Barry and Goldie's Spiritual Travelogue        #36   Make Rumi for Shabbos

Goldie: A highlight of this part of the adventure was our meeting with Stacy, who lives outside of Anchorage. She’s been reading our postings on the Renew-Jew list and wrote to arrange to meet us in Seward....she drove three hours to get to us. A former Los Angeles resident with Jewish renewal connections in San Francisco, she’s been living outside of Anchorage for four years.............and she is passionate about the joy of living in Alaska.

Stacy describes the radical freedoms of still frontier-like Alaska to us, advancing our already keen sense of the scenic splendor, and emphasizing the sane spacing between humans, and the gloriously fresh air. We see the town of Seward so differently through her eyes. She points to the mountains, one huge one in particular...it is the site of an annual straight up-hill run....the participants slide down on their heels afterward. She winds us around behind the town to a pristine beach with idiosyncratically slung together beach houses...wild flowers abound, two eagles hover. What’s not to like?

We have come to know that people don’t seek us out across vast distances to serve as our local tour guides. In every country and city to which we travel there are those who have Stacy’s passionate question. How do I bring meaningful spirituality into my synagogue or church? Often I spend hours consulting on this....a subject too lengthy for this travelog.

I remember when Barry discovered the Sufi poet Rumi’s words "Wake up, wake up, don’t go back to sleep" written around the same time as the Jewish mystics of the 1200's wrote "hitoh’r’r’ri hitoh’r’r’ri may’afar kumi" - "wake your self up, wake yourself up...get up from the dust!" There is such passion and aliveness to spiritual awakening, its wise application is another story.

Here in our tiny ark on the rolling, expanding seas beside the receding glaciers and rising waters we find the seed of society incubating. The Noah story says the species entered the ark in pairs and emerged as families. Through our internet postings and travels a virtual spiritual family has emerged. For me it feels like we, all of us who are privileged to awaken, are the P’nai Eyleem - the many unifying aspects/faces of God within the ever-unfolding and multiplying potential of creation. A kindness and hopefulness comes with this awakening, a love for all life forms and faiths.

Mark found his kernel of faith at the end of the Noah story. He observed that God describes human nature as inherently bad and then commits never to destroy creation again, placing a rainbow in the sky as a symbol of this commitment. "If God can learn not to be violent and we are created in God’s image," says Mark, "then this gives me hope that humans can do the same."

Mostly I believe that too. Brutal quotas are reported to have been required of Russians posted here during the tsars for the harvesting of furs without regard for the maintenance of species. Accusations of improprieties fly from each group toward every group. Stacy tells us the cleanup from the Exxon Valdez disaster was both comprehensive and at some ultimate level cosmetic.....lift up a rock nearby she says, you’ll find the oil sodden with oil. I did, she is sadly correct.

I promise to send Stacy mystical texts about light, where could Hanukkah - the festival of lights - be more relevant than cloaked in the Alaskan winter darkness? She can invite friends to bring objects which speak to the power of inner and outer light in their lives....their menorahs will light up many kinds of darkness. I love the glow in her eyes, her ideas and questions, she is a natural leader for hopeful souls.

The cruise director came by to ask if my son would like to chant his Torah portion in the talent show. We’ve been practicing in the lounges and some of the passengers are caught up in the process by now.

Onboard ship, we make Shabbos with an open invitation to a half hour service. Barry reports that the Bahai only offer a fifteen minute service once each day at their huge temple in Chicago....so I want to rise to the ship’s schedule challenge of brief and meaningful spirituality.

Some thirty five folks show up..........by the time we get started there are twenty five minutes left......lots of Jewish geography happening....a former director of Aleph, when it was known as B’nai Or, Leslie Kreithen (sp?) turns out to be onboard, members of every kind of shul and many people who were born Jewish and don’t know a thing about it beyond that. Quite a few Christians come, including one of my son’s new friends, a fundamentalist who often speaks of Satan.

We lit candles to Juliette Spitzer’s beautiful "Gather in the light, gather in the warmth, gather in the peace of Shabbos", expanded into our five levels of the soul through a guided visualization, did a traditional and then Carlbach melody for L’cha Dodi...noticed our bride-like state of mind for this adventure, chanted a traditional borchu, followed with Rabbi Geelah Rayzl’s "evening, the evenings, evening the frayed edges of our lives, maariv aravim, ameyn" and moved on to the idea of loving and listening embedded in the shema and v’ahavta.

Each person was invited to share one way in which they have felt blessed by something new on this trip........a rainbow of delights emerged, including their pleasure at having a personal role in this Shabbat service experience. Then quiet time to find the prayer of one’s heart for the amidah, completing it by calling out the countries to which we especially send peace - oseh shalom and committing to a mitzvah centered life with the aleynu.

Many called out names of family members for the Kaddish memorial prayer segment, later I learned that most had not been to a service since childhood and this was a very important Kaddish for them to choose. We closed with Kiddush over the wine, a ha motzi over the delicious sweet challah baked on board specially for us and closed with shalom aleichem......we have become a sweet community to each other in the halls, a ship board minyan.

Barry: I haven’t had much to say in this posting. I hate beginnings and I dread endings. I don’t like comings and I dislike goings even more. A strange confession for someone with so much change and travel in his life. I have learned to compensate to some extent by foregoing short vacations. Still, there is always the day of reckoning. This major leg of our journey is coming to an end, soon it will be goodbye to Juliette and family in Seattle, then home to sort out house, finances, New York.

So I’m back to feeling a little gray with one ray of sunshine being the Kallah where we’ll be meeting friends old and new. Maybe, surrounded by our friends, we can have a closing ritual to this incredible chapter in our lives............

Just a reminder that we are using internet cafes to for postings, in order to intercept notes from you they need to be sent to: RebGoldieM@aol.com