This year shall be a peaceful New Year...

This year shall be a peaceful New Year...

Goodbye to the mind-cracking chaos of 2022.

I have tried the marches, followed the news in an incessant loop, wrote postcards to encourage voters until my wrists ached up my arms, stayed sleeplessly wide wake into the early morning hours, running as a worn ribbon over and over, the rationale for, the potential solutions for, inexplicable estrangements, hatred, violence, hunger, pain, lay wide eyed in wonder and horror at the sheer grit and grieving there in Ukraine, there in Afghanistan, and here, on stateside borders. Watched impotently, recycling my cans and paper and plastic, as tempestuous storms rose and buildings crashed and then guns fired and lives fell and children huddled in classrooms and too many police confoundingly lost their compass. I have tried to take it all in, to translate it all into some sort of sanity, to find a path in the darkness, even for myself and too often, found the ceaseless whirring of my mind in those looping paths to no answers… and so…I have decided that it is my inner sense that has been askew - Finally realizing that I cannot control but I can manage. I can manage. And so.....

This year shall be a peaceful New Year. I shall drink some simple coffee with sweet cream from a heavy cup whose heft fits my hand – I shall allow pleasure in whatever form it appears. I shall see the spectacular marvel of a single raindrop as it joins its collective, I shall know the wonders I cannot see of savannahs, seas and arctic circles, of birds flashing in the midnight skies and all creatures, in all places doing their natural creaturely things. I shall hear the joyful cries of newborn babes and not permit misery, no matter how horrific, to obliviate joy. I shall comfort where I can and bring compassion in any way I can to all that suffer. Yet, this year, I shall humbly acknowledge my limitations as one single creature on this teeming planet and I shall choose to know with the certainty of belief that all will be well even when it is so clearly not – I shall choose to believe that the path forward is one of peace, and that love, compassion and calm is the only way through – and whether there come sunshine or darkness, whether the skies storm or clear and shine in glorious splendor there shall be light … in me.

If it shall come to pass that each of us cherish and protect and refuse to extinguish our own spark of light – Ah that would be quite something would it not? I wish for each and all the joy of your own indomitable, light and that 2023 shall shine with our colossal connection as each day unfolds. With love to you and yours and to each and all. Happy 2023.

Happy Chanukah - Light To The Lonely -...The Miracle of Light For All...

HAPPY CHANUKAH - LIGHT TO THE LONELY .... THE MIRACLE OF LIGHT FOR ALL...

To all those who have fond faces of family and friends to share the light of Chanukah I bid you well and wish you happiness in your joy - this, though is not for you - Not quite yet …

This is for those who hold the first candle over their menorah - and listen to the single sound of their striking match

This is for those who through, death, distance, disagreement or the simple cruel throw of the die land

Alone

Some shall remember and hunger for a past where the scent of latkes and love lingered loud and lasting in clothes and hair and walls and air from first night throughout

Some shall remember the glow of children’s faces - or shockingly their own face safe and excited over the simple sumptuous pleasure of a smear of jelly in a donut the incomparable taste of powdered sugar - the scratch of chairs as family gathered - the laughter of elders and the galed giggles of children

It won’t be the gelt felt in these ghostly yearnings - though tiny net bags of foil wrapped coins,dreidels , plastic and wooden and the inevitable electric menorah in someone’s house will very likely appear

This is for those tonight in quiet houses - who pull out an old or maybe a new menorah, who pull the first colored candle from the box and as the legions of lonely ready themselves for the scratch of the match to light the flame

Know that you are not alone - for this is the holiday where light lit the darkness and hope and resilience rose triumphant and joyous over darkness, fear and attack

This is for you - each and every and all connected as the flame catches and light dances within …

Listen and hear the laughter of then, of the what-could-be and rejoice in the spark of hope you carry forward joining as one on this first Chanukah eve creating a conflagration of camaraderie

throughout the ages -

This is for you - as you touch the tip of your light to your first candle know -

This is for you - for all those who in solitary or severely compromised number, nevertheless murmur ancient words, watch the wick light and allow oneself to feel the fill of the miracle of hope

As they did then - so you shall do on this first night and on each following night

May you feel your spirit lift as you join in the festival of light and may your memories and imagined perfect Chanukah merge, spin in the dancing of millions of flames together

For it is you, those who light -

in spite of it all who shall understand as the candlelight flickers and waves that you are never alone with the power of light in your hands - the true miracle of hope

To those and to one and all - may the glow of light warm your home and heart and may I wish you what can only be a Happy Chanukah

In honor and memory and musings of it all - from camps to kibbutzim to congregations to singing perfect families and back back back again to those who lit oil against darkness, gathered in solidarity and resistance and began it all ..

All as One - connected in the light lit tonight

Once there was pink

once there was softest pink watched from a white shore across aqualine ripples - gentle, calm, perfect serenity embracing the coming of navied fragrant frangipani night - sweet dreams and a nearly certain dawn unfurling a satin ribbon of tomorrows - now - sunsets turn crimson, blood fired forecasts of death dancing -a dismissed nightmare no longer -gentle pink perpetuity glows only in reached for memory ... and occasional faith in forever

The Flickering

Ah these reflective black nights and radiant deceptively insouciant mornings immersed in the pool of self, I meander the watery line between movie-star idol of my own ill-cast drama and ragged peon of the world - taste ash tossed by the ghost of past, and future upon this present bundle of scattered synapses stuttering, stumbling, for the answer in the fading of the flickering stone.

Speaking of the unspeakable - on kindness

watercolor by dear artist friend Jacklyn Ritz Hennard 

Plucked from the possibility, day after day of all that could and does not happen to crush body soul and spirit - A post war child who read and heard of ravaged survivor faces with blank eyes lived long enough to see buildings fall and terror on ash whitened faces running through rubbled streets. As I, by the grace of some unseen entity positioned to wake each morning in my grandparents’ bed to watch the tree outside my window grow skyward stronger each year surviving each storm, to warm myself at a fireplace in winter as snow falls gently on mullioned windows,  to walk so far free from doctors’ visits, to phone a shopping list and receive food of choice in paper cartons, all this and so much more- an ongoing largesse, a bounty of such kindness positions me to be able to be, as meant to be, a mitzvah manifester - to perform anonymously small acts of  kindnesses when opportunity presents -dropping a crumbled five dollar bill on the ground for a tearful boy who’d lost his money for a present for his father returning from service, paying for  a family’s dinner bill celebrating the birthday of a new baby with their ninety three year old mother, holding a door open in the rain or sunshine, smiling at someone for no reason, thanking another for any service given,  leaving  a large tip on a table in a restaurant in an unfamiliar  town, buying new pillows for out placed children in the same orphanage where my husband spent some time as a toddler long long ago,  opening the door to a tiny kitten in the storm, sending donations, slipping poems into pockets of the grieving, the joy of rushing away from these deeds under the cloak of anonymity. In fact, I shudder to speak of such mitzvahs meant always to be unheralded lest they become braggadocio these acts of kindness that have always and shall always remain unclaimed - seeking to repair this broken world -these are small gifts to myself - sprinkling the sense that the world is kind - a microscopic unseen hand within the vast kindness of the Source that has so smiled upon me – offering some kindness so others might feel love of from an unseen softness smiling upon them too – Oh, I watch from spectacular safety another spring and my garden flowers blossom as children, as so many living fall murdered dead, as starvation, deprivation, hatred, chilling indifference clump as golems, among us, as oceans crest, ice floes melt on and on the tsunami of unkindness roils - I continue for now, miraculously  held in some universal toss of monumental kindness to be able to return a speck of kindness whenever and however the possibility  presents - I have no memory of any individual kindnesses  received - the vastness of my good fortune shimmers inexpressible  - my flecks join unseen legions doing the same-riding the tips of waves of wonder  in spite or perhaps somehow because of the horror of all that surrounds the flowers that bloom . This is ongoing kindness I have received. This the kindness I seek to repay. 

 

 

True North

 

True North 

 

star dust shimmers in soul

song, sparkling, sacred -

spell, binding all to its order

in the journey whirling true

north thawing any incipient

freeze – beneath serenity, 

rising, this voice of thunder

moving from translucent to 

transparent – pure power

bending the arc always to

righteousness 

Found

 

Found

along the roadway
poking through the
mulch of autumn
crunch - right there
a shoot in sunlight
of the self was that
was and is coming
to be
found

 

NESHAMA - UKRAINE

NESHAMA - UKRAINE 

Neshama - Neshama - breath of life - sacred soul ...

sit in my bed at night - in the dawn of early morning

this helpless cheer-leader - pounding sunflower

pom poms - poems and pretty pictures -illuming my

unadulterated incompetence to truly assist - with each

breath - my shame - inhaled - my safe existence exhaled

as I sit - watching, watching, the soul of freedom furl

manifested in streets - one particled part of this entire

watching world who gather and cheer - some as simple

spectators at a novel televised event -this watching world

that sends a bit of support here and there as men learn

weapons and kiss loved ones off - as mothers craft molotovs - 

babes at breast - take arms or flight away - in the cold, cold -

smiling for children, tears flicked off tired eyes- as a singular 

voice calm and measured rises above -rises in a clarion call to

all to come and join in protecting freedom sacrosanct -

calls in unwavering passion - Neshama manifested - 

in a leader in a people - as the world watches - 

and watches and watches - 

Neshama - Neshama -soul of breath - of life -

We are one - We are one breath -

I cringe in my privilege far far

away - push the button on my

coffee maker -return to

the couch along with millions

of others to watch - to watch -

Nesahama - Neshama

soul of humanity -

my breath held

witness to

Glory -

unstoppable

Neshama -