Fall!! (and leaves and leaving)

One of the (many) treats of being at the Oraita retreat this week in New Hampshire is that the leaves moved from just-starting-to-change to approaching-their-height during the week. On the drive home to Pennsylvania, the first stretch down through New Hampshire and Massachusetts was really spectacular. . . . I love fall!!!

This week the Torah reading is Parsaht Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1 - 17:27), which tells the story of Avraham leaving his homeland and his father's house to begin his great journey to fulfill God's will (and found a nation). This week of study for me was also an attempt to find a way towards fulfilling God's will. And I had to journey from my home and its comforts to take on this task.

May it be the will of the Holy Blessed One that we shall always be ready to hear the Blessed One's call and be willing to leave our homes when that call demands a journey of us.

Shabbat Shalom.

. . .cycling in the rain, I'm cycling . . .

People who know me well know that I don't bicycle ride just for exercise. I ride to go to the supermarket and the park. . . . And I ride because God is out there.

Out where, you say? Well, there are three classic places to find God in the Jewish tradition -- in out texts (Torah!), in our relationships with others (ministering to hospital patients for sure!) and in nature (God's creation). And while God certainly created the sunny day we normally hope for when we get on a bicycle, sometimes it's easier for me to find God's hand in nature when I can feel that hand actively touching me. . . . When I can feel the wet of the rain touching me, the wind pushing me and the sound of thunder in my ears.

קוֹל יְהוָה, עַל-הַמָּיִם
The voice of HaShem (the Lord) is upon the waters! we sing as we parade the Torah around the sanctuary on Shabbat
אֵל-הַכָּבוֹד הִרְעִים;
The Glory of God thunders.
יְהוָה, עַל-מַיִם רַבִּים.
HaShem is upon the myriad of waters.
--Psalm 29

This afternoon I awoke around 2:30pm (I was recovering from being on-call in the hospital for the 24 hours of July 4th). I would have tried to get out on the road right away, but I had broken a spoke Tuesday night. Luckily I had a spare and -- as part of my ongoing program of trying to learn to do more of my own bike maintenance -- I already had the experience under my belt of once replacing a spoke before. This was the occasion for me to assemble my new truing stand (I had purchased it at the end of April, along with a repair stand ($175.48 for both, including tax and shipping from Nashbar). You really don't need a stand for basic truing, but I have to say it made the task much easier.

Anyway, so I had this feeling of success when I finally got the bike put back together. But it was kind of dark outside and there was rain and some thunder. I looked at the weather report and saw the rest of the afternoon and evening was expected to be more of the same. It took me a few minutes to talk myself into it, but soon I was heading out the door into the rain. I'm so glad I did!

It made me think of the best time I ever had riding in the rain. It was last August and part of an awesome week-long bike tour I did on my own from here in Reading to the Jersey shore and back (around 300 miles total). That day I had badly underestimated how much time it would take me to get me to my final destination for the day (about five miles northwest of downtown New Brunswick, NJ). Around dusk, I hadn't even made it to New Brunswick when powerful gusts of wind and the sight of lightening in the distance ushered in the storm. And this wasn't just any storm. It was probably the worst thunderstorms to hit New Jersey that entire summer; trees and power lines got knocked down throughout the state.

When I finally made it into New Brunswick, it was dark and I found myself in a maze of roads under construction by the Rutgers campus. I was lost and didn't have a good map. All I knew was I needed somehow to follow the right bank of the Raritan river. All I had was my compass and a rough sense of where the river was. There was no one around as the rain started to fall hard and I started to get scared.

Eventually I made my way into downtown New Brunswick and found the road I needed (rt. 527). At first it was a fairly decent city street, but it soon turned into the kind of high speed multi-lane highway (with a minimal shoulder) that it would have been dangerous to ride on during the daytime. And here it was dark amid a pouring thunderstorm! Trucks were passing by splashing up waves of warm water onto me. I could hardly see in front of me.

And then it happened. The fear disappeared. I was bone tired and exhausted, but my legs kept turning without me having to consciously will them on. I realized that I was singing.

I have been a rover
I have walked alone
Hiked a hundred highways
Never found a home
Still in all I'm happy
The reason is, you see
Once in a while along the way
Love's been good to me

It was from this amazing Johnny Cash album -- American V -- that was constantly on my iPod and in my heart and mind that summer. Songs that spoke to me with their voice of a man who knows he is close to death, but has grown to have nothing but acceptance in his heart (acceptance that brings him profound joy even as he stands right before the doorway to the end). . . Songs that were a deep spiritual inspiration to a man who was spending his time working amid so much death and suffering in a hospital. Songs of a man who was prepared to die at that moment and face whatever might lay before. Songs of spiritual joy.

At that moment, in that rain storm, I was prepared to die and face whatever might lay before me. I don't know any state in the world a person can experience that is more spiritually powerful than that . . . that has more God in it than that. And it wasn't prayer that got me there. It wasn't Talmud study or meditation. It was the bicycle . . . and the rain, the beautiful rain.

____________

I haven't been riding as much this summer as last, but I feel I am at a point where I can make a reasonable commitment to myself to ride regularly for the next two months or so. My goal is to ride 150 kilometers a week (93 miles). For those who are serious bicycle riders this probably seems like an absurdly modest goal. But for a man of my (rather large) size and slow average speed, it will take some effort to maintain.

I am on good pace to make it this week, however. I have gotten out every evening. Including today's ride, I have gone 98.6 kilometers so far. I have tomorrow off from work, so, God willing, I will probably have no trouble getting in a 60 kilometer ride. I will probably go on one of my standard rides. Here's a map of it!

____________

The Johnny Cash song I quoted above (Love's been good to me), I have since learned was written by Rod McKuen and first sung by Frank Sinatra! (I've never heard the Sinatra version.)

Coming home

On my way driving home today from the Rabbinical Assembly's annual convention in Boston, I decided to take some time off from the drive to enjoy the spring day. The natural wonder that is the waterfall I captured here with my cameraphone is not in some isolated pastoral place, as you might think. Almost miraculously, its splendor appears out of the dense, urban grime -- and squalor, I am very sorry to say -- of Paterson, NJ.

Here, by these falls, the Passaic River finally ends its long course northward and at last finds a way through the wall that is the Watchtung Mountains to reverse course and head south, first to Newark Bay and finally to the Atlantic Ocean. It is called the Great Falls of the Passaic River. Here are some more pictures I took of it.

The stone of the sheer cliffs by which the river runs here reminds me of the great cliffs of the Palisades. As I was heading down the West Side Highway to the George Washington Bridge, today, I felt blessed that it was sunny and that it was early spring -- late enough in the season that the trees have budded enough that their beautiful green was everywhere in my sight, but still early enough that the trees by the road had not become that denseness of full summer green that would have blocked my view of the Palisades on the other side of the mighty Hudson River. . . . And, when crossing the bridge, I was able to get in the right lane on the upper deck and take in the view to the north as I passed. . . Ah, the mighty Hudson. You can always take my breath away. . . . It's something that people often don't realize about New York City -- that its physical setting (the cliffs, the hills, the islands, the rivers, the marshes, and, most of all, the harbor) is nothing short of spectacular. If a great city had not arisen there, it still would have been a place that people would have been sure to visit.

The miracle of spring

One of the things I love about living on the East Coast is the intensity of seasons here.

Just a few days ago it seemed like all the trees – with the exceptions of the early blooming ones full of flowers – still had the bare look of winter and the skies were gray. But then came some heavy rains and a couple of days with sunshine and all of a sudden the world has changed. Driving down to Philadelphia under sunny skies to the Spirituality in Health Care Education conference this morning, it seemed like all the trees had at least started to bud and the lower lying growth had already become the green of spring and summer.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who set the earth around the sun and tilted it in such a way to give us the miracle of the seasons!

End of fall

Last Friday when I drove from Reading to the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the leaves were spectacular along the PA turnpike. Today, most of the leaves were down as I made the same drive.

Still, it's quite a beautiful day. . . The beauty of winter is right around the corner. :)

My Birthday

יום רביעי י' בחשון תשס"ז

And a beautiful day it is here in Reading, PA. Taking the afternoon off from work. Planning on getting outside and enjoying the fall a bit. . . . . . When I was living in Boston a couple of years ago, REI's fall catalogue came out with this title on its cover:

No crowds, no bugs -- we love Fall!

I couldn't agree more. It's just a great time to be outside. I went for a short bicycle ride late last week -- about 25 kilometers round trip on this road (Rt 625) that follows up Wyomissing creek close to its source about 600 feet above Reading proper. I love climbing up there and then _flying_ back down to get back home.

On the way up, the creek is visible most of the way, running first through woods and then through farms and fields. It was a sunny, crisp day and most of the trees still had leaves, which had taken on their fall colors. . . . People who live on the West Coast miss the beauty of this -- the chance to see a landscape change and morph with the rhythm of the year . . . To see new views start to appear as fall goes on and winter comes with its promises of white and purity and calm. . . It's a priviledge to be able to do the same ride through the same landscape throughout the year . . . And I've come to love the landscape of Berks county -- its mix of woods and fields, its one-step-shy-of-mountainness character. . . Although I must admit that I miss the rides I had in Massachusetts. I also then had a route that ran along a stream for a good part of the way. I can picture the beauty of it running through the pure white on those winter days when I found the strength to go out in the cold.

On my ride last week, I thought some more about an idea I have -- in the cool and cold weather, why not wear a bib to block the wind? . . That way, you can leave your back exposed and sweat could escape easily (if you are, for example, wearing a wool sweater for warmth). But you still get good "wind chill" protection when you are going fast down a hill. . . I think I will try it soon, but I'm not sure what kind of bib to use.

Today, I do not plan a bike ride. But I think I will go up to Hawk Mountain and walk around for a bit.