Beginner's Mind

I want to see my face the way it looked the day the world began.

I want to look with fresh eyes, no preconceived notions, no expertise, a tabula rasa,

blank and ready to be written on.

I want to be an empty cup, spacious, willing.

I want to open the ears of my ears.

What if all of us were to come together with Beginner's Mind,

and build a world?

Creativity, Ceaseless Creativity

That "Creation" was a creative act: we must keep this in mind.
Why am I not seeing an initiative like this here in Israel? (Though maybe it exists and hasn't reached my ears). This Sunday at 7:00 p.m. people of all faiths will gather at Centennial Square in Victoria BC. Silently. Not to discuss rationally the best solution to the crisis in the Middle East. Not to convince each other of anything. Simply to BE together, "to come together and pray for quiet and tranquility to allow a new consciousness to emerge".
Any act of creativity, I imagine, requires a stillness, a quieting of the noise.
Healing, I am beginning to think, health, and peace, are each acts of concentrated, open, purposeful creativity. But not personal, rational creativity. More, an opening to the larger source, of ceaseless creativity.

Sweet Molly Ann

In moments when I question my value and doubt my possibility, I jot in the corner of my to-do list, "Molly Ann believes in me".

Wherever she is, Molly Ann convinces me that I'm OK.

Human Being, not Human Doing

At the Winnipeg Folk Festival, there will be an opportunity to take a 25 hour break to be a "Human Being", rather than a "Human Doing", and to see the world as fine, just the way it is, for a brief time. What a brilliant invention, though not new. Shabbat!

Extraordinary Dailiness

There was a time when long distance was long distance. Last night Janie and Sunny and I had a leisurely visit, Janie and Sunny in faraway Winnipeg, bright daylight, and I in the midnight darkness of Netanya, night envelopping the ripening mangoes and the song of the waves. We chatted and visited, savouring the silence between words, and the jingle of the ice cream truck that sent Sunny running outside for treats. And back again to the screen so that I could share in the yummy ice cream cone. The magical auntie tax. ("Modern technology", Beno just piped in."Soon we won't need people".) The yummiest treat for me is that I can be ordinary with Janie and Sunny. That's extraordinary!!

Eretz

Today's Hebrew word is "Eretz", also pronounce "Aretz" (though suddenly I am pulled magnetically to change this to "today's word is "tov", mistranslated as "good", so I'll do that one next)
Eretz: the land. In the beginning God (read as "the ceaseless creativity of the universe, whatever organizing force juggles or paints or mirrors this universe into being) created the heavens and the earth. The phrase, "the heavens and the earth", ha-shomayim v ha-aretz, can refer to "the spiritual world and the physical world", so "eretz" here means "the physical world". According to Judaism, the physical world is one tiny tiny fraction of the world. The vast vast majority is the shomayim part, the world of ideas, dreams, history, future, interpretation, spirit, fantasy, principle, emotion, thought, hope. Physical world? Tiny.
Eretz. Earth. Physical world. The word "eretz" also refers to the Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. You would never hear someone say they are "b'yisrael", in Israel. Only "ba-aretz", in the land. There are two places to be: ba-aretz, in the land of Israel, and ba-chutz la-aretz, outside of the land of Israel. Honest. People travel to "chul", a short form for 'outside of the land", and they come back to ha-aretz. They come back. They always come back. Even if it takes them 2000 years, they come back to the land.
Eretz: land
Eretz zavat chalav udvash: A land flowing with milk and honey