And perhaps you wonder, What is it like To be in the land, At Seder time? To stand at the shores of the sea, To walk the longed-for sands? I rode my bike in wind today, Along much of Israel's coastline, Seeing the wildflowers that decorated The hagaddahs of my childhood. A mild haze at the sea's horizon, Blurred any line That might separate Sea from sky, Past from now, Promise from pipe dream, Blessing from curse. There are no lines, But the ones we etch On this earth's flowing cloud. Mirrors of mirrors, We vision and reminisce, Fight and believe. Still, here, The hills running down to the sea Bob with the wildflowers that decorated The hagaddahs of my childhood, Amongst the words Next year in Jerusalem! The young people won't sit at Seders here. They'll be guarding the borders, The entries to hotels, The gates to the city. We are here, And not here. The message, though blurred, Like today's sealine horizon, Mixing wave with sky, Above with below, Whispers to us, There is still work to do. Hoist the matzos to your back, Gather the little ones And don't forget to bring along Your timbrels, your tambourine! The time is here And we are here To lift our voices, Next year! Next year! Next year! The gates of the city.

If the Mantra Fits

A soft knit toque is what makes me stop the busyness for a moment and write. There is so much, so very much. I was sure I had lost it. It was not on the floor of the cafe where I stopped for a dreamy cappuccino with nice friends on the cold morning, mid-run in wind and drizzle. It was not in my pocket and not in my bag, not along the sidewalk. Lost. Oh well. I let go, made it feel okay that it was lost. And now, a day later, it is beside my jacket at home where I threw my jacket after coming inside toqueless at the end of my run. There is always a real world explanation. It was probably stuck in my jacket's collar. But the momentary joy that swept through my entire body upon seeing it there,was miracle. What is lost can come back. The haunting line in The Kiterunner, "Come back. It can be made right again". I held the toque to my chest. I'll wear it more thankfully on today's run. But before putting my soft knit toque on my head, I'll try to recreate Friday night. Adam and I seem to have, in our own quiet ways, found ourselves in positions here in Israel where we are called upon to make changes in the fabric of how people live their lives. Kids at summer camp used to nickname him Buddha. And now, his tools for focus and the bringing about of a sphere of calm around him, is both useful in his own work, and helping me in mine. His work needs pinpoint focus, detachment from ego, a quiet center, and stillness within. Just before Shabbat, a teacher reminded me by email that I had suggested we help our kids on the autism spectrum to take on phrases for calming themselves when they get out of control. I was in the middle of responding, when Adam arrived for Friday night. Yes, mantras, Adam said, and proceeded not simply to give me beautiful examples in Hebrew regarding calming the fire within, not putting out the fire, but mastering it. Don't forget to breathe. Adam took me further, showing me how I can help each child know the colour of his anger, the size of it, the location on his body where he feels the anger. He showed me how a person can cultivate mastery over the feeling, make it bigger or smaller at will. He showed me how to help each child find out their own power animal, and use this animal as a mentor. I realized that the mantra for calming will come from each child individually. I heard my own calming mantras from Mommy, "Don't worry", "you gotta take the bitter with the better", and most nurturing of all, "you look after my girl". Me weeks away from turning 60, and "You look after my girl, ya hear?" centres me. And so, I will help each child choose a project, calming cards, or a power animal to mentor them, a mantra, a mandala wheel of calming choices, a stoplight of red for stop, yellow for breathe and calm, green for plan a solution and do it. For now, I'll put on my soft knit toque. It's not that this is the best toque in the world. It is that it is my toque, the one that fits the shape of my head.

The Biochemistry of Kisses

Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth Begins the Song of Song of Songs And today ends and begins A year and a year. Let me straddle the years briefly, A foot in each one. Let me straddle World Know that cognitive therapies Do address Chemical problems. A kiss suppresses cortisols, The chemicals of stress. A kiss is just a kiss. A kiss boosts oxytcin, The molecular configuration Of Love. You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss. Purpose solves headaches, Caring for someone else Reduces our own bellyaches, Mommys don't get colds They don't have time. Falling I. Love is chemical, A craziness, a cure. Kissing is Nice.

Fool

A pure synchronicity with yesterday's post is the bread the Gimpel the Fool bakes, in the play we saw last night. The bread, and everything else in this material, here and now world, are imaginary, and the truth is right under that imaginary crust. It was a fitting way to celebrate Christmas Eve in the Holy Land, and it was also an invitation to reread Crazy Wisdom, a book that always sets me right. "Accepting uncertainty as our philosophy might allow us to honor each other's stories more, delighting in all the bizarre and wondrous interpretations of the mystery. We might also show more tolerance for those who appear to be fools, and for those who speak truths we don't want to hear".

Proofing the Bread

I am reading Letters from Murray Enkin over the years, handwritten letters written in airports, quick notes scrawled with wet hands after long thoughtful baths, letters that the biographers have not seen, letters that exist in one copy, letters that I have saved, even though ostensibly many of them were just written to help me with a decision or dilemma that has long long been resolved. The content has ceased to matter, but the philosophy of how stays with me in Daddy's words all these years. Messages? That the things that count can't be counted, that a decision has so many many factors, each factor entangling the others, changing the other's shape and colour until the big picture is not at all what the parts would suggest. Like the flour and the little granules of yeast that somehow danced with the gods of complexity and became croissants when we baked together for a brief but intense kick. In a study, the numbers are not each one unit, as each subject carries a different weight, and sometimes factors laugh: "We had a democratic vote. Daddy and Susie voted for Trocadero, Mommy and Janie for Pagoda, and Randy for Steak and Burger. And so we dined at Steak and Burger and wonderful time was had by all." The pleasure of little Randy happy and sitting through a meal without climbing carried a larger weight than the promise of delicate spicing in the fettucini. Evidence based research could be valid if we were able to weight the myriad factors and the way they shape and alter each other, if we we're able to step out of rational-mind, monkey-mind, linear mind, one equals one mind, for a moment and think with our complexity mind, our big sky mind, our multifactorial, sparking radiant mind. Should Randy and Janie get a Eurail pass and take efficient, cheap trains directly to all the places on their list, while visiting Mommy and Daddy in Oxford at the peak of Daddy's quantifiable years? More efficient, more reliable, quicker and cheaper may be the dependent variable you can isolate. But in real life the pleasures will come from the getting lost, from the unexpected little Newton Popplefords you'll happen upon when you're rained upon and shivering, from the friends you'll make when asking for directions you wouldn't have needed if you had followed a preplanned and efficient itinerary. Daddy's letters teach me that we can use the evidence and the available information to make our decisions, as long as we acknowledge that many of the factors can only be accessed by our wise, intuitive, nonrational, superrational, clever, dancing mind that naturally takes into account the differential weightings of factors and the way they intertwine, little beads of yeast and cups of dry white flour not lining up linearly but interacting according not to the arithmetician's rules, but according to the baker's rule, that the outcome will follow a logic of rising and surprising.

The mind as a flame

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, But a fire to be kindled. Plutarch I needed a bright yellow card for an art project to do with the kids, and all I could find was a bright yellow index card from my 50th birthday cardfile, written on on one side. One side good. This is the message on the card, and this is my message and the "ani maamin", the "this I believe", of my therapy. I need to be daring enough with the group, the way I always am in individual sessions,to let surprise startle us, to let creativity emerge from the kids. Hee hee, the project is a chanukiah and the time is the festival of light. What happy synchronicity! What angels guide me in planning the group session, reminding me that flame, even the contained and controlled flame of a chanuka candle, has an element of the wild. These sparking, radiant kids who are so hard to contain, flourish when the containing channels their energies so they can bring a thought to completion. That's where teaching, a gentle fanning, comes in.

Approaching 60

I have a little writing nook in this new apartment. It's the safe room, the sealed room, but I swing open the big iron window and write the sunrise. I am approaching the age of 60.
Daddy once told me that at the age of 20, he threw out his childish diary. And then he regretted having done this. And so, I have kept my diaries and notebooks and jottings and articles and music reviews and scraps of thought and worry and dream and poem since 1964. Plus one poem about snowflakes from 1958. Letters from Camp White Pine, five on the first day to Daddy who was studying in London, and three the rest of the summer. When do we write? When there is a longing. Martin Buber wrote, "god created Man because he loved stories". Cc created the world imperfect because he loves to see us sculpt and sing and build and dream and write the world towards wholeness.
I am approaching the age of 60. Part of me says the project over the next few months until March 10 will be to sift through and collate a slim volume of writings from the scraggly stacks of notebooks. But it's not time yet. That project is for 80. These four months til march 10 are for a fresh haiku each morning, for singing a new song to the world. Aha! These four months I will pull one scrap, one line, one scribbled notion from an old notebook each morning, and use it to inform a new thought.
Hanging from the sturdy lever that opens the heavy iron saferoom writingroom window to let the sunrise in, is a tinkling wind chime I never had a chance to give to Malca. And the scrap of paper that sings to me this sunny morning after the first rains is in Malca's generous pen stroke, the corner of an envelope I've saved through all the moves: "Let's write often this year"