Spiritual

I CAN’T PUTT!

/ howardshapiro / 9 Comments

II played at golf yesterday at a beautiful course near Waynesville, NC. There were lots of streams, water hazards, elevations, and great views of the mountains. There were several holes on the back nine especially where you couldn’t see the green or the flag. But on one of the holes, I managed to get up to the edge of the green with an uncharacteristically good shot. I knew that as I started to walk up to my ball that all I needed was my putter. As I got closer, I heard myself complaining: “I can’t putt!”   “That should be the title of your next blog,” Jim announced. So, here we go. “I can’t putt” really meant that I misjudged the place where the ball landed. I can’t putt meant I was beating up on myself just a little. I can’t putt meant I was feeling stupid. Golf is good for that.

If the closest you come to liking golf is the soft velvety voices of the announcers narrating the golf matches on the weekends; their mellow tones a perfect sedative and almost always a guarantee for a good nap, then I thank you for reading this far. And this blog isn’t about golf or the things we can’t do. It is about humility and resolve; it is about being willing to fail before you succeed and enjoying the process because that is what life is. There’s no such thing as perfect.

There is almost. There is so much that is out of our control. Being human is living with limits. Not to get maudlin but we all have a hard end to our strivings. That limit looms over all we do even if we are not conscious of it at every minute. So we fill our days with things that we hope will make us healthier, happier, smarter, richer, more proficient, more more more. And we fill our lives with possessions that we think we need to live a rewarding life.

I can putt by the way. I just can’t putt perfectly and consistently. I think perfection and consistency are overrated. I think there are great lessons to be learned and a lot of laughter and joy to be discovered when the ball rims the cup. It sort of depends on your approach to the game. My religious or spiritual truth does not call me to flawlessness. It invites me to try, to strive, to struggle with whatever morning brings and start each day with gratitude that this life is overflowing with blessings.

But enough. I am feeling so privileged – like in White Privilege – but that’s a different blog. One day ……..

They Call It Savoring

/ howardshapiro / 8 Comments

I love changing the desktop background on my laptop. Every few weeks I right click on the screen and look for a new photo that matches my mood. They almost always come from the arsenal of digital photos that live in my cloud. This is a Baobab tree in South Africa that can’t get enough of the world it inhabits. I didn’t know the concept when I took this picture, but it would definitely live in my gratitude album today.

It’s really a simple idea that I read about in a Times ten-day challenge to learn new habits for mindful living. It is day eight. Some of the other techniques are equally fascinating like the five-finger breathing meditation and the exercise snack. (Instead of reaching for a cookie, reach for the wall and do a set of wall push-ups.) Then have the cookie, just kidding (about the cookie not the push-up).

Here’s my take on gratitude photography and why it works for me. I carry my phone with me almost everywhere I go – my note-taker, calendar, teacher, shopping cart, and a window to the world. But for this: my easy access camera.

Gratitude photography suggests that we notice the things and people around us we often take for granted. Gratitude photography invites you to be surprised by the world you live in. I’ve begun doing it on my morning walk. The very act of observing the mushroom growing out of the gravel; the fire hydrant on the edge of the lake; the minivan on its final journey that gave 16 years of service; the smile on someone you love; the green that is like no other green of the moss after it rains.

They call it savoring; making an effort to notice our surroundings and appreciate the people, things and relationships that make us happy. I don’t know if it is a game changer but according to the article scientists say that savoring exercises “can lead to meaningful gains in happiness and well-being.” I’ll go with that. So, I am trying it. One a day if possible. I don’t think it has to be the most well crafted photograph. It invites you to notice, appreciate and be grateful. It is one of the pathways to joy. Here’s two.

Gratitude Photos

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/ howardshapiro / 18 Comments

What You Can Learn When You Don’t Know Your Learning

Here’s one of my secret passions. I love America’s Got Talent. I’m not as faithful a fan as I could be. I usually watch it on Facebook. Someone posts a contestant’s presentation and I click the enlarge button and turn on my sound. After email and the newspaper (along with the mini crossword) FB is my third activity of the day. Not counting coffee.

This morning a woman who goes by the name “Nightbirde” inspired me. She sang a song she wrote called “Its OK”. It is touching and soft and gentle and affirming. Especially when you know the back story of her ongoing struggle with Cancer. While talking with Simon (you gotta know who Simon is) she just throws out this simple, profound and challenging line. “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore to decide to be happy.”

“Wow”, Simon says on AGT. Wow I echo from behind my screen. I don’t know how she (Jane) knows this or heard this but there is so much to unpack in these amazing words that it doesn’t matter what their origin. I am tempted to parse it phrase by phrase, like Rashi does Torah. But you get it. There is less in our control than we like; there is more in our control than we can imagine.

Maybe it isn’t true in all stages of life, but it is now. Don’t wait until life isn’t hard. Just living is hard; just staying healthy is hard. Just accepting that this is what’s real and this is what I have right now is hard. And I can lift it up or let it pull me down but sometimes, too many times, I can’t change it.

Don’t wait to decide to be happy. To decide to be happy. Whether it’s a struggle or comes easily and naturally happiness is a decision. Not always a simple one and sometimes we need help to make that decision. Help like love. Help like people we care about and who care about us. Help that comes in the form of chemicals. Help that comes in dreams or prayers or words like God, family, friends, tomorrow, sunshine. Even golf and garden.

It’s been a long time since I posted anything on this blog.I often think about why. And sometimes I start to write but a voice inside says it isn’t quite good enough. I guess Nightbirde spoke to me in ways that transcended the RAM and CPU that make up the guts of this machine on my lap. Don’t wait. So It’s not perfect.

And Then There Was Darkness

/ howardshapiro / 22 Comments

(I wrote this yesterday as a meditation before lighting the lights of Shabbat and I read it at Temple Israel last night. Eileen said I should post it on my blog. It is always good to listen to Eileen.)

And then there was darkness. Banners waving; Flags burnished; T-shirts announcing they came to destroy our democracy.

They came on foot and they came with the urging of a man we are ashamed to call President. They came marching and chanting and they mounted the steps and they climbed the walls and they breached the fence. The barricades of decency destroyed.

And then there was darkness. The domed sanctuary to our freedom defiled by their anger, their hate, their venom poisoning the electoral process. Their truth the lies of a political expediency.

They came marching and chanting. And they broke the police lines and they shattered the sacred halls of liberty and they leered into their cameras calling themselves Patriots.

And then there was darkness.. And slowly reinforcements arrived. And belatedly the National Guard was called up. And step by step and bit by bit they were gently

Too gently

Pushed back and the mob dissipated into the night where they find a comfortable refuge. And the darkness became light. And the House of the People went back to do its work. The darkness became light when in the earliest of hours a glimmer of hope as a new President and Vice President were certified, announced, anointed.

Liberty was proclaimed throughout this broken land and we began to breathe again. Slowly and filled with worry but breathing. Astonished and full of questions and concerns, but breathing, heartbroken and might I say: angry.

But the darkness became light.

With this as our prayer, with this as our hope this glimmer, this spark, this turn toward the moon and the sun let us say these familiar words finding in them comfort and strength.

Let us kindle these holy flames and with them let us welcome Shabbat.

May its radiance illumine our hearts.

On Hold

/ howardshapiro / 19 Comments

What do you do when you are on hold? You listen to horrible music interrupted by an announcement that informs you: “All specialists are assisting other customers. Please hold for the next available specialist.” At the beginning of this process I was informed that the average wait time is 50 minutes or more. Thanks Chase. At least Apple lets you choose the music you would like to listen to. (or none – even better.) Too bad Chase’s website doesn’t address my issue.

This is what I am doing on hold. I decided I needed some fortitude so I picked out a nice California Red.(Now this is going to sound like I know what I am talking about.) Nothing too fancy medium of body, not too acidic, but one that will hold up to this drivel I am listening to. You know what I like about the wine I am savoring? It has this beautiful almost pink color that compliments the dark red at the edge of the glass. I would take a picture of it, but I am afraid I will lose my place in line.

This is what I am doing on hold. I am resolving to go back to the poetry course with Billy Collins  I bought from Masterclass. I left off during our shut down and I am going to see if I can motivate myself to continue and maybe even complete it. In chapter three he teaches, “There is no chronology involved in poetry. You can go anywhere. You can fly.” I like that. It reminds me of what happens when I try to meditate. My mind is like a poem. It goes anywhere and everywhere and if I am successful slips away to a place deep inside.

This is what I am doing on hold. I am thinking about you and this unplugged blog. Of course, it really isn’t unplugged. It is connected in a hopefully important sense to the wires in my brain and being and to the question of purpose and meaning. I often ask myself: Who am I writing this blog for and why?  I always find it interesting that the more “political” I get the more comments I receive. So, I find myself torn between moments like this where we share a slice of life together and causes to which I am committed. But ultimately I’ve decided: this is all about the connections we forge with ourselves and each other. Isn’t everything?

Lessons from a Waning Moon

/ howardshapiro / 17 Comments

I woke early this morning, technically it was morning but my body and the world outside my windows said it was still the middle of the night. I did everything I knew how to fall back asleep, but nothing worked and here I am in the office reading the newest Dan Silva book, “The Order”. It is too good to help me fall back asleep as Gabriel Allon eats in wonderful cafes and hunts down those who would destroy the world we know.

And then it was dawn. I didn’t even know it till I looked up and saw what you see. There is the tiniest sliver of an ancient moon peeking through the night sky. I said, OMG, it must be Elul – the month of preparation before the New Year. But I was wrong. It wasn’t the beginning of a new month, but the end of an old. The Hebrew month of Av was waning, and the moon was kissing it goodbye.

I know that reads like poor poetry and I apologize. But I need to somehow make sense of what is happening to us all. When Elul comes in just a few days, I know that nothing will change. We will still be social distancing; we will still be counting our afflicted and our dead. The pandemic of 2020 will still be with us. We will still be struggling with how we stay safe; how we keep our family safe. And too many of us: how can I pay the rent; buy food; get a paycheck.

And our elected representatives play Nero’s violin. And Rome burns. And we are victims of an almost criminal neglect for our county’s safety and well-being. And I despair. Then I remember Elul is coming. There will be a new moon. There will be a glimmer of hope. It’s not just the turning of the earth and night becoming day. I am genuinely psyched by the addition of Harris to the Biden ticket. Naïve? Perhaps. But my Judaism teaches change can happen. We are obligated to make it happen and we need to know it begins with us.

The silver of the moon is gone, caught by the rising sun. But it will return along with sanity at least I hope it so; I pray it so.

There is a Painting

/ howardshapiro / 18 Comments

There’s a painting in our office in the new apartment we are still finishing in the high rise building near the mall in the city where we rented our first apartment when we came here what now feels like a long time ago and it was. It is a gaggle of men studying. I started to say a group of Rabbis but why do I assume only Rabbis study. I guess you could ask why only men but that’s a different discussion. They sit pretty close to each other, breathing disagreements and questions on each other’s faces. Things we notice now.

I replaced the glass and the matt after the glass cracked in our move. It’s been with us ever since I was a student Rabbi in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1965-66, a gift from the congregation after my one-year internship with them. They were incredibly warm, gracious and proud Jews of the South and put up with this naïve and inexperienced young Yankee from Boston. The congregation had been founded officially in 1865. But Jews have been living in Vicksburg for almost 200 years.

 It is a Zvi Raphaeli Litho. (Whatever that adds to this story. But in Jewish tradition it is imperative to quote your sources and name your teachers.) And they teach, these lines of color, strokes from a paint brush of the artist’s creativity. They teach about time and Torah; they teach about nostalgia and memory; they teach about an eternal quest to make sense of this life we have been gifted. One man is sleeping, maybe just a quick nap. Or maybe it is the Rabbi and they learn more from his silence than his words. I know about silence. Sometimes it is distant and cold, angry and bitter. Sometimes it is reflective and soft, harmonized compassion. Sometimes it is wise. I try to remember that simply refraining from speech opens up the moment to unforeseen potential. Speech is populated with words I already knew; silence celebrates that there is more to learn from each other.

My men are not silent. They are arguing about tomorrow. What will be its shape and how will we rise from this table piled with ancient tomes?  I would recommend to them The NYTimes article “No One Knows What’s Going To Happen” (Mark Lilla) as a worthwhile antidote to the hints they scour in the texts before them. In a way it is an echo of what happens when you are willing to live with the silence. Everything we say about tomorrow is a guess. Some guesses are more educated than others, but our predictions depend on so many variables including will my scholars in the portrait wear a mask when they leave the House of Study. Including will my scholars pray with their deeds and not just their words.

There is a very hard lesson to be internalized here. “Human beings want to feel they are on a power walk into the future, when in fact we are always just tapping our canes on the pavement in the fog. A dose of humility would do us good in the present moment. It might also help reconcile us to the radical uncertainty in which we are always living.” (NYT: Lilla. 5/24)

Scary this uncertainty. But if we are honest, we were never in control. We just lived as if we were. It was way more comfortable and settling. This stuff is tough but you all know that and didn’t have to read this far to hear me say it. But back to my scholars. I think what got them through is they had each other. If nothing else that was a constant worthy of emulating.

My Dark Side

/ howardshapiro / 23 Comments

This is my dark side speaking. I am not even sure that I want to give it voice. Better it should live in my imagination or nightmares; better it should live in my silent fear. I come to this naturally. We say in Hebrew: Al Tiftach Peh LiSatan – Do not open your mouth to Satan. Or put a little less esoterically. If you don’t verbalize it won’t become real. (Or something like that.)

But it has or it is becoming. We are ready to accept three thousand people dying a day from the virus in the US alone. We are ready to accept that this social distancing is the new norm. We are ready to accept that the more we open our society without enough testing, without a viable treatment, without a vaccine or immunity, we will push the death rate higher and higher. And our vulnerable will die; our seniors will die; our disenfranchised will be at higher risks; our care givers and first responders, our doctors and nurses will be put in more and more danger. It’s a mess.

If I were writing science fiction, I would give the virus “intention”. The earth would have a sense of consciousness, and this would be a warning/punishment/cleansing/teaching that we have gone too far and this beautiful blue globe will not keep spinning if we do not start to take care of it. In shutting us down; the virus has brought clear waters to the canals of Venice. A lesson.

Or if I were writing theology of a reward and punishment style, I would give the virus a Creator. And there would be prophets running around preaching and prophesying of an Apocalypse. Everyone is saying: It is the end of the world as we know it.  Where is Jonah when we need him?

If I were writing alternative history, I would tell my readers that the virus has purpose. It will make our society leaner and younger. The burden of a growing, aging, infirm population will be eradicated. And we will breathe again – we the immune; we with the antibodies; we with the new identity cards that have a CF embedded in gold. CF for Covid Free. We will go out again and the new ID with CF will get you into bars and arenas, theaters and malls, restaurants and house of worship and study.

Or we will just descend into sporadic and seasonal chaos. Ever read “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy? It is a post-apocalyptic novel of a father and son navigating the new reality some unknown disaster created. I actually gave a sermon based on it, seeing the father as Abraham and the son as Isaac and the road they navigated as a test of faith, love and ingenuity.

I told you my dark side was speaking. “WASHINGTON, D.C. – Toilet paper isn’t the only commodity in short supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal safety concerns triggered by the pandemic have made nationwide gun sales explode. Many gun dealers in Northeast Ohio say business is so busy they’ve had trouble maintaining inventory.” (Cleveland.com) And today Palm Beach County opens in Phase One. Restaurants and Retail at 25%. No nails done – a big topic in my house and no haircuts yet.

Progress but so much unknown. Progress but so much yet to be determined. Progress but so many lessons yet to be learned. Certainly, we will be a masked society. Certainly at least for a while we will keep our distance from each other. Certainly, we will think twice about things that used to be routine. Like touching a door handle or shaking hands – although I sort of like the Namaste fold – it is respectful and humbling which in these times is a good thing. I am getting used to some of the restrictions but that’s a different post. This one is staying dark.