february 4th, 2015

Wow, dear ones, hello.

It is February. This post is a sprinkling of everything, because life is… so full and multiple and even in the warmth and holding of Tu B’Shvat, the new year of the trees, in Tel Aviv, there is a chill in the morning and evenings that gets into your bones. It has February-ness in it, so please be gentle.

This morning, on my way to class, I saw city-hired workers cutting dead branches off of some large palm trees that line the highway. How interesting… cutting trees on Tu B’Shvat. I thought about how when I was trying to grow my hair out to donate, my mom kept on saying, “You need to trim it to let it grow.” And of course it is Tu B’Shvat, and of course, now almost five years ago, I stood up in front of many of you to talk about my mom’s “tree-ness,” and e.e. cummings gives voice to the deepest secret, this secret that is still a mystery to me (full poem here).

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

the sky of the sky of a tree call life… A little research on Tu B’Shvat seders led me to this text that (I tweaked pronouns, but full resource sheet here): “The Tree of Life supports the Whole Cosmos. I am the one that planted this tree, for the whole world to delight in; and I hammered out all with it, and I called its name ‘all/hakol’, for all depends on it, and all comes from it. And all need it, and they look toward it and wait for it. (Sefer Bahir, sec.22)”That whole-ness, “all,” is a tree called life.

When I woke up yesterday, we heard news that a member of our community here, in his fourth year, had passed away. Not someone I know personally, but the ripples… He apparently and tragically took his own life. And, as the director of my program said, “the details are not what matter – what matters is how big his heart was, and now, how we are here for each other.”

I felt like she was referring to this concept of how we are each part of a whole, and we are each whole.

Something I have been struggling with in the past few weeks as I have begun spending hours in the anatomy lab each day is… explaining what I am doing and experiencing. I just read a book called “Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab” by Christine Montross. One of her main topics is the “resocialization” of the medical student to become accustomed to handled a dead body, and the contradictions within medicine, specifically -- the beginning of training to be a physician by “dismantling the dead to heal the living.” I have grown “close” to my body (when I say my body, I mean, the dead body which I am dissecting). We have not named him, though we sometimes call him, “our guy”. He was a veterinarian and died at 99 years old. In the book, Montross talked about the intimacy she develops with her cadaver, who she calls Eve – the first woman. “With Eve, I feel an odd kind of intimacy. I try to remain tender with her, and respectful, even when the actions I perform seem to be a violation. She and my group members and I have a kind of shared history –we knew her when she was whole.” Wholeness.

Amidst the heaviness, a new friend reminded me that the full moon last night/today is in Leo, and as mysticmama tells us: “The best part of Leo is the inner child. You are to nourish and protect your childlike innocence. You are to be open to new ideas and fresh perspectives. Be curious about life. Be engaged in the magic of the moment. Be in your heart.”

The magic of the moment… every moment. Look at the moon! And lastly, Mark Nepo…

"A FEW TURNS OF THE MOON  From the balcony of this restaurant, I watch  a hundred lives below: burrowing and laugh-  ing and finding their way. And perhaps because  I’ve lost my father and our beloved dog in the  last year, perhaps because at sixty-three, I see  over the final hill more clearly, I also see the  hundreds on the other side, still burrowing  and laughing and finding their way. I don’t  know if this is alarming or a comfort: that  we go on the same, that the gleam pressed  out of every hardship is the jewel of existence,  here and on the other side. So I spoon my  soup and sip my wine, knowing the balcony  is the gutter and the gutter is the balcony,  that the dark waits all curled up in the light,  and the light, thank God, waits all curled up  in the dark.  A Question to Walk With: Describe a moment in which you have felt the irrepressible force of life coming through.  For all the hardships that life throws at us, I have always felt that life keeps living. Perhaps not in the same form or in a way that is recognizable. But life keeps pulsing under everything. And no matter the pain or confusion I face, something in me keeps reaching for that irrepressible pulse. This poem comes from my reaching." May we continue feeling and being sure of that irrepressible pulse – that light that is curled up in the darkness. A full moon in a dark sky…  All my love, and gratitude, and blessings, Einat