Feeling a bit deflated! The holiday is coming, and I’m woefully unprepared. I actually am not planning on doing anything...just another day as in the past it was always a table full of family and friends. My husband considers Christmas a commercial holiday and so planning pizza for two is not real festive. Yet the kindness of new found friends, and old ones popping up may stir some Christmas cheer after all. For most of 40 years I’d head back home and we’d bake hundreds of cookies to share with all those that stopped by. Taking trips to the garage to refill the plate (Wisconsin is good for cold storage) was not a chore but an honor, and a creative challenge. That memory flooded in on one of my few trips to the store and I found myself buying sugar, flour and butter. Let the merriment begin! I’m ready for eggnog spice balls! 12/15 entry
January 2, 2021
I don't think it was a conscious idea, but I stopped praying. When I had to go out of the house, I would pray every morning, sometimes also in the afternoon. I went to shul every Shabbat. Now it is rare that I will pray. I don't want to get dressed. Or I don't really feel like talking to God or mumbling the words. I don't know if or why it is important. A few weeks ago when my husband and I heard davening in our backyard, we quickly got dressed and went to the outdoor shul. I was excited to see what it was going to be like. I was hoping for some excitement or feeling of awe for the first time in months being part of a community or hearing the Torah read. And all I felt, in the end, was a desire to run away, and that I was stuck. It struck me last week when i was sitting in my garden, in shorts and a tank top, reading a novel, while I overheard the Torah reading. I had no desire to run to get dressed or even enter that space again. The rituals I still do are go to the mikvah. Which I question more now, of what is this water really doing. Is it worth all the planning and arranging that I need to do so I can go? Shabbat, which I appreciate as the one day that I don't have to focus on my computer. Although at times I want to have interactions with people other than my husband. But overall it is nice to have a day where I don't feel bad about sitting in the sun and reading. I am curious as to how Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur will feel this year. Not sure if I will go to shul or if there will be shul. I am also a rabbi --- so I am not sure how I will be able to [be] present or helpful to others who are also feeling a lack of connection. I am not sure if it is a loss of faith or perhaps just a loss of desire for strict rituals.
August 7, 2020