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.

Encouraging Paleo Kids, One Egg At A Time

 This morning I made a heart-shaped omelette for my daughter.

My kids love cereal, the more sugary the better. We have progressed to the point that the really obnoxious ones (Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the major favourite) are only allowed on Shabbat morning, but I'm trying to wean them gently off Cheerios. Now that school has started and they are no longer eating breakfast at noon, I'm trying to get the egg routine into place.

My eldest son has already developed a taste for omelettes and is old enough to understand the process, even though he sometimes sabotages it - don't we all? My second son blows hot and cold, but he's never been as much of a carb fiend as his siblings. I bought a tiny square cast iron pan and he will occasionally let me cook him a little square omelette in it. "It's so cute!"

My daughter has been a tougher nut to crack. She will occasionally eat the cute little square omelettes, but she really wanted a heart-shaped one, or at least round - but little.

Yesterday I was at Pollock's Hardware, a fabulous co-op here in Winnipeg. I picked up a teeny tiny round cast-iron pan, but then my eye fell on the little tart mould you see here. Bingo!!

So yes, this morning I put the tart mould, well-greased, IN my regular-sized round cast-iron pan, and poured the beaten egg into it. It did leak a little bit along the fluted sides, but I picked those bits up and put them back in. It was a little tricky getting the egg out of the mould to flip it, but a little persistence with a fork did the job.

She totally loved it and ate it all - a first.

Take that, General Mills!!

Beginnings - #BlogElul 19

Ah, Rabbi Sommer, you've hit it again. Right on the nose. I heard people on the radio talking about how September really feels more like a new year than January - especially in Manitoba, where the summer is short and precious. The people reluctantly come back from the lake and take up reality again, preparing for the snow to fly by Halloween and the bone-chilling cold to be here by Hannukah.

I find it fascinating that the Rabbis chose to put the New Year for calculation of years, Sabbaticals and Jubilees on Rosh HaShanah, the first day of the seventh month. They said it was the anniversary of the creation of the world - hayom harat olam, literally today is the pregnancy of the world. Connecting to what I said yesterday about the Shechinah being our mother, Rosh HaShanah is the world's birthday, and in Elul we blow up the balloons and hang the streamers for the world's birthday party.

It's a new year - new clothes, new teachers, new resolutions. May it hold sweetness for us all.

Love - #BlogElul 18

Tomorrow is my kids' first day of school for this year. That is the main reason my day of Elul is practically coinciding with my day of September - I need to finish this blog post and go to bed, my alarm will go off at 6:30 for the first time in two months.

There was much running around and packing and organising, and people who couldn't get to sleep from excitement and a whole summer of going to bed late. There is a newly minted Grade 5 student who is nervous about getting her own locker, a big brave Grade 8 student who has this junior high thing figured out, and an unbelievable Grade 11 student who is suddenly thinking about university and life after the school in which he began kindergarten just the other day.

I am very blessed to have three versions of my heart out walking around outside my body, to quote the writer Elizabeth Stone. Before they came into my life I thought I knew what love was. I had parents and siblings and lovers, and I loved them all. But they did not cause my heart to go walking around outside my body.

During the High Holy Days, we imagine G-d as the King of Kings, a stern but fair judge. But let us not forget that HaShem is also our parent, and that the feminine aspect of G-d, the Shechinah, is our Holy Mother. We are Her heart walking around the world. In the face of such love, how can we be afraid?

Inspiration - #BlogElul 17

Ah, Inspiration.That elusive energising of the imagination that we all seek. The Greeks personified it as nine goddesses, each in charge of a different form of art, and called upon them to support their efforts - the opening lines of both the Iliad and the Odyssey are invocations of the Muse. Romantic poets such as Lord Byron wrote impassioned poems to their muses, either real or figurative.

In Judaism, inspiration is considered, of course, to come from G-d, the ultimate source of our spirituality and imagination. True understanding, repentance and most importantly, the resolve to do better, must follow from a moment of inspiration. Art may be the result of this clarity of vision, but it cannot be created without it.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision in which an angel of fire touched his lips with a glowing coal and made him fit to carry out G-d's mission, speaking to the people of the destruction that was sure to come if they did not mend their ways. 

How painful does inspiration need to be before we can see our way clear?

Wonder - #BlogElul 16

Today is the 16th day of Elul, because the sun has already set. Very confusing, because it is still September 2nd. At midnight, the two days will coalesce into one, only to separate again at tomorrow's sunset.

Our ability to handle two calendars at the same time is only part of the wonder that is the human mind. My daughter is now of an age that she has been asking me where we go when we die - I have to admit that I don't know. I like to think that my late mother's consciousness is still around somewhere, amused at the cosmic joke of my daughter being so very much like myself. Yet that joke is a wonder in itself - the face, the voice, the behaviour - not identical because she is, after all, her father's daughter as well, but shockingly similar at times.

Religion is not really necessary to appreciate the wonder of this gift of life and the perpetuation of ourselves, but it helps organise our response to it, I think. I don't know whether Judaism is the only religion that has a special blessing to be said upon seeing natural wonders: we bless the King of the Universe who has fulfilled the act of Creation. It is to be said upon seeing a magnificent mountain or a gorgeous sunrise - something special.

Where have you been that justified a special blessing for natural wonders?

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!