Joy, Fury, Contemplation, Conversation, Release
I was joyous this morning when I awakened to the sounds of the rustling leaves in the wind, the birds chirping outside my window.
Oh, it was good to be alive! I was filled with my best Rosh Hoshana intentions. Before bed last night (Wednesday night) I had read through the prayers of my High Holy Days prayer book, I was ready for this day; the first full day of my repentance, (New Year -- 5771).
My “right arm,” Quaker Sue, was coming to Harpers Ferry today. And, for the first time – in thirty years -- I would share my new found clarity and joy in my Jewish heritage with another person. And, sharing with Sue would have the added mitzvah of an interfaith sharing.
(The delay is another whole set of stories, having to do with how I became an anti-Semite, for almost no reason at all other than some very yukky acting Jews -- and -- an absence of some much-needed healing conversations that are still needed now!)
Sue and I would go to the woods of our Harpers Ferry Retreat Center and celebrate at our fire circle, the center of rituals and untold celebrations on this land for almost twenty years now.
Never once used in this way before.
I would be coming home to myself; my Jewish self in the process of uniting with the rest of me.
Oh, it would be so good to be home! Home on this land!
Home to me! I felt full from my head to my toes of being "my kind of Jew," at last, as I awakened.
Then I recalled that CNN had informed us that the imam of the illustrious NYC Mosque project was to have been interviewed last night on Larry King.
Damn! I was furious!
How insensitive! “
Just like those Muslims!” my righteously infuriated mind shouted out loud inside of me.
“Why did this imam of our recent controversy with Muslims pick the eve of our holiest days of the year to make his pitch?” the justifiably angry, former anti-Semitic, recovering Jewish American Princess part of me asked the whole of me.
I was sick to my stomach with his and their insensitivity.
The eve of Rosh Hoshana! How dare they?
“But "what kind of Jew" am I to think this way?” I wondered, brought up short ,as I was with second thoughts.
Had I not just read in my prayer book that my repentance demanded I turn away from anger.
Was my fury that good kind of healing and cleansing anger that had felt like my liberation last night?
Or was it something else, again? Just then my cell phone rang!
It was Sandi, #3 of the Divine Sisters ZOP (Zones of Peace), as we did declare on September 11, 2008.
(That be "Anastasia, Sandi and Sue" with one Divine ZOP Sister apprentice in training.)
As my next conversation began, I would, thus, be reminded, once again, how it came to be that the Days of Repentance” and the “Days of Awe” are one and the same on the Jewish calendar!
To be continued.
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