The word from the field

Each one of these could be, and may be, an in depth exploration, but Shabbos is coming, and you can't keep the Queen waiting.

Breakthrough in learning - Thursday night, went back to look over a piece about saying 'malchiot' (verses about God's Kingship) on Rosh Hashannah. I was struck by something strange - for some reason it comes from a seamingly loosely related passage - the trumpets in the desert.
In this place you have the space (culturally) to pace the floor muttering (or yelling) "I don't get it! Why?", so that's what I did. It took a faith that God doesn't do anything randomly, that our sages didn't write anything randomly, more, that they wrote to show us deep patterns in reality, and they wrote in such a way that we have to work to draw them out. The faith (and the pacing and muttering and the help of friends) is beginning to pay off...

Midnight went into the woods to talk to God, flail around, jump up and down, dance, sing, scream, cry, beg, question, thank, wonder... It's a practice know as 'hitbodedut', one of the many forms of Jewish Meditation. Felt great.

Busy working on another meditative practice. Mezuzah. The Ramabam writes down at the end of his discussion of mezuzah what the mezezah means, on a simple level. This simple level amounts to an encounter with God at every doorway, a wake up call from the empty flow of time. A group of us have taken on the discipline of engaging in this awareness, this encounter, at every doorway.
There are a lot of doors here.

The question of when, how, and if I'm going to leave this place after the holidays is cooking away on the back burner. I'm stirring it, tasting it, letting it keep cooking.

Thank God, I'm deeply lonely for my holy wife, wheresoever she may be.

Heading to Uman for Rosh Hashannah. Why am I spending a week in the middle of the Ukraine with thousands of other Jews? I'm not sure.

Let no one say that I have failed to provide an update.