The Theology of the Cubs

October 25, 2016 Irwin Keller

If only we could live our lives this way! With such constancy. With exquisite endurance, faith that doesn't flag, joy even in the waiting. Holding the world – and each other – with love and loyalty, despite imperfection, despite unfinishedness... If we could just hang on to life, with all its ups and downs, with the fierce love with which Cubs fans hang on to baseball. What a world this would be!

Drawing Water (from Earth, Sky and Heart)

October 21, 2016 Irwin Keller

Despite prayers for rain that begin this week, and despite all these rainmaking rituals, they didn't actually want the rain to hit while they were all sitting outside in the sukkah. So they had to struggle with what it meant to pray for something that you're not quite ready for yet.

Cloud Sukkah

October 17, 2016 Irwin Keller

The sukkah is a practice of impermanence. Our homes, our bodies, our lives – they are all sukkot. They are temporary. Flimsy. They bend with the wind. They get soaked with rain. We decorate them with the harvest – with our own harvests. All of our best features: qualities, talents, learnings. These adorn the sukkot of our lives. They are beautiful. But even they, like the gourds and apples and palm fronds on a backyard sukkah, eventually compost.

Two Podcasts

October 15, 2016 Irwin Keller

I was not feeling the sermon I had written. So I abandoned it in the moment and extemporized. (Eventually some of what I had written about came back in, but more authentically.)

Redigging the Wells (Rosh Hashanah 5777)

October 2, 2016 Irwin Keller

But knowing where we stand, knowing who we are, in a deep way? In a way that fills that vacuum? So that we have a sense of priority and of purpose. Compassion at the ready. Yes, knowing where we stand. That is surely something. That is surely medicine for our aching psyches.