Wisteria and The Fullness of Time

Six or seven years ago, I planted a Wisteria vine next to my patio. I trained it to climb up the strong arbor my husband constructed and waited for the long trailing pink blooms to show. I had seen Wisteria grow all over the Pacific Northwest and was delighted when the vine was on sale at the local nursery. A year passed and the vine grew quite large wrapping itself constantly around things it shouldn’t and I ended up pruning it back drastically year after year just so it didn’t engulf the house and yank it down into the underworld.

I new it would take time for the roots to develop and for the plant to feel at home here, but became disappointed when after four years the now massive vine had not bloomed once. I comforted myself with the fact that the foliage alone was beautiful and that the plant seemed healthy. At the fifth year I heard from a friend that sometimes it takes many years for Wisteria to finally bloom and to be patient. I decided to let the whole matter go and wait. I certainly wasn’t going to dig it up, it was far too mature at this point.

Earlier this week, I was going about my household chores, and as I was talking to G-d in my head, I said this to Him, “I wish my Wisteria would bloom this year, but it probably won’t.” That’s all. Nothing profound and probably sorely lacking in faith. I forgot about it and went about my day.

Then the next day, I happened to open the sliding glass door that leads to the patio from my bedroom and to my happy shock, the entire vine had erupted in gorgeous perfumed trailing blossoms!

It wasn’t until I was in my garden a couple days ago that the fullness of what had happened hit me. The vine was growing in all directions, reaching out once again to wrap itself around my new maple tree and so I spent considerable time pruning it back. It was raining softly and I was dusted in soil due to my heavy work in the garden earlier. Every time I pulled a vine back a shower of cool water would hit me in the face or a leaf would gently slap me on the cheek. I was warm from all my activity and so the rain didn’t bother me, rather it was delightful. The entire garden was quiet and I could only hear the occasional bird chirping through the soft fall of rain.

A gorgeous thought flowed into my mind. With it came a gratefulness that filled my heart like warm water flowing through me. I cannot quote it with words exactly, but the feeling was so strong and it came from outside of me. I felt like G-d said to me…

See? I was working all this time. Like the vine here, you wondered if the ministry you were doing would ever get off the ground after Bob’s passing three years ago. There was a lot of constant, behind-the-scenes work that no one else saw but you. You were growing roots during that time. But here you are at the end of this school year with a graduating class, clients, a new office, groups meeting, a new board being elected at the end of June, the largest one you’ve ever had, and it is all coming to fruition. I make things bloom when it is time.

I stood there completely filthy and wet with a smile on my face, and felt the most whole I’ve felt in a very long time. G-d has spoken to me about many things while out in the garden. It seems to be one of his classrooms for me, but this was an enormous gift that I had to document. A milestone of sorts.

I love how nature can be our teacher in these things. It makes sense that G-d, the Creator of all things, would use his creation to show us deep truths.

Good Shabbat, Everyone!

Honoring the Work

From 1990 to 2005 I was able to focus on ministry, whether teaching or counseling. There was the writing of curriculum or even a brochure here and there, and there was a great deal of work, but my sole focus (other than my family) was the “work” of the ministry. It was meaningful, fulfilling, sometimes painful, but always worth the effort and I still feel every minute was worth it.

Since The Great Upheaval (our founder passing away) I ended up having to build the ministry up from almost ground zero. I think if G-d had shown me at the moment all that I would endure, I’d probably say, “Thank you very much…but, no.” and quietly leave the ministry I had known and gone back to concentrating on homeschooling and other more manageable and feel-good pursuits. Thankfully, G-d did not show me the future, but asked me to follow Him step-by-step, through the days, weeks, months and years.

There is a part of me, a very large part, which is drawn to the idea of the Holy Man or Holy Woman (In Judaism, the Tzadik). I have read articles, books, seen pictures of these wise and amazing individuals for many years and always hoped in the secret parts of me that perhaps when my hair is long and grey that I will have attained that measure of wisdom, insight and closeness with The Divine so that every word that I speak will emanate light, wisdom, kindness and the presence of G-d.

But then I wake up to my desk covered in papers (all important, all time sensitive). My inbox is filled with emails and my cell phone is ringing. I have to make decisions about logos and print jobs, newsletters and appeal letters. I have to redo a budget because after six hours of detailed work, somehow my budget was deleted. I’m up till 2:30am recreating it from memory only to wake at 6:30 to make sure my teenager gets up for school.

The very necessary work of administrating an organization takes up a great deal of time and energy. It’s important that it be done and done well. Details matter, especially when dealing with the IRS and the State as well as future partners and volunteers. Every interaction matters. Every phone call matters. Every deadline matters.

Oh.

And then there’s the actual ministry. You mean like actually helping people? Like teaching and writing and counseling? Oh you mean the real stuff? Yes, I need to do this too. G-d has been tremendously gracious and has helped me keep a break-neck schedule without me burning out. Surely His Spirit is helping me function when any sane person would be panting on the floor.

For a while I guess I’ve been judging myself on a very deep level. Probably deeper than I was aware of for a while and then recently it came to me…

ALL this is ministry and it is necessary for this time. For instance, if I did not pay the ministry bills on time, we wouldn’t have a building for those people suffering mental illness to come and receive prayer. If I didn’t keep a budget, we could run out of money prematurely losing the ability to continue our classes. I am well aware that we live in this world where these kinds of things matter.

I am to honor this part of my life instead of judging it. I’ve come to believe this “honoring” is what G-d wishes for me to do. Instead of waiting for all this work to be over, I am to let it happen, do the work and see it all as G-d working through my life in this way at this time.

I still would love to be the Wise Woman doing nothing else but sitting on a rug thinking deep thoughts, discussing the deep things of G-d and His Torah, and dispensing wisdom, but that is not my reality and may never be. Certainly, these Holy Men and Holy Women have others who are caring for the details of this corporeal life so they may concentrate on the spiritual. That most certainly is not my reality.

For now I’m surrounded by paper and waiting on a very late print order to come in today so I can meet a deadline. I have Challot to bake and Shabbat to prepare for, loads of laundry to do, and a few hours of SAT preparation to do with my sixth grader this morning for his yearly SAT next week.

Perhaps the rug, the pillows, the gentle breezes and flowing wisdom exist only in the spiritual realm, because this life right now is far from it.

Coming Up For Air

Since February, I had been doing nothing else than surviving my life getting ready for a huge Passover Seder as well as continuing to minister, handle all the administrative tasks of the organization as well as homeschooling my sixth grader and keeping the house running so things didn’t fall down around our ears. Even after Passover, which went very well by the way, I felt overwhelmed and still had (and have) numerous things to accomplish, so blogging was way, way down on my list of priorities. I missed it though!

We had 128 people attend our community Passover Seder (our largest to date) and it went exceedingly well. Between me preparing my own house for Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread (read: scraping my oven door and tearing apart the house for possible bread crumbs) and putting on a formal event, it was a busy time.

Without inviting disaster (hopefully) I can say that our home life is very calm and stable and my father has been healthy since our horrendous experience last August. He’ll be turning 80 years old next month and we are celebrating early with dinner out with the family. I’m sure he’ll enjoy that.

It’s just work, work, work for me right now, and except for a nasty experience with incompetent people at a print shop that shall go unnamed yesterday, I am thankful for all the blessings of G-d.

Hopefully I’ll have more to say and write in the future, but this is my update for now. I’ve been lurking and reading others’ blogs for months now, even if I didn’t have the time to comment. So, keep blogging and I’ll do my best to come back to the blogosphere when I can crawl out from under the pile of papers on my desk.

My Favorite Bookstore

I love books. If I could afford it, I’d have a room just for a personal library here at home and I would be practically living in bookstores in order to fill it. A few years ago I discovered what has become my absolute favorite bookstore. It has a bit of everything and I take my younger son on “dates” as he loves it too. It’s called Third Place Books, its name a purposeful one that speaks of the first two places being home and work, but that we need a third place to be in community. I love their philosophy, the business model and the feel of the place isn’t store-like, but fun and inspirational.

What my son loves most is the floor chess. We have to play a full game of chess each time we go, so I make sure we aren’t rushed. The chess set is beat up from years of wear and tear from toddlers seeing them as just bigger blocks to teens no doubt hurling them around during after-school boredom, but Jonathan overlooks all this and can’t wait to challenge me to a duel. He usually wins and makes surprising moves, but this day I finally had my revenge. He reluctantly shook my hand in congratulations with just a slight rolling of the eyes.

On a different day we attended his first book signing. I have wanted to do this for a while. One of the many blessings of Homeschooling is that as indicated above with the chess, we can make up our own days and do things that others can’t do so readily. We can go places during the day that would otherwise be crowded at night.

I had taken him to the store to stock up on more reading material and the extremely knowledgeable gal there led us to where there would be books most suitable for my son. All I had to say was, “Twelve years old, boy, loves adventure, whaddyagot?” and she began pulling books off the shelf and piling them up in my arms. He has loved each and everyone.

One of them was Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. More of a graphic book about the not-so-fun adventures of a middle school aged boy, kids love it for its relevancy to what they are facing at school and at home. Jonathan gobbled it up in one week and we found out the author would be doing a presentation a couple weeks later and then signing books.

 

We attended this gathering which included field trips from various schools and soon several hundred kids filled the small stage area. Kinney had put together an awesome presentation that was highly interactive with kids yelling out questions and him giving funny answers. After his presentation everyone careened into a very long line and my son, Jonathan, patiently waited for his turn to see this “famous person” and get his book signed. He was elated to talk with the author of a book he enjoyed so much.

When Jonathan got home and he continued reading his next book, Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, a fictional account of a young Jewish boy caught in the sealed Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War II, he turned to me and said, I want to meet this author too. When is he coming?

 

 

 

 

Would You Torture?

For quite a while I’ve been inundated with both ministry and daily duties on behalf of my family to the point that even when I had a few moments to put together a coherent sentence I was too exhausted to care. Among all the news I’ve been able to glean on my way from the car to my desk and back again, I kept hearing the term “waterboarding” and knew it was a form of torture, but didn’t know exactly all that was involved. Part of me didn’t care simply because it isn’t something that is integral to my life and, certainly, any decisions about whether or not to allow it as a form of interrogation would not be laid at my doorstep. So, like most national policy and political wrangling, I let it go in one ear and out the other.

I finally Googled the term and read the entire article on wikipedia about waterboarding. My initial reaction was horror because I have sat in on speeches delivered by persecuted Christians who have been tortured because of their faith in foreign lands and for anyone who has ever read about The Shoah (the Holocaust) knows many torturous experiments were perpetrated against the Jews in the concentration camps. It seemed incomprehensible to me that I could live in a country where our government would allow this action against anyone.

But then I thought of the three thousand plus lives lost on 9/11 and it brought the entire thing down to size. What if one of my sons or my husband were about to be murdered and the perpetrator (or one of them) was captured? What if they had the information as to where my loved ones were and they were unwilling to divulge the facts simply because we asked nicely? What would I be willing to do to extricate this vital information so that I could save my son or husband? Would this extreme action even get me reliable information? What lengths would I be willing to go to, to save my family?

After all, isn’t this we’re talking about on a much larger scale? Are we so callous that we think terrorism won’t touch our family, just those out there on the news?

And then I think of my relationship with G-d. How far do we let ourselves go? What is permissible? If we are to be like Jesus, can we imagine Jesus ever performing a waterboarding technique on a person no matter how evil they are? And then the answer stares me in the face and I cannot on any level imagine supporting such a behavior knowing that G-d is looking on.

It isn’t a good set of choices. It’s not nice. It’s not lovely to look at. It’s hideous and disturbing and the temptation to rise up and “do unto others” in a negative way is enormous when our loved ones are threatened. But, what effect does torture have on the torturer? And by extrapolation, a nation that allows it?

I have trouble imagining how a human being can do this for a living. Just think, the person who tortures was hired by the government, gets up in the morning, takes a shower, put on his suit (or whatever one wears to such things), drives in to work, perhaps buys an espresso to wake up, shows up at the office and walks into a room with a human being strapped down. This employee, with full permission of his employer goes about tearing down another human being and then goes home to his wife and family and puts his head on his pillow at night for a good night’s sleep. Later, he receives a paycheck and pays his bills, maybe taking his children out for a McDonalds Happy Meal on the weekend. How insane is this?

I know that those within the government see things I can only dimly comprehend and I’m sure I’m glad I’m not there to see the inner workings of a machine run wild, but as a citizen, I cannot endorse torture, even if it meant loss on a personal level. To use it as one more technique in one’s toolbox of interrogation techniques is sick.

I’m sure many will disagree with me, but either our faith informs every part of our lives or we are simply just picking and choosing what we desire to apply. It is when things get difficult that our faith is tested. Do we really value it or not? Do we really live what we say? And for those who believe in the Resurrection, this life isn’t all there is. As much as I want to live a long, healthy, fulfilling life and as much as I wish the same for my children, we have a life waiting for us that will never come to an end. Do we want to enter it as children of G-d who kept themselves from being spoiled by the ever-shifting values of the world, or so concerned with earthly matters that we forget where our true Kingdom lies?