The day after the seder, reality shoves back in like a football player with lowered shoulder. Dishes to wash: the browned kugel pan, chopping knives, the eggbeater that whipped the whites for Eppie’s matzah balls, the gravy boats that held haroset, the glass bowls encrusted with salt. All day...

Wear God like a cloak / and stride forth with confidence.

Breakfast on kosher macaroons and Diet Pepsi in the car on the way to Price Chopper for lamb. Peel five pounds of onions and let the Cuisinart shred them while you push them down and weep....

In gatherings we are stirred like the leaves of the fall season rustling around sacred trees, tossed hither and yon until we come to rest together, quietly, softly . . . We come to gather strength from each other. We come to give strength to each other....

I got off work at 7 pm and did the thing where you chase the bus a ­little bit but then realize you won’t make it and walk sheepishly back to the bus stop. I’m already an hour late to Sunday night singing at the Lucy Stone Cooperative, a UU affordable housing co-op in Boston. I’m still...

I’ve always had a tough time falling asleep. As a child, I was skeptical about the whole idea of sleep. I thought, “Who needs it anyway? Can’t we just be awake all the time? Isn’t that what life is all about?” So it is not surprising that, when my now mother-in-law asked me a few years ago...

We are all dying, our lives always moving ­toward completion. We need to learn to live with death, and to understand that death is not the worst of all events. We need to fear not death, but life— empty lives, loveless lives, lives that do not build upon the gifts that each of us has been given,...

We float on a sea hidden beneath dry surfaces covered by stones. Isn’t this why we drink and dive so deeply go down to the sea in ships risk drowning, again and again? Isn’t this why Moses parted the waters to begin his journey? Why Jesus crossed the waters to comfort and challenge us? We were...

I have been wondering what the morning glories know. Is it envy that compels these vines to strangle other flowers arising in their path? Or perhaps self-preservation, to climb these walls, forsaking humbler beings, winding greedy stems around the trellis in their hungry pursuit of light. Still,...

Why did I listen to Your calling, O God? Why did I step out on faith, O Love? Why did I lift my feet, ignore my fear, and run ­toward the unknown? Now I am far from home. My heart aches for my familiar land, for ­people who greeted me with kisses. I can’t see the way back—it doesn’t exist. I...

Fill me with anxiety, O Life! Electrify me, make me nervous Beyond any staid concern For those things which challenge Placid, flaccid ways, anachronisms of being. Keep me tense, a-tiptoe, Blinking at the novel, Reaching out for those things Just beyond my fingertips; So that I may make patterns,...

A good anger swallowed clots the blood to slime —Marge Piercy But what is to be done with it, this anger that dare not be swallowed? Should it be diluted with denial, cooled with indifference? Should it be sweetened with good intentions, softened with lies? Should it be spewed out red hot over...

Walk the maze within your heart: guide your steps into its questioning curves. This labyrinth is a puzzle leading you deeper into your own truths. Listen in the twists and turns. Listen in the openness within all searching. Listen: a wisdom within you calls to a wisdom beyond you and in that...

“So...what do you want to do with your life???” There was a time when this question haunted me like an existential crisis. Some might call it being in my twenties, but I certainly didn’t feel that such pain was just “to be expected.” I remember pouring over inspirational books. I found few...

During the hot Nebraska summers of my childhood, I spent hours, high in my treehouse, devouring the books I found in the small collection my parents had acquired from the estates of various relatives. One of my favorites was A Wonder Book, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling of classical myths. My...

Of course truth is hard. It is a rock. Yet I do not think it will fall upon me And crush me. I do not think they can hammer it to bits And stone me. Help me place the rock in the strong current Of these rushing waters. I must climb upon it. I must know how truth feels....

Nature provides ready metaphors for peace and justice. Jesus' peaceful kingdom is described as a mustard seed that grows into a large bush, providing shelter to all. the Hebrew prophet Amos cried for justice to roll down like water, and we sing, "I've got peace like a river" and "strength like a...

I understand history as possibility...that could also stop being a possibility. —Paulo Freire The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the rustling grass, where the bobwhite drums and the meadowlark's melody is vanishing. The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the dark forest...

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? —Kabir Suppose you cried a thousand years for a child who died when she drank bad water. Suppose you organized a great movement to clean the water. Suppose you carried the first filled glass to the...

(Ahmedabad, India, 2001) Mother Earth is shouting but we do not hear. She is filled with anguish, for all we understand is death. And in her agony she suffers too over the fact that she must kill her own to get our attentionn...