Being Alone

There is something about being alone that beckons me
Watching a man with his tefillin bowing to his G-d
A child on a swing, pumping and peddling her way into her dreams
An adult all bundled up, making fresh prints in the snow...

I think what draws me in is the reality that being alone is our only true state
We are born in that state and we die in that state

I find that being alone is comforting
It gives me the space to just be


When alone, I find calm 
In that state there are 
No phones to answer, no emails to check
No one to make demands or seek council
Nothing to do but just be


And when refueled and restored, 
I am ready to come out of the state of being alone 
And I am ready to answer the phone and check those emails.......

Creativity

There is a lot of scientific research these days on "creativity".  Scientists are now able to prove scientifically, with data, that we are creative! Pardon me, but I find that a bit funny. No disrespect meant to all those brilliant left brainers who are out there working so hard to prove how the right brain works, but it feels a bit strange to me. My hat does go off to those scientists who have the scholarly ability (and inclination) to do this kind of research, but don't we intuitively know that we are creative?  And can't that just be good enough?

In Judaism, creativity is very important because it is through creativity that we have the ability to emulate G-d.  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik says when we create, we are partners with G-d in Creation, finishing His work. This means that everyone not only can be creative, but each one of us is hard-wired to be creative.  I like this.

R. Keith Sawyer, Associate Professor of Education at Washington University, has authored many books on creativity and it is in Explaining Creativity, that he gets close to the Jewish approach to creativity. "Until the modern scientific era," he says, "creativity was attributed to a superhuman force; all novel ideas originated with the gods.  After all, how could a person create something that did not exist before the divine act of creation?  In fact, the Latin meaning of the verb 'inspire' is 'to breath into', reflecting the belief that creative inspiration was akin to the moment in creation when G-d first breathed life into man."

  
In Hebrew the word for breath is nesheemah, having the same root as the word for soul, neshemah.   So this means that the word breath and soul are connected. It says in Bereishit (Genesis) that G-d breathed the breath of life into man, creating his soul. 


Our soul is the breath of G-d......

Brainworm

Music is playing inside my head

Over and over and over again

My friend, there's no end to the music

~Carole King

Oliver Sacks is referred to by The New York Times as the "poet laureate of medicine". In his book Musicophilia he has coined a term for when "a certain fragment of music repeats itself incessantly, sometimes maddeningly for days on end." He calls this a "brainworm".  He says a brainworm is usually a short well-defined phrase, of three or four bars.  These bars circle around in the mind for hours and even days, before they fade because they are involuntary musical imagery out of our control.  He says the incessant repetition can be very bothersome and intrusive and you can even get trapped inside the tempo of the song.

But also, Sacks says, a brainworm can bring a smile to your face, and maybe even to those around you as you hum aloud. Brainworms don't have to be annoying.

I think they can inspire when they are shared.  Care to share yours?

Chanukah and Vulnerability

‎"When our hearts are open and our feelings are flowing as they're designed to do, we're all vulnerable to the divine." ~Candace B. Pert, Ph.D. 


I just finished setting up my family's menorahs for Chanukah.  Each first holiday without my Dad this year of avelut (mourning) was hard, but this one feels quite daunting.  Mainly because it is the last one of the year. 


Each first holiday this year brought its own intense emotions ranging from a sense of finality and confusion to a profound sense of sadness that I just felt on Thanksgiving. Now creeping up right behind is probably the most intense feeling of all, vulnerability.  I suppose it isn't a surprise that this feeling comes with this last holiday because it feels like vulnerability is an embodiment of all of the emotions that I felt during this entire year.


I also feel that it isn't an irony that with Chanukah comes vulnerability considering all the symbolism attached to Chanukah.  On www.aish.com I found this:  "It is said that the Chanukah Menorah symbolizes knowledge. In spiritual terms, light and oil symbolize the ability of Divine Wisdom [the light] to be expressed in terms of human knowledge [the oil]. The word for oil in Hebrew is shemen, which is a compression of the word shemona, the number eight, symbolizing the heavenly Sphere of Bina, or understanding. All human knowledge is an expression of the spark of Divine knowledge contained within it."

 May the light of Chanukah remind us that we are all vulnerable and may that vulnerability open us up to the Divine........