the stain glass windows. By afternoon she was gone.
Steve and I took a break in mid-afternoon to walk outside in the remarkable October blue sky air, leaves changing and autumn flowers opening to the sun. We had broken our fast earlier in the day and enjoyed a late lunch at the cafe up the hill from the church.
We had lived in this neighborhood off and on for five years in the 1990's through summer of 2001 and it has been a second home to us ever since. But the cafe was relatively new to us and we hadn't spent much time there before. The neighborhood had gentrified since we had been away and was wealthier than when we had lived there. On the salaries we made when we lived in Philly, we probably couldn't have afforded to stay.
Back at the church for the late afternoon service, we took part in the traditional reading of the biblical story of Jonah in a most decidedly nontraditional way. The service leaders (the rabbi sat at the side taking a short break from her service-leading marathon day) divided the congregants into five different groups each of whom were responsible for acting out one scene from the story.
Our group performed the scene in which a terrified Jonah is thrown into the storming sea by a group of even more terrified sailors. We acted out our scene to the tune of "what do you do with a drunken sailor." I was Jonah and my role involved singing out a curse that the sailors sang back to me in refrain. Having cursed publicly in synagogue on the holiest day of the year, I was relieved that the audience laughed-- and that I was not struck by lightning.
The rabbi offered a vastly moving commentary on why the story of Jonah points to the necessity of performing Tikun Olam-- the repair of the world. Tikun Olam is the spiritual belief that helped me turn back to the Yom Kipur service this year-- my closest tie to understanding what is beyond my understanding.
After still more prayers and a lighting of candles the service ended and Steve and I stepped into the lobby for a breath of air.In the lobby, a rabbi, an organizer from California for rabbisforobama. org, asked us if we wanted to campaign for Obama in PA the next day. We were thrilled to say yes.
In 2000, we had rallied in Philly during the republican convention with police helicopters hovering over us in the air and a heavy police presence on the ground as well. So having the opportunity to work for Obama in our long ago forsaken city felt particularly gratifying.
The next day we assembled with our cell phones in an inner-ring suburb of Philly to make phone calls. Jan Shikowsky, the Congressional representative from the district I where I spend most of my childhood in Illinois was campaigning for Obama as well and came in to speak with us. After sitting outside in the sun all afternoon making phone calls, we found a ride back to the train with another volunteer with whom we spoke about Obama's chances in PA and in general.
At dusk that evening we walked through the Independence Hall National Park area in Old City and the air was embracing and soft. We went to see "Trouble the Water," an extraordinary documentary about Hurricane Katrina, then took the train back to our friends' home in New Jersey where we were staying. We sat outside with our friends talking in their Sukkah, the open air booth that they had build on their deck for the harvest festival of Sukkot which follows Yom Kipur. We could almost see stars through the corn shuck roof and the light pollution from across the river in Philly.
The next day, our final day there, I woke up early and walked to the farmer's market under the commuter train tracks and bought locally grown pears and locally baked bread. The autumn chill buoyed my steps-- as did the woman who was handing out voter registration forms for the election. Then Steve and I caught a ride back to Philly to take the two connecting commuter trains home to New York.
I know this sounds like Susan's Hippie Heaven Weekend Retreat and it really was. But it was bittersweet too. In addition to the gentrification of our old neighborhood, we saw many folks who truly seemed to be hurting, the real casualties on the front lines of the economic downturn. Macy's, the flagship store in the Gallery-Market East Mall-- in Center City had closed down and the store space was empty. The sign for Strawbridge and Clothier, the locally own department store that had occupied that space for most of the twentieth century, was gone and only a faint imprint remained-- local history erased, living wage jobs abandoned.
Other storefronts on Market Street were empty and compared to the Friday night hustle of New York, the Market East shopping district seemed subdued and abandoned. There were more folks than I remembered on the street, men particularly, ill or hungry, who asked us for money. As elsewhere I've visited in the US this year, the deep divide between the poor and the much wealthier was particularly striking.
I think I had initially seen Philly through the rose-colored lenses of when we last lived there, at the turn of the 21st century, when the economic outlook was more hopeful. But that changed very quickly. The world of hurt that has at last reached the middle class continues to affect the poor with the most difficult struggles of all.
I was moved in Philly-- moved to begin again, as the reflection of Yom Kipur implores us to do.The light is there-- it is hard work to find our way to it-- it hurts us and beckons us at once. The sparrow glides toward the closed window, using her wings to sense the sunlight and to find a way out when there seems to be no way at all. Her fluttering wings beat in rhythm to the prayers of our heart and become one as we learn to make sense of-- and failing at that, to begin to change-- the discordant sounds of worldly fears that cannot now-- not ever-- keep us from moving forward."
Update: Apropos of "Progress", G_d knows we need it.
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