Just back from my first trip of the year to my pulpit. It's in a little town 300 miles up Hwy 99, which makes for a very long Friday (driving up before services) and a long Sunday (driving back, after religious school.)

I've been making that drive for a year now, and while initially I dreaded it, it's become part of my routine. I hate the first bit -- getting out of LA -- because I have two choices for that: do it early, during rush hour, or a bit later, when I will have to hustle for the rest of the day, but I won't have to fight rush hour on the 405. There's no good way, I've decided, just grit my teeth and drive.

As I climb the mountains and the LA radio stations begin to choke and hiss static at me , though, the scenery turns wild and beautiful and the traffic isn't bad. There's a gorgeous wilderness up there, miles and miles of it, hills that tumble on both sides of the freeway, and surprising vistas. It's not green, this time of year -- burnt browns and oranges and grays -- and you can see the scars from old wildfires, but it is beautiful as only a California wilderness is beautiful. The road passes Pyramid Lake, which has a pyramid-like island in the middle of it, and somewhere out of sight of the road there is also Castaic Lake. Those miles shake the smog out of my brain; generally I turn off the radio and drive in glorious silence.

I don't often feel the urge to go back and "fix" these entries, but my last entry had a dreadful clinker:

"I started the day by showing up for the regular minyan at a local Conservative synagogue. I decided that it was stupid, this one time in my life when I can for sure daven with a minyan every day, and I'm not doing it. So when I can be there, I will be there. "

I should clarify: *I* was being stupid. The regular minyan at Beth Am is a pleasure, and it is by no means stupid. Muddying that up was indeed a stupid writing mistake.

And now, whew, it's fixed.

Back in L.A...

Today is a stretching day, one of several I've scheduled this week. I started the day by showing up for the regular minyan at a local Conservative synagogue. I decided that it was stupid, this one time in my life when I can for sure daven with a minyan every day, and I'm not doing it. So when I can be there, I will be there. And "can" means "do not have a committment elsewhere" not "goofing off at home". (It also can't mean "I'm too embarrassed." As the rabbis point out to us, the shy do not learn.) Once school starts, I'll pray there.

Other stretches lie ahead, some I'll mention here and some I won't. One way I know that I'm really living on Jewish time these days is that the New Year really starts for me on Rosh HaShanah, and the preceding month (Elul) is the month of admitting to stuff and fixing what I can. It's Honesty Month, for mending relationships, with others and with God. I am extrapolating a bit, and including "myself" in the people with whom I need to mend things. And that is all I am going to say about that.

A month of friends and family in the Bay Area -- which I stretched to five weeks because I couldn't bring myself to go quite so soon -- was just the ticket: I feel ready to go back to school, which is truly a miracle. The hardest thing for me about L.A. is the people who aren't here; it gets lonesome. And sometimes it just has to be -- I'd be lousy company, with my nose in the books -- but another of my resolutions for the coming year is that I'm going home regularly. And phoning friends more often.

I got the dreaded exegesis paper back from Dr. Eskenazi-- the paper I agonized over most of June! -- and she liked it, she really liked it. I don't know when I've been so thrilled with a good grade on a paper; it's a lovely feeling, to put all I've got into a project and think that "that was pretty good, I think" and then hear from the teacher, "yeah, it was a good job." And what I learned, I get to keep.

Grrr. Abu Ghraib prison is back in the news.

Our tax dollars at work, folks. We paid the cretins who followed those orders, or who didn't follow orders. We paid the people who gave them the orders -- or who were supervising them so poorly that they didn't realize that the night shift was freelancing as torturers. We are paying the dog-ate-my-homework crowd in the Bush administration who could not be bothered to read a report, or to pay attention to it if they read it.

We are paying for this, every one of us, with every paycheck, with the checks we sent on April 15. Our children will be paying for it, too. I do not understand why the entire country is not up in arms to call the Bush administration to account for this.

 
I just had an encounter that sent me back 40 years.

I stood at the crosswalk at Lakeshore and Trestle Glen, feeling impatient about the long stoplight.   A boy (he looked about ten) seemed to feel the same way I did -- he kept banging his fist on the "Press for Crossing" button.  I looked down at him, and said, "These things sure do take forever, don't they?"  and he grinned at me and said, "Yeah."  We were instant allies.  Just then, the light changed and the signal to walk flashed at us.   I stepped off the curb, and the kid yelped at me.  I stopped, and a car screeched to a stop (she had been about to run the light).  Without missing a beat, the boy galloped across the street, and I hollered, "Thanks!"  He didn't even look back.

As I got to the other side of the street, I saw him run over to a woman a little older than myself.  When I reached the curb, she turned to the group crossing over, holding out a copy of "Street Spirit", a weekly published by the American Friends Service Committee, that is sold by homeless folks around here.  "Buy a copy?" she said, rather tentatively, "My grandson is here with me, I'd like to take him to the fair."

I stopped (after all, her grandson just saved my silly neck.)  "I just met this young man -- he kept me from walking in front of a car," I said.  She beamed.  "Do you have kids?" she asked me, "Because there's a nice little street fair, and we're going to take the bus over so he can ride the rides."  "Oh, my kids are grown," I said, digging in my purse, "Big guys.  But I hope you have a good day.  Some of my best days were going places with my grandmother."  I handed her the cash from my wallet.  She gasped, and turned to smile at her grandson.  He wiggled and smiled back up at her.

All of a sudden I missed my own grandmother so much that my eyes were filling up with tears.  I wished them luck and a good day, and half-ran into a nearby coffee house (where I am sitting now).  I looked out the front window after I emerged from the ladies' room, and they were gone.  I hope they have a good day at the street fair.

I remember some great days, when I was that kid's age, sliding around on the front seat of her old Buick while she drove from Franklin to Murfreesboro through Triune.  We'd have had cottage cheese and tomatoes at her house, and then we'd stop furtively at Ole Taylor's Candy Kitchen in Smyrna (where they make Saturn cars today) and get a piece of chocolate. 

Then we'd hit an antique shop in Murfreesboro that we both loved; she'd pay a dollar for which we could fill a grocery bag with used books.  Thanks to Meme and the Antique Barn's back room, I read Dickens and Twain from old books that sometimes smelled odd but that were always nicer to hold than a paperback.  We'd examine the china and she would tell me all about France, where they make Limoge china and where my father spent his Army service.  She'd never been to France, would never in her life travel outside the United States, but she'd talk about it as if she had.  

She'd show me old tools and we'd talk about how people lived in "old times."  I remember a thing that looked like a wastebasket with teeth:  it was a cranberry picker.  She said people had to wade in water to scoop the cranberries for Thanksgiving dinner.  I am pretty sure that Ocean Spray has something more sophisticated, but I never eat cranberries without thinking of men standing in cold water.

Other times, we might drive up to Nashville and stop by Elder's Bookstore on Elliston Place, where she'd chat with old Mr. Elder, while I'd watch young Mr. Elder organize books on the shelves.  She had an arrangement with old Mr. Elder:  she'd bring in a bag of paperback murder mysteries, and exchange it for another bag.  We'd talk  history with the Elders for a while, then get back in the car and drive to the Cathedral, where Monsignor Albert Siener lived in the rectory.  Before he went off to seminary, he had gone to Cathedral Grade School in the same class with Meme.  He lost a leg to phlebitis, but before he got sick and they sent him back to Nashville, he and the man who became Pope John XXIII had been friends and fellow-students in Rome. 

We'd visit with "Msgr. Albert"  for an hour or so.  Meme would hand him the bag of mysteries, and he'd hand her the bag we'd brought last time.  Msgr. Albert was the holiest man we knew.   I learned a lot from listening to the two of them talk -- everything from old Irish Catholic Nashville stories to Vatican politics -- but the most important thing I learned was the humanity of the very holy:  Msgr Albert loved mystery stories, and he kept licorice candy in a jar, and when little girls got bored during a long Cathedral Mass and got squirmy and irritated their parents, he'd beckon (and since he was Msgr Albert, my parents simply waved me off to him).  We'd go to the back of the church and he'd hand me the tails of his cincture (rope belt) and we'd be off, me "driving" him in his wheelchair back and forth across the back of the church while the service droned on.  He believed that children should not be miserable in church.

[A side trip:  I get angry these days, when I hear jokes about Catholic priests and pedophilia.  First of all, the horrors that have come to light recently are no joke.  But secondly, the sick priests (and the bad bishops who protected them) were not the whole church:  in my childhood, I knew lots of priests and lots of nuns, and they ran the gamut from kind and saintly to crazy as a bedbug.  There are some I could have done without, true, but there are others, like Msgr Albert Siener, without whom I wouldn't be the person I am today, people from whom I got a glimpse of holiness.]

But back to the day:  we'd leave of Msgr Albert with his mystery books (he had lots of theology books, too; but Meme was his source for the fun stuff.)   We might go downtown to window shop at the Cain-Sloan department store, or at Harvey's, and then we might -- might! -- stop by Candyland for a dish of peppermint ice cream with chocolate sauce.  (Do you notice the recurring theme?)

Over ice cream, we'd talk about books, and history, and life.  I got advice from my grandmother that I value to this day: 

"Don't ever sign anything you haven't read, no matter who tells you to." 

"Vote every chance you get."

"A woman should always have a little money of her own."

"You need an education, Punkin.  College.  I only went to one year at Belmont, but you're going to get an education."

There was also information that -- well, she was opinionated.

"The liquor business is bad luck.  That's what happened to the Kennedys.  He made his money bootlegging, and now poor Rose has to live out all that bad luck.  Don't ever have anything to do with the liquor business."

"You can't tell me I'm descended from a monkey.  God made monkeys and he made people.  And little babies have been growing in their mother's stomachs ever since Adam and Eve."

"We're lace-curtain Irish, not shanty.  And your ancestors were kings in Ireland."

... and so on.  Actually, I did some research, looking for her in reference books the terrible summer after she died -- she was right.  The Carrolls were kings of Ely, in Ireland, in about the year 1000.  "King" meant something a little different in 1962 than it meant in 1000, but still, she was right. 

She died 30 years ago this past spring, and I still miss her.

I hope that boy has a good day with his grandmother.  I cannot bear to imagine my grandmother begging; I feel sick that his grandmother has to. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I've spent a very pleasant morning repotting african violets.   In March, I gave my big plants a haircut and used the castoff leaves to start new plants; now the new plants are big enough to graduate from their plastic cup homes (with the tacky but effective Ziplock "greenhouse" covers) to real pots of their own. 
 
No "Pomp and Circumstance" in the background but I got satisfyingly grubby, and now the windowsill here in Oakland is full of little green guys who will either make gifts for unwary friends or travel back to LA with me at the end of the month. 
 
I needed a hobby that would engage the right side of my brain and require me to get really dirty from time to time, without requiring so much time and attention that I couldn't deal with school.  I also missed having pets.  The violets fill the bill nicely:  they are fussy enough that they do require attention, but they don't need sitters or litterboxes. 
 
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I need to live with other living creatures.   I suspect that the violets keep me from annoying my children too much, and worse yet, from inflicting my mom-energy on colleagues.    They aren't quite pets, and they certainly are not children, but they do remind me that I am the partner of God in miracles: they wouldn't thrive without water, food, and fussing.  Once upon a time, they grew wild in Africa, someplace where their leaves never got wet and their roots were watered regularly, but with a bit of help, they are nice to have in an apartment that is a little too quiet sometimes. 
 
Apparently I'm not the only person who feels this way about saintpaulia.   There's a national society devoted to the little devils, which sponsors shows, contests, trading events, and so on.   
 
I used to worry that someday I'd be one of those old ladies with 100 cats.  I don't think that's likely now, but I may become the middle-aged lady with 100 furry little plants!
 

On June 17, 1996, I sat in an armchair in the small shul at Congregation Beth Jacob in Oakland, CA, and answered the questions of a beit din [rabbinical court]. I recall three things clearly: (1) I was petrified (2) I had no idea how to answer the question about Israel and (3) One of the members of the beit din asked me, after an answer I gave to one question, whether I'd ever thought about rabbinical school. I couldn't tell if he was serious, or just trying to break the tension with a little humor.

Then we went to the mikveh [ritual bath], where management had forgotten to turn on the heater. I dipped a toe in the tank of ice-water, and asked myself the ancient question: well, how badly do you want to be a Jew?

Today, for the first time, in that same little room, I sat as a member of the beit din while we asked questions of first a young man I was meeting for the first time, and then, later, of a young woman from my congregation. I witnessed their readiness for conversion, and then we walked down the hall to the mikveh room (which was blessedly humid -- the heater was on!). I stood outside the door and listened as the young man said the blessings and immersed himself in the water. Then, later, I guided my candidate through the blessings and the rite of immersion.

There have been a lot of milestones in my Jewish journey; this one leaves me pretty much speechless. It is a privilege to be with someone at the beginning of his or her Jewish life, to study, to be a companion and guide, to decide, with three other Jews, that yes, indeed, we recognize a yiddishe neshomah, a Jewish soul.

What a blessing!

And now I can quit having nightmares about something going wrong. The worst nightmare was the one that had to do with a brass band marching through the mikveh room.... oy. I was glad, today, to have two senior rabbis with me, to keep me from messing up! They, too, were a blessing.