Typos? Not.

When I type I  make a lot of mistakes.
I struggle to type without errors.
Word processing is the best thing that ever happened to my typing.
Technology has finally caught up with my level of inaccuracy and my skill as a typist.
(I made ten! errors in the last paragraph.)

My typo of the word "praying" comes out " prying".

I sometimes feel it is a good mistake. Praying is prying myself loose from the everyday world and prying my self out of my thoughts and focusing them on Eternity and Infinity, on reality.

How many of you go through the day thinking that all of this is just an illusion?
This world is not reality, as much as it presses in on me, as much as I feel that I am dependent on the next breath of air, of my rib cage expanding again, and the food and the space I live in, the need to create order. All of it is just a lie and a test to see if  I can see, feel and experience what is beyond this world to the reality of forever.  Can I pry myself out of this space and be with Hashem?

Write about mistakes that turned out okay in the end.

Write about prying something loose.

Transformed

BS"D

Memory is selective.

Women pretty much forget what they went through in labor.  In spite of being intense, and sometimes painful, they usually look forward to having another child.

People that were obsessed with getting their homes free of chametz and perfectly clean and orderly seem to forget all about it once the holiday actually starts.  The whole family descends on them;  the grandchildren run around playing, leaving toys and clothes and books in their wake;  furniture is moved around to accommodate diners and conversations; towels and bedding are out, in disarray in every room of the house, including the living room and the housewife that would have shouted about such behavior 48 hours ago, is getting a kind of pure pleasure from this chaos, a kind of satisfaction that is only felt at this time of year, at Passover.

Passover is a holiday of transformation.

Write about any or all of the following words:

Transformation

Metamorphosis

Changes

Rebirth


Chag Semach!

Passover: what is different this time?

BS"D

In the Seder one of the major pieces is the Ma Ishtana מה ישתנה What is different about this night?

Use this as a timed writing piece:  Start every line with What is different....
Write for 5 minutes.

Insanity! Clean for Passover

BS"D


In a way that is short and user friendly, Nicole explains how to clean for Passover without going crazy.

Nicole Bem is a talented writer I met in a class given by Gila Green in Ra'anana, Israel.
Here's the link:   Spiritual Scrubbing
She also has a book out:  LET MY RV GO!

Chag Semach!

Separation

BS"D

This time of year we all spend a lot of time separating:

Is this chometz? Can I sell it?
Does this still fit? Should I give it away?
Do I want this set of glasses?
Should I repair this pair of shoes or get new ones?
Why have I been holding on to this?!
Is there is something under this-what could be under this?  Who put this here!?
I forgot I even had this.
I can't get rid of this.

As you sift through your life, your belongings and memories and junk, what comes up?
Write about sifting and separating.

Passing over Passover

BS"D

I know: who has time to write at this time of the year?!

Just writers!  I can't seem to stay away from my computer.  Call it procrastination.  Call it an obsession.
I only know that as my trash fills up, as my dust pan fills up, as I empty yet another vacuum cleaner bag, I am filled with words.
Mostly I feel gratitude ( yes! really!) to be a part of this season.  It's so easy to complain about the long hard hours of work leading up to the Seder and a full week long holiday.

What are you grateful for in the pre Passover season?

This can be just one word!

Chag Semach!

Trying: On Writing and Child Rearing

BS"D

I hear the rumble of a drill upstairs. I wonder what my neighbours are doing up there. I feel the hardness of the seat. The chair is not good for sitting long, but sit long I do in it. 

The air is cold around my legs, and I want to dress more warmly but dressing more warmly means that I have to wash my hands afterwards and then my hands will be cold, colder than they are already. 

I have a burning, cold burning like menthol on my face on the sides and the cheeks. I wonder if I'm allergic to something or if this an emotion. I know that I am afraid to write and do the projects I have set out for myself. I have a terror of being exposed but I think that this is what I was meant to do with my time right now. I very much want to start to teach writing but I'm afraid and sure that no one will want to take a class from me since I want to be paid and since I've never published a thing. I can only try.

I can only try.

I just thought again about the girl that wanted to know how do raise a girl like my daughter. 

You can't do anything about anything in the world except want it and fear G/d.

So I feared G/d, probably not enough, but enough.  Enough that what I wanted was not to disappoint Him by doing things with/to my daughter that she couldn't have a relationship with Him. I want my children, all of them, to be with G/d. To love Him and fear Him and to want Him, to want to walk with Him more than anything else that they could have in the world.

What can I say? I wanted it and G/d said "Yes, you can have these kinds of things, you can have these kinds of children."

Children don't belong to us.

They are given to us to work on ourselves and to guide them to enter a relationship with G/d. 

That's all.

This is cross posted at my other blog "The Flashlight". 

The Double Image

The Double Image

Using Elul Effectively

בס"ד

 I've been reading and listening to lectures to prepare some writing exercises for Elul, but it really a tall order!  I'm going to give some quotes from some of the articles I've read.  You can use these to help you get focused in your writing on the z'man we've started:  Days of Repentance and Tshuva.

This is an outtake from an article by Rav Nosson Weisz of Aish HaTorah on Parshat Shoftim:

At the very beginning of the Days of Awe we are summoned to take ourselves in hand and appoint internal judges and officers over our characters and behavior and prepare ourselves to face judgment. We are urged to do this in order to avoid having to face God's judgment. By weighing and judging our characters and actions on our own, repenting any wrongdoing and instituting the changes that are needed to correct our faults we can avoid the harsh scrutiny of the heavenly Court. God always prefers to leave matters to human initiative and only people who fail to judge themselves are submitted to the jurisdiction of the Divine Court.

* * *
TESHUVA ON DEMAND
But coming to grips with the "days of teshuva" can be problematic. It is one thing to command people to execute actions on demand, but it is quite another matter to ask people to experience feelings on demand. God designed us with the requisite circuitry to be able to direct ourselves to perform actions that are at variance with our feelings. Such self-control has its limits but the ability to discipline ourselves regardless of how we feel is definitely part of the human repertoire. But God did not supply us with the requisite switch to turn our feelings off or on. To experience a feeling on demand is difficult indeed.
Maimonides devotes the entire first chapter of his Hilchot Deot, the Laws of Character Development to the topic of changing one's character and developing the ability to experience certain feelings; the basic strategy presented there is based on behavior control. Through the execution of a controlled course of behavior that goes against the grain it is possible to affect character change over the course of time. For example, a tendency to stinginess can be overcome by deliberately behaving in the manner of a spendthrift over a period of time.
The point is clear: human beings simply do not have the spiritual equipment to effect immediate changes in their attitudes, feelings or characters. Understanding that you are on the wrong track does not in itself suffice to put you back on the right one. Maimonedes knew this a thousand years ago; psychiatrists have finally arrived at the same conclusion only recently. Knowledge does not alter character, feelings do. This phenomenon of human nature creates a very special problem when it comes to repentance.

* * *
A MATTER OF THE HEART
For repentance must come from the heart. True repentance requires the recognition and acknowledgement of character faults and the resolution to correct them in one's heart. As Maimonides explains:

What is teshuva? The sinner has to stop doing the sin, he must put it out of his mind and resolve in his heart never to go back to doing it again... to the extent that The One who Knows the Secrets of the Heart (i.e. God) can testify that he will never return to this sin again. (Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 2:2)

As such, repentance does not seem to be a phenomenon that can be squeezed into a particular time slot or season. It is a process that requires constant focus and attention; it can only be attained gradually, over a long period of time, whose duration is bound to vary from person to person.
How can God order all Jews to begin to repent on command at the start of the month of Elul and complete the process by Yom Kippur in light of the fact that He failed to supply us with the necessary equipment to carry out instantaneous character changes?
To acquire the tools we shall require to approach this problem, let us begin by examining the historic origins of these 40 days of teshuva that begin with Rosh Chodesh Elul and end with Yom Kippur.

* * *

You can read the rest here.

Show, Don't Tell on Rosh HaShannah

בס"ד

We spend a lot of time the new year in synagogue.
We crown Hashem King.
We ask him to remember our covenant with our fathers Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaacov.
We blow a shofar.

At home, we eat a festive meal with symbols of the kinds of things we want in the new year.

The idea of eating something sweet will bring sweet things into our lives is a bit strange, though.  What does it mean?  Where did our rabbis learn this idea?

Yaacov and Rachel communitcated through symbols or signs.  We learn this in the midrash.  They suspected, rightly! that Rachel's father Lavan, would switch the sisters just before the wedding ceremony so Yaacov gave Rachel signs so he would know that he was marrying her. But Rachel taught her sister Leah the signs before she married Yaacov, so Leah wouldn't be embarrassed and humiliated in front of everyone.

Have you ever seen a couple that just met?
They can't stop talking to each other.  They are on the phone all the time, talk non-stop when they are together, ignore all their family and friends.

Five year, ten years, twenty years later, the same couple don't talk like that.  Often they can know exactly what is going on with the other through a glance, or a tip of the head, or  slight movement of the hand.  At some point, a relationship moves beyond words to a higher level of communication. This is the kind of relationship that Yaacov and Rachel had.

And this is the kind of relationship that we are showing Hashem that we have with Him when we use symbols on Rosh HaShannah:  we're so close to You, we don't have to use words.  We can have these foods on the table and we know that You will understand the meaning behind them, because we have this special relationship with You.

On Rosh HaShannah we want to renew our special relationship with the Creator of the Universe and we want Him to see us a close and unique.  We want Him to look at us as individuals.  So we use signs and symbols that only an initmate will know.

Show, don't tell!