Making friends with Jesus, figuring out a handle for Christ, and managing Jewish Christmas guilt.
Read moreLet it Rain
Shemini Atzeret 5781 – May it rain until our wells are full.
I am worried that our will to live is being depleted. Not that people are dying because they gave up. Although clearly the world has become less hospitable, and our assessment of what future we might look forward to has shifted. But I'm talking about something beyond that. There is something about the usual flow of life through us and through this Creation that feels to be at risk.
Read moreCross the Jordan (in honor of Juneteenth)
It is harder to leave the Wilderness than it looks. We are peeking across a border into a Paradise right now, where we could be bigger than we are now; our spirits enormous as giants. But it is easier to stay grasshoppers, shrunken, constricted, hard-shelled, afraid of being trampled.
Read moreRain!
Remember Miriam who had the women meet their husbands at the water,
And set her brother in a basket in the water.
Who led the people in song and dance when we had crossed the water,
And whose faithful well supplied our folk with abundant, unlikely water.
For her sake, do not withhold water.
Blossom of the Universe (Rosh Hashanah 5780)
Together we can be a refugium – protectors of life. We can bring all our distinctiveness – our skills, our smarts, our songs – whatever the Tree of Life planted in us. Bring all of that to this community and to the other communities in which we are rooted around the world. We can share this vision, this consciousness, this love and longing at the root level, the way trees speak over distance through the mycelial network. We will be the protectors of people, places and creatures in need through the hard times, and the restorers and renewers of the landscape on the other side of it.
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