God

A Garden is a Place of Worship

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I am watching my garden grow. It takes a lot of patience. It also takes a lot of care. It has taught me that I’m not so good at waiting; I’m also not so good at getting down on my knees and weeding. I’m pretty good at watering and fertilizing but don’t ask me how many little pellets per square foot – for me it is a good deal of intuition and faith – well really – hope. All the professionals tell me that this year has been tough. The winter had a hard freeze when the temperature hovered around zero and the hydrangeas rebelled. So, it is a slow return to summer’s glory.

I expected a rainbow of colors by now. What I got so far are these yellow Yarrows. (Although to be fair the purple Irises have been both faithful and reliable, but they are unhappily very short lived and I saw a few buds on some blue geraniums.) It is quite a spiritual exercise, this waiting and watering, watching and worrying, weeding and wishing.

I never heard of Marc Hamer till I read a piece in the NYT.  In his latest memoir: “Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens, he writes, “a garden is always a place of worship even if it’s a really crappy one.” If I can extrapolate from his words: Worship is believing that there is a power (or Power) in the universe that promotes growth. Some people believe that power listens to prayer. Some people believe that power invites us to find the oneness that unites the flower and the seed. In Hamer’s reflections, “kneeling in the garden is like bowing to the world that made me.” It is acknowledging – there is a place for us. It is hands and heart united in gratitude.

I believe in my garden, but I have a fair amount of garden jealousy. I pass neatly coiffed landscapes with defined beds and barely a weed to be seen. That’s not mine. At least not yet. But it won’t be that way forever. Eileen just bought me a new weeder that hopefully makes the process palatable. It’s Wirecutter’s favorite and called a Woodcraft Weeding Hoe. (Father’s Day you know and who wears a tie these days anyway.) I tried it out this morning. Here’s the challenge – is that a weed or wildflower?  And what do you do with the mulch you have now dug up.

Never mind, it is good therapy. If I can keep the red ants and chiggers away from me, it is a healthy form of meditation. Never mind, I love how it is never static, always changing, always becoming. I love how the dirt under my fingernails (no matter how thick the gloves) is a prayer to creation and all that is yet to be.

God Strings

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I was going to call this Two Weddings and a Funeral but it turns out that it is a South Korean Romcom about a gay man and a lesbian woman who marry to protect their secret lives in a society filled with taboos and judgement. I actually had my numbers wrong. I was thinking of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” the British comedy with Andy McDowell and Hugh Grant. The plot is predictable, the ending happy and the stars ever so young.

All of this is in my head because our summer is its own movie: two weddings, three graduations and one memorial celebration of life. All of them involve a plane or two and are forcing us to make both physical and digital folders for all the arrangements. Not complaining here at all. The first graduation (Jacob, your turn for a shout out) has just ended. And I was so aware as I watched the ceremonies all over the Duke campus, how blessed we are, living the Shehecheeyanu moment. (For those readers who are Hebrew challenged and find the word hard enough to read and almost impossible to pronounce: it translates ‘who has kept us alive’.)

We take that blessing so lightly. Maybe it’s the belief structure around it, praising/blessing God for being so personally interested in us, watching over us, preserving us, and allowing us to reach this moment. Maybe it’s the familiarity or the frequency. Jewish tradition invites us to say the blessing on so many occasions from a New Year to the first night of any holiday to new life events. For me I think it’s the theology: Does God need our blessings? Or do I need to bless. Meaning: I need to recognize the specialness, sanctity, uniqueness of the moment. Does God need our praise or do I need to stop and mark with gratitude and humility how lucky (read ‘blessed’) I am to be alive, aware, and sentient at this time.

I came back from the weekend and the next morning took a Yoga class. At the end of Savasana (the final resting pose in many Yoga classes), the instructor read a teaching about God and Oneness. It taught how many of us tend to think of God in dualistic terms. That there is God and there is us. God is up there or out there, and we are down here, separate from each other. But all that is illusion. There is only oneness. There is only “existence” and as we live in God so God lives in us. We are connected to each other, to the world, to the cosmos both inside and out. We may perceive moments and events as separate, but they flow into each other and out of each other as the waters in a bubbling stream.

All of this is my way of saying Shehecheeyanu again. Not just for the life events of this summer but for every moment. Our being is a gift. Life is a gift and gratitude is the foundational posture upon which a life of meaning stands. So, thank-you to our 3 graduates: Corey, Maya and Jacob. You remind me how sacred life can be. You remind me we are connected in ways astounding and holy. I think I will call them God Strings.

Musings

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I don’t know about you but every day that I get up in the morning and see the sun rising I know I am blessed. I don’t know about you but every day when I get up in the morning and get out of bed without pain in unexpected places, I feel lucky. I don’t know about you but anytime my nose runs or my throat tickles or I cough I fleetingly ask myself is this COVID. We live in unsettling times. There is almost no such thing as normal. We think we are in control of what will happen tomorrow or the day after and the airlines throw a curve ball, or the weather does a number, or the rapid test shows two lines, and you are screwed.

It’s not that I am in a bad place. Not at all. I am aware how amazing my life is and that I live in interesting times. Not that they are perfect. Not that they aren’t worrisome. Not that sometimes I feel like we are living on the edge of a precipice. And tomorrow is either free fall into an unknown abyss worthy of depiction in a movie about the apocalypse or we are on the border of a new epoch about to soar into horizons we can barely imagine. There are so many things I don’t know.

I don’t know what it felt like to live as a Jew branded with a yellow star or cone or hat in some European ghetto or Middle Eastern Mellah. I don’t know what it felt like to live as a serf on land that was not my own in a time when life was valued by what you could produce and not by who you were. (Although we are not so distant from the same kind of yardstick). I don’t know what it was like to live without antibiotics or modern medicine when a simple cut could end your life. Or maybe I do – maybe we all do. This pandemic has certainly humbled us and taught that the simple act of covering your face can keep you safer. And things we once took for granted like sitting in a theater or dancing the hora (I just came from a beautiful wedding) or dining inside a restaurant can’t be taken for granted. Neither can attending a 4th of July parade.

I don’t even know what there is to say about all these guns. I don’t know why anyone needs semi-automatic weapons. There are no dinosaurs roaming our streets. There are no lions lurking in the tall grasses. There are no marauding masses breaking down the barricades. Most of us live in relative safety. Why the guns, the guns, the guns? The politically correct thing is to applaud the “bipartisan” gun bill just passed. But this is what I know. It is not enough. Not enough. Not enough. And I feel powerless to make effective change. I know: VOTE. I know: SPEAK OUT. I know: GIVE MONEY/TIME. But in the words of the prophet called Pete: “When will they every learn; when will they ever learn?” I don’t know about you but the fireworks didn’t do it for me the other night.

God Laughs

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According to the Yiddish proverb, this is what happens when you plan. God laughs.

It is Sunday morning. Dani and Corey get married tonight. Eileen and I flew up to NY on Wednesday to be here for Sammy’s graduation on Thursday and the graduation party on Saturday. And this is all one week after we missed going to LA for Tali’s USC graduation the week before which we watched streamed because of a Covid scare.

So many blessings and celebrations. So many new clothes to buy. The suit for tonight was the hardest; the white shirt was a close second.  That’s because I don’t fit into an athletic fit (duh) and am too thin across the shoulders for what used to be called a “regular” and too thick around the middle for most “slims” and besides they only work if they have a 35-sleeve length not 34/35. (You didn’t know it was so complicated or all this about my body.)

Of course, I left the white shirt home.

Which is one of the lessons of the day. What made me think people would be looking at me? (Well to be a little bit fair, I was officiating.) The bride and groom were stunningly beautiful and handsome. So happy and so comfortable in the controlled mayhem that accompanied pictures, the venue, the logistics, the wedding planner’s timeline – they handled it all with grace, laughter, and ease. It was amazing. The whole month has been filled with passages: two graduations, a wedding, and a confirmation. The whole month has been filled with God moments. The God I believe in doesn’t pull strings, manipulating human behavior as a master marionette. The God I believe in laughs as I plan. The God I believe in is the spirit of gratitude, appreciation. The God I believe in resides in the holiness of these passages. And every wrinkle and kink are reminders of my humanity – flawed but not sinful, imperfect but not guilty, but oh so capable of love and appreciation.

So, the shirt I found to wear was not a perfect background for my tie. But it wasn’t about me. (You knew that from the beginning.). It is about transitions and tomorrow. It is about life’s journeys, time turning and the next generation. How “lucky” (read blessed) to be alive in this moment. It doesn’t matter to me what my theology of the day is (or the color of my shirt). It matters that I can feel how profound the moment. It is what I mean when I praise the Source of creation who has preserved me in life, kept me in health and brought me to this moment.

Do I hear an AMEN?

D-Day Reflections

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I have been watching the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of D-Day. It has been touching, poignant and important. I loved the red, white and blue flyovers the Normandy beaches and seeing Queen Elizabeth on the podium in Portsmouth. I was grateful that President Trump was respectful. But the stars of the moment were the surviving veterans themselves. Some of who had never been back to this place that changed the course of history and saved the world from Nazi tyranny and atrocities. This place that claimed the lives of thousands of young, brave men who sacrificed themselves for us, yes for the lives we lead and the future our children can look forward to is indeed sacred ground.

I tried very hard not to personalize this celebration of courage. Until I heard the clip of the President being interviewed on British TV by Piers Morgan when he said that he never was a fan of that war, ”I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war. I thought it was very far away.” I can’t believe he really said that. But then again we are becoming calloused to the things he says.

Vietnam was very far away. It took me three plane rides to get from Newark, NJ to Ton Son Nhut, Saigon. I wasn’t a fan of that war either but I didn’t have bone spurs that kept me from serving. Funny they don’t seem to keep him from playing golf. I was lucky though. I served as a Chaplain and even if the war had little or no meaning my role there did. I could feel what it meant to the Army, Navy, and Air Force soldiers that there was a Jewish presence there. Someone cared; someone listened; someone brought a taste of what Judaism meant to them wherever they were.

We didn’t win that war. We didn’t even have the high ground morally or politically. We sort of knew it then but we sort of didn’t also. They told us we needed to stop the Red Menace. They told us we were fighting to preserve the freedom of the South Vietnamese. We didn’t want to believe that we were killing children and that dropping Napalm from the sky was a necessary evil.

How different were the wars and how different the experience of the returning soldiers. But none of that takes away from the 90 plus year olds who returned to Normandy and to the place where they waded ashore or dropped from the sky to fight for us. And none of that takes away from the rows and rows of crosses and stars in the American cemetery. And none of that takes away from the most fundamental of all facts: America salutes you.

Shame

/ howardshapiro / 17 Comments

fence immigration

I wish I had a solution. I wish I could speak with authority about the subject. I wish I felt more confident about writing this blog on immigration and the current policies of the Administration. But I don’t (have a solution) and I’m not (confident).

This is what I know. Something is wrong – radically wrong, from the inside and the outside. Tearing children away from their parents as families cross our southern border asking for asylum is cruel and unusual punishment to me. I wonder what is happening on our northern borders? I don’t read of similar policies in airports on either coast. How much of this is an extension of selective immigration from what are perceived as national population pools that will benefit a narrow America First agenda fueled by politicians who quote the Bible?

I am at a loss to understand how this Administration lives with itself. Yes we need to have a coherent and comprehensive immigration policy. Yes we need to have border security. Yes we need to stop the flow of drug, human, and whatever else traffic into our country. AND Y ES we need to live up to basic human values of caring, of love, or compassion, of acceptance. There are lots of verses in the Bible. I’m not averse to quoting them myself. But lets be honest. You can probably find one that fits whatever political mood or flavor you are trying to promote. You can definitely find stories and verses that need a lot of contextualization and interpretation and taking them on face value raises more questions than answers. But in my mind the overarching sense the Bible imparts (both Hebrew and Christian) is caring for the downtrodden, compassion for the stranger, justice for the widow, love and kindness for the orphan, looking forward to a world redeemed, participating in the work of salvation, finding a place in your heart for those on the margins.

And I could go on. What is mind blowing to me is that instead of trying to solve this problem, the leadership we elected is playing a blame game. (At least today.) It’s the previous presidents’ fault. It’s the legislation enacted by the Democrats. It’s sad and it’s shameful. That’s what it is. Even his wife is embarrassed. Fix it. Separating families, children to the right, adults to the left isn’t making America great again. It’s making America complicit. It’s making America callous. It’s making America cruel. If you are like me you feel powerless. It is all too complicated. Sometimes you don’t have to consider all the intricacies of every situation. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut feelings: Shame.

But don’t stop there – call congress; connect with your representatives and senators; vote, vote vote.

 

 

White Gloves

/ howardshapiro / 15 Comments

Memorial Day 2018It is a good day to try to write. Morning has broken but the skies show no sign that there is sun lurking behind the cloud cover. The clay tiles of the roofs across the street are outlined against a grey that is of no particular color or interest. Everything is still on this Memorial Day 2018, except my memories.

Maybe the article in my “inbox” from The Forward propels them this morning. Reposted from Veterans Day two years ago, “Profiles Of Our Fallen” obits 37 Jewish men and women who died defending you and me over these past ten years. The image accompanying it is of hands gloved in white folding an American flag horizontally cuffed with the blue sleeves of a US Army dress uniform. I know those sleeves with the gold braid. They take me back to my responsibility as the Jewish Chaplain of Arlington National Cemetery when I served full time duty at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. That was the year before I was posted to Vietnam.

It was a strange and disturbing time. The beauty of a military funeral with its elaborate rites and rules played out against the rolling green and white of Arlington. So many stone markers standing at attention quietly witnessing the tragic sacrifice of what could have been and of what we will never know. I played my part, proudly. It was the least I could do for those who will never know another tomorrow. I played my part, religiously, not one hundred percent sure, event then, what the ancient words consummated. This I knew. If almost nothing could heal, at least these Hebrew formulas bound memory to eternity and offered a glimpse of a blue sky that seemingly goes on forever.

They weren’t all killed in action; they weren’t all too young to die. Some were career officers who died what we call a natural death. But too many were. Standing at an open grave you know many things. You know this could be you. You know this will be you. You know that for all we think we are, we are but dust and ashes, grass that grows and withers, a faded flower in the wind.

We owe so much to all of them. There is almost nothing we can give them to repay the debt, except perhaps: A life well lived, a life of caring; a life infused with giving; a life of service to the causes they died for. I ask one minute of your time today or tomorrow or whenever you read this. No matter what your challenges, you are blessed to be living in a country that still cherishes your right to choose how you will live your days. Think of them and remember.

In my head, the bugler is playing taps. They died for our freedom. It is that simple and that complicated. We owe them this country.

 

 

There Will Be Light

/ howardshapiro / 6 Comments

IMG_0344I wake early in the morning. It is such a struggle to stay asleep. I feel like I am wrestling with the mattress and the sheets, as the pillow becomes my nemesis. And I say, enough. I know the light is coming through the shutters soon; the sun will find its way back; dawn will softly, slowly seep into the space where darkness reigned and the world was so seriously silent.

It’s the radiation and the side affects. I’m not complaining, although I’m not sure why not. I am in the home stretch, over the hump, almost free and clear, all those platitudes you think and say which have both elements of truth and falsehood embedded within. Writing this, I only have 3 more. Before I finish this, 2. I’m happy and thrilled the skies have not fallen on me (poo, poo, poo). I cant help but adding “yet” a product of my Jewish sense of foreboding.

People want to know the details of the side effects. I always hesitate cause it feels so personal and embarrassing to talk about urinary urgency, frequency, control. It’s not so problematic to share energy levels and tiredness. I think about one of my favorite science fiction series: Dune. I don’t remember it being in the movie version but there is definitely a thread in the novels about how over the centuries and millennia the habitants of Dune collected their urine and deposited them in vast caverns of this desert planet eventually transforming the wasteland where they had to live under ground to a paradise of green meadows and blue lakes. Or at least that’s how I remember it.

Gently flowing streams, gardens of blossoms and purpose, out of the darkness and into the light. That’s my image for today. And it’s not just the metaphor I hang onto for myself. It is a faith statement about human progress and the slow and uneven climb towards a utopian future. I believe in that. I believe that the tomorrows and the tomorrows after that will be brighter, safer, healthier, fairer than either yesterday or today.

Not without struggle; not without pain; not without effort; not without you and me doing our part to make it happen. So I will lay myself down on that sheet covered table and let the clicks and buzzing of the Linear Accelerator work. It is promising me sunshine and restful nights. It is a miracle of science and thank God for that.

The Challenge of Easter & Passover

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Passover and Easter kiss each other this weekend. Friday is Good Friday and as the sun sets Jews begin to ask the questions of the first Seder. Easter is Sunday and the second day of Passover. I like it. I like when the calendar underscores that our spiritual traditions have the potential to unite us and join us in common cause even if we walk the path with different shoes, clothes, rituals and images. It may be “chutzpah” for me to assume your image but go with me for a minute.

For Jews it is the broken piece of Matzah held high for all to see; for Christians it is the broken body of Jesus on the cross. For Jews it is the hidden piece of Matzah to be found and redeemed before we can continue on our freedom journey; for Christians the body of Jesus hidden in a cave and found risen promising new life. Both are promises; both are challenges; both are opportunities; both revolutionary. Last Friday night Rabbi Olshein quoted the powerful and poetic teaching of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel underscoring this concept: “Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism and falsehood.”

For me, this year especially both holidays share a challenge. Coming one week after the Student Marches our ritual celebrations ask us to remove the symbols from their ancient husks masquerading as holy and ask our own four questions or five or three, whatever number resonates with you. I will ask:

Why is this moment on the American political scene different from other moments? Because the children are leading us, because the future is calling us, because we now know it is time to stand up.

What is so bitter to us and so salty we cannot enjoy our meal as usual? 17 deaths are bitter to us; our tears are salty as they run down our cheeks. 17 deaths weigh heavy on us, not to minimize the deaths of Las Vegas, Orlando, Sandy Hook, do I have to go on? Do I have to keep on counting? Because it is not enough to dip our parsley in salt water and think we have fulfilled the commandment. The commandment calls on us to exercise our freedom, to act on our commitments, not to let the status quo of a government enslaved to the gun lobbies to continue to sacrifice our children on the altars of their apathy.

What is enough? Enough passivity, it is not enough to think the other “guy” can do it. Enough of lethargy, it is up to you and me to make the change; it is up to you and me to leave Egypt and walk across the sand and the sea to a safer and fairer tomorrow. When you break the middle Matzah – listen to the sound. You have to listen hard it is faint but telling. It echoes that it is time to put our society back together. It is time to make government align with the needs of its citizens. “Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are in need celebrate America with us.

In the Christian metaphor: Jesus has risen. Let us rise; let us break the shackles of indifference. Jesus has risen. Let us rise; let us hold the cup of Elijah high promising a new dawn and a new day for all of us. Let us rise; let us tear down the pyramids and build a just and uniquely American society for all to see.

Happy Holy Days everyone, may they bring us closer to a land that fulfills its promise to a time when the Messiah lives next door.

 

 

 

It’s Not a Microwave

/ howardshapiro / 16 Comments

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So this was day one; thirty-nine more to go. Forty is a transitional number in the Bible. It rains forty days and nights in the Noah story; Jonah walks through the city of Nineveh for forty days warning the people to repent. The Israelites wander in the desert for forty years until they can cross over and enter the land of promise. Even Jesus gets in the act being tempted for forty days and nights before returning to the Galilee to preach. It seems in Biblical times one enters this time of forty and comes out the other side different, changed, ready, healed. I’m counting on it.

This was day one of my forty radiation treatments. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in the fall and today I laid myself down and let the machine begin the healing process. It didn’t hurt; I felt nothing; even the sounds coming out of the machine were much less intimidating than an MRI. It’s not the only protocol associated with my treatments but this was a moment of so many thoughts and so many associations.

It is hard hearing this cancer word even though people I love and respect have told me that I will be fine. I will not die from this. I just have to follow the rules, keep strong and stay positive. Everything in this process has been stepped, like those of Russia. Wide swaths of time waving in the wind silently speaking that this cannot be ignored (not the cancer nor the emotions). When my PSA numbers first began to climb the Doctors said it was time to check my blood every six months and then it was time to have an MRI and then it was time to have a biopsy and then – I don’t have to go through all the details….

But today was real. I found myself looking for meaning in everything, looking for signs. It is the evening of my mother’s birthday; the color of the red light against the backdrop of the water and the sky where I make the left is redder than usual. The arms of the machine against the blue of the plastic panes are embracing. It is good – twice good – to begin on a Tuesday since on that third day of creation, God said it was good, twice. It will be fine.

I guess what it all adds up to is my finitude is catching up. I’m going to let it for a while, maybe 39 more times, but then: Watch out – I am crossing out the lines on the bucket list.

Who’s In?

/ howardshapiro / 7 Comments

3 billboards

This is what greeted me on my phone from a New York Times feed yesterday morning. Deadly shootings in schools — that is, the killing of children in sanctuaries of learning — have become a distinctly American ritual, the rote responses as familiar as a kindergarten recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. It is the day after the day after the school massacre in Parkland, Florida and 17 funerals have already started.

Everyone I speak to is disheartened, sad, frustrated, angry that all our politicians do is offer platitudes. Is it ok with them that the new normal is that the American Flag flies at half-mast? I have posted and shared on Facebook cute and clever cartoons that Nicholas Cruz isn’t an immigrant, isn’t Muslim, signed petitions, sent money ….

But I haven’t done this:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/politics/three-billboards-rubio-trnd/index.html

Open the link. Even if you have to copy and paste it. I’m in. I have no idea how much a billboard cost – but imagine billboards all across America. Something’s got to shake up our elected officials. Something has to move the needle. I believe in the power of prayer to inspire us to live and act on our values. I believe in the power of prayer to help us console the bereaved. But prayer can become platitude. And our politicians pray for the victims. How about this? “Who rises from prayer a better person, their prayer is answered.”

Help our society become better. Remove easy access to automatic rifles. Tighten background checks. Do what has to be done to make our society safer, our schools sanctuaries of learning and not fear. Raise our flag to wave proudly across a nation that values life over guns.

So I mean it – Who’s in?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/politics/three-billboards-rubio-trnd/index.html

Or I’m open to a better idea – but doing nothing is not an option.

 

 

bottom 3rd from the right

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I’m embarrassed. It has been months since I have written anything for this blog and I have an excuse but not a good one. I wouldn’t blame you if you have given up on me and unsubscribed from rabbiunplugged.wordpress.com (Don’t do that – just saying). But I’m back – at least I have all these good intentions to be back. It’s easy to let yourself get off track and to make up all kind of reasons why you are not doing what you should or could. Not that this blog is a requirement for graduation or even my self-esteem. I have been richly validated during this almost month long celebration of the 50th year since my Ordination as a Rabbi. And I loved every minute.

The picture of the 16 of us in our graduation gowns and hoods (the kind that go around your neck not over your head) capture us in time. We were all men; women Rabbis were to come five years later. And we were all young at least I think we look that way. I am pretty sure we were all first career Rabbis, most of us destined for what was then a typical career path in a congregation.

But life has a will of its own. Another way of saying that is to insert the word God in that sentence. Pathways open up before us and God calls us to choose which trail to take. I don’t mean that literally. But every turn and fork in the road is a choice and that includes even the unconscious decision to let inertia be the wind at your back. The challenge is to find the sacred and the holy, the meaningful and satisfying in the details and demands of each day.

And challenge is a good word here. There were stretches of time when routine took over and I just plodded away. Luckily, someone, something woke me to the moment and said: God is in this place – look at the bush, burning unconsumed. Notice it. (Yes, I have amalgamated stories and images – hey – 50 years – you get some license.)

I have tried to live with the words of Rabbi Alvin Fine’s poem as my prayer and mantra. “Birth is a beginning and death a destination but life is a journey a going, a growing made stage by stage…. victory lies not in some high place along the way, but in having made the journey (into) a sacred pilgrimage.” We choose what is high and what is low. We choose how to extrapolate the holy from the profane. We choose how to see/reflect/perceive the multitude of experiences life hands us.

Some (too many) in the picture are no longer physically with us. They are gone to what the ancient Rabbis often called the Academy on High. I miss them and don’t understand the why. But that too is a life lesson, one of the hardest to internalize. We don’t get to know it all – no matter how many degrees and accomplishment to our credit. There is a mystery at the heart of birth and death. And so I hold onto the unknown by saying Baruch – blessed. Blessed are the years; blessed are the paths; blessed are the people; blessed are the moments when I am aware of the “You” out there – patiently waiting to be embraced.