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Yom Kippur Thoughts 2023-5784

Tracy Rich1 Comment

Yom Kippur is known as the “Day of Atonement,” and it is often interpreted as a somber day of self-reflection about all the things you did wrong, all the ways you fell short. Or as a day where you search your heart and think about who you need to forgive or ask forgiveness from. Above all the feeling and assumption often ends up being that we should feel bad about ourselves because we have failed.


Although I do find it useful to have regular times of the year to reflect, to shift focus, and to ask for/to give forgiveness, I am connecting to a different meaning of Yom Kippur this year – the vulnerability of truly knowing and accepting that we are completely and truly loved no matter what.


The very first prayer sung at the evening service before Yom Kippur, Kol Nidre (which means “all the vows,”) declares:  all future vows and promises are invalid, by declaring that all vows are “absolved, remitted, cancelled, declared null and void, not in force of in effect.” Why would all future vows and promises be declared invalid? We know we are going to fall short. We know we are going to make mistakes, to do hurtful things. This prayer says we are already forgiven. If we are already forgiven for future issues, what’s the point of the next 24
hours of prayer and literally beating our chests, admitting all our wrongdoing? Of course I believe we have to take responsibility for the ways we have “missed the mark” or been hurtful. I definitely live my life in inquiry about how I can grow to be a better human being, and to
create healthy and positive connections with others. However, this year, I am inviting myself and others into a different focus.


Why are we already forgiven? Because as humans we cannot ever be perfect. That is not the goal. Rather, I believe, the goal is to learn to love ourselves – and others – no matter what. No matter what means we are completely and totally loveable – including our ugly, imperfect,
undeveloped, hurt selves. We are loved wholly and absolutely. We do not have to do anything to earn this love. Love is the melody of all religions and spiritual practices. In imperfect human form, religions reflect the times they were developed; they include human fears and the tendency to exclude by making rules and judgments. But Love is beyond any religion. It is the energy that forms us and keeps us alive. It is a force that invites us to gentle honesty and vulnerability.


One of the things I appreciate about the Yom Kippur service is that there are sections where all the wrongdoings are announced. But it’s not my wrongdoing; it’s ours. Maybe I didn’t cheat or steal this year and you did. We still ask for forgiveness together. Maybe I was unkind with my words and you weren’t. We still ask for forgiveness together. We stand together in our imperfection and we acknowledge our shortcomings, our shadowy selves, our hurtful actions, our fears, anxieties, doubts, and despair. And then what? There is another prayer that says, “you are loved by a great love” (ahava raba). What courage it takes to step into the light and be seen – in our imperfection – and to know we are loved. What a leap of faith it is to let go of self-hate and allow gentleness. I already know I – and you – have failed to live up to our highest ideals. I already know that even if I or you do better at some things this year, I – and you – will fall short from some of my intentions. But I also already know that I – and you – are worthy of deep, abiding love. Love that knows no boundaries.


How can you practice receiving this this year? Imagine, for a moment, how you may have experienced love – in someone’s eyes? In the forest? By the ocean? In a piece of music? With an animal? Imagine that feeling multiplied over and over, without end, offering itself to you, inviting you into the absolute naked vulnerability of being seen fully and being loved. Notice if you tend to push that offering away or if you doubt it applies to you. Now listen again – you are fully seen and loved – my heart is holding this truth and is opening to nurture it so that it grows ever more firmly rooted. Imagine how the world could be transformed if each of our hearts could hold this truth more often and more deeply.


So when you find yourself making a list of your imperfections and failures, pause and breathe and welcome your very humanity and imagine you are loved right now, this moment. There is no other moment anyway! Right now, however you are showing up – not after you change or after you ask for forgiveness, but right now. Wholly, completely, without any holding back. That is the actual challenge – not perfect behavior but to know we are loved and to grow in love in
return. To atonement – “at-one-ment” – to be with the wholeness within our brokenness – that is the invitation.

Decolonizing Parenting

Tracy Rich3 Comments

As a parent, has your mind and spirit been “colonized?” Has your ability to think and act independently and from your heart and soul sense been thwarted or dimmed? What would it mean to “decolonize” our parenting practices, to free ourselves from the conquering forces of conformity, productivity, and linear thinking? Parenting is completely unlike building a car or a house, where there are plans, rules, do this first and that second. Parenting is creating our own roadmap as we go. It is facing the unknown, unhealed parts of ourselves, which is a humbling, confusing, and breathtaking process. We carry the spoken and unspoken messages from our lineage and of society of how to be or not be as a parent. We hold the unreleased tensions and unconscious hopes from our own childhood in our bodies that often are affecting us in ways of which we are not aware.

When a baby is imagined – not yet even conceived or born – we often start from a colonized mindset. Will my baby be ideally formed, able-bodied, book smart, meet all their milestones at the “right” time? Will I know what to do and how to be a “good” parent?” What will my child achieve? How can I be better than my parents? These questions are not wrong, but they imply a narrow definition of success and joy.

When a baby is born, we ask immediately, “is it a boy or a girl?” as if that is the top identifier of who that baby will be. “Is the baby okay?, wanting to know the baby is not deformed, which is understandable, especially given the emphasis on the ideal. At two minutes after birth in a hospital, the baby is given an APGAR test and given a score (Apgar stands for Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration.” In the test, five things are used to check a baby’s health. Each is scored on a scale of 0 to 2, with 2 being the best score.) What is the score? Is my baby nursing properly? Is five pounds “too small?” Is 9 pounds “too big?”

Although health metrics are important for understanding what a baby might need as they grow, what energy does this communicate to a baby? If the first messages are “what have you accomplished?” “How have you measured up to the ideal?” “Am I happy with you or disappointed?” what does that do to a baby’s nervous system? What does it to do a parent’s nervous system as well? How do the tensions, expectations, and judgments effect the relationship between parent(s) and child(ren)?

What would happen to our minds and bodies if we asked different questions before a child joins our family or immediately after birth? Here are some possibilities:

Who are you?

What is your path/purpose?

What shall I learn from this relationship?

How will I change from parenting you?

How does my body feel when I hold you?

What does my body need to take care of you?

What can I be aware of and do to not cause harm and to add to healing in the world?

What if we were allowed the time to feel, to be, to connect? What messages would a baby receive then? What would it feel like to be met with curiosity instead of judgment? What if nothing was “right” or “wrong?” What if we remembered parenting as a verb: to accompany, to nurture, to protect, to trust, to let go, to listen, to take responsibility for harm, to relate, to grieve, to celebrate, instead of an accomplishment or a “good or “bad” outcome? A product?

What happens in our bodies when we consider this? What softens? What clutches on to the desire for the “right” choice, the “best” path? We have our own unhealed, painful spots within, having been fed the idea that there should be a right or best choice. Can we be gentle with ourselves, love ourselves as we are in order to more deeply love our children?

This path of parenting is long and has many junctures where we can choose to get off the well-worn path and try something different. Support is often needed to make this choice – the support of nature, a loving friend, a spiritual companion, the divine, or your own awakened heart. Forgive yourself, dear human; we are not meant to live in perfection. Look at the clouds passing by; feel the sun on your face, sense the breeze, put your feet on the earth and breathe.

What questions arise that resonate for you?

Incorporation

Tracy Rich2 Comments

I met some trees a few weeks ago – full of fruit – peaches, pears, and apples…surrounding my sister’s new home with their  protective branches, scraggly demeanor, and rough trunks. My sister gifted me with a brown paper bag full of unripe pears, with specific instructions about ripening. I carefully tended the rock hard fruit, not quite believing they would ever be ready to use.  Although it took  three weeks, today  they were ready, and I decided to make a pear tart. Mixing the dough, peeling and slicing the pears, watching the juices bubble in the oven, I started to notice the thoughts and feelings and sensations going through me.  This move to a new home came at the end of an unprecedented eight months of  my sister, my partner, and I living together, while my sister figured out her next life steps.

 As I added lemon juice and butter and cinnamon, the images of this living together time flowed through me. I reflected on the myriad conversations my sister, partner, and I had about change, transitions, and belief systems. I thought about  the ways in which we examined what we thought was possible. The topics we approached, like money, spirituality, family patterns, and sharing space, weren’t easy at times, but, in the end, supported us to shed masks, risk vulnerability, and experience a deeper connection.

Smelling the sweet/tart smell of the baking pears,  I started to think about the word, incorporation. I thought about how much I’ve learned about trauma and how it affects our bodies, how negative experiences live on in our cells, and how much tenderness and patience we need to transform these experiences into healing and wisdom. I noticed that with all the learning about trauma, I don’t always think about how positive experiences also impact our bodies. How we carry new learnings within us as well. That our cells process the ways in which we shed old habits and try out new ones. That we need time, space, and the same tenderness and patience to incorporate non-traumatic events too.

In the dictionary, the archaic form of incorporate is to embody. Our bodies take in and process all we experience, and it can be healing to experience this process by using our physical form. Mixing, measuring, rolling, washing the dishes, slicing, pouring, carrying, all reminding me, with each step, that these pears are now part of my sister’s life and, even at a distance, part of mine as well. As I put the peels into the compost bucket, I imagined the skins transforming into dirt, which will eventually be delivered to a community garden, somewhere in Boston. Our ideas, efforts, and energy of the past nine months now transformed into nutrition for other life forms – worms joining the metamorphosis that will feed the roots and leaves of vegetables in the future.

Although much of my work is with suffering beings, this rhythm of life and these connections to the more than human world are catching my attention. Tasting the warm tart, experiencing that sour lemon/brown sugar combination of aliveness I thank the tree, the bees, the sun, the rain, and the dirt. I feel the gratitude of my relationship with my sister and my partner and all the patterns we have examined and rerouted.  I imagine my body digesting and incorporating nutrients, and excreting what is not needed. I feel my soul being fed as well so that I can be fully in the world, bringing this awareness of  possibility and love into my every step. Holding it all – the suffering and the joy – that is my intention. I want to feel deep inside the connection to change – hard, unyielding pear to juicy life-giving moment.

Ongoing Inquiry into Hope

Tracy Rich4 Comments
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I have been reflecting on hope — as I experience the spring unfold. The buds going from tight and hard to gently unfurling, the tiny blue flowers poking up through the hard ground, the forsythia broadcasting its yellow triumphant hue for all to see. Along with noticing the way the plant beings step into the light, withstand the shock of unexpected snow, rejuvenate after various blights, I have wondered what to take to heart about their way – that seems filled with hope – that growth is possible, that healing happens, that beauty returns.

Bolstering these musings is this quote from a book I just read: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, by Austin Channing Brown. She writes:

So I have learned not to fear the death of hope. I don’t really want to re­count all the ways that hope has let me down; it’s so damn painful. But all of this comes with living, with struggling, with believing in the possibility of change. The death of hope gives way to a sadness that heals, to anger that inspires, to a wisdom that empowers me the next time I get to work, pick up my pen, join a march, tell my story.

In the Buddhist way, hope is not encouraged – being with what is, noticing, observing, having compassion, witnessing – all this is encouraged but not hope per se. I appreciate Austin Channing Brown’s teaching – that letting go of hope connects her to feelings and a sense of how to move forward.

As I was writing this, I came across this passage, written by Reverend Elizabeth Nguyen, a local colleague. Her words captured so beautifully some of my inner dialogue:

This week is Lunar New Year, celebrated by Vietnamese folks as Tết. In my family it means lighting incense on altars, honoring ancestors, red envelopes of money and feasting on candied dried coconut and winter melon for a sweet new year. It means calling out “Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!”(Happy New Year!). It means remembering the ancestors of mine who found a way to hope in the midst of war and immigration and loss and violence.

In the face of…uncertainty and brokenness, I’ve been thinking a lot about hope…One of my mentors shared a powerful insight: that given the violence and racism, the power of white supremacy and depth of greed in our world, I’m not in a place where I can think myself into hope. Any attempt to logic my way into hope ends in despair. What I can do is put myself in the way of beauty, art and the things outside logic…
….We may not have reason to hope, but if we put ourselves in the way of it enough, we may remember how to believe in it.

I so appreciate these two writers’ words, and their outlook is helping me as I sit with what feels like the seductive nature of despair or the perennial questions about whether or not it is “worth it” to hope.

I believe we are not here to simply hope for a better future. Nor are we here to despair of things never changing. Rather I believe we are here to remember we are human. We are here to deeply understand the specific and particular way we have shown up in this lifetime. We are here to experience being human and to be challenged to expand our heart, to sit with pain, to deepen our capacity for compassion – for ourselves and others. We are here to listen – to witness others’ true stories – without advice or platitudes or guilt or condescension. We are here to notice our desire to hope for something “better” and to step in to what we are called to right now. Where can we speak up? How can we remain vulnerable when/if we feel threatened? What helps us let our heart expand with compassion when it wants to shrink and shield itself into “us and them?” How can our breath be supported? Can we be tender with the human impulse to avoid others’ suffering? How can we learn to ask for support? Can we encourage ourselves and others to stay with whatever is arising right now and to find generosity within – to hear, to feel, to give?

Pema Chodron writes: “We could say that looking for alternatives is the only thing that keeps us from realizing that we’re already in a sacred world.” (from When Things Fall Apart). As the daffodil blooms and the red-winged blackbird builds its nest, I feel the pull to remember that the more than human world reaches towards light; it reminds me to find the sacred in each and every moment; it calls me to show up fully as myself and to be with others as heart-fully as possible, Our human incarnation is a sacred opportunity not to aim for hope but to believe that there are always steps towards repair, healing, growth, and connection.

Waterfalls of Love

Tracy Rich3 Comments

waterfall

One of my favorite quotes, attributed to Buddha is:

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection

Why do I keep coming back to this quote? Every once in a while I get an intense deeply felt sense of the waterfalls of love available to us – pouring out from the sky, the earth, the trees. Some call the source of this waterfall of love the Divine, others Allah, others HP, some just the beautiful silver maple on the main road at the Arboretum. Sometimes, when I catch a whiff of this abundance of love I am transported, and I can feel the connections, interconnections, possibilities, and oneness. Other times, I notice the experience of Love is almost unbearable – I can’t completely let it in. If I were to let it in, to truly and fully hold myself in a place of being beloved, I would then know/feel/trust/be in the truth that each and every person is held in this ocean of love as well. Being in that truth is still, at times, more than my humble human heart can truly bear, so I dip my toe in, let go of whatever self-recriminations I can, step into the present moment, where the past and the future do not exist, and open myself to however much my heart can hold.

In this toe-dipping process, I catch a glimpse of how every choice, act, decision, skillful or unskillful at the time, was my own version of how a plant seeks the light, how a flower follows the sun. At each major juncture, I have been reaching for the understanding of how to be – how to become conscious of who I came into this world to be, what my family offered and what they were not able to give, ways in which my blind spots took over, times I had the courage to be my authentic self, choices to shed layers upon layers of stuck habits, old beliefs, and unconscious patterns.

“Deserving love and affection” can sound soft or undemanding. However, in this human being process, it is actually one of the most demanding paths of all – to love ourselves – and others – no matter what. To turn a mirror towards ourselves and notice the painful truths of our imperfections and inadequacies and missteps and still choose to love ourselves. To know that each time we stretch our capacity to love ourselves we also are more able to love others. In choosing love, we can listen, consider others’ points of view, be patient, and find forgiveness.  In choosing love, we can set limits, create boundaries, speak up, and take action. The waterfalls are available to us – if we have the courage to step under.