Making friends with Jesus, figuring out a handle for Christ, and managing Jewish Christmas guilt.
Read moreThat Light in Joseph (Audio Podcast)
Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh’s Granaries. By Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1874. Source: Wikipedia.
One often-overlooked dimension of Joseph’s hiddenness has to do with his gender. Torah keeps pointing to something unusual about it. This includes references to his looks, his emotions, his social role, even his body.
Read moreTo Love the Absent Mind (Audio Podcast)
I return from a 6-week leave of absence with questions , raised by an unfortunate meeting of home and car, about my own mind’s sudden leave of absence.
Read moreLet it Rain (Audio Podcast)
I am worried that our will to live is being depleted. Not that people are dying because they gave up. Although clearly the world has become less hospitable, and our assessment of what future we might look forward to has shifted. But I'm talking about something beyond that. There is something about the usual flow of life through us and through this Creation that feels to be at risk.
Notes on Transformation (Audio Podcast)
And here we are, wondering how to be part of this transformation, how to tend and cultivate it; how to keep it from becoming something dreadful and instead inch it toward something beautiful. I somehow picture it like that befuddling Olympic sport, curling. We can't force this rebirthing world to move forward the way we want. But we can skate alongside with brooms, and create the subtle conditions for it to gently incline toward blessing.
Read moreIn the River of Light (Audio Podcast)
Let us not mistake this world of politics and rancor as the only world in which we exist. This is a saturated, hydro-charged Cosmos.
Read moreLate Season (Audio Podcast)
And there it was. My unspoken conviction that all fruition must come before age 60, while I'm still young in my own estimation. That if I didn't achieve whatever on some timeline, then I'd failed, and I might as well give it up. I sat there and laughed at myself, willing to deny my future self all sorts of fulfillment and joy, just because I thought 60 was too old.
Read moreThe Fires of Elul (Audio Podcast)
I have nothing to say about it. No way to beautify this extreme weather story. No silver lining to offer. Our species long ago stripped the planet of silver linings, using them as shiny decorations on the edifice of unsustainable living.
Read moreStations of the Journey (Audio Podcast)
The journey that we are on itself is a Divine Name. Each stop on it is a letter. This journey through stations of sorrow and hope, outrage and love, grief and fear and fatigue and coziness too. Each stop, each encampment wants to be noticed and counted, lest in retrospect it become a blur.
Reflections on Parashat Mas'ei during COVID times.
Counting and Chanting (Audio Podcast)
We are in many overlapping periods of time – the 22-day "narrow place" as well as the enduring shelter-in-place. Some thoughts on the flow of Jewish time, and on the musical traditions that we employ to accompany us on the journey.
Read moreWalk Humbly (Audio Podcast)
God, you have made the human slightly less than angels. Which is, I'm sure, meant as a compliment. But just under the angels is a bummer of a spot to be in. Not high enough to really get the big picture we need and want. And not rooted in the earth enough to have the ways of knowing that other animals do, who do not have to try to figure out what is motivating them.
Read moreGifts of the Queers (Audio Podcast)
It's Pride Season. And even though this is a difficult time, we must become adept at holding successes at the same time that we hold struggle. And so a little piece of celebration called "Gifts of the Queers" – a chance to recognize the role that LGBTQI people have played in our culture, including our Jewish culture, that we don't so often identify and name. Audio here.
Read moreCross the Jordan (Audio Podcast)
It is harder to leave the Wilderness than it looks. We are peeking across a border into a Paradise right now, where we could be bigger than we are now; our spirits enormous as giants. But it is easier to stay grasshoppers, shrunken, constricted, hard-shelled, afraid of being trampled.
Read moreTorah Says Witness, Including Your Whiteness (Audio Podcast)
Miriam was struck with the disease, but until Aharon witnessed it, until she was witnessed, it wasn't quite real. How powerful is the act of witnessing – the way it draws something into manifestation! Torah this week is saying: witness. Make it real. You can't work with it until you see it. Miriam didn't have a prayer of being healed until her unexpected – and blessedly temporary – whiteness was witnessed.
Read moreTo Breathe Free (Audio Podcast)
Our European ancestors tossed their tefillin overboard along with their languages, rituals and personal histories. They sacrificed their particularity so that we could be Americans. By which we now understand – so we could be White.
Read moreBring on Some Revelation (with a side of Torah, please) – Audio Podcast
After we emerge from our houses back into the sunlight; after we are all driving and working and buying – we will look around and we will be disappointed. Others will seem not to have shared our visions, or agreed to our mitzvot. Our Revelation will not have turned into Transformation. Yet. So let us make sure that one verse of our Torah is: "Disappointment is to be expected. Disappointment is not an obstacle but fuel for the journey.”
Read moreWilderness and Garden (Audio Podcast)
Maybe the most salient difference between a Wilderness and a Garden is the fact of being witnessed. And the speech waiting for us in the Wilderness? Maybe it’s not chatter and not the earth-shaking thrum of God at Sinai. But the loving voice of a gardener.
Tourist in Shapeless Time (Audio Podcast)
It was easy and heroic to maintain this seclusion for a while, when it was new, when we were constantly problem-solving. When our confinement was itself movement into the unknown. But at this point, I have depleted my internal resources.
Can I let go of my need for every moment of this terrible time to be productive or meaningful or insight-giving? What will it be like to let this time be: let it be its frustrating, tedious, anxious and sad self, without the pressure of having to be the source of global transformation or personal enlightenment?
Read moreA Theology of COVID Times (Audio Podcast)
Where is God in all of this? The answer is, maybe, everywhere. And why isn’t God intervening? Of course God is intervening. In fact we are doing so every day.
Read moreIsolation, AIDS Flashbacks, & Divine Embrace (Audio Podcast)
There are pieces of this isolation I want to remember and bring with me when we are finally able to move freely about the cabin. But I also know that this isolation, no matter how pleasant parts of it may be, is something we will all need to reckon with over time. Because there is injury in going so long not touching and not being touched! Noticing and having to ignore the skin’s desire to feel skin, our bones’ desire to be pressed in an embrace.
Read more