Rosh Hashanah is one of my favorite Holidays.
Just recently, I celebrated my second Jewish birthday. I had my beit din around this time, two years ago, specifically so that I could celebrate the High Holidays as a Jew. But that is not what makes Rosh Hashanah special for me.
RH is actually the first time that I experienced Jewish life outside of college and Passover Seders. It was the first time I attended a Friday night service, spoken mostly in Hebrew. And I attended it with my then-Fiancé.
The memory is tinged with sadness, too, because it was in fact that weekend that our relationship officially ended. It was so sad to me, in part, because I never even got to celebrate with his family!
The Jury is still out on what, exactly, my motivations were for ending the relationship. Was it that I really just did not like him? Entirely possible. Was he good for me, but I was too afraid of love? That is possible, too. Maybe, in some funny G-d joke kind of way, both are true. And maybe, even though it was an ending and a loss that I experienced at the time, in effect, it was really a beginning.
And truly, it was.
It has now been five years since then, and, looking back, I have come so far, and in some ways, I have not changed at all.
Now, I am Jewish. I have my own Jewish life. I have Jewish friends. I can bake challah, and I have even made my own Shabbat candles. Now I know more prayers and tunes than I ever thought possible.
But one thing hasn't changed. On the positive side, after a period of not believing that I could ever date or love anyone else, I have opened myself to exploring relationships with many different people. Some long and some short. And from each person, I have gleaned something, whether it was pleasant or not. But what hasn't changed is that, for all of my openness and exploration, I still feel closed to love. I don't let love in. When it gets too close I push it away, or I run and hide. Sometimes I do both. Sometimes I hide, even when I stay.
This is a painful process, and a painful way to be. And my awareness of it simply makes me sad. I don't know what the solution is. It is undoubtedly something way too easy, like, "Just relax." But you know how hard that is when you have years of unconscious beliefs and behaviors guiding your every move, with or without your permission.
So, my Rosh Hashanah prayer is this:
May my heart become open this year to the Love that is around me, that wants to be with me, that yearns to give to me. May my eyes become open to seeing it, and my hands become open to receiving. And my mind refrain from rejecting it.
May my soul and spirit relax in the presence of this love, knowing that it will nurture me and nourish me and sustain me through all and any hardships I may bear.
May a wealth of abundance flow in and through me from every angle.
And may the blast of the shofar shock my spirit into resetting itself to my original "default setting" in which my channels to giving and receiving love were not blocked, but open, flowing and fluid, giving and receiving perfectly all the time.
May it be so.
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Holy Baptism
I just had a striking realization this morning. I was writing the date down, and I realized that it was 28 years ago to this day that I was baptized in the Episcopal Church.
This is a pretty big deal for a Christian family. It's almost as important as your birthday, but you don't really celebrate it, and nobody bakes you a cake. It's kind of like a second birth, in the Christian mind, really. It's where you get to be born in front of everybody, but it's clean, it's sterile. The baby wears a long, white frock, and there's no blood, only water. No screaming, only prayers and promises, with your parents and Godparents standing around, and the whole church watches on.
The Christian church seems to think it owns baptism. But it sometimes forgets that its baptism, as far as I can figure, comes from the same source as the Jewish Mikveh. And Jesus wasn't the only one who went around Baptizing people in the waters of the Jordan. In fact, Jesus himself was Baptized, and it's one of the major stories in the Christian Bible, when he gets baptized by John, and the voice comes from the clouds, and all that. So why do they think that baptism is all theirs, and it's so darn special?
Besides, I think Christians really get cheated on the baptism front. What you get, as a Christian, is somebody splashing a token amount of water on your forehead as a baby (some churches do more), when you are completely helpless, and have no long-term memory or decision-making capacity - and then they stamp the sign of a torture instrument on your forehead with some oil and call you a Christian. Who got to decide that was going to happen to you? Certainly not yourself, that's for sure. And since Christianity is a converts-only religion, it's kind of a nasty trick to say you "converted" when you were a baby. They give you the "opportunity" to "confirm" your "belief" when you are older, but by that point, your head is so filled with lies, you don't know what is true anymore.
Jews get it a lot better, I think. And of course, I haven't done it yet, but I at least have an idea of what goes on. You get a whole pool to yourself. There is no white garment. No aura of sterility to your existence. No, you go in NAKED. You go in with all of yourself, and only yourself. You get cleansed without any additional baggage. So that when you come out, you can truly feel that something is different, because there was nothing between you and the waters of the Mikveh. I find just the idea of it to be extremely profound. In fact, if I had looked at the calendar this way a while ago, I might have even scheduled my Mikveh and my Beit Din to take place on this day. I am about ready to do it. I feel like there is basically nothing that can change my mind at this point. Not the doubts of others, not the derision of my family, not the questions from any Jewish person about why in God's name would I want to choose to become a part of a persecuted people? Hey, well, that's just normal, as far as I am concerned. It's a moot point. The list of reasons for me doing it are long, the list of detractors is both short and filled with flawed logic. So therefore, my choice is clear.
And baptism is purported to wash aways one's sins and make you a new person. This is exactly what my rabbi tells me the waters of the Mikveh are for, such that once I go through them, I will no longer be who I was before, whether I like it or not. There is no going back. It's a tough choice to make, with a lot of pressure, and a lot of reasons to back out. Those are the same reasons, in my opinion, to keep going. So I look forward to going into the Mikveh. I see it as the baptism I choose, and the one I have always desired.
This is a pretty big deal for a Christian family. It's almost as important as your birthday, but you don't really celebrate it, and nobody bakes you a cake. It's kind of like a second birth, in the Christian mind, really. It's where you get to be born in front of everybody, but it's clean, it's sterile. The baby wears a long, white frock, and there's no blood, only water. No screaming, only prayers and promises, with your parents and Godparents standing around, and the whole church watches on.
The Christian church seems to think it owns baptism. But it sometimes forgets that its baptism, as far as I can figure, comes from the same source as the Jewish Mikveh. And Jesus wasn't the only one who went around Baptizing people in the waters of the Jordan. In fact, Jesus himself was Baptized, and it's one of the major stories in the Christian Bible, when he gets baptized by John, and the voice comes from the clouds, and all that. So why do they think that baptism is all theirs, and it's so darn special?
Besides, I think Christians really get cheated on the baptism front. What you get, as a Christian, is somebody splashing a token amount of water on your forehead as a baby (some churches do more), when you are completely helpless, and have no long-term memory or decision-making capacity - and then they stamp the sign of a torture instrument on your forehead with some oil and call you a Christian. Who got to decide that was going to happen to you? Certainly not yourself, that's for sure. And since Christianity is a converts-only religion, it's kind of a nasty trick to say you "converted" when you were a baby. They give you the "opportunity" to "confirm" your "belief" when you are older, but by that point, your head is so filled with lies, you don't know what is true anymore.
Jews get it a lot better, I think. And of course, I haven't done it yet, but I at least have an idea of what goes on. You get a whole pool to yourself. There is no white garment. No aura of sterility to your existence. No, you go in NAKED. You go in with all of yourself, and only yourself. You get cleansed without any additional baggage. So that when you come out, you can truly feel that something is different, because there was nothing between you and the waters of the Mikveh. I find just the idea of it to be extremely profound. In fact, if I had looked at the calendar this way a while ago, I might have even scheduled my Mikveh and my Beit Din to take place on this day. I am about ready to do it. I feel like there is basically nothing that can change my mind at this point. Not the doubts of others, not the derision of my family, not the questions from any Jewish person about why in God's name would I want to choose to become a part of a persecuted people? Hey, well, that's just normal, as far as I am concerned. It's a moot point. The list of reasons for me doing it are long, the list of detractors is both short and filled with flawed logic. So therefore, my choice is clear.
And baptism is purported to wash aways one's sins and make you a new person. This is exactly what my rabbi tells me the waters of the Mikveh are for, such that once I go through them, I will no longer be who I was before, whether I like it or not. There is no going back. It's a tough choice to make, with a lot of pressure, and a lot of reasons to back out. Those are the same reasons, in my opinion, to keep going. So I look forward to going into the Mikveh. I see it as the baptism I choose, and the one I have always desired.
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