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?

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!