Living and Working

Several years ago I had a particularly hard time at work. While sitting at my desk I wrote out a list of things that I wanted to change about myself. Since then I've kept this list by my computer at work. It helps.

Compassionate Living
-Thinking the best about people and events.
-Withholding judgment until sure.
-Sharing feelings.
-Expressing gratitude to God.
-Acknowledging my mistakes.
-Forgiving others and asking for forgiveness.
-Learning about others and caring about their lives.
-Practicing patience
-Respecting and understanding differences.
-Recognizing the good others do.

Prayerful Living
-Acknowledging my Creator.
-Blessing my Creator.
-Accepting blessings from my Creator.
-Accepting that all things come from my Creator.
-Creating Beauty.
-Greeting others with Grace, Love, and Compassion.
-Receiving Beauty.
-Releasing Anger.
-Recognizing the good in others and in events.
-Sustainable living.

End of the Amidah

At the end of the Amidah is a time for personal prayer. This is what I have come up with while looking at the phrase, "Let me be humble before all."

May this prayer help heal the wounds in my heart brought about by my arrogance. May those who hate me be reconciled to me. May I be reconciled to those I have done harm to by forgiving those who may have harmed me, by living according to Your will, by following Your commandments, and by learning to love unconditionally.

Hospital visits

R. Zutra bar Tobiah said in the name of Rav: The world was created by means of ten capacities and powers: By wisdom, by understanding, by reason, by strength, by rebuke, by might, by righteousness, by judgment, by loving-kindness, and by compassion.

I have been volunteering at United Hospital as a Jewish patient visitor for over three years.

United Hospital has 10 floors: 7 floors of patient rooms, a lower level, a main level and a top floor for meetings. Each patient floor has its specialty: post-surgery is on the 2^nd floor, ICU on the 3^rd floor, heart-lung, 4th floor, psychiatry 5^th floor, (only accessible by elevator). 6^th floor, oncology, 7^th floor, epilepsy , and 8^th floor, geriatric psychiatry. The second floor also has the Birthing Center.

As corny as it sounds, it almost seems as if the cycle of life can be visited from all the floors; even the lower level which has the tunnel I take from the volunteer office across the street and also the 9th floor which holds only meeting rooms. On days when there is a Jewish patient on each floor I can visit the whole cycle starting off by holding a newborn baby in my hands and finish by holding hands with a 90 year-old who thinks I’m his father.

The 2^nd floor birthing rooms can also hold tragedy. I once visited a mother whose child was stillborn. I came to visit shortly after knowing what had happened but not knowing that the baby’s body was still in the room. A visit seemed not enough for the grief that was still in the room, yet what else could I do other than offer condolences and my presence.

Each visit leads me to more prayer. Each floor seems to be a reflection of Rav’s ten capacities of creation. Sometimes one floor might have all ten.

I hope I address each of these capacities in my role as a volunteer. Even rebuke if needed sometimes. It is a very rewarding time. The chaplains are kind and helpful, the nurses and support staff are wonderful and staying in touch with humanity is a blessing.

Yoga meditations

Last summer, while visiting my mother in Georgia, I was able to attend a yoga session everyday for two weeks, sometimes twice a day. I kept my thoughts in the form of haiku. While not necessarily Jewish, yoga does seem to have the sense of mantra-like meditation that Jewish prayer evokes.

Yoga - nondoing

Here, now. No past. But, listen,

Yoga-nand, the birds!

Be here now, Ram Dass.

Hah! If you were Danna would have

You fly like a crow.

Hafiz, you preached joy

Through letting go of the past.

What, no more dead horses?

Orchid Hospital.

Sunbeam Hotel. Check in, gang,

The yoga is hot.

How did breath come to

North Augusta?

What wind blew it in?

Hope and love.

We must go slowly

Time is short. Yes! Sunbeam,

Crawl across my mat.

This haiku is all wrong.

But wait! Count the breaths: In, out,

_ _ _ _ _

Hafiz, your raw poems!

Blood, sweat, tears tell not enough.

But what a cliché!

A poem for Hafiz:

Summer sun --- Ah, forget it.

Let’s get drunk on love.

500 years ago Basho already knew what

Jim’s favorite pose would be:
“How cool it is

Putting the feet on the wall

An afternoon nap.”

A response to the Fire Hydrant Pose

from Richard Wright (Haiku: This Other World)

“With a twitching nose

A dog reads a telegram

On a wet tree trunk.”

Om Shanti, peace, peace

May there be peace now and to

the next Gentle Stretch

300 years ago Kogu ro Chiyo echoed Amy when she noticed:

“A morning glory

Has taken the well-bucket

I’ll borrow water”

King David sang praises

Higher, he thought, than the frogs.

But Hafiz, your praises!

Open heart surgery

This our first pose of the evening

Our surgeon, Daniel.

Cats do it, and dogs

Crows, pigeons, mountains, heros.

Yes! All love poses.

Hafiz, you said “I”

Turned to “we” when waking

You tickled God’s feet.

Pay attention, Hafiz.

That tickling could kill illusion.

What’s left? God’s real love.

A response to Hafiz concerning

his recent report of seeing angels

dance on the tip of my ear:

Thanks.

Kikaku said 300 years ago:

“The harvest moon:

Lo, on the tatami mats

The shape of a pine”

Today I could have said:

The morning sunbeam:

Lo, on my mat, it’s my good friend.

Please, no spider squish.

We can come to God

Dressed for dancing

or

Be carried on a stretcher

to God’s ward.

-Hafiz

While waiting for the 8:30 class, I read:

Nightingale weeping

and ceaseless ocean

moaning . . .

Soon, oh soon, the dawn

-Shirao

The sickly orchid

that I tended so . . .

At last

Thanks me with a bud

-Taigi

Thank you, Radiant Orchid doctor.

An inspiration from Hafiz

after my two weeks at Radiant Health:

Just sit there right now.

Don’t do a thing.

Just rest.

For your separation from God

is the hardest work in this world.

Let me bring you trays of food

And something

That you like to drink.

You can use my soft words

As a cushion

For your

Head.

-Hafiz

Hafiz, You said most everyone

is lousy at math.

That we spend time dissecting

The Invisible One.

We think:

This is the Beloved One,

He looks like this and acts like that,

How could that moron over there be God.

(So is this what you meant when you said

Zero is more fun than a God of numbers?

Or is my act of thinking really

just trying to dissect you?)

Sanskrit is confusing.

If English was good enough for

Hafiz,

Why not in yoga?

Meditation

In movement. DVD in play.

Pause . . .

Nature calls.

Pranayama.

Gentle Series.

See how remarkable

the ribbon!

Now untie it.

Hafiz,

even the last lines

of your poems

make a poem itself.

“We all stand in line

for the highest Gift.”

“As I dance with

Precious life today,”

When no one is looking

and I want to kiss God

I just lift my own hand to my

mouth. –Hafiz

Hafiz,

Is that pose in the Gentle Stretch

or the Workout?

Radiant Yoga?

Yes, even the spider knows

Grace, love, compassion.

Yoga is not love.

Love is the spider, freely

Crawling from the hand.

Dervish dancing, Hafiz?

I can barely make yoga.

“Hah!” Whose fault is that?”

Hayko said centuries ago:

The caged eagle

When lonely

He flaps his wings

Not the Gentle Stretch

with Davna. Here eagles fly.

Even elders soar.

First Posting

Not a Jewish poet but his poem speaks to me and how my journey may have started.

The Naming of the Beasts by Francis Sparshott (b. 1926)

In that lost Caucasian garden

where history began

the nameless beasts paraded

in front of the first man.

Who am I? they asked him

and what shall I be

when you have left the garden?

Name me. Name me.

Poverty cruelty lechery

rage hate shame

each stalked past the podium

seeking his name.

Adam stood to attention

unable to speak

his life too short to utter

what was made that week.

The glum parade stumbles

from risen to set sun

past their dumfounded patron.

But he knows each one

and at last a strange dampness

salts either cheek.

That was the language of Eden.

Not Hebrew, not Greek:

in groans, grunts, howls

as the first tears fall

the inarticulate brute

finds names for them all.