Miracles

You can pull out the slow cooker and make a chicken soup with three color carrots.

You can gift your kids a globe that transforms into a nightlight of glowing constellations.

You can watch their fingers trace its stars.

You can put out floral china teacups and five flavors of tea arranged in the shape of flower petals, and a jar of wildflower honey on the side.

You can place tall beeswax candles that never fully burn next to the quickly extinguished Hanukkah flames.

You can listen to the Nutcracker and look at photographs of your last outing with all of your matriarchs, on the steps of the Philadelphia Academy of Music, your grandmother - of blessed memory - asking if you robbed a bank to get seats so close to the stage — you seemed to know it would be worth the splurge for just this one time.

You can wear the small menorah necklace of your great-grandmother, its flames tiny rubies.

You can contemplate miracles — recalling the words of your mysticism professor, who asked, twenty-five years prior, if you knew how many small miracles had occurred for you to fall asleep and wake up the next day with so much seemingly in place as the day before.

You can wish your loved ones continued strength, light and faith.

Happy Hanukkah.

Stillness is the Move

I borrowed the title of this post from a song by the Dirty Projectors: Stillness is the Move.

I was walking early Sunday morning, before 7AM, in the Rose Garden of Golden Gate Park, and the song gravitated into my consciousness, the way that song lyrics and poems rise to the surface, like driftwood on the tide, when we’re alone. For me stillness literally involves movement; I have to walk to find it.

A friend recently asked how I get out of bed so early.

I am asleep most nights before 10Pm, often dozing off in one or the other of my kid’s twin beds during tuck-in, and waking up a few hours later to wind chimes sounding from a neighbor’s yard, and the gentle glow of their nightlight, my body realizing it needs more space.

Early Sunday morning I see the glass on the street where the car window along the park was smashed in, the owner most likely still asleep; the woman walking her 8 week-old puppy who just arrived from a farm in Colorado the night before, carrying him against her chest like a newborn – his paws still too young to touch the city sidewalks; the roses covered with a mist that I’m still too new to know is fog or rain – the birds loud chirping.

I get out of bed so early because this is the time I find stillness, and stillness is so hard for me to locate at any other hour. And I so desperately need it to get close to any sort of knowing that helps me navigate the world – its constant chatter and endless news feeds -- the opposite of a birdsong.

I know what’s true in these moments, can locate my center, my heart full on fragrance and grace: the pinks and reds and peach and yellow rose petals catching and repelling rain, the top of the Golden Gate bridge shrouded in fog, my sneakers soaked through from the wet grass; it’s all here for me, if I go out to meet it.

For any of us, all of us, to meet it.

Continued strength and love friends.

Counting the Omer

I’ve decided to count the Omer (the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot) this year. In ancient times, the omer marked the start of the harvest when Jewish people would bring their first sheaves of grain to the temple as an offering of thanks.

I’ll admit that this sounded pretty obscure to me for many years, and I did not feel a connection or pull to participate in this ritual.

But, like many things that have shifted and taken on new shape and meaning over this past year, the chance to do something disciplined and intentional, that I know I can succeed at (I can for sure count to 49!) feels like a gift.

I am not a naturally disciplined person.

I have purchased a 3 day invigorating juice cleanse 3 times over the past year, each time thinking this would be a great way to kick off a new season. And I’m sure it is — for someone else. For me, by Noon each day the fresh pressed juices served as a refreshing beverage to the solid plate of food that I fixed for myself. I now know that I only fast one day a year, on Yom Kippur — and not even a sip of celery juice on that day!

But maybe this is too extreme an example.

Discipline doesn’t have to be starvation.

It is sitting in my chair for one hour every morning and working on my manuscript.

And then working up to two hours.

It is taking a walk - not every - but most days.

And of course, it is not eating bread or anything leavened over these 8 days of Passover. (And maybe a limit on chocolate covered macaroons…okay, no more after 8pm?)

So this year, I am going to count the 49 days. So far, I have successfully counted to 2, but I feel anchored, and optimistic that I will get there. I even bought a beautiful workbook to help me along, because I have learned to appreciate the small tangible items that ground me in daily ritual: fresh tulips, coffee scented candle, extra fine ballpoint pens and a little bit of practice, each day. Dayenu.

Wishing you all a meaningful Passover filled with practices that lift and ground you.