Awakening - #BlogElul23

Ooh, a tough one this time, Rabbi Sommer. I feel like I am in a dialogue with you, even though I've never met you or even corresponded with you. I do hope you are reading these blog posts - I think you are. It's funny how some of these little contributions just flow out of my fingers, and some just keep on getting erased again and again.

In search of inspiration, I asked Rabbi Google for a definition of awakening, and this is what s/he told me:

 a·wak·en·ing/əˈwāk(ə)niNG/

Noun:	An act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something.
Adjective:	Coming into existence or awareness.
Synonyms:	revival - arousal

Ah. That gestalt moment when the vase suddenly becomes two faces, when we suddenly see or understand something we can never again unsee. Realisations hit us when we spend time on the accounting of the soul, and we can never again become unaware of them.

It can be pretty darned painful, but it is often a useful exercise, one way or another. The pursuit of mindfulness can have its costs, because ignorance or rather obliviousness sometimes can be bliss.

But in the end, it is better to know, to understand, to forgive, rather than to stuff things down into our unconscious and let them dictate our actions from the depths.

Awakening can mean looking reality in the eye, trying to understand the past and move forward to the future. Sometimes we would rather remain asleep, but Elul calls upon us to wake up to who we are and who we can be.

What will you awaken to today?

Endings - #BlogElul 20

How clever of Rabbi Sommer to put Endings at the end of the work week, as we prepare for Shabbat. Cooking special foods, looking forward to resting and seeing friends at shul, putting this first week of school behind us.

I've been writing and posting these blogs the evening before, when it is the Jewish day already but not yet the Gregorian one. But last night I got home too late to write it, because our Internet ends at 10:30 pm on school nights. There's another ending to think about - a self-imposed boundary that my family has taken on, because my teens and I are Internet junkies - if it is there, we will be on. So all summer it went out at midnight, but now it turns into a pumpkin at 10:30 so we can go to bed and get the sleep we so desperately need. Sometimes blogging just has to wait. What endings and boundaries do you impose on yourself to deal with your own weaknesses?

I am going to try something I've never done before - pre-write a blog post (for tomorrow) and have it post on a schedule. I won't know if it has worked until after Havdallah, the beautiful separation ceremony that ends Shabbat and brings us back into the workaday world. Of course the first thing my teens and I do when we have made Havdallah is to run back to the Internet to see what we have missed. It is very  important to us to have those 26 hours offline, but when they are over, our FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) strikes in full force. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

Wishing everyone a restful Shabbat, and I'll see you on the other side.

Learning and Health - #BlogElul 14 and 15

As I was planning this series of blog posts about Elul, following Rabbi Phyllis Sommer's #BlogElul system that you see here on the left, I knew I couldn't write number 14 on Shabbat, so I figured I'd write it after Shabbat was out. But by then, of course, it would be the 15th of Elul, because Jewish days start at sunset, not midnight.

So I'm combining 14 and 15 into one, which I am posting on the 15th of Elul, Saturday night. No wonder we have got such a lovely full moon - it's the middle of the month already, and Rosh HaShanah is only two weeks away. Yikes.

To me, learning and health have become inextricably connected in recent years, so it is actually more than appropriate for me to combine them in one blog post. A few years ago I suffered a major bout of ulcerative colitis that nearly landed me in hospital. I took my steroids as directed for a limited time to get the flareup under control, but I was determined not to go on the long term, low-dose chemotherapy drugs that seems to be modern medicine's only answer to autoimmune disease. It was first offered to me in 1995, and there wasn't anything better on tap in 2010. It was very disappointing.

So, I started learning about alternatives ways of supporting health (as opposed to treating symptoms and suppressing the immune-system-gone-wild). My travels on the Internet led me first to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and then to paleo, and to the fascinating concept of n = 1 self-experimentation.

There are a zillion and a half diets and theories and concepts out there, most of them contradictory. A fruitarian like Durianrider gets excellent results, and so do people who eat exactly the opposite way. It's enough to make you throw your hands in the air and give up, and just eat Twinkies until you die.

Alternatively, you can try things out and find out what works for you. Your body is unique (unless you have an identical twin, and even then your life experience will cause epigenetic changes). What works for your buddy may not work for you. What works for you may be disastrous for your sister. Only by taking responsibility for your own health, learning what works for your body, your metabolism and your immune system, can you become healthy (as opposed to merely managing symptoms). Health care professionals can support us in this quest, but we've got to be the ones driving the train - nobody in this world knows your  body better than you do. Learn as much as you can to achieve health.

Wishing everyone a healthy new year!

Elul is almost halfway through ...

I've been reading an amazing blog by Rabbi Phyllis Sommer. She talks about all sorts of things, but right now she's engaged in a project called #BlogElul, as you can see in this picture I lifted from said blog

So, what's Elul when it's at home? Elul is the sixth month of the Hebrew calendar, and when it ends, we have the first day of the seventh month, known as Tishrei. This day is mandated in the Torah to be a day of solemn assembly, of blowing of trumpets, of G-d's judging of our sins of the previous year and determination of our fate in the coming year. Yes, that's Rosh HaShanah, literally the Head of the Year. We call it the Jewish New Year, but actually it is not the beginning of the first month - that one is Nisan, the spring month in which we commemorate our redemption from Egypt. Are you confused yet?

Anyway, the tradition is to spend the month of Elul, before Rosh HaShanah, in the practice known as "cheshbon hanefesh", literally an accounting of the soul. In the synagogue, every weekday after the morning service, we sound the shofar to remind us that we need to be spiritually prepared to meet the King of Kings. It is quite common for people to follow some kind of book or path in this preparation.

Rabbi Sommer has provided us with a visual blueprint to guide brief daily blogs about the Elul process, and I meant to participate in it, but got caught up in other things, as so often happens. People have been posting their Elul blogs in the comments of her blog, and I want to join in. It is, after all, never too late to begin the accounting of the soul.

Today is the 12th day of Elul, and her theme is Image. I can think of no better image than this nice blue sign, and I will do my very best to keep up. Most of the posts should be much briefer than this, so don't be daunted by the prospect of daily posts from me!

How is your accounting going?

What I've been doing ...

I've not posted here in over a week, but I have a good reason for it. The wonderful Barbara Feldman trusted me to write some of the little informative pieces on her website, Rosh Hashanah Fun. It's got lovely colouring pages and stuff for kids, and it also has little tidbits of information, such as why we celebrate RH, what we eat, whether Yom Kippur is a happy or sad holiday, why we fast, etc. Even better, she's PAYING me for it. I'm so excited. I've been paid for online writing before, but each time it fills me with wonder and awe.

Originally she was looking for one writer to write the 20 pieces on the website, but mercifully she decided to split it between me and the incomparable Rabbi Phyllis Sommer. I am kind of stunned that I'm up there with a rabbi, especially one I admire so much. Here's a fun exercise for the reader: see if you can figure out which ones I wrote, and which ones she wrote.

Anyway, I will try to post more, now that I've got all my work for Barbara in (at least for now ... there are hints she may want me to do more, which would make me very happy). For one thing, I want to get in on Rabbi Sommer's Elul challenge, which you will have seen if you checked out her website above. I've also been feeling extremely artisanal in the kitchen lately, and I totally need to brag about everything I've been making.

Oh yeah, and I also need you guys to donate to my Breast Cancer run. Last year I made it to $1000. I'm not saying we necessarily need to duplicate that, but with heartfelt thanks to those who have already donated, I'm sure we can do better than $300 ... 

What exciting things have you been doing?