A reflection on turning 60, followed by a song written to honor Rabbi Mark S. Shapiro and Rabbi Sarah Tauber, both of whom left the planet on August 28.
Vicki and I are sponsoring tonight's service in celebration of our birthdays. Vicki, of course, is ahead of me, having turned 60 on Wednesday. Whereas I, much her junior, don't turn 60 until next Friday.
A week out from the big day and I'm already in the full flow of contemplating it. Birthdays require contemplation the older we get. They are like Yom Kippur – moments of taking stock. What have I done? What is undone? What needs repair? And birthdays are increasingly an intimation of mortality. We tussle with the numbers – so much more life behind than ahead. And what are the odds that my genes give me?
I remember when I turned 50, I was resistant. I was blue for months leading up to my birthday; maybe I was grieving the irrevocability of time. Maybe I was feeling sad for all my friends and peers who had died of AIDS in the 1980s and 90s who should have been reaching 50 with me. I couldn't bear the roll-call.
Forty had its challenges too. My father was dying and I was in no mood to celebrate, although there is a good story about foiling my own surprise party that I may someday tell you if you liquor me up a bit first.
Thirty? I don't remember what I did on my 30th birthday. But I was in my Saturn return. I was steeling myself to leave a relationship and was, unbeknownst, about to lose my job too, without which loss I could never have become the glamorous and marginally famous drag queen that I was for 21 years and still am on the inside.
Twenty? Another surprise party story, in which I happened to pass in traffic the friend who was taking me out to dinner in an hour, and his car was full of other friends of mine and I realized dinner was going to be an ambush. I stopped to drop something off at my friend Sara Lynn, and she took 20 minutes to coach me as I practiced many expressions and exclamations of surprise, until she was satisfied I could react convincingly when they all jump out from behind furniture.
Yes, turning 20 was fun. I was leaving a week later to study for a year in Israel. Oh wait, no. That was 19. That whole story was 19. I turned 20 in Israel, with friends, as I packed to come home. I somehow remember that as a simpler time, but no time is simple. I was figuring out about coming out back then. Only my sister knew I was gay, along with whoever kept the mailing list of the International League of Gay Esperantists, because that was the one gay thing I had done. Yes, it was a far-from-simple time.
But I have to say: I am feeling better about turning 60 than maybe any divisible-by-ten birthday since I was 20. I'm not feeling old, exactly, but full. And the fullness has both happiness and sadness in it. Loss and fulfillment. A richness. I feel glad, or it feels right, to be entering the generation of elders.
There is a different flavor to this milestone birthday than others, because this time neither my father nor my mother is walking the planet. Psalm 27, the psalm for the month of Elul, this month, my birth month, says:
כִּי־אָבִי וְאִמִּי עֲזָבוּנִי וַיְיָ יַאַסְפֵנִי
"My father and my mother have left me, and Adonai gathers me."
The psalm captures the vulnerability, the instability, the wobbliness when you find yourself at the front of the generations for the first time. But I am not feeling abandoned, but gathered. My parents' absence has evolved into a constant, subtle presence. They are part of what I am gathering into.
Even the death last week of my lifelong rabbi, Mark S. Shapiro, who influenced me in more ways than I could explain, whose example first inspired me to be a rabbi, although I will never do it as well as he did, if only you all could have known him – even his death, one of the hardest losses I've experienced outside of my parents, doesn't leave me feeling forsaken or alone. Instead I feel gathered up now into his legacy, stepping into my fullness to carry on his work. In other words, although he was trying for years to pass it on to me, I now feel ready to catch the baton.
After all, God willing, I will receive my ordination in just four months. This ordination is my 60th birthday gift. It almost didn't happen. In 2015, I sat for lunch with Shoshana Fershtman, struggling with the decision of whether to go to rabbinical school or not. I'd already been serving this congregation for 7 years; I had an outsider's pride: who needs your stinkin' piece of paper? But I wanted it: the learning and the community and the classmates and the piece of paper too. Finally, in a last ditch effort to talk myself out of rabbinical school, I exclaimed, "But if I start now, I'll be 60 by the time I get ordained."
Shoshana reflected for a moment, shrugged, and said, "But you're going to be 60 anyway."
And there it was. My unspoken conviction that all fruition must come before age 60, while I'm still young in my own estimation. That if I didn't achieve whatever on some timeline, then I'd failed, and I might as well give it up. I sat across from Shoshana and laughed at myself, willing to deny my future self all sorts of fulfillment and joy, just because I thought 60 was too old.
So now I get to receive this time-release gift from my 55-year old self. Sure, it is late in the game. But it's still in time.
I took a walk today, my first big walk since the fires began, and I found myself scouring the bushes for the last blackberries of the season. It's been a month since I'd been on the road, and the bushes had been heavy with fruit. Now the they were sparer, for sure. There were outdated berries, shrunken and leathery. And there were some first coming in – red and bitter. But then there were some balancing right on the edge of past and future, that were perfect, despite the season, and they melted to syrup in my mouth.
This week's Torah portion, Ki Tavo, instructs us that when we enter the Promised Land, we must be mindful of our blessings. Our first fruits we offer to God. We present them to the priest, while reciting a formula stating our lineage: "My people were wandering Arameans; they went down to Egypt and were enslaved there until God freed us." And beyond the first fruits, a full tenth of our produce is embargoed – it can only go to those in need.
I feel as if on some level I am stepping into a Promised Land – promised but never guaranteed. And to my surprise, it is still blooming and fruiting. I resolve to offer up the first fruits, whatever they will be, to this lovely, challenged, glorious world of ours. I resolve to remember my journey and the collective journeys that brought me here. I resolve that whatever ripens in the time ahead, I will remember to give some of it away.
Stepping into a Promised Land. I find the ford and a walking stick and begin to wade across toward the next decade. With me are family, friends. And also the dead, always at my side. My 60-year old eyes can't see so very far ahead; can't make out the landscape or the length of the road. But I am eager, well nourished from the richness of the years, and open to whatever happens next. Maybe I'll meander. After all, my people were wandering Arameans, I am told. With walking stick and berry-stained fingers, I draw myself onto the far shore.
I wrote this setting of Psalm 27:1, the opening verse of the psalm for the month of Elul, on August 27, sitting in vigil for my rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Mark S. Shapiro, and my classmate, teacher and friend, Rabbi Sarah Tauber.