The Scent of a Rose

I love the fact that Judaism has a prayer for everything. A prayer for waking up, a prayer for going to sleep. A prayer for meals and a prayer for drink. A prayer, even for a snack. There are prayers for things, and prayers for feelings, for intangible things like events. And it's wonderful, because those are the times when your soul seems to want to say something, and you just wish you could put the words to it. Judaism has those words. But the odd or paradoxical thing about it is that the moment you go to say them - or at least for me - when I say the prayers, or do some ritual thing like eating an item off a seder plate, I am whelmed, perhaps under-whelmed at not the sacredness of the moment or a mystical feeling (which I might get, say, walking silently in a grove of trees) but rather at an almost banal, profane aspect of the moment. Suddenly, instead of focusing on what's inside, I am focused outside, on word, speech action. Maybe I'm not "doing it right." But I don't know that there is a "right" in Judaism. There is certainly "the way things are done." But ultimately, the way you do it, if you do something consciously, is right. This is the way it is for me. This is my experience. And I don't think it means the moment isn't sacred. Maybe it means that it is.

I just got back from my first Rosh Chodesh women's seder. I was invited by a friend that I met in San Francisco, but it was held in the East Bay, not too far from where I live. So I went, and there were about ten of us. I was thinking about prayer, because I was thinking about sacred space, and the space was sacred. At a few points during the seder, I wondered, what would an outside person, maybe a neighbor standing just outside the window, think, if they heard our mumbling in unison, with candles in front of us. It all seemed like, maybe from the outside, it was some mystical, cultish thing. But from the inside, it was just normal. We were just people, sitting around, with candles, saying things and sharing thoughts, stories, experiences.

The theme of the meeting was Tu B'Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, since that holiday is coming up next weekend. On the table were mandarin oranges, dates, strawberries, cinnamon sticks and a bowl of red rose petals. There were four sections, and at each section we would take in the scent of one of the items. The dates we ate afterward.

The rose petals were beautiful, bright, and velvety, but they had very little scent. Not at all like the rose that seemed to bloom just for me on the day that I left my little house in France. I clipped that rose and took it with me, but then I wished that I had left it. It looked so beautiful on the tree where it was. And of course it didn't bloom "for me." But it seemed to. It seemed to salute me. And when I saw it there, I buried my nose in it's petals and smelled the sweetest scent of rose I've ever smelt.

In the last section of our seder, we read a guided mediation, where we were supposed to be walking somewhere (wherever we went in our imagination), and were distracted by a scent. Then we would turn to see what the thing was giving off the scent, and were told that this was the scent of our soul. We were supposed to interact with it in various ways, and then finally leave the place and continue on our way. We were to first just take it in. Then find out what kind of "nourishment" it needed, and then ask it for a gift.

I was doing the reading, so it was hard to concentrate until I put the paper down and closed my eyes. In a hurry, I jumped right in and found myself on a dirt path in a forest of low trees, maybe pines. they were fairly dark. I was on a larger, gravel path, but a smaller dirt path opened up to my right. And even though I was supposed to be drawn by the scent, I saw first before I smelled that there was a bright red rose on the periphery of my vision. Before I turned, I thought, maybe this is a mistake, it's supposed to be something else. Maybe I'm just thinking of this because we just smelled rose petals. But even so, I decided that if that was the case, this was still what was coming to mind, so I was going to go with it. And the rose was very bright and deep, the color, and its petals still fairly tight, just starting to bloom.

It wasn't very far off the path, and it was growing in a clearing. What did it need? It needed what all plants need. It needed water. So I gave it some water. And it seemed to thank me. Then I realized that behind it was a stone well. The rose was growing right at the edge of it, with two long stems. One had the larger, opening rose, and the other, a little bit below, was a bud, red, but not open yet.

The well was the one that we used to play on in the church yard. I will never forget it. It was low, with a wide lip of stone, and cherubs carved on the outside. It was no longer functioning, and there was only a metal grate covering a gravel bottom on the inside, where we would go in and sit. But once it must have been a working well, because there was a rusted iron pulley above it on a wrought iron arch. My friend T. painted it once in one of his paintings.

In my vision, it was a working well, though. Even though I didn't look in, I knew that it was filled with water. I gave the rose, which was there to represent my "soul" some water, and it gave me the well in return. I didn't even have to ask. It just gave. It knew that was what I needed.

And so, I spent a few moments with the rose, and decided that I didn't want to leave. But after I thought that, I turned and left and walked back out to the main path.