Crossing The Street

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict/War had me doing a slow immobilizing churn in deep gut territory.
It was Marty Kaplan's excellent but hard hitting post "Eyeless in Gaza" on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ that moved me to get off my tuchas and ask myself the question; where is my honesty in all this when I can see both sides? Which led, to the realization that honesty has absolutely nothing to do with the truth, just truthfulness, and it's time to travel a road whose signposts where sunk in the Bronx.

Growing up as a East Bronx Jew in the 50's meant being touched by a generation who realized and remembered the strength and beauty of the ghetto/neighborhood. As a result, a couple of perks included kids hearing English peppered with colorful Yiddish phrases and commands and that you could ask any adult or responsible teenager to "cross" you at any time. " Cross me" was Bronx speak for take me across the big street to the other side. In my neighborhood the big street was Bronx Park East and on the other side did in fact lay the massive Bronx Park. It was acknowledged as an exceptional rite of passage, more meaningful to a kid than a bar mitzvah when you were able to to "cross yourself" (remember, it is Bronx speak). Before however, you could enter the delightful freedom of the park, you always had to pass, like a one sided gauntlet, The Benches.

The Benches that surrounded the park was where the women sat. The women, mostly mothers and grandmothers sat to gossip, discuss, argue, support each other and watch--absolutely everything. As the guardians of custom and culture in a post Holocaust community, the fledgling Israel was a big deal even if you did not identify as a Zionist. It's unqualified support was enmeshed with the teachings of survival of a people and never to be questioned. To speak otherwise was clearly a betrayal and threatened the safety of this and every other existing Jewish community. Somehow it became part of the first law of survival and to be understood, like all laws of survival, in the bone.

Survival lesson one. The truth? No. Is there truthfulness in my knowing this? Yes. Do I understand survival in my bone differently? Definitely. Does my view and expectation for the the people of Isreal and Gaza to exist in safety feel more embodied now? Yup. Signing petitions along with others to stop the fighting somehow did not offer the sought after freedom from narrow views, dogmatic assumptions, circular reasoning, as well as a stomach churning guilty conscience. The blogosphere is many things for many people. For me it allowed me to "cross by myself".

My Lesson for a Missed Friend

This morning I started to take down the Holiday Tree (we confess to being spiritually eclectic Jewish Americans with an interfaith partnership and intergenerational household) which brought into hindsight this three week period of bad Northeast weather, cabin fever amongst the already mentioned inter-faith and generational hoard, the company of additional loved ones, a fever-threatening strep outbreak which resulted in a failure to launch them back to school, and recognition, of how much I missed my friends who moved to Tucson and weren't part of the prodigal loved ones who came to us upon a midnight dreary.

While the holiday season comes about like clockwork it still seems to be for me, at least, a time that I always get knocked off my personal center. The increased amount of bodies I have to vie with for space and for longer periods of time, the constant sounds of someone else's voice and activity, the failure of the Networks to put on even one new episode to rivet my ass to the blissful experience of non presence, really screws up my "om" moments that might leave me better prepared for managing the increase in stress. This year while attempting to read Rabbi Rami Shapiro's The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness Preparing to Practice, which is an excellent book by the way, I can't begin to tell you the foul thoughts I had with each demanding whine for more time on the Wii.

But there is more to this post than just my own complaining and whining. I miss my friend of 30 years and not because we are lousy telephone buddies. The telephone just couldn't make it anyway. When she lived close by we would have these intense, wonderful and rich psycho-spiritual conversations for hours and I really do miss it. But that is not what I most miss most. I miss the times we sat in silence in each other's company before, during and after one of these discussions. A friend of mine named Francis, who was a true scholar and researcher said that she felt the preciousness of her relationship with her partner, in the act of "simply being able to work in her presence". To deeply know this is so different than pounding away in a gray cubical next to the person you are going to go to have lunch with at noon. It is, in fact, knowing you are truly and uniquely blessed. I know our friendship is a deep blessing and as I sit in silence pondering that thought, I fall into the preciousness of that intimacy and the eternal presence of friendship; a lesson well remembered for a missed friend.

This is a very special unspecial day

I am 63 but it's not my birthday. In fact there is really nothing special about this day other than I feel like Doogy Houser as I see these little letters crawl across the page. If you were 63 you too might know who Doogy Houser was. Probably though (I wasn't a real fan of this show), I might have more in common with him than I care to admit. He spilled his new found wisdom, profundities and compelling endurance at the shows end every week. I thought I might do the same here except he was 16 and I am way past that even if we reverse the numbers so it should be somewhat different, eh?.
But just as his weekly commentary on life as demonstrated by the aforementioned moving letters, was an attempt to make timeless sense of a life lived even if only 1/2 hour a week, so this day I too set virtual type to virtual paper and try to make sense out of my world. The fact is at 63 the idea occurs to me that it is likely just as much a commentary on a made up story just like Doogy Houser' script or anything else that we witness out there in the world. But it really doesn't make any difference. On this day, this unspecial special day I've chosen to start to play with life's Divine Impermanance and humbly try to teach it a thing or two.