Monday, February 27th
"In the beginning . . . the earth was tohu va-vohu. Darkness was on the face of the deep and God's spirit was hovering over the face of the water."
I kind of know how God felt.
Tohu va-vohu has been interpreted in different ways. But the generally accepted sense of the phrase is a presence of chaos and disorder that encompasses both a physical and emotional experience: a disorder that amounts to a type of soul-sucking void.
Our Torah begins with tohu va-vohu and so does a life. I try to hold on to this, our tradition's earliest story, as my space is turned upside down and I feel like I'm losing it. Thank God Marc has been here through the final phases of the Boise chaos to do my bidding: find missing tape, toss miscellaneous items into baskets, bins and even trash cans, run errands, pull nails out of walls and pick fragments of packing peanuts off every conceivable surface.
According to the text, God handles the swirling mayhem with a greater sense of peace than I can muster. In the first few verses of Genesis, God calmly proceeds to create a world through dividing - light is shed and separated from dark, one called day and the other called night. Water above is separated from other water below. Water below is gathered into two sections, God naming one land and the other sea. Step-by-step everything is contained, categorized and labelled. Chaos yields to order and life becomes possible.
Scripture does not mention permanent marker or yellow duct tape which is the method that I preferred for my far more modest yet personally monumental creation effort. Yellow taped items go into my parents' house, non-taped boxes and furniture into a storage unit.
God may have created alone, but my own ordering process required help. At left are Helping Hands movers who were amazing at squeezing way too many possessions into a 17' truck.
At each phase of creation, God pauses, steps back, and appreciates the present simply for what it is. A moment in time. Not complete. Not ideal. But, as God declares, "it is good." It is ours to reflect this Godliness and all I can say is: I shall try.
Tuesday, February 28th
I have noticed over years of chaplaincy that many of my patients include in their story, "And I have to deal with this hospital stay when I'm right in the middle of a move!"
How come so many people end up in the hospital when they're moving?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that I visited with so many orthopaedic patients. There's nothing like a box- and possession-strewn house to bring a broken femur into your life.
But I can easily see how this physical and emotional chaos can lead to medical crisis. In fact, I have been very cognizant of this connection over the past week, hoping that I didn't end up saying good-bye to my co-workers only to end up back in the Emergency Dept the following night.
I did manage to get out of town without a personal trip to St. Al's but I didn't leave completely unscathed. Chewing on a hard candy, I broke a bracket off my back molar and had to begin my final day as a Boisean driving out to my orthodontist in Meridian. Knowing the crises that could have potentially awaited me, I can't complain.
Marc and I slept at Dan's but I returned home to shower. With my bathroom door closed I could pretend everything was normal. I hadn't yet packed it up. But I eventually had to venture out into the mess of the incompletely packed bedroom. Little by little everything is sorted, packed, categorized, taped up and labelled. Marc packs up the last of it in the truck. The creation process continues.
I look out my bedroom window for the last time: the foothills view that has brought peace and beauty to my life for 9-1/2 years.
It was my first real cry of the packing process. Then it was done. Time for the final walk-through. I relinquish my keys and garage door openers to office staff. Good-bye River Quarry. Good-bye Park Center. Good-bye Broadway. Where do I live now? Where is my home?
Can I bring myself to say, "it is good?" But it is. Thusly a life begins.
Of all the chaplains in my department, the one who is most enthusiastic about distributing ashes on Ash Wednesday is me. I think it's cool that I may be the only rabbi in America who has grey vestiges of burnt palm fronds on her right thumb after an afternoon of smearing the sign of the cross on Catholic brows. I have been fascinated with the ritual of Ash Wednesday since elementary school when I saw classmates coming to school one morning with smudgy marks on their foreheads: Through inquiry, I discovered that these marks were remnants from a religious ritual that had occurred at church before the start of the school day. Something about it seemed so incredibly Jewish that it astounded me. Christians do rituals, too??
My personal take is that Ash Wednesday is the Christian Yom Kippur. The intention of today -- "opening day" of the Lenten season -- is to make penance through fasting, prayer and giving to the community in order to prepare one's self and one's soul for the season of rebirth later in the Spring. Sackcloth and ashes are standard biblical garb for displaying humility and grief -- in order to be reborn, you have to acknowledge that something in you's gotta die.
Yesterday I took off work so that I could make some serious headway on getting my stuff boxed up. And in between phone calls, snacking and back-to-back episodes of Downton Abbey on Netflix (SO addicting. Like crack for the nerdy and health-conscious.) I did make some progress. As I tackled the items tucked away in the far reaches of my garage, I ended up coated with thick grey dust - my clothes, my hands, my face. The symbolic parallel with the Christian season didn't escape my notice. This process isn't just about the physical dissolution of a Boise life. Rebirth lies in my future only if I acknowledge that there needs to be dismantling of some unhelpful attitudes and habits as well.
I came to Boise as a 33-year-old mom of a toddler and a 5-week-old infant. I was chronologically young and emotionally even younger. I've received a generous amount of love and support in the intervening years -- a lot of grace that I did not always deserve. And life has also kicked me in the butt on occasion - not nearly as hard as most but enough to jar me out of some of my self-righteousness, my rigidity, my self-absorption.
As I look at the scene in my house - living space broken down, walls bare and hidden dust revealed -- I know I need to be cognizant of this -- my own personal (non-Christological) Ash Wednesday. I'm sadly leaving behind a lot of good -- people, natural beauty, community -- but I also need to say good-bye to the aspects of myself that have not been helpful. That's got to be part of my internal journey over the course of my cross-country travels.
When Jews return to the house of mourning after a funeral, there is always, among the casseroles and baked goods, a bowl of eggs. There's death, there's life. Sounds like an appropriate breakfast for when we cross into Maryland.
We Rappaports are painstaking researchers by nature. What we lack in the frivolous joy of spontaneity we make up for in our enthusiastic embracing of preparedness.
My brother, Marc, is one of the only people to whom I would turn over complete control of the road trip itinerary. He is the Master of such endeavors and should perhaps consider a second career after he qualifies for a solid-enough government pension.
I knew I was in good hands when I received my spread sheet including daily driving logs, hotels with fitness rooms and wifi, gas stations at intervals required by a gluttonous 17' truck chock full of possessions, and, most importantly, the locations of must-see Americana along the way.
The hotel list could be confused with a lyrics sheet from the Grand Ol' Opry: Amarillo, Texas; Muskogee, Oklahoma; Bowling Green, Kentucky . . . . Do these places actually exist outside of country music playlists? But how snarky can I be given that I'm from Boise, Idaho?
The other great thing about traveling with my brother, besides the security of watertight plans and back-up plans, is that we share the same childhood vacation history -- a particular approach conceived and orchestrated by our mother who has never passed a factory, historical site, educational display or cultural oddity without catching a tour and collecting literature and doesn't understand the concept known as "downtime."
With quirky curiosity embedded in our DNA as well as years of sharing overpacked vacations domestically and abroad (this is definitely one of those nature AND nurture things), we both look ahead with excitement to fitting the following sites into our cross-country odyssey:
I am reminded of the Chassidic teaching about Lech L'cha: "Go to yourself = Go to your roots." (see quote in post below) I think this is the perfect way to transition from life A to life B -- to go on a good, old-fashioned Rappaport vacation: pre-set, pre-determined, leaving nothing but weather and "acts of God" to chance. Our approach may be a bit confining, but in this case I'm going to look at it as a receiving blanket wound around a NICU baby: a secure opportunity to calm myself before the emotional storm.
So in another nine days it'll be a flash from the past: the 60's and 70's come to life as the Rappaport children take a vacation. Except, much to little brother Marc's great relief, I will not be spending hours pinching and hitting and generally tormenting him in the back seat of the car with my dad threatening to knock our heads together when the noise and chaos reach industrial levels.
"Lech l'cha" are the opening words of God's command to Abram (and Sarai) in Genesis 12: "Go forth . . . "
Abram is called to leave behind the familiar; called to set out for a land that is not yet known to him. Abram was 75 years old when he took all his possessions and left Haran.
I'm not 75 (although maybe I am in Torah years!) and I'm not Abram (nor Sarai). But this ancient story resonates with this mid-life woman who is needing to leave her comfortable and beautiful community in the West to an unfamiliar place to do who knows what with who knows whom. My spirit is called to enter a new phase of life. And so I go.
Jewish teachings inspired by Genesis 12 that I find particularly meaningful:
"Perhaps the Hebrew ("Lech l'cha") implies, "Go by yourself." This is one journey which must be made alone. One must become a stranger in the world to view it clearly, a wanderer to find its resting point. Abraham is God's possession, not the world's." -- Samson Raphael Hirsch
"The expression may be interpreted to mean, "Go to yourself," i.e., go to your roots, to find your potential. -- Chasidic teaching
"Why did Abraham have to go forth to the world? At home he was like a flask of myrrh with a tight-fitting lid. Only when it is open can the fragrance be scattered to the winds." -- Midrash
On one level, my journey is not exactly being made alone: I have support on this side, support on the other side, and my brother, AAA and U-Haul to get me from point A to point B. But this truly is my journey. I have a family as a physical safety net but my soul and my ego are taking a net-less leap of faith. Will I find personal connection? Fulfilling Jewish work? Can long-standing personal and professional dreams come true at this juncture, my half-century mark?
If I don't look at my cardboard/styrofoam/newsprint/packing foam-strewn garage I can still pretend that everything is quite normal. I haven't yet started breaking down my living space. My journey will truly start when the pictures come down off the walls and the books are cleared from my dining room shelves. Then I will know: I'm officially the spiritual stranger in the world, the wanderer whose resting point is points unknown.
