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 moreRain!
Remember Miriam who had the women meet their husbands at the water,
And set her brother in a basket in the water.
Who led the people in song and dance when we had crossed the water,
And whose faithful well supplied our folk with abundant, unlikely water.
For her sake, do not withhold water.
Blossom of the Universe (Rosh Hashanah 5780)
Together we can be a refugium – protectors of life. We can bring all our distinctiveness – our skills, our smarts, our songs – whatever the Tree of Life planted in us. Bring all of that to this community and to the other communities in which we are rooted around the world. We can share this vision, this consciousness, this love and longing at the root level, the way trees speak over distance through the mycelial network. We will be the protectors of people, places and creatures in need through the hard times, and the restorers and renewers of the landscape on the other side of it.
Read moreAd Anah – The Heavens Weep and Are Not Answered
Years have worn on. When will You hear us – and
Zodiac's prayers, and angels on high?
The Persistence of Shabbat (After Pittsburgh)
We don't always say yes to what Shabbat offers. Maybe we say no more often than we say yes. But she never gets the hint. And she never gives up on us. She keeps showing up at the door in all her beauty, the Shechinah robed in time, with the fierceness of lions and the voice of songbirds. And so it is also after a week like this one. A horrible, unthinkable week, here she is again. Despite it all.
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