Fall Harvest Moon
This year I attended the first Rosh Hashanah service and both Yom Kippur services. More of the Hebrew has become familiar, at least the transliterations. More of the melodies and songs, too. There are still times when I feel awkward, out of place. At certain points, in certain prayers, for example, the congregation turns to face the east, takes a slight dip at the knee and bows. Not sure exactly what’s going on there. Not all men wear kippahs, a smattering of women do. Same with prayer shawls. Not wearing either one does not make me uncomfortable as it first did, but I’m still aware of it.
Especially at the High Holiday services there were many I did not know, since some Jews attend the High Holidays in a fashion like the Christmas and Easter alumi in Christian churches. 70% of Jews in the U.S. do not attend synagogues, but many come for certain liturgical high points, including Pesach and Purim.
Even so, there are now more people whom I know and in turn know me or Kate. That makes going to the synagogue a place to be seen, seen in the same way the Woolly Mammoths saw each other. We’re still new to most of the relationships, a year plus for the people we’ve come to know best like Marilyn and Irv, Tara, Rabbi Jamie, Leah, Elizabeth, Sally, Fran, Lisa, Anshel, Rich, Allan, Ron, Jamie and Steve, but they’re developing. I’ve learned to be patient with the evolution of friendships and close acquaintances, letting them grow in a natural way.
In the mussar vaad practice group, MVP, Marilyn asked me to present on kavod, or the midot (character or soul trait) of honor, dignity and respect. This is even more intimidating than presenting to the Thursday mussar group because this group includes Tara, Marilyn, Rabbi Jamie and Ron, a former script writer in Hollywood, very bright, but, at the same time, more fun because it’s a challenge. I’ve found an important component of staying vigorous emotionally, intellectually and physically at 70 is taking on challenges, much like a decision some years ago to test my self-perception as a bad language learner with Latin.
Showing up to the MVP, the Thursday mussar group, taking kabbalah and Hebrew, going to some services, attending holiday events, and working on the adult education committee are all moments when relationships can grow and I really enjoy working with these folks. Beth Evergreen was a great find for us.
A peculiar sequelae of my new schedule, afternoons remain inchoate. After the nap and before supper. Not sure yet what to do with that. Might be good for games and puzzles? I want to read then, too, and do Latin (or, Hebrew). Perhaps once kabbalah and Hebrew classes get cooking I’ll find this the natural time for that work. The issue is peculiar because once I’ve fed the dogs, gotten my writing done, finished items off my to do list and completed my workout, I’ve already had 7 plus active hours.
Under the category of awe. In passing I noted a reference to butterflies being around in some numbers. One commenter on pinecam.com referred to them as painted ladies migrating.
The mind and heart, so wonderful, so necessary, so amazing, but also so fragile. Take mine for instance. Yesterday was a full day, beginning, as my days do, around 4:45 am. I got the dogs fed, ancientrails written, Jennie’s 750 words written and went downstairs to eat breakfast and make two sugar cream pies.
Today is a busy one. Once I’ve finished my writing, ancientrails and Jennie’s Dead’s 750 words, I’m going to make two sugar cream pies. One is for home, the other for the mussar leadership group that meets tonight. Sugar cream pies are a distinct cultural marker for the Hoosier state, but more than that, they’re really delicious. Why I don’t make them often.
Had a nightmare last night. Not often I have those. This one involved a gradual decompensation from ordinary life to forgetfulness to a social worker coming to help me as a vagrant, finding me in a dilapidated house with some others, also disoriented. Frightening. Might have been instigated by a pun game I played last night at Beth Evergreen. I wasn’t very quick, sometimes had nothing. I felt a bit embarrassed, slightly intimidated. It had been a long day, I was tired and the games went on past my bedtime, so it wasn’t the best circumstances for me. Still.
Up here in the mountains the occasional aspen has begun to turn. The grasses in the mountain meadows have lost their intense green. The angle of the sun has already lessened, casting deeper shadows. Orion is visible in the dark, clear night sky. Moose, elk and deer bucks have begun to drop the velvet on their antlers, preparing for the quickening of the rut. The bears become more brazen as their need for calories, more calories, before hibernation makes them feel an urgency.
The orchestra of life plays this symphony all year as it responds to the conductors spring, summer, fall and winter, each with their own favorite tempo. The elemental nature of the West makes the composition here often raw, sometimes going as far as dissonance during the chinooks, or a dry summer month, during a blizzard, yet it is usually majestic with soaring blue notes and the babbling background music of mountain streams and bugling elk.