Friday, September 17, 2004
Head Rosh
It’s the new year, folks, and I’m full of the spirit. Which spirit in particular that may be, I’m not at liberty to say, but it’s not the Easy Spirit wherewith nuns play basketball. It’s a bit more subtle than that - as if anything could be more subtle than a nun playing basketball, but that’s the magic of the spiritual journey that is Rosh Hashona. I will elucidate by sharing a few items of note about the services:
* We got to Berkeley very quickly, both wednesday night and thursday morning, avoiding stacks of traffic and zipping along with a song in our hearts, channeled through the iPod. On wednesday night, though, once we got to Berkeley and were in the right general neighborhood, we spend a good bit of time trying to get around blocked intersections and wrong-way one-way streets to get to our destination. The journey might be easy, but the arrival at the ultimate destination can still be a real bitch.
* We do not sing our service with all our voice and heart to wake up god - it is to wake up ourselves.
* The tashlich bags this year contain botanicals - a bit of potpourri instead of the traditional breadcrumbs or pebbles. These are to be tossed into a body of living water as part of the ceremony of sloughing off dross, which we’ll observe this evening at Baker Beach. However, for me, “Tashlich Botanicals” just makes me thing of Trogdor the Burninator,” which makes me giggle at inappropriate times. Similarly, at some point the machzor (prayerbook for the days of awe) used a word that was perfectly ordinary, normal and cromulent - but it brought to my mind the word “embiggen,” which I kept hearing inside my head for the rest of the services, with resultant distraction and giggles. Television and the internet have ruinously improved me.
* On the way home from evening services, after a quick and uneventful drive back into the city from the east bay, as we cruised along a wide avenue that dove deep into the heart of golden gate park, I saw three racoons fumphering around in the darkness near the tree ferms. They glanced over at us but didn’t let us interrupt their good time. The next morning I awoke to the strong, unmistakeable smell of skunk; it faded fairly quickly but drove into my mind that I am only one of many different kinds of living thing that calls this area home. There are comedies and dramas going on outside my front door that no human is aware of. I don’t think that’ll change the way I act or what I do, but if I keep it well in mind it may change the way I see my world. And would that be such a bad thing?
* Written as I sat waiting for morning services to start: This year I feel totally unprepared for this process. It’s not like anybody sprung it on me, but I just don’t feel ready for it. Not right now. There are things I can’t address yet, revellations still to intense to confront. And obviously, therefore, I need it more than ever.
* “The heart must break to become large, so there is room in it for the entire cosmos.”
* This congregation uses a machzor that is all scrambled up. You’re always going from page 7 to page 53 to page 15 to supplement page 6 number 12… it’s dizzying. But after a couple of hours in the lofty space where they celebrate these holidays, spinning around in the prayerbook - where they’ll slowly and repetitively chant just a few words to a driving highly orchestrated beat, on and on for several minutes, the congregation on its feet dancing and clapping - and then suddenly stop and quicklychant another page and a half of hebrew that I have no hope of following - after a few hours of this I get a sense of immersion in the process, where I don’t know where I’m going or when I’ll get there, so the only thing to think about is where I am right now - a focus on the sacred moment arising from a confounding of my innate desire for strict linear order. I used to wish they’d revise the machzor so it would track straight through, from page one to whatever. Now I’m not so sure.
* “This is a time of self-confrontation, of seeing what you would prefer to overlook. You must put yourself in a narrow place where you cannot escape from yourself, and then force yourself to undergo the process of self-examination that will result in renewed blessings for the new year and, ultimately, peace on earth. It’s hard to force yourself through this narrow place, but you don’t get much sound by blowing through the wide end of a shofar, either.”
* As we walked into the sanctuary we were asked to draw a card; when we turned them over each one had one of the 22 letters of the hebrew alphabet (alef-bet) on it. Then we were handed a chart entitled “Some of the Meanings of the Alef Bet Letters.” I chose Tav, the last letter of the alef-bet, which symbolizes the end of theory and the beginning of practice. That’s a very good meditation for me for the coming year; I’m grateful for it. I’ll start by getting my lazy ass to work.
