Theological Reflections threading through this work
Like most children I was a natural mystic. I felt awe in and relished all around me; from watching the twirling maple seeds cascading from the trees and the antics of the chipmunks, to being memerized by the sight of the sunset flowing through the bare, black boughs of the winter trees, their branches etched against the skies.
The prayerbook at my synagogue spoke of God as male, and as a girl I accepted this without thought. Having grown up with a loving, gentle father, the care of a loving, male God was a natural transfer.
Later I struggled; hearing my father's anguish, wondering aloud how he could possibly believe in a God when one and a half million children were murdered in the Holocaust, and later, feeling on the outside looking in as a woman by English translations in the prayerbook which excluded me.
I feel most aligned with the notion of Spirit present but cloaked in this world, being felt more powerfully, vividly in moments, graced.
One might think, hearing the voice of these prayer poems and woven in the writings and rituals that I am a clear eyed woman of faith having found a permanent religious home. Yet indeed within is the mystic, still on the road, a searcher, a wanderer.
Long ago when first hearing of God having 70 voices, 70 names, appearing differently to each person, that deeply touched me, of the Holy Who uncessingly unfolds.
Thus when composing these prayerpoems and rituals as a younger woman and a feminist, I purposively sought and used names of God that were non-sexist yet moored in Jewish liturgical history, not widely in use, to reintroduce them to a wider circle, to push open the boundaries of the box, to give more breath.
As I started to mark each moon, I found myself imagining these as routes from which Spirit tries to reach to us.
I imagined the Holy trying to speak to us through the moons, through the sacred times, through the seasons, through the movements of nature, trying to instruct us, as we human beings rather blindly seek to create our lives, trying to shape lives of meaning, beauty, and aliveness.
As I wrote I imagined Spirit feeling towards me that which I feel for my daughter, that deep, fierce, loving, beyond words. And from that place, I wrote.
At times I can feel the underlying bedrock of the spiritual flowing through the universe undergirding my days.
But even more so when I visit these prayer poems periodically in the moon or before a holy day. Stopping here renews my spirit, reminds me and I rise up from these pages, heartened, with more to me, with a greater sense of interconnection and a deeper feeling of peace.
I hope these reflections will help enable you to possibly more comfortably explore these works.
Perhaps opening too to the possibility of relating to the One Who is elusive, hidden, and perhaps, seeking you.
