How close do you want to get to God?

Da  lifney mi atah omeid?  Know before Whom you stand. These words, about the "nobody's God" whom  I so love, are carved above the ark in my synagogue and in many others. When my mind wanders at services, often they pull my eyes toward them like a magnet and bring my attention back.

But when I consider my relation to God--which I often do--the words come closer than any others I know to being more than a statement. It seems to me they also pose a question. A question it isn't easy to answer. Even though no one but God and I will hear my inner debate or my answer. My answer for that day, or perhaps only that moment. Is there an optimum distance between me and God? And, if so, who decides? God or me?  

It isn't an easy question to ponder. Ha! now that's an understatement (not my most recognizable style).  Becuase, of course, there is something to be said in favor of working toward intimacy with God, and there is a good deal to be said for "keeping one's distance," so to speak.

There are sensible reasons not to work to make my relationship with God more intimate. To get closer to  the God who brought us out of Egypt--smack into the desert?  Who drew Moses up to Sinai--only to lay down the Law?  Who never seems to pull out all the stops for us the way He did for Joshua?  Or try this one on for size: all Abram did was say Hineni, Here I am, and wiz boom bam, he and all his possessions were on the road to...where?  Even IBM lets you know where they're transferring  you  to.  And that was only the beginning of what God asked of Abram.  The cruel decisions He placed before him.  O, Hagar, beloved Hagar.  Threat to Isaac, real or imagined. Does Abraham (his Ellis Island name) tell Sarah he loves both his sons, and she should go take a bath and relax her fears? And then, of course, there's Isaac and the BIG test. Who passed that one, tell me. (I suspect it may have been Sarah, who followed them, and talked back to God so cogently that He backed off. I wrote a midrash with this scenario--still strikes me as realistic.)

So much for intimacy with the Man in the corner office with more windows than all other corner offices combined.

But, then, intimacy has its attractions.  Think the sexiest movie star of your choice, with the savvy of Solomon, the voice of Sinatra, the insights of Abraham Joshua Heschel, the kindness of  Rabbi Herschel Matt, the humble courage of Pope John XXIII--and a smile like...God's.  Just think about the prospect of having an intimate relationship with that God.

But we cannot know if God's traits are a combination of what distinguished those remarkale human beings--or a set beyond our imagining. More spectacular? Simpler? Quieter? Generally at peace with his/her creation or furious at having given us free will? Don't waste your energy guessing. We have to decide without having the answers at the back of the book. They're not all even in the body of the Book.
Living with uncertainty is the price of belief.

So: how close DO you want to get to God?       

Oh my

August 11

Have I been busy! Of course I know that's no excuse for neglecting my blog. What's more, writing it may help me clarify any number of things. So here are my current four tasks, for which I have neither sufficient hands nor head.

1. I have been organizing an auction for my synagogue since February, to take place October 29th. There is still much to be done. I ran my fourth and "last" one in 2005. Retired, publically, and in my head. But I know how to do it, and others don't have the experience or know-how--such as that it takes eight months to do well. Others tried to get one going. No go. So this past winter, I volunteered to do it again. It's harder work than I remembered. (My mother used to say that it was a good thing women didn't remember how much childbirth hurt, or no woman would ever have more than one child.)

2. I have been looking to move for a while now, to rent another apartment where this NYC-raised non-driver can still walk to my usual haunts (such as the Y). The right place in the right building turned up at, well, not the best time. I move september 15th. Decades of files and drafts need to be culled, the rest packed. This, too, is hard work.

3. I have had several health issues, which, rest assured, will not be detailed here. Besides, I hate to dwell on them long enough to write at all clearly about them. Suffice it to say that I have an unpleasant knack for getting unusual health problems. Know how many meds there are to treat high blood pressure? Me neither, but there are many many many. Know how many there are to treat abnormally low blood pressure? I'm on IT. I pray that my doctors to learn to collaborate. My current observation is that each one--and they are good physicians--tends to forget that a patient has numerous organs which interact, more than a single orifice, and is sometimes prescribed meds which don't "play well" with others.

4. I have in recent weeks had several people about whom I care require serious surgeries. I pray for them, a lot, partly to cut my worry level down above sea level; partly in hopes of reminding God to keep watch over my friends and, especially, to take good care of the surgeons involved, without reminding Him/Her so often that I get on God's nerves.

5. Maybe simply writing these down as I just have will help me to manage my time and effort more productively. Maybe not. But it's worth a try.

God bless my friends, my therapist, and God Him/Herself for allowing me to trust that, when I pray, I'm not pissing in the wind.

Prayer Too

July 24

When the Answer to a Prayer Seems to be No

Last week, I was in the hospital for a few days. There, I had an interesting experience during a medical test. Some might say it was challenging.

I did not find it challenging. Frankly, it only occurred to me a couple of days afterward to think much about it. Right afterward , I was too pleased to be told I could go home.

The test was a tilt table test. I had no idea what it involved. I assumed there would be a table and, with me on it, it would be tilted. I imagined it would take a few moments.

My imagination was not up to par. When I was brought into the test area, there was indeed a table and I was instructed to lie down on it. Then I was--well, the word that comes to mind is “adhered”–I was adhered to the table by broad bands, which were then securely fixed. The broadness of the bands struck me as funny in a not-so-funny way. I inquired: Do you now administer a lethal injection? Look,. that’s how I react to anything that catches me off guard: I make a joke. But the fact is, the only time I had ever seen anyone held fast to a table with wide bands was on TV, when the next step was indeed lethal injection.

I was the only one who laughed–not a unique experience for me, but one which did not raise my comfort level.

I was told that the table (with me “adhered’ to it) would be tilted until I was upright. The test would take thirty minutes or a little longer, the technician said–a lot longer than I had imagined. Then the table was tilted to a standing position, and I set to praying. In front of me was a curtain with an unattractive print of regular, no-color circles. Time passed slowly. The technician and the cardiologist monitoring the test communicated with each other, but not with me. I said, It would be a good idea to paint smiley faces on the circles, to make them less boring to look at. I was told it would be good not to speak. I shut up.

And focused on my prayers, which no one but God would hear. I wanted God’s help to keep myself upright–which I’d figured out was the idea. The test. I repeated my favorite one-line prayer many times, and tried to visualize God behind me, holding me upright. As the minutes passed, my prayers seemed to be having some effect. .

Then, with only five minutes to go, a nitroglycerine tablet was put under my tongue. My mouth was dry–not from any degree of fear–by then I thought I had the test aced–but because I was thirsty. Being ridiculously honest, I reported that the tablet was not dissolving, and asked if I should suck it. Yes, they said. I sucked it. Whereupon I felt slightly lightheaded or maybe a little dizzy–am not good at telling them apart They asked how I felt, and I was trying to figure out which it was.

Next thing I knew I was un-tilted, supine again, and both the technician and cardiologist were very busy bringing me back. From pretty far.

When I was deemed well enough for him to leave, the cardiologist, who had not laughed at my two jokes, said, You may not think this is funny. But thanks for fainting, that’s the only time this test is interesting. Or unfunny words to that effect. He also said I could still go home as scheduled–the words I wanted to hear..

Not much more than half an hour later, I was back in my room. And two hours later, I was home.

Did God flunk the test, too? Just after I sucked the nitroglycerine tablet, did God get bored and take a break? ? First, of all, it never occurred to me to test God. I just don’t have other language to use right now. So: I don’t think God flunked the test–or failed me. I think the real purpose of my prayers was answered. God wasn’t there to fiddle with the test. God’s purpose was to stop me from feeling all alone during the test. When the technician and the cardiologist were doing their thing, God was doing that.

Being with me. That’s what God does.

Why I Believe God is Nobody's God.

July 11

I called my spiritual memoir Nobody’s God because it is an essential part of my personal faith that God doesn’t belong to any person or any religious denomination.

I’ve met many people who disagree with me about this. I think numerous denominations, especially those which are right of center theologically, teach that the path to God is narrow. It seems to me that the higher the toll on this road, the more invested its adherents are in its being the “right” path. They argue passionately for their position. I find their passion admirable if a bit frightening, but too. . well, narrow.

The road to God I see is wide. What’s more, it has not one but many divergences, some well-traveled, others less. But my experience of God (which is of course limited to my experience of God) tells me that most if not all those byways lead to God. Moreover, if we could venture even briefly from our own path to another, we might find the paths to be more similar than dissimilar.

Know why I think that? Because I believe this: God wants us to reach Him–and Her. To get to that marvelous place where love goes both ways.

What's in a Name?

Names are a big deal. In Genesis, as God creates things, He names them. Indeed, naming them is critical: it is the final step in bringing them to life. I don’t like my name. More accurately, I avidly dislike it. Toby Stein a clunky, chunky name. It just sits there. Plain, homely, useless.

Except that if it were truly useless, I’d be happier. For both “Toby” and “Stein” are both vessels from which one can drink beer. And I was stuck with both. ?

The fact is, my parents named me Tybele (three syllables), which is the Yiddish diminutive of “dove”–a name with wings. However, an English name was required for the birth certificate, and so, at only a few days old, I became Toby.

Over the years, I tried to edge away from Toby by spelling my first name in numerous ways: Tiby when I was past toddler age, because that would signify I wasn’t a baby any more. When I was first published (in my college’s literary magazine), I elected to spell it Tybie, which was fancified Tiby, I guess. Years later, because close friends tended to shorten Toby to Tob, with a long “o,” I took to spelling it Tobe because that didn’t require an explanation.

If Toby wasn’t–or shouldn’t have been–my first name, Stein shouldn’t have been my surname. My father’s name was originally Ochs. It wasn’t changed by some guy on Ellis Island. My father never passed through Ellis Island. He sneaked across the Canadian border to find an older brother in Detroit. When he joined that brother’s jewelry business, it would have raised too many questions for the brothers to have different names, and my uncle Sam had (for some reason not only unknown but unimaginable to me) already changed his name from interesting Ochs to heavy-handed Stein.

When I got married, I grabbed my husband’s name in a tight embrace. Not only was Kilfoyle a lovely, a musical name (accent on the last syllable, please), but Toby Stein Kilfoyle was more than a name. It was a conversational gambit and I got a kick out of that.

And yet, and yet, one day in 1977, in an American courtroom, I asked to have Stein back as my legal name.

It was the day of my divorce proceedings. My first novel was in production, and when I excitedly told my editor that my divorce was actually about to take place, she informed me that my book jacket was about to go to press and I had thirty-six hours to decide what name I wanted on it–and on any other book I might write from then on. I did the sensible thing. I called my two closest friends to ask their advice: keep the lilting Kilfoyle or go back to Toby Stein? I don’t remember their advice; it turned out not to matter. Not once I heard my question: “I have to decide whether or not to take my name back.” My name.

That was the day I stopped hating it. Toby Stein: my exodus name.

Speech and Silence

June 19

There are two settings in which I feel especially comfortable. One revolves around conversation, the other involves silence. T he first occurs any time someone is up for a conversation about God. The second is when there is an open-ended silence.

I like participating in a conversation about God because, almost always, I learn something. At the start of such a conversation, I never know if I am bound for deep water or a peaceful twirl around the lake; but the chance of adventure improves when my partner in talk has a seriously different a view of God from mine. Often, as our talk pulls away from shore, I feel a frisson of excitement, aware that I may be offered an insight which never occurred to me, or be gifted with an anecdote that touches the place inside me where my faith dwells. In sharing perspectives, in exchanging views, I often find nourishment for my own–or a brand new way to turn the kaleidoscope. A good rolling conversation may make me stronger or softer or braver.

Sometimes, if I bring up the subject of God, I am asked to “define my terms.” End of conversation. God entered my life on February 2, 1962 and hasn’t left since. But I cannot define what or, more accurately (to me) Who I mean when I say “God.” I love God. I revere God. I am grateful to God. I am nosy about what God may think or feel about a great many particular situations. I listen for God’s laughter. But I don’t know how to define God.

This post is the leftover of a big mistake I made today in synagogue during the “summary”last session of a Melton class about “The Purposes of Judaism” I swallowed hard and said how much easier it is for me to find non-Jews who’re willing to talk about God than it is to engage my fellow Jews in such a conversation. Then I–stupidly–specifically included the Jews with whom I share membership in my synagogue. I should have better bitten my tongue–right through. Many years ago, Michael Kogan, a local professor and member of my synagogue, told me that it’s impossible to write about God, so it was foolishness to try. I am not, after all these years of trying–having perhaps eked out a paltry few sentences with accessible content–willing to give up trying to write about God. But this morning I should have kept my mouth shut.

But the fact remains: when I have an opportunity to speak with members of other religious persuasions, such discussions more often than not carry me a step or two or even three forward toward a clearer understanding of why I choose to be a synagogue-going Jew. A Jew by daily choice.

Now, to my second favored setting. For a person whose talkativeness is locally on the cusp of notorious, I am strangely drawn to sitting in silence. Anywhere, but preferably in any house of worship. Even a “room of worship” will do: I never pass the chapel at New York Hospital without going inside to sit in that nearly always empty room, and savor the silence. But my favorite place to meet up with silence is my synagogue. Sometimes, there, I sit up straight and reflect on the words over the ark: Know before Whom you stand. Sometimes I am smitten by the reflection of a stained glass window on its adjacent wall as the day’s light mutes to serenity. At other times, the clutter in my mind keeps interrupting the silence, but I persevere, and occasionally win. I love most the times when I can let go of words and images and tune in to the music of the silence itself.

Nobody's God and my Ongoing Exodus

All those commandments! In Judaism, no fewer than 613 line up to be responded to one way or another. For, as all of us know, "No" is an answer, too.

Even the famous first ten are a hefty challenge. When I most feel that, I remind myself of how God sets them--and us--up, right at the outset, with a not-especially-subtle reminder that He earned the right to issue them by leading us out of Egypt.

(When I picture that event, I sometimes imagine a whole lot of folks kicking and screaming internally. After all, what a slave knows is slavery, and it is a bleak fact of human nature that most of us–nearly all of us--prefer the known, however grim, to the unknown. Isn’t that why so many folks in unhappy marriages stay married?)

Yet the language we use, when we talk about the exodus from Egypt, is that, in bringing us out of Egypt, God made free men of slaves. I see that famous trek through a dry path in the Sea of Reeds as only the first steps to our freedom.

Bigger steps toward freedom, it seems to me, are the commandments. I realize that there are people who see any commandment, let alone half a dozen hundred of them, as diminishing our freedom. But in my opinion the end result of the commandments is to offer us 613 chances to be truly free people. Together, the commandments are like a mikvah, a ritual bath, cleansing us of our sand-clogged nature.

A memory from years ago used a diffrent image that, to me, says much the same thing. It appeared in an interview in Time magazine with Jean Kerr, then at the height of her playwrighting fame. I remember the exact words of neither the question nor of Kerr's answer, but the exchange has stayed with me. Kerr was asked something like: How can as brilliant a woman as you possibly be a serious Roman Catholic? The gist of her response: Within that box, I am totally free. To her, the rigorous teachings of the Church
formed the requisite box within which freedom lay.

I believe that. Without the strictures of Catholicism or the commandments central to Judaism, there is no freedom. Only an illusion of freedom, closer to chaos than to the real thing.

That’s why I am very thankful for God’s commandments. For the currently feasible ones I obey with a whole heart and mind, which have given me more than a taste of freedom. And, also, for the ones I continue to wrestle with, in hopes of surrendering yet another inch of my will and thereby finding still more abundant freedom.

Nobody's God

May 29, 2011

It isn’t even Memorial Day until tomorrow. But I’m there now. I just finished watching the Memorial Day Concert on the Washington Mall which is an annual event. I never miss it. This year, the music and performers were several notches better than some other years, but whereas I usually care a great deal about how well music is played or sung, the truth is, when it comes to the Memorial Day concert, that's incidental to me. What matters is that the grand songs--the hymns reflecting love of this country--are included and that the audience on the mall knows the words, or at least the melody, and the music inhabits them as they sing along. Most important to me, there’s always “The Star-Spangled Banner” to start things off; and no matter how well or poorly that’s sung, my heart fills. I stand. Right in front of my TV, alone in this apartment.

I feel passionate about this country. In a part of me I seldom open and never leave ajar, a place where words do not abide.

Just in case you’re wondering, I am not always proud of what we do as a nation, and certainly not always proud of what I see or hear my fellow Americans do, but–always–I love this country.

I can tell you why in a sentence. My parents, both of whom were born in Russia and met here, thought of America as the Promised Land. That’s why.

That’s why, at the end of every Seder, I keep still when others cry out “Next year in Jerusalem!” I care a lot about Israel. I support Israel, prepared in any company to defend her place in her immediate world and the wider one. I do not sit silent when it is suggested that she shrink her borders beyond protecting, in hopes of persuading her "neighbors" that she has the right to exist. Recently, I got excited about TALI, an organization devoted to teaching Israeli schoolchildren that they are Jewish--that they have choices beyond Orthodoxy and secularism. When, many years ago, during my first visit to Israel, I saw a border of Israeli flags surrounding the prime minister's offices, I was thrilled. I took a snapshot I still look at occasionally, remembering when that flag was only the symbol of a dream. But--but!--next year, like last, like this one, I want to be here in America. Because I am my parents’ daughter, and among the things that means, is that I am already in my Promised Land.

I've been remiss about posting. Some good reasons, but using reasons as excuses can become a sloppy habit. So I will just say I'm sorry, and try to do better. The post below is the text of a "lesson" I will be giving this evening at a special Shabbat at my synagogue, in honor of Angie Atkins. Angie was a very involved member of our congregation who has recently decamped to Manhattan; and tonight, offically called TISH (Taking it to Shomrei's House), is the gift she chose to have rather than a material gift when she was honored at a dinner-dance here for her service. I missed that event, but wanted to participate in tonight by writing some remarks I hope will speak of and to her.

Here's what I have written for this evening.

A Mixed Blessing

Once upon a time, at our community Shavuot all-nighter, Rabbi Patz was conducting a session in one of our classrooms. I don’t remember what the topic was–I always chose his session regardless because he’s such a fine teacher. The room was crowded. Rabbi Patz taught with his usual straight up clarity; then he asked a question. No hands went up. I raised my hand. I said something. Another hand across the room went up and the speaker built on what I said. The rabbi asked a follow-up question. No hands. Then hers again. Again, I don’t remember what she said–only that it was wonderfully open –which elicited an open response from me. Whereupon Rabbi Patz looked from one of us to the other and said “Are you two related?” Angie and I both laughed. “No,” I said. “We’re just believers.”

It’s in honor of Angie and that shared moment years ago that I dare to speak this evening briefly about that most difficult of all subjects to say anything accessible about. Belief. That’s risky enough, without veering from the only belief I know, my own. So: what do I mean when I say I’m a believer? I mean I believe that God is present in my life. Even when I don't sense His presence–which is most of the time–I believe God is present. Here. For sure, HERE. To join in celebrating Shabbat with Angie, who celebrates Him with such fervor.

When someone asks, Do you really believe in a personal God?, I say “I do.” What’s more, I believe that, if we are made in God’s image, God has to be somewhat like us. I’m not talking about limbs–there’s some inner similarity between God and us. I believe God has wants and even needs; and feels lonely when He’s ignored. And as, to me, God in not an abstraction, I am convinced that my belief cannot be an abstraction, either. That means I have to act on my belief. By doing things I might otherwise avoid doing.

I have to say that I’ve found faith to be a distinctly mixed blessing. It is nearly always centering. It is very seldom comforting. It is continually challenging. This is important: I think what God challenges me to do is not different from what my secular parents brought me up to do. What’s different is the freedom faith gives me to do it. Belief enables me to take chances beyond my natural inclination. I can do something my intuition tells me is right or important to do, regardless of the possibility that, in return, I may get an eyeful of spit.

I’ll tell you about the first time this happened. During the second week of February 1962–not more than ten days after I first came to believe–I set out on my lunch hour for Altman’s. As my bus neared 34th Street, I noticed an elderly woman talking to the driver. Her appearance kindled memory. Her grey hair was wound in thin braids around her head. She wore a “topper,” a style of coat then fifteen years out of style. Beneath its hem showed what in my childhood was called a “house dress.” She gripped a change purse. She looked like a hundred women I had as a youngster seen around the Amalgamated. The driver glanced at a piece of paper she was holding out to him. He said something; she shook her head. He tried again. Again, she shook her head. We approached my stop. Hers, too, apparently. As I neared the door, the woman was focused on negotiating the steps down to the curb. The driver took the opportunity to ask me in a low tone if I’d show her the way to her destination. She seems confused, he said mildly. (Both passengers and bus drivers tended to be gentler with one another in 1962.)

When I stepped off the bus, the woman was standing on the sidewalk, looking lost. On the corner of 34th and Lex? I asked if I could help.

She handed me the same piece of paper she’d shown the driver. It was a page from a prescription pad; on it were jotted another doctor’s name and an address. The address was one block north and a block and a half west of where we stood. Do YOU know where it is? she asked in a tone signifying doubt that ANYONE would.

I said I did, and assured her that I was headed the same way. I was careful to let her set the pace. She started talking–from nervousness, I think. The doctor whose office she was coming from had not merely referred her to this doctor, but set up an immediate appointment. Whom would that not worry? When we reached Park Avenue, I turned right with her, remaining quiet to leave an opening for her to vent more if she wanted to. But she turned silent.

In the silence, a thought occurred to me. If she didn’t know the way from the bus to an address two and a half blocks away in mid-Manhattan, she might not know her way home. Carefully, but with confidence, I asked where she lived. East Broadway, she said, her tone dismissive, as though I were chattering. East Broadway? I knew my way from the top of Manhattan to, well, not THERE.

But my brain bonged that it had to require a change of bus or subway. And, whether from age, infirmity or anxiety, my companion looked worn down with fatigue. God only knew how she might feel after the visit to the second doctor. Besides, I had asked her. My own guess was, there was no smooth way from Madison and 35th to East Broadway. What to do?

The solution was simple–which is to say, not easy. Though our pace was slow, we were now almost to the island that bisects Park Avenue. There was only half a block to put my solution into effect. As we stepped up onto the curb, the light turned red. She wasn’t looking my way. Quickly, I transferred four singles from my purse to my pocket, folding them tightly. Then I said it. "You’ll be tired after seeing two doctors in a row. May I treat you to a taxi home?" She turned fully toward me and looked up at me–INTO me. I had it coming; she hadn’t asked me for a thing–not to walk with her, not to provide her with directions home, certainly not to pay her way there.

That red light belonged in Ripley, outlasting any other in history, while that old lady’s eyes frisked my soul. I was beginning to think we’d be standing there until I was as old as she, when the light went to green–and she nodded, once, and said, "Yes." Just, "Yes." But I was as content as watered grass.

We walked on in silence. I passed her the folded bills–enough for a cab from Spuyten Duyvil to anywhere in Manhattan, but not so much that it could possibly appear that I was offering her money. Only a ride home. Because she’d be tired. Without counting them, she put the bills into her change purse, and clicked it shut.

We reached the apartment house address on the prescription slip. At the curb end of the awning, I wished her good luck and said goodbye. "Goodbye," she said. Gummed to the sidewalk by relief, I watched her walk toward the building entrance, where a doorman was already opening the door for her. She stopped, turned around and, seeing me still there, she paused, then came back. “I only had a dime,” she said, turned, and walked back toward the building entrance, where the doorman still held the door.

I walked on to Altman’s according to plan, my vision only the slightest bit blurred

How did I feel? Grateful. Blessed. REAL. The way belief feels to me. And how, this Shabbat, it feels to be related to Angie.

nobodysgod

May 1

Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s death, by the “regular” calendar. I do observe the yahrzeit by the Hebrew calendar, but the American date is the one my heart observes. Some years, only a few memories waft by. But this year, I missed him. It’s odd, really: what happened was that I felt his presence more and that made me miss him a lot.

I think I somehow commingled memories I have of my father and ones I have of my mother. Because he died when I was nine and she lived till I was eighteen, he is mostly a made-up figure to me, while I knew her intimately and as “really” as one can know a mother whom one loves and loses too young.

In the last ten days or so, working on my “moth” presentation for Barnard reunion, has brought her repeatedly to mind. My presentation is “about” Miss Colie, but there’s no remembering her without remembering my mother, too. How self-conscious I was about her coming to school on parents’ day–because she was older than the other mothers. I never did get used to that, from the earliest school days, that she was always the oldest mother. I have a number of friends who have given birth in their forties–it’s become commonplace–but when my mother had me at forty-three, it was not in the least commonplace. (More than likely, I was a “mistake.” But I am certain that, if I was a mistake, my mother never regretted having me. In the years after my father died, I was the very reason she lived another day.) Last week, as I remembered with appropriate shame my reservations about her visit to my Barnard classes, I also remembered vividly how Miss Colie, my freshman English teacher, was taken with her, how they ended up talking so long that other mothers stopped waiting their turn and left.

What I remember myself most vividly, besides my mother’s excellent carriage, was her willingness to answer my questions, my endless questions. To this day, when I hear a friend say to a child or grandchild “Because” as the sole answer to any question, I cringe. “Because” wasn’t in my mother’s lexicon.

Of course that means she’s to blame for my unquenchable questioning even now. It’s not a lust for the “right answer”–I’m pretty sure it’s never that–but, rather, a hunger to know what someone else thinks, especially someone who knows more than I do about the subject at hand. So I can take that answer and look at it. Think about it. See how it fits in with other pieces of the puzzle I’m continually working on in my head.

Every answer is a potential blessing.

Nobody's God

April 17

I broke my once-a-week posting promise. I hate breaking a promise, including one to myself. The promise to write a post every week was made both to myself and to anyone who reads these. So: to you and to me, I’m sorry.

I didn’t write a post last week because I was busy writing something else–and then beginning to turn it into a performance piece. Here’s what happened.

A couple of months ago, on impulse I submitted a synopsis about a Barnard teacher of mine for a “Moth” presentation scheduled during my upcoming reunion. "The Moth,” as some of you likely know, is a non-profit whose mission is to create storytelling productions in varioud settings. The subject for ours is: someone who was a “Mentor, Muse, or Monster” during our college years. Rosalie Colie was all three to me at Barnard In the long run, she probably had more to do with my becoming a writer than anyone.

On a new impulse, I would like to share her with anyone who reads this post. I’m still working with the producer on what I will present during reunion, but in the final version Miss Colie won’t be different–and neither will I. Here’s where we are now:



I went to a terrific high school. The only hitch was, academic subjects were just stuff you had to get through so you could get on with whatever you came to Performing Arts to perform.

Somehow, there I was at Barnard and in Miss Rosalie Colie’s freshman English class–surrounded –and surrounded is definitely how I felt--by girls who’d attended notoriously good high schools in Brooklyn. Those girls really scared me, towering academic redwoods. The day we got our first test back from Miss Colie, I knew everyone but me would get a good mark. I got a C-minus. No surprise. A girl behind me spoke out. You can’t give me a C-minus—I had a 98.6 average. Wild with relief, I blurted out, I thought 98.6 was temperature.

Mind you, I wasn’t giddy over having company for my own C-minus. Keeping my scholarship was critical. I had to get good grades–or goodbye Barnard.

Next day, I moved up to the front row, put on blinders, paid attention only to what was being said in the front of the room, and for the first time in my life put my mind to work.

Parents’ day arrived. I adored my mother. She was loving, giving, permissive, elegant, and well-educated–she’d earned a doctorate in Russian literature at the University of Kiev. But she was old–sixty that year. And despite her excellent English, she still had a Russian accent. After Miss Colie’s class, she joined the line to speak with Miss Colie. The line moved quickly. Her turn came. The line stopped moving. I watched mesmerized as she and Miss Colie became engrossed in conversation. I had to leave–or miss my next class. That evening, my mother told me Miss Colie was very smart for such a young woman. The next day Miss Colie took me aside to say that my mother was a fascinating woman. Gotcha, Toby.

We had to go to Miss Colie’s office to reclaim our graded papers. About two months into the semester, when I turned up to get a paper on Pere Goriot–yes, I remember which paper it was–I saw at once the upper-right hand corner was empty. There was no grade. Not a good sign. Miss Colie told me to sit. Another not-good sign. I sat. Slowly, she set down a “B,” then added a period. I don’t know how many straight-up B’s Miss Colie was doling out by then, but my guess is, not many. I do know that I saved bus fare home–I floated all the way to Washington Heights.

Miss Colie decided I might be worth mentoring. She gave me a list of books, handwritten on legal-size yellow paper. You need to know these, she said. By then I had a major crush–not on her, on her mind. I vowed silently to read them all–that weekend. A month later, Miss Colie said that if I worked very very hard I might one day write a “real book.” It wasn’t a compliment, it was a challenge. .

That’s how Miss Colie mentored-- through challenging. Meet one challenge, there’d be another. I didn’t have time or energy to resent it.

After Christmas break, Miss Colie was gone. GONE. We were told only that she was ill and we could not contact her. With her physical absence she turned from mentor to muse. Now I pushed me. The level of effort she demanded, I now commanded myself to make. I so wanted her to know how hard I was working anyway. Finally, it came to me how to let her know. If I could somehow win the Gildersleeve Prize, her best friend who also taught at Barnard, would tell her. What a good get-well card winning would make. But could I? There were all those girls-the redwoods. Don’t think about them. Work. I did, and how. And I won the Gildersleeve Prize. A week later, I received a thank you note from Miss Colie.

Sophomore year she was back. Illness had not softened her. Towards me, she was tougher than ever. That spring, she assigned a sonnet to analyze. I don’t like analyzing poetry, gave the task short shrift. When I went to pick up my paper, she literally tossed it across her desk at me. If this was anyone else’s, I’d give it an F, she said. I wish I did not remember this part but I do. I said, So give me an F. She shook her head. Spring break is coming up. You will analyze five sonnets. Have the papers on my desk the day we get back. I did it. For 10 days, I breathed sonnets. I did figure out how to get something out of analyzing a sonnet. But I felt she’d pushed me too hard this time. She probably felt she shouldn’t have had to. For the rest of the semester we spoke in extremely short sentences.

That summer, my mother died. And Barnard, believing in in loco parentis, found a dorm room for me. I was still unpacking my books when I heard scurrying in the hallway and a single sharp knock on my door. Without waiting for a Come in., she did. Wordlessly she looked me over. Then she said, You’re not wearing black. Good! Then: There’s a faculty tea across the street and you’re coming with me. Not a word about our mutual silence of the spring, or what a terrible summer I must have had. She was there, would be there. Pushing hard, she’d have my back. I left the pile of books unshelved and went off with her to tea.

nobodysgod

April 4

Nobodys God

Faith is still much on my mind. Partly because over the past few days I’ve had the privilege to hear a few people who are not believers speak up about their non-belief. I say "privilege" because to my mind it’s a gift when anyone shares anything that personal. I happen to feel a connection to the non-believers I know, because I remember myself as a non-believer. Many memories get gauzy over time, but for me that one hasn’t. After I came to believe, I vowed not to forget what I thought and felt before that. What I was like.

I’m reminded that when I was a faculty wife, a truly charming young man named Bobby was very surprised to discover I’d never smoked pot. Indeed, my not having tried marijuana baffled him. It didn’t fit his image of me. He never said, but I think he liked my general openness. In any case, every couple of weeks he’d turn up at my kitchen door to offer me increasingly fancy pot. By then of course I had to say no, even if I’d wanted to try it. One day about three months into this dance of ours, he showed up to tell me he would no longer be trying to turn me on. How could I not ask why? Because, he said, I figured out, you’d be exactly the same. He had this triumphant grin on his face, having solved the mystery. I count "you’d be exactly the same" the best compliment I got during my year and seven months in Hamilton, New York.

I still never have tried pot. Would I be the same? I’ll never know. I do know that when faith came to me, when God entered my life–and stayed–I did stay pretty much the same. I found God challenging rather than comforting. And having faith freed me to do good things that had beforehand seemed potentially embarrassing or otherwise risky. But otherwise, I was the same Toby.

Now, four decades later, I still find faith to be a challenge. And to bolster my courage. It’s still not a comfort, or only very very rarely. And it is definitely not easy: not easy to explain; not easy to surrender to; not easy to live with, day by day.

Even four decades ago, when my faith was brand shining new, I sensed that. And wrote:

On the Nature of Faith

Have faith.
Have half of this peach.
Have fun at the beach.
Have faith.

Poor as those four lines are as verse, I stand by them.

nobodysgod

I just came across a piece I wrote some time ago about the "American dream." I have no idea what the occasion was, but it doesn’t take a huge incentive to get me talking about this country. I’ve got a love for America that I suspect I was fed with my mother’s milk, because to both of my parents this was the Promised Land.

Given that, what I said there about the "American Dream" didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was how intimately my thoughts about making that dream a reality in one’s life relate to another cherished part of my life. I’m talking about faith.

In the piece that fortuitously came into my hands, I wrote that the American Dream "is not something you have at night, it’s something you do, day by day." That could well serve–and serve well–as a description of how I think about faith. How I experience it.

To me, faith, like the American Dream, isn’t something you have. It’s something you do. That right, day by day. As the American Dream requires rigorous effort, so does faith. At the outset, for both, we can, if we’re inclined to be attentive to the world around us, find. . ideas. . .people...actions. Little pieces that we can work with, which may turn out to connect readily–or with sweat-producing effort–to each other. Eventually, perhaps, to shape into a way of life that is rich with possible joy It can’t happen overnight–obviously–because, as I said, it is not something that happens when you’re asleep. So it takes wakefulness, work, time.

Which is why, understandably, for almost all of us, there is a sporadic temptation to give up on the American dream–or on faith. The daily effort required turns out to be more than we think we can bear–or, certainly, feel like putting out when the outcome isn’t even guaranteed. We decide to give up on the dream, or on faith, and move on. But dreams and faith can both be stubborn. You may let go of them, but they may not let go of you. They may insist on your attention. And, eventually, that you renew your intention to make them come to life.

My folks willingly–enthusiastically–took on the hard work of making the American dream a reality in their lives. Once my father thought he came this close–and it collapsed on them. But, painfully slowly, my mother and father emerged from the rubble and tried again. And again. They never brought the whole dream to life, but neither did they give up trying. And, it seems to me, that the trying itself may have tasted to them a lot like the dream fulfilled would have. After all, it’s called the American Dream because it could only happen here. Here, the place they called, without irony, the Promised Land.

With faith, it seems to work something like this. If–when–we give up on it, faith seems to drift easily away, in no time becomes quite distant. And yet, it can return at any time, tap us on the shoulder, or kick us in the butt–announce itself as present. Let us know, in no uncertain terms, I may be small, but I’m here. And you really ought to consider letting me into your life again.

Building a life where faith is the everyday reality can be as hard as my parents’ experience of America. But–no, and–every bit as fulfilling.

Truth is, I’m counting on it.

nobodysgod

In my last post, I said that I saw prayer as a way of keeping in touch with God. I think that phrase could use some clarifying.

You know how some people "keep in touch" by sending one another an annual holiday card? Or sending an annual family "catch-up" letter? My idea of keeping in touch is definitely not like that. To me "keeping in touch" means maintaining–sustaining–a relationship in an everyday way. Being present to the relationship in an ongoing way. Sometimes intimately, sometimes with simply an awareness that it’s there, a part of your life.
And with any other good mutual relationship, when you really need to know it’s there. . . you know it’s there. You don’t need to squander time or energy "catching up" before you bring up what’s troubling your mind or
heart or spirit. Or are facing a terrible event.

My mother’s dying night was like that for me. Our relationship was "clean"–there was nothing to bring out or up which had been shoved under the rug, so to speak. There was no need to tidy up our relationship. We had no loose ends to try to tie up. The only thing I had left to tell her was that I loved her, which I said many times that night. Words said not to inform, but in an attempt to be present to her even as she became less and less present to me. I was not saying it in hopes she would tell me she loved me too, because I knew that as surely as she knew I loved her. In that, as in every other way, it was our habit to keep in touch. Thankfully, that was our reality, because, well before morning, she was too far away to speak.

Maybe that’s when I learned the value of always keeping in touch with those who are important to you. Whom you love. I am pretty sure it’s why I do my best now to keep in touch with God–Whom I didn’t know back then. In the years since He came into my life, my wish is to be as present to Him as He is to me has only grown. So that when He needs me to be truly kind to someone, I will be ready to hear that from Him. And when I am impelled to alert Him to some emergency in my life or the life of a friend, He doesn’t dismiss my prayer with some divine version of "I know, I know," He allows me to think for the moment that He had to hear it from me. When life rebounds to normality, I can admit to both of us that I knew He knew what was going on, and was "on" it. I just had to remind myself of that.

Today, I know the Shekhinah–God’s softer, maternal half–is holding Japanese babies especially close to Her. Against Her very breast. I know She’s with them. Still, I pray for that. It reminds me that I need to keep them close to my heart, too.

nobodysgod

I didn't write anything to post last week because, when life piles on too much too quickly, I try mightily to put first things first. The past week was one of those. And while keeping to my blogging schedule is high on my to-do list, this week nothing on that list--including the earthquake--outranked one wholly unexpected event close to home. The twenty-six year-old nephew of a very good friend had a heart attack Tuesday, a whopper of one. I watched the earthquake on television, and the tsunami, and the fires and hoped I cared enough, but was pretty sure I fell short. On Friday, my friend's nephew underwent quadruple bypass surgery. Late Friday night, I heard: he came through the surgery well--which sounds as though he passed some difficult graduate school admissions exam. But I heard through the stock medicalese that it was time to take a deep breath of relief--and let gratitude in.

Over the weekend, morning by evening, day by day, I heard that a tube had been removed, he was sitting up, yet another tube was removed, he walked a bit in the hospital corridor, he ate something. I did not give short shrift to any report, knowing that bit by bit is precisely how one reclaims a life. I have been told, and it makes sense, that from this point on in his recovery, being young will help. But wasn't he too young to need such radical intervention--to need to reclaim his life?

The television chides me: look again at the children of the earthquake, the infants whose mothers were carried off by the tsunami or fathers burned by fire--the young of Japan whose fight to reclaim a life will be far, far slower, if it happens at all.

My heart takes over chiding me. For my friend's nephew, I did what I could. All I could. I prayed and prayed and prayed. So now, while I continue to pray for his full recovery, I need to make space inside me to pray for those Japanese children. And the old there. And those in the middle. All who have survived. And those who have not.

I don't know what prayer does, other than keep me centered and relatively sane. But I believe it does more. I believe it reminds God that I know He is there. And I'm counting on Him to do what He can. Just as, I believe, He counts on me to do my part, which is to pray. To keep in touch.

Please note: Whenever I come to a place where it is appropriate to use a pronoun rather than "God," I use the male pronoun. In numerous Jewish settings, including my own synagogue, to avoid using the male pronoun, "God" is repeated. Sometimes, a descriptive phrase-name (such as "The Ineffable") is substituted for "God." I am averse to either method of avoiding the use of the male pronoun. The English language includes pronouns for a reason. They allow language to be fluid. That is not a small matter to me, both as a wirter and lover of language. But if I take a somewhat narrow view of usage, my view of God is not narrow. Both my mind and spirit know that God is not male exclusively. Both my mind and spirit know God as both male and female. I hope that my persistence in using the out-of-favor male pronoun will not prove an insuperable obstacle to your reading this blog. If you want to argue about it, I'm open--write me here or on my Facebook page.

All my adult life, I have been a supporter of the right to free speech. How could I not be, when my parents came here from a country where speaking freely could cost you your life? Even when the First Amendment permits hate-filled people to vent their hatred, I know that their rights are important to protect. But this week, my belief in the sanctity–in the beauty–of the First Amendment was tested. And I flunked the test.

This past Wednesday, the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that the morally hideous signs held aloft by the Phelps family outside the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The majority decision said that, because the Phelps family’s demonstration was "political, public and peaceable," it did not fall outside the First Amendment’s protection. Sympathy for the grieving Snyder family was noted, but irrelevant.

I have no doubt that was a correct interpretation. But to be correct is not the same thing as being right. And something about that ruling didn’t feel right to me. I wondered how it felt to God, Whom the Phelpses’ placards listed as a supporter.

Then I remembered a question that is–or ought to be–part of our national memory. During the Army-McCarthy hearings, sixty years ago–miraculously televised by ABC–Senator Joseph McCarthy went after a young lawyer named Fred Fisher. Fisher wasn’t even present, because Mr. Welch, Special Counsel to the Army, had decided not to use Fisher's services when the young man admitted that he had as a still younger man belonged to the Lawyers Guild which apparently had a Communist connection. Despite the fact that, due to Mr. Welch’s caution, Fred Fisher was not in any way involved in the hearings, Senator McCarthy, out for blood, brought up Fisher’s youthful mistake. He chewed on it and chewed on it, would not let it go. Finally, in a voice that can never be forgotten by anyone who heard it, Mr. Welch said to Senator McCarthy, "Have you no decency sir, at long last?"

Why did the Supreme Court ruling bring to my mind the increasingly heated exchange between Joseph Welch and Senator McCarthy? The connection is found in Welch’s use of the word "decency." The way Phelps and his feral family behaved may have been constitutional, but it wasn’t decent.

In this country, most of us hold dissent very high among our democracy’s virtues. I’ve read that the 8-1 decision this week may help the cause of free speech, and some say that there’s never too high a price for that. Maybe. But should not dissent be leavened with humanity? With, yes, decency? With enough simple decency to allow a fallen marine’s family to conduct his funeral service in peace?
　
　
　

Nobody's God

February 25, 2011.

Dear God! Sometimes I don’t even want to talk to You, let alone pray. It used to be so simple between us: I talked to You, I listened to You, I talked back, You told me off, I stalked off, cooled off, came back, and we started over. No, it was better than that. We picked up where we left off. We communicated. Truly communicated. The way my mother and I used to, so there were never any jagged leftovers lying in wait to give either of us a splinter. I did so love that woman, my complicated, difficult mother. I didn’t love her weaknesses, but I didn’t take advantage of them, either. I don’t know if You have weaknesses (I suspect one or two). Regardless, you’re God. Loving and. . . mature. Why would you take advantage of my weaknesses?

Take my weakness to edit everything in sight. Here’s an example and, for the record, it’s not a small one to me.

It has to do with a prayer–and a particular pray-er. A dear friend who prays for me every day. I am someone who’s grateful to be prayed for. I am especially grateful to be in the prayers of people who are convinced that God is a good listener. While I am inclined to think that the main–and certainly salutary–result of prayer is to center the person praying, I do believe that our prayers can, may, and do occasionally move God to act.


So I watch what I pray for.


That, it turns out, is the easy part for me. What I find hard is to remember that I have no business even daydreaming about editing someone else’s prayers. Talk about chutzpah! Yet it sometimes takes every bit of my spiritual energy to push that desire down and keep it there.

I do believe that, as "Nobody’s God" belongs to no faith group, He must be adamant about the right of people to pray not only how but also for what they want to. That’s the open-minded God I pray to, right? Believe in. Check. And I know there’s no point in believing in God if you don’t trust Him. Yet whenever I think of this one prayer by my friend, I repeatedly yank back my trust. I don’t want to have to trust that God will not–to teach me a lesson, or on a divine whim–grant her prayer, I want to be sure. Because if. . . that would destroy my faith in God’s open-mindedness. Which is no lower than point three of my personal creed.


The devil is in the details? Here goes. This is not just any friend, but a friend whom I have grown to love, who prays for me on a daily basis. When another friend of mine is mired in a particular difficulty, I do not hesitate to enlist this dear friend’s prayers to accompany mine. When I find myself in a smooth-walled hole, she is the friend I ask to help hoist me up by adding her prayers to my own. I ask her because I know she really prays.
The problem is, my friend prays every day for me to be saved. To be redeemed by Jesus. She knows that I was for a time a Catholic, and maybe that feeds her hope, but I doubt it. You see, my friend definitely does not believe in "nobody’s God"–only hers. Her Jesus belongs to my friend’s "Bible-Centered Baptist church." The church is evangelical, and so is she. When we’re running an errand, she speaks of how, specifically, he is helping our day along. She’s not displaying her intimate relationship with Jesus for my benefit. He is her constant companion–in both senses. The immediacy of her faith is wonderful to witness–but also discomforting.

My friend and I do not argue theology, we don’t discuss theology. She knows by heart all she feels she needs to know about God. Including that, unless I accept Jesus as my Lord, I am doomed.

And so she prays for that, my surrender to Jesus. Every day. My head knows that I cannot revise her prayer, edit it so that she prays instead that God will guide me along my own path. Mind you, I do not ever say–even think–"been there, done that." I cannot imagine being that disrespectful of either her faith or our friendship.

Once, as we sat on my couch, for a brief visit away from my work, hers, or an errand, she said, I think your view of God is wider than mine, mine is narrower than yours. I waited, hovering on the cusp of joy. But she stopped there. She is happy with her narrower view. She loves her church. Her Bible-study guide. Her Jesus. And because she loves me, she prays for me to surrender to them all. Because, she tells me, the prospect of missing me in Heaven makes her sad.

I do not tell her that I believe Heaven is bigger than she thinks, or that God is. Let Nobody’s God fend for Himself. I am learning. Learning there is nothing I can say to my friend. Learning that what I can do is pray that my love of God will lead me to Heaven. And that when my friend and I come face to face there, we will embrace wordlessly, as loving friends do when they meet up.
　

Nobody's God

February 18, 2011.

One part of writing I especially like is the process of shaping words and phrases into accessible, clear sentences. Sentences a reader can enter without being scratched by verbal brambles. Sentences a reader can feel free to respond to, confident that he understands what I meant to say. When I work as an editor with other writers, I talk about clarity and accessability more than any other topics. But I see that, in this blog I have been less diligent about its shape than the shape of its individual parts. So it’s time to "shape up." Every other week, I will discuss how I see my belief that God "belongs" to no one group of believers playing out in real life. Alternate weeks, I will share an experience or person or book that became part of the path which led me to the conviction that God is "nobody’s God."

I’m going to start with the second kind of post, and ask you to return with me to my experience, in childhood, of Yiddishkeit. When, long before I came to believe that God is nobody’s God, I was part of a family where He was indeed nobody’s God.

Had anyone asked my parents whether they were more Jewish than American–or the reverse–my father would doubtless have shaken his head and smiled indulgently, while my mother would have pointed out, fairly politely, that it was a foolish question. Like asking someone if he valued one leg more than the other, she might have added. To my parents, being Jewish was why they came to America. My father came first, AWOL from the czar’s army; my mother arrived a few years later, leaving behind a job as supervisor of secondary evening school in the Ukraine. Louis Stein never finished fifth grade; Zelda Zam had completed the work for a doctorate at the University of Kiev. She was tall, quite stunning, and too serious; he was short, closer to homely than plain–and a champion charmer. In Chicago, the two of them met, fell in love, and married. Only in America.

With both arms, my mother wrapped her Bronx-born daughter warmly–in love and Yiddish lullabies, Yiddish songs, and Yiddish stories. They put me in a Jewish pre-school, where Yiddish was the lingua franca. My vocabulary was entirely Yiddish, and not short on words; but at two and a half, I stubbornly refused to combine words into a sentence. Until the afternoon, desperate for a push on the swings which the pre-school director calmly refused to give me until I asked in a complete sentence, I grudgingly emitted: "Zeit azoi gut und gib mich a shtup"–which may belong in Ripley as the longest first sentence ever, at least in Yiddish.


When I graduated to an Arbiter Ring shule, we studied the teacher’s own version of our formation as a people, a version from which God was somehow entirely absent. Who knew? It was a good story, anyway. I even went for a year of weekends to a Jewish High School–but God wasn’t part of the curriculum there either.

Only one element was lacking from my intensely Jewish upbringing: God. Mind you, neither of my parents ever said a word against God. God was–simply?–never mentioned. Instead, Truth was raised to the level of The Ultimate. To tell the Truth always took the top spot in my family’s creed. Not once did it occur to me that either of my parents might lie. They lied. My father lied continually about the health of our family’s finances–especially their prognosis. My mother, as proud as she was smart but determined that we’d eat, lied about taking a job scrubbing the floors of the common rooms in the Amalgamated, the housing project in which we lived. My father lived his life entirely encapsulated in fantastical thinking. My mother The Realist created fantasies to keep my childhood happy. Once, when Con Ed had had it with us, and turned off the electricity, my mother lit candles on the kitchen table, declaring it a holiday. Our holiday meal was smelts. Smelts by candlelight? It worked. Proof: the first time I ever went to the 21 Club, I saw smelts on the menu, and ordered them–my forever idea of celebratory fare.

My favorite of the lies my mother told me was repeated whenever she managed to purchase theater tickets. As she led me upstairs to the $1.80 seats, she would, step after step, say "best seats in the house, best seats in the house." Once we were in our sky-high seats, and she had caught her breath, she would–each time–explain that these were the best seats because the people who sat there loved the theater. When I was twenty-four and she dead for six years, I sat in house seats for the first time. When the curtain came down on the first act, I cried out "My mother lied to me!" And then I laughed. Laughed with pride at my mother’s brilliance. What a wonderful lie to tell a child–a lie thickly laden with truth. Lack of money alone would not supply stamina enough to hike all the way up to the second balcony. It would take love.

I got a lot of that. My Yiddishkeit childhood was happy. In the snapshots of me, my one dimple is unmistakable.

nobodysgod

February 11, 2011.

As I wrote my last post, I was pleased to be able to recall readily the details of my confirmation by Cardinal Bea. But after the blog was posted, my brain fastened on the fact that while red-letter events of my years as a Catholic are vivid to me even now, I remember little about, specifically, what I believed–and thought–then. I remember how ardently I believed in God, but all that says to me now is how passionately I believed in my belief itself. But what about when I thought about God, Jesus, being Jewish, chastity, the "meaning of life"–what was I thinking? (Please note that the emphasis is not on the last word, as in "What was I thinking?)

Curiosity nagged at me. Not being able to remember, that nagged at me even more. By concentrating hard, I could recall a feeling–and then the thought–that nothing around me looked the same once God was in my life. Nothing was "everyday" any more. But while I was determined to become a person whose life reflected her faith, I was equally determined not to change. To remain my parents’ daughter. Beyond those tissue-thin recollections, I could remember only extraordinary joy, which was barely tempered by a sporadic sense of anxiety about going all the way, so to speak, and being baptized.

Coincidences are not part of my belief system. Checking for possible clues in the bookcase where I keep old drafts, I noticed a bulky brown envelope. At once, I knew that manila envelope held poems from the time immediately before my baptism. I am no poet–but even as I held the unopened envelope in my hands, the reason I wrote those poems blithely bounced back into my head.

I laughed. I had written these poems because there was a gap in my days I needed to fill–not among the top ten reasons a poet writes poetry, I’m pretty sure. But it was mine–because seven months before my rescheduled baptism, I lost my job. With no movie-going or meeting-a friend-for-lunch money, I had to find some way to occupy myself that didn’t cost anything. Chastity was writ large for this catechumen, so any "filler" activity had to take place sitting up. That was why, every day when I returned home from noon Mass at St. Paul the Apostle, I would–I remember now!–read a little of some confident convert’s autobiography. The rest of the afternoon hours, I filled by writing a poem. Then, or more likely, later, I stuck the lot of them in the manila envelope I now held.

I opened it. Dozens of pages came tumbling out. On each was a poem, typed on unemployment-thin paper. I gathered them up from the floor and braved them.

My first observation was that the poems confirmed that any gift I have for poetry is scrawny indeed. Far more importantly, reading them did reveal some of what was on my
mind back then. They offer evidence of how serious was my determination to remain myself. One promise kept. Another find:: once an asker of questions, always an asker of questions. The poems are stiff with questions. Chronically curious, I wasn’t cured of that happy ailment. Moreover, even when I was in the early-days-heat of my love affair with God, I made jokes. Making jokes is something I do a lot now–but was surprised to find poems that are funny. Well, I was did have to amuse myself. Nonetheless, the poems, both decent and pretty dreadful, reveal how quickly I understood that having a relationship with God wasn’t a joke. Or easy.

That I knew that is evident in this very short poem, titled "On the Nature of Faith:

Have faith.
Have half of this peach.
Have fun at the beach.
Have faith.

Here’s a short one on "The Eucharist":


Bland blessedness,
Muted and dim:
Five real wounds less
Than wholly Him.

I was not a believer long before I understood how deceptive religious language can be. As you read the next poem, called "Sweet Jesus," picture a mother in the park, whose child has fallen and cut open his knees. See in her outstretched arms the sweetness of her love?


Impaled upon the cost,
Your coaxing arms uncrossed,
That welcome is not lost
Upon us, Sweet Jesus.

Heart-long toward that grace
We race, to take our place
With You–and find spared space
Up there. Thus.
Sweet Jesus.

The next poem was written after making the Stations of the Cross. It’s about the tenth station, which shows Jesus being stripped..

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who is the barest one of all?

In any Catholic church, the Virgin Mary is always in sight. My curiosity, disinclined to pause for breath anywhere, had "A question for our Lady":

Mary, ever virgin, in life before in name,
Didn’t it hurt you, girl, to miss that dazzling pain?

Here’s one called "An Old Tree,"which hints to me that I might have given some thought to the risk-laden tree in the Garden of Eden:

The rings around the trunk, they say,
Are the way to gauge an aged
Tree’s longevity. But how, pray,
Calculate when the tree’s engaged
In backing up a dying God?
Yet see that tree on Calvary,
Those are no soft twigs, those die-hard
Planks nailed tight to Sanctity.
But the heart of an bold old tree
Which would have chosen otherwise
Than thus revive cold memory
Of when it stood in Paradise.

I’ve said that I was in need of "free" amusement during those money-tight months before my baptism. "Conversion: One Version" was obviously written for that purpose:

Becoming a Roman,
When a full-grown woman,
Holds lots of surprises.
But I think first prize is
Snatched from the myriad
By a late period.
Quelle temptation to pander
To delusions of grandeur.

And last, another serious poem, written from my lifelong desire to understand more than I can.

Calvary

It is hard as nails
To grieve a God. First-born
Price God set impales
Himself. Unadorned, worn
Thin by slim hope held tight,
A prophecy comes true
To death: accounts set right
By a diligent Jew.
In squinting toward the kill,
Our eyes blink smarts enough
To salt that wounded hill.
But tears strike blindman’s buff
At truth, for all faith knows
Of how God comes, or goes.　

Enough. Indeed, probably more than enough of my "brown envelope" poems. Though I had packed these poems away with small if any intention of ever looking at them again, what I discovered in reading them now was that, even in the early days of my belief, I hadn’t packed my mind away. That’s the main reason I’ve shared them. But also because putting them out in the blogosphere makes me feel gutsy.


　
　
　
　

February 4, 2011

Friday, February 4, 2011.

Holiness is like pornography. Because Justice Potter Stewart’s comment applies. As when you’re faced with pornography, when you’re faced with holiness, you know it.

I met a holy person once, and meeting Augustin Cardinal Bea was a blessing I cherish to this day. Two biographical facts back up my view, I think.

First, Pope Pius XII made Cardinal Bea his confessor. Of course, the seal of confession covers that relationship. But when I discovered how much of Cardinal Bea’s late writings were about the Jewish people, I found the possible connection irresistible.

Second: When the theologically conservative Pope John XXIII was inspired to convoke a new Vatican Council–opening Church windows which had long been tightly shut–the first person he told was Cardinal Bea. During the Council, Cardinal Bea not only played a major role in drafting Nostre Aetate, the document which declared that the Jewish people was not guilty in the death of Jesus Christ, he also pushed very hard to get it passed. John Borelli, an historian of Vatican II, is quoted in Wikipedia as saying, "It took the will of John XXIII and the perseverance of Cardinal Bea to impose the declaration on the Council."

But in the spring of 1964, not quite a year after my baptism, passage of the statement on the Jews did not look at all like a sure thing. I was both too angry and too hurt to be confirmed in the Church.

Then something happened. One night, I noticed a two-line Reuters dispatch saying that Cardinal Bea, whose efforts on behalf of Nostre Aetate I had been reading about, would be visiting Cardinal Cushing the next few days. At one a.m., I sat down and wrote Cardinal Bea a letter. First thing in the morning, I asked the librarian in my office how to address a cardinal and to help me find out Cardinal Cushing’s address. I filled in the blanks in my letter and mailed it.

In those days, mail wasn’t by pony express the way it is now, and the following morning I received a phone call from Cardinal Bea’s secretary, a Jesuit named Stefan Schmidt, saying that if the cardinal had to return to Rome the next afternoon, but if I could come up to Boston in the t morning, "his eminence would be delighted to confirm you." My boss, a lapsed Catholic, instructed me to take the rest of the day off  to hunt down a proper outfit–my arms completely covered, he explained. I laughed at the notion that my arms might be a problem for the cardinal who was in his late seventies, but bought an elegant white suit at Bendel’s and a big white hat to "top off" my proper outfit. The following morning, I flew up to Boston.

The man who walked slowly toward me in a "palatial" public room was bent over, physically an old man. But when he lifted his head to greet me, I saw his eyes--astonishingly clear eyes in a face road-mapped with wrinkles. I felt as though those eyes could see right inside people, yet they were heart-warmed. Declining to have his ring kissed, the cardinal invited me to sit. He sat down near me and asked me questions, some about me but also about my parents. He seemed not curious so much as interested in my Jewish background. Through an archway, I could see people waiting for an audience, yet our conversation went on and on until his secretary firmly urged us to proceed with the confirmation ceremony, and hastened us into Cardinal Cushing’s private chapel.

About the ceremony I remember only being surprised that the cardinal’s secretary seemed to be more familiar with it than the cardinal. I saw this as a sign of the forgetfulness which often accompanies age. But when told by his secretary to slap my face–which I knew was an integral part of the ceremony–the cardinal shook his head. A whispered debate ensued. Finally, the Cardinal nodded, apparently giving in. He came over to where I knelt at a rather ornate prie-dieu, raised his hand–and slowly caressed my cheek.

When the ceremony was over, instead of taking his leave, the cardinal led me back into the reception room. He asked if I would like a photograph of him, and had it sent for. Need I say I have it still? Then, apparently enjoying himself, he went further, and called for a photographer. Apparently there was one in house. In the picture of  the cardinal and me, my large white hat floats like a huppah over the two of us.

I saw the Cardinal again the following year, when I was invited to Fordham for him to celebrate Mass for me. But it’s something that happened during our third and last meeting that I need to share. By then I had heard thirdhand that the reason the cardinal spent so much time with me when first we met and later sent me several gifts, was that he had never confirmed anyone before. I was told that the esteemed scholar, who had never had a pastoral assignment, was very pleased to have been asked to do something outside his ordinary activities.

But to our final meeting. In 1967, like many Jews (though probably not many of them were, as I was then, also a Catholic), I flew to Israel to see the Wall. My trip home would include a stopover in Rome, so I shopped for a kipah to give the cardinal as a memento. Invited to visit him on Saturday evening, I showed up at his palace–this one really was a palace–promptly at the appointed hour. When I gave my name, I was immediately taken to him. He was alone, working, seated at a huge desk in a huge room with many doors. After he asked about my trip for a few minutes, not wanting to take too much of his tme, I presented my modest gift of two kipot. Both were the correct red, but neither was utterly plain. I had looked high and higher in Jerusalem, but the best I could come by were kipot with very narrow silver borders. He thanked me and said they were beautiful. Then, very softly, he asked, "But are they for boys?" I so wanted him to think they were not totally inappropriate. So I pointed to the skirted bottom half of his cassock and said, "Eminence, are those?"


He looked down at himself, then back at me–and laughed.  Loudly. Very loudly. Instantly, four doors opened and four Swiss guards came running in. Swiftly, still laughing, he sent them away. But I was stuck in the moment before. How could they have mistaken a laugh for a scream? Had none of those guards ever heard the cardinal laugh?

That made me sad–but later birthed a thought I’ve never told until now. Cardinal Bea was a holy man with a Texas-sized laugh he obviously didn’t get many opportunities to let loose on the world. Maybe, I thought, to be completely holy, you has to have laughter inside of you. Maybe the ability to laugh was the ultimate imitatio dei, because it allowed a holy person to be like God in that way, too. 

(Now I know why I started blogging–to have the chance to type imitatio dei for the first time in my life.)

Now, tell me. Have you ever met a someone with outsize goodness and wisdom, untarnished by a gloss of humility? Who possessed grace straight up? And who had a terrific laugh? If you have met someone like that, you know yourself to be as blessed as I.
　
　　
　
　

nobodysgod

This blog is about Nobody’s God. Not my God or your God, not the God of my neighbor across the street or someone in the Welsh countryside. Rather, God is the God of all four of us–and everyone else. God of us all alike. Belonging to no one more than another, nor to any denomination more than the rest. Belonging not even a little more to the worthiest-seeming among us. That’s why I think of God as Nobody’s God.

And why I named my spiritual autobiography Nobody’s God. As I wrote the manuscript, reliving my own journey, I came to understand more and more clearly that, while my journey was mine alone, God is not mine in any exclusive sense whatsoever. I see God through my eyes, from my perspective; my view of God is doubtless colored by teachings of my denomination–and of another denomination to which I once belonged. God is at the center of my life–but also at the center of others’ lives whose vision and understanding of God are quite different from mine. And I think those differences are just fine with the One God.

It’s as simple as this: either there is One God–or there is no God. That is one of the very few things I’m even pretty sure about.

Which is okay, because, as I see it, the willingness to live with incertitude is the one prerequisite for faith. I believe that. As I believe in God. I do not know God is, but that’s okay, too. Because I do know that my belief in God, and my relationship with God, matter in my life. That I believe God cares for me, in both senses, centers me, strengthens me, makes me a braver and kinder person. I believe, too, that God challenges me–though I think it was probably my idea to write this blog.

So here we go: I’m committing myself to writing this blog weekly.

In it, as in my everyday life, I will speak of God rather a lot. If that’s okay with you, let’s talk again next week.