Three Paragraphs

I wrote about preparing. And I wonder. Am I truly preparing or merely preparing to be preparing? Or worse yet, pretending to be preparing.

I have to ask, because I feel a certain approach avoidance pulling me further away from my goals rather than nearer, at least of late. I wonder if a very old friend of mine--fear of success--is riding with me on this mission.

Among the things I am preparing for in this Season of Preparing is the Davening Leadership Training Institute (DLTI) in which I am enrolled and will commence classes in a few weeks. There will be four one week sessions separated by six months. DLTI is separate and somehow connected to the Jewish Renewal smicha (ordination) program. I am taking it, at least in part, because I found such great joy in leading our congregation in worship at my B'nai Mitzvah and Sixtieth Birthday celebrations last year, to enhance the skills I employ leading the residents at Lytton Gardens Senior Communities in Shabbat prayer each month, and to prepare me to bring a different ruach (spirit) to services at my shul.

One text I am reading to prepare for the class is The Path of Blessing by Rabbi Marcia Prager. It is a beautiful conversation about the deepest meaning of the six words common to virtually every Jewish prayer--"Barukh Ata Adonay, Eloheynu Melekh Ha'Olam"--commonly translated as "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe." I will not do Reb Marcia the injustice of attempting to paraphrase her work in a few sentences. Suffice it to say that she infuses each word and each letter of each word with meaning that allows one to transcend the limits of our common understanding of the phrase. She unlock the prayer in a way that provides an opening to a deeply spiritual experience .

Why else would I be tapping the keys at 3:34 a.m.?

I read a few pages of her book before I turned the light off for the night. As it sometimes happens I awoke in the middle of the night and lay there wondering about the big issues in my life. It may come as no surprise that in the middle of the night I find everything to be a big issue. This night/morning I was drawn back to a few of Reb Marcia's words as a possible explanation of the resistance I am feeling in my preparation for the Israel Ride.

In the context of opening the word melekh to a richer interpretation than merely "King" she expands its meaning to: "movement of divine creative power through its pathway to fill the receptive soul." The specific words I reflected on when I awoke are these:

... We must be willing to let go of our attachment to negative habits of mind and body, to purify our desires and clarify our intentions. So many of us live with minds and hearts clogged with resentments, old angers and fears. We cling to old habits of thinking and being until those habits begin to define who we are. Yet we fear that without them we would lose ourselves.

Aspects of this statement are familiar to me from several other sources going back to the self-improvement best seller of the sixties--Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. He was a cosmetic surgeon who wondered why people still saw themselves the way they were before the physical transformation his surgery provided. It is very hard to develop a new self-image despite evidence of profound change. In my case, I lose a few pounds, even as I gain some muscle, going increasing distances on my bicycle and not only harbor negative thoughts about my ability to perform my stated goal, I find my exercise and dietary habits lapsing almost as if to prove my worst fears.

Perhaps Reb Marcia's words call out to me now because they address not only the mental and physical realm, but a critical spiritual aspect as well. She continues...

The irony is, of course, that only when we let go of what is old is there room to receive the new. We are born to be whole, to be free, to be loved and filled by the presence of God. When we give up the obsessive clutter, we make room to be filled by God. Then we rise out of our petty mochin d'katnut, our small-mindedness, and receive in fullness the mochin d'gadlut, expanded mind.

With heart, soul, and mind open and receptive, we surrender control and ask only to be filled with God. We let go of expectations and find profound insight. We release our judgments and are filled with radiant divine light. We relinquish our attachment to external goals and discover true purpose. We exchange self-satisfied cleverness for the beginnings of wisdom.

Whew! I could sit with those three paragraphs for a very long time. Just three paragraphs out of an entire chapter devoted to the word barukh! Such a huge task to capture the essence of six words--and what it would mean in terms of personal transformation, spiritual growth, mental and physical well being to grok those six words even once when I recite them!

I often talk of the journey I am taking searching for Yeshaya. What would it take for me to live my life at a level of what I like to call my Yeshaya-consciousness. I wonder if this season of preparing or the actual Israel ride will bring me closer. I wonder if DLTI will move me further along. And then I coach myself as I would a friend and suggest that all of these are external events, enriching as they may be, and that I already possess everything required to engage in Yeshaya-consciousness. And then the little Boo Birds on my shoulder say, "Or do I?"

Shoo, Boo Birds!
Barukh Ata Adonay, Eloheynu Melekh Ha'Olam....

Elul--A Time to Prepare

I was telling the rabbi about the nature of my cycling journey--that the challenges and the learning has been more than merely physical. He responded by asking me to write a piece about it for the September congregational newsletter. The deadline was four weeks away. Nonetheless that night it crossed my mind that the newsletter would be issued during the month of Elul--the Hebrew month that precedes Rosh Hashanah. Immediately I felt a connection between the preparation we are obliged to do for the New Year and the preparation I was doing for the Israel Ride. Even though it was midnight, and I was preparing to go to bed I had to stop first and see where these thoughts would take me. Even though it is still July--the month of Tammuz, that is--I have written the following Elul piece for the shul. Here is your sneak preview!

.........................................................................................................................................

A month to get ready.
That should be ample.
Every year we have this gift,
like football players going to summer training camp before the big Fall kickoff—
only ours is a spiritual kickoff.
You know what happens to the holdouts—the ones who don't show up for camp?
They are in no shape to play the game.

This is an excerpt from my ethical will (viz., www.Yeshaya.net). I included a page on Elul in my ethical will because the month preceding Rosh Hashanah usually has two levels of significance for me. Like all of us I have the opportunity to use Elul to make spiritual preparations for the High Holy Days. I can, and sometimes do take advantage of Elul to reflect on where I have missed the mark, and to seek forgiveness. As ba'al tekiah--the carrier of the shofar blast--I also use this time to prepare myself physically for the high honor and solemn duty of sounding shofar on Rosh Hashanah morning. In very practical terms it is time to get my lip in shape. As a former French horn player that means practicing scales and especially long tones.

This year there is a third focus in my practice of preparation. A few short weeks after the chaggim are complete I will, God willing, sound shofar again--this time in the Old City of Jerusalem to mark the commencement of a 300-mile bicycle ride in which I will be among over 100 cyclists wending our way to Ashkelon, then through the Negev to our ultimate destination, Eilat, to raise awareness and money to save the endangered environment of the Negev.

I have been preparing my heart, my soul, and most assuredly all my might since April for this journey. I have felt the significance of the Israel Ride and my preparations grow steadily since I took on this challenge. I have very high expectations, based on all I have heard from previous riders--our own Greg Sterling among them--that this will be more than an exotic tour. It will be a mission that will have lasting significance to me personally even as I make an important contribution to a dialog among Christians, Moslems, and Jews whose objective is not only to protect and preserve the Negev, but to enhance the environment for peace among the peoples of Eretz Yisrael.

I feel exceedingly blessed to have so much to look forward to. I experience an even greater blessing by turning the anticipation of the ride and the High Holy Days into actions that enrich the present as well as the future.

I recently received a teaching that said that even greater than to perform a mitzvah is to inspire and motivate others to perform mitzvot. In that spirit I ask that you visit www.Yeshaya.net. I hope you will be inspired to learn more about ethical wills and to create one of your own. While you are there, please click on my Israel Ride link and make a donation to be shared by two truly outstanding organizations--Hazon (www.hazon.org) and the Arava Institute (www.arava.org). Most of all, use the remaining days of the waning year to go to "training camp!" Once again, Naomi Palmer is leading an Elul workshop for the shul, this year using the inspiring text Forty Days of Transformation by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins.

Finally, I pray that we all have a meaningful and productive Elul that prepares us for teshuva, for a year of growth, a year of health, and a year in which we make great strides in repairing the world.

b'shalom
Yeshaya

My Word

One would think that after riding up and down the same hills time after time whatever lessons there are to be learned would indeed be learned by now. Why would a fresh assault on the same strip of asphalt yield a new lesson and more curiously why would I find myself metaphorically covering the same ground?

I don’t think I have an answer for that. I just know it to be true. The lessons I have to learn I have to relearn repeatedly--maybe with a slightly higher consciousness than previously.

Today I found myself revisiting the issue of uphill versus downhill. I noticed that I was feeling rather pessimistic about this whole venture while peddling up, and a good deal more optimistic pedaling down. I must note that the exhilaration of flying down the road has been somewhat diminished now that I have felt at a lesser speed the sensation of asphalt tearing my flesh. I am a good deal more cautious and observant than I was in my blissful ignorance prior to my fall a few weeks ago. Reminds me of the Garden of Eden.

One thing I have utterly no explanation for is why I found myself quite spontaneously and at first unconsciously humming Adir Hu as I climbed Sand Hill Road. I don’t usually sing Adir Hu at Passover, much less in the middle of July! It must be something about the relentless repetition of the song that got into sync with my determined pedaling cadence. Later, with as little conscious effort as I made chanting Adir Hu on the way up the hill, I found one of the joyous Lecha Dodi melodies that I recently learned accompanying me downhill. It is not Shabbat, but it did seem in keeping with the delight I was experiencing.

Another strange anachronistic reference went through my mind on the ascent today. Suddenly I had thoughts of Kol Nidre and how we disavow in advance any vows we might make in the year ahead. I think that was originally intended to defend us from being forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition. I’m not sure it applies to promises and declarations we make in the normal course of our lives. Nonetheless, in the darker moments of today’s ride, the darker side of my soul was searching for a way out of my commitment to cross the Negev in November.

Some of this may be in response to my taking on an assignment from the rabbi to write something about the ride for the September congregational newsletter. The deadline is not for a few weeks, but I got an idea about what I might say just before I was going to bed last night so I jumped on creating a first draft. The newsletter will be issued during Elul, so I tied my preparation for the ride to our annual preparation for the High Holy Days. It is only a stones throw from Elul to Kol Nidre. I will assume my subconscious made that leap as I found the reality of the bike ride much harsher by day than the sublime theory I had savored the night before.

Therein lies a fundamental truth. It is so much easier to make the declaration than to deliver the goods. I suppose that that is one of the incentives for making declarations. Without them there is virtually no way I would have continued my climb today as far as I did. It turns out that hard as it is to do so, I feel the power of my word propel me to take on more than my legs or lungs want me to. The power of my word--it is a mystery why it should have such power given that words are so easily uttered and the performance they commit me to is often so difficult. What stake do my words have in the game? Why would I or anyone else pay them any heed at all? This tells me to guard my tongue as cautiously as I now guard my cycling descents.

The Maggid

I have a new word in my vocabulary--Maggid.

Of course it is not a new word--quite old in fact. (Wikipedia says dating to the sixteenth century--Maggid (מַגִּיד) is a traditional Eastern European religious itinerant preacher, skilled as a narrator of Torah and religious stories.) Reb Marcia Prager, my teacher last week in a class entitled The High Art of the Maggid, provided a much richer definition. She told us and then demonstrated how the Maggid's aim is far more than mere storytelling or even, like Aesop, providing a moral. The purpose of the story is to activate that part of the listener's heart that wants to serve God. The story becomes a merkava--a chariot that carries one up to the Holy throne.

Tonight a few of us gathered at my house in the presence of a Maggid. I'm not sure if he would self-describe with that term, but it fits nonetheless.

Nigel Savage, Executive Director of Hazon, the sponsoring agency of the Israel Ride, came and regaled us with stories. We learned of his personal history which connects directly with the history of Hazon, which he founded in 2000. The word hazon is Hebrew for "vision." Their vision is "to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community -- as a step towards a healthier and more sustainable world for all." We learned the history of the bicycle rides Hazon has initiated in the United States and in Israel to bring attention and resources to the cause of the environment. We listened to anecdotes of riders from past events--people whose bicycles have become merkavot. We listened to Nigel's stories and I, for one, felt a part of my heart activated to greater service.

I have sensed for some time that--as Buckminster Fuller would say--the "precessional effect" of taking on this Israel Ride challenge may not be known for some time. Without going into a lot of detail, that's Bucky's term for unintended consequences of a higher degree of importance than the aim of the original action. I suspect that through this venture I will make connections to people and ideas that will have lasting meaning. I got a small glimpse of that tonight in the stories of past riders. I got an immediate "hit" in our conversation that resulted in my being designated Ba'al Tekiah (the "carrier" of the shofar blast) for our ride. Each ride is heralded at the start with sounding of the shofar.

This has more overtones than a complex Cabernet (says the wine non-drinker). Only a few days ago I related a story to our Maggid class of why I so value the shofar that came to me from my father and came to him from an Israeli tourist guide almost fifty years ago. How they became friends is at the heart of the story which I will save for another time. To think that I will be carrying the shofar, its piercing vibrations, and the memory of these men back to their origin in Eretz Yisrael at the time of my father's yartzeit--this is rich.

Nigel said he would like me to tell the story again when we are together in Israel. It will be my opportunity to be a Maggid for my fellow travelers, which I look forward to as much as anything on the trip.

Watch the Road

One second I am excitedly pedaling to meet a friend a block away so we can begin a challenging ride on a picture perfect day. The next second I am catapulted uncontrollably in air, knowing in the slow movement of time that in a matter of nanoseconds I will be striking the unforgiving asphalt surface below in an unpredictable manner.

Gravity and inertia take their inevitable effect. I land tangled up in bike. The part of me that is still unaware or in denial wants to jump up instantly and carry on. The subconscious truly knowing part of me takes over and commands my body to stop, to lie still, to take stock before moving another muscle.

I lie there slowly realizing that in my haste to join Teri, as I cut through an empty parking lot early on a Saturday morning, I had totally missed seeing a steep unmarked speed bump. Faster than I could react to my spill, a cyclist 100 feet away ran to my aid. There is an elegant pervasive code in the cycling community. We take care of each other. We recognize the frailty, the danger that comes with this challenging sport. We take care of our fellow travelers. Even I who still feels like a visitor at times among the far more experienced cyclists do immediately feel this sense of kinship, affiliation—this bond.

I rose, not wanting to delay my group's 7:45 a.m. wheels rolling target any further. "I have to meet someone." I explained to the man offering aid." No. You need to take care of yourself first, " he insisted. "Did you hit your head?" he asked as he ran for his supply of antiseptic salve and bandages.

Slowly the reality of the moment sunk in. I was bleeding on hands and arms and knees. I took the first aid supplies from my benefactor. Thanked him. Knowing my group was only a block or two away I figured I would ride over to them, but then realized that my handlebars and shifters were in a strange new configuration. It no longer seemed prudent to mount the bike, so I called Teri, let her know that I had wiped out, and slowly walked back to my car, only a few yards away. I drove to the rendezvous point and wished the others a good ride before heading home. My cycling for the day, my cycling for this week was done.

I am loving this whole cycling adventure! Yes I am loving it, bumps in the road included. No I am not a masochist—at least I think not. I do not enjoy the pain. What I value is the learning. Today's message can be a simple one—keep your head in the game. Be awake. Be aware. Be conscious. Be present. Observe what is right in front of you. So many ways to say it.

Where was I when that bump arose from nowhere to attack my bike? Part of me was a few blocks away greeting Teri and her friends. Part of me was being held hostage by a state of haste. Part of me may have been in judgment and anger at being a few minutes late, at not giving myself the time to exit the house at a comfortable pace, to drive to Woodside, to park the car, to deploy my bike—all the little things I would like to have done consciously and deliberately, but was doing in a hurry. Part of me was proud that I showed up at all for any part of a ride heading up Old La Honda Road. Part of me may have been in fear of the same thing. Part of me may have been a saboteur knowing I had so many other things to do before traveling the following day.

Clearly none of me was watching the road, and that, I conclude, is a basic requirement of cycling. I just spit out a bunch of simple messages in the preceding paragraph. I like this one better. It is so pithy—"Watch the road."

I chuckle. It reminds me of how, as a young stickball player, each spring it would take me some time to remember, "keep your eye on the ball"—another basic tenet in the overall category of "watch what you are doing." My dad used to say it this way—"Doug, be careful." And that's what I plan on doing.

Thanksgiving

Okay, I know. Today is The Fourth of July--Independence Day! And, like virtually every other holiday, it is a day to give thanks.

I always feel self-conscious, and a bit pushy, if not downright sanctimonious when I suggest that we actually express our thanks at the Thanksgiving table. I'm not sure whether the resistance is truly coming from those assembled or whether it is inside me. Regardless, I truly value the act of giving thanks, of recognizing one's bounty. I do it just about everyday in my morning "Walk 'n' Talk."

As I walked this morning there was a noticeable bounce in my step. I have so much to be thankful for. This is a great nation "conceived in Liberty," and I feel grateful that I am partaking amply in the harvest sown by the Founding Fathers.

I’ve been polishing up my website to launch it today, so its contents are prominent in my thoughts right now. I am grateful that I have had the space in my life to create an ethical will this past year, and to share it lovingly with my magnificent family. Moreover, I have had the good fortune to share this and more with many others through the use of this absolutely magical iMac and with the support of bright, beautiful, and energetic trainers at the Apple store who helped me construct my website and enter these blogs. I have had an abundance of opportunity to reflect, create, share, and love.

As much as I relish seeing my work take form, I look with even greater joy upon the contributions my family made to truly complete the ethical will. By each of them offering words that described what they had learned from me, my collection of blessings in a way became sealed. Hearing what they had learned gave the lessons back to me--sometimes by surprise! Did I teach them that? Did I demonstrate that value? (Some of these I liked hearing about more than others!)

So today is a good day to reflect on an item from Jake's list where he says he learned: “Independence – it is okay to go on your own when nobody wants to 'come with.'" As a Myers-Briggs extrovert I am curious about how I have been spending an increasing amount time alone, and enjoying it quite a bit. As alone as I may be at times, I feel as though what I do is always in relation with others known or unknown. I feel I have an audience even if this blog falls like a tree in the proverbial forest. I guess that’s where the Myers-Briggs thing comes in. Even if no one literally “comes with” I invent them. It’s like shooting 8-ball alone, pretending that Joel Cohen is stripes to my solids. Well, I don’t shoot much pool any more, but you get the idea. Now what I do is more an act of faith that what I do will somehow connect me to others in another time and place.

So far riding bike has been a relatively solo affair. I’ve talked occasionally to other cyclists in stores, at work, at cycling events, but I’ve done very little riding with others so far. Ultimately it gets down to man and machine and the long road ahead. That’s a pregnant metaphor, if ever there was one. I will leave it for you to ponder.

Lastly, at the risk of being a bit pushy, if not downright sanctimonious, I’ll suggest that we all express our thanks for whatever few or hopefully many blessings we can count today. Have a Fabulous Fourth!