Coney and back!

Minna loves her work as a congregational rabbi, but it is the nature of her work that sometimes unpredictable and intense experiences interrupt one's normal schedule -- especially one's schedule of "rest and restore' time. That's what it's been like lately with multiple funerals in her congregation. So we both felt that this noninterrupted scheduled day off had to be made to really 'count' as fun and relaxing. Well, I am happy to say that I think we really did succeed in making it count, today. We rode our bicycles from a place we're staying at in Soho to Coney Island and back. Our approximate route of some 32 miles is displayed on the left.

It was a fun time that twice included the thrill of being high above the East River on the Brooklyn Bridge (and the non-thrill of having to dodge throngs of tourists up there) as well as a trip to the Coney Island aquarium.

Here's Minna when we got to Coney Island:

Less is more -- pruning: in life, in gardening and in spiritual care

Up until about an hour ago, this poor guy was a very bushy, healthy-looking plant of basil. But, under the influence of this gardening video, I decided to prune it back almost to nothing -- all in the hope that I could slow down its growth, and thus extend its life.

I've been looking for ways to slow things down in my own life as well. I remember a couple of months ago, sitting on a couch with a fellow doctoral student at NYU and working on a project together. It was the first chance I ever had to really interact with this colleague, and I was surprised to find how

The stalks from the three plants I pruned From Pruning (late June)

much we had in common about how we thought about our lives and our work. For both of us, it is important to do more than one thing at a time. And, as challenging as it might be to try and do something like hold down two full-time pursuits at one time, that it was a kind of challenge that we both very much needed -- the contrast of having "feet in two different worlds" helped us to be more grounded. It helped us to not get caught up by our tendency to become obsessed with one thing, like that "one thing" is everything. It helped us keep our perspective both focused and balanced.

So, I hope not to give up this multi-tasking aspect of my life. But, over the last 12 months or so, it's been more like I had three full-time pursuits than just two and it's been quite a strain at times. Mostly, I feel incredibly proud of myself reflecting back on the last 12 months. I became a certified chaplain education (by being approved as an Associate Supervisor in the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education) -- something that I achieved in about as short a time (less than three years) as is theoretically possible. I started a new path as a researcher of education (as a doctoral student in the Education and Jewish studies program at NYU). I found the time to go to some key conferences and meetings, including the Jerusalem Spiritual Care Conference (that included a historic delegation of American CPE supervisors, seeking to give Israelis guidance on how to set up their own professional spiritual care certification and training) and the National Association of Jewish Chaplains conference in Boston (where I gave a workshop on personal Midrash). I also recently attended both the Network for Research in Jewish Education conference where I presented some of my work to other education professionals, and the Oraita spiritual retreat where I studied ancient Jewish sources relating to spiritual (and self-) care with other rabbis. And I continued to work as a CPE (clinical pastoral education) supervisor amid all this, as well as finding time and energy to keep growing my relationship with Minna and to be her partner while she embarked on her own multi-task of starting work as the spiritual leader of a congregation, while finishing her five-year path towards rabbinic ordination.

But I've, nonetheless, been glad to have the change-of-pace that is my summer work -- where I am focused on mostly one task (running a full-time unit of CPE, with my six students, all either seminarians or people who recently finished their seminary education).

Here are the leaves that I picked from the stalks. From Pruning (late June)

It's a reminder that what I really love most is being a teacher -- the kind of teacher who has the privilege of having intense relationships with his or her students and the privilege of having the opportunity to perhaps have a profound impact on their respective journeys as people, as professional workers in ministry and as spiritual caregivers and leaders. Although I also very much want to be involved in research about education, all of my passion and insight for that research has its roots in my personal experience working with students.

So, for this summer I'm pruning myself back for a bit, trying to slow down some and focus in one area (as well as on things that are just fun and restorative, like gardening). My hope is that this pruning will yield not only immediate benefit (a more-rested, less-stressed Alan), but also will yield a richer harvest when I reenter the researcher/student part of my life when I return to NYU in the fall!

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Getting back to my _real_ garden for a bit (ie, the one with plants and vegetables), I have some things I want to share beyond the pruning (by the way, if you're interested in learning how -- or if -- to prune tomatoes of their so-called "suckers", there's good info and a video here).

First, I was really excited to see our first flower on our eggplant, today, which means that there is some real hope of having our own crop of these most special of vegetables!

From Pruning (late June)

The excitement is because we've sometimes come close to losing hope for this plant. As you can see from the pics below, something is eating its leaves.

From Pruning (late June)

Here are a couple more pics showing the current state of progress:

Looking up at two of our upside-down ones -- a cuke in foreground and a tomato behind From Pruning (late June)

My hope is this one will grow enough that I can "train it" to the lattice of the fence (actually a door) here. From Pruning (late June)

Peppers starting to yield! From Pruning (late June)

And the cucumbers are starting to have their first flowers! From Pruning (late June)

And they are climbing up the strings I gave them to the top of the fence! From Pruning (late June)

Mixing work and play in the (post?)modern world

As I prepare to begin another intense summer of teaching pastoral care in a hospital and Minna prepares to make the transition (ordination at Hebrew College on June 6!) from rabbinical student to full-time rabbi, we decided to take a few days to ourselves during which we got to one of Minna's favorite places near her childhood home -- the Morton Wildlife Refuge near Sag Harbor, NY. But work came with us. That's Minna above answering a synagogue-related email on her iPhone (while maybe-not-so-wild turkeys sneak up behind her!).

The challenge of making time for play while still being available, as professionals, to the people and tasks that require us is one that almost everyone seems to face, today. But it's an especially challenging issue for people who are clergy or in related forms of ministry. People -- especially those facing the crisis that is illness, injury or loss -- expect us to be able to be present for them. As Minna's teacher Art Green said in a recent talk in Rome to Catholic sisters, "this ability to be present can only come out of your own spiritual life. To live a life of giving to others, you need to be nourished by God’s presence in your own life. To hold people, in their pain as well as in their joy, you as a rabbi (or a priest, or a sister) have to manifest your own strength, which is really not your own at all, but God’s, in which you are rooted by your own faith."

That's why coming to a place like Morton is so important when we are able to get away. For Minna, Morton is not just a place to relax. It is a place to rediscover what she already knew but that she might have forgotten among all the work and stresses -- who she really is, what she really cares about. For Morton -- for her -- is a place of spiritual centering. A place that makes meaning for her. A place that has been with her as she has made the many twists and turns that have been the journey of her life and her spirit. . . . The value of this _kind_ of self-care is a big part of what I will be trying to share with my chaplain students this summer -- not just time off, but time that nurtures the soul.

The ocean at Morton:

From Morton and such (publics)

Of course Morton, while a place I am happy to be at, doesn't quite have that meaning for me, having one first discovered it (courtesy of Minna) a couple of years ago. I was reminded of that first visit this time -- when Minna fed chickadees who landed on her hand -- as she invited this one to come land on her hand:

From Morton and such (publics)

It was a good time on a too-short trip. But at least I got to ride a bicycle there (Minna snapped this pic of me in the Morton parking lot on her Dad's bike):

From Morton and such (publics)

The Rabbinical Assembly annual convention was also going on in New York during these days and I got a chance to reconnect with some old rabbinical school colleagues, etc., who were in town for the convention. It was really great to see them and my old dean, Rabbi Brad Artson. This connecting with other rabbis -- people who face similar challenges and joys -- is another important kind of self-care.

For all those who have a long (or even a short!) weekend coming up as Memorial Day approaches, may you find true restoring rest -- rest that makes it possible to do the meaningful work you have out in the world!

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PS Here's another pic of Minna at Morton. I really like this one!

From Morton and such (publics)

Getting back to the Land -- care for the caregivers

That's the Mediterranean sea behind those two bleary-eyed (but happy!) faces above. Minna and I were just an hour off the plane at Ben-Gurion in Tel-Aviv. I'm here for the 6th annual Israel spiritual care conference (it's so great to see professional chaplaincy start to get established here in Israel!). Minna came along as part of a long-term ambition for our lives together -- to make coming to Israel a regular part of what we do and not something that only happens every decade or so. I was so excited over the last week or so, thinking about coming here and often found myself daydreaming about walking along the streets of Jerusalem again and hearing the language of the Hebrew Bible spoken out of the mouths of children as their first language. Coming here is a way of my caring for my own spirit.

I'm looking forward to the conference, too, tomorrow and Wednesday. There's a delegation of Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors from the States here for the conference, so this could really be a watershed event for chaplaincy training in Israel, an educational pursuit that is only in its infancy here.

It's exciting!

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Here's a view, by the way, of the ocean from where we drank some coffee after we dipped our toes in the sea.

From Israel Spring 2010

[x-posted t0 smamitayim]

X-y goes to the Mega

This morning I put the rack on the biike and -- after walking Minna to where she needed to pick up her ride to school -- went to the Mega (a huge discount supermarket about a mile from where we live) to stock up for Shabbat. A dream of mine was to be able to do my grocery shopping by bike in Jerusalem. Above is the bike -- which we call "X-y", by the way -- loaded with the 300 shekel (about $85) of groceries I bought. The panniers are REI 'Round Town panniers (now on sale at a great price there, by the way) with these great reusable shopping bags from reusablebags.com stuffed in them. These reusable bags are the size of an old-fashioned standard paper shopping bag.

When I got back to the apartment (quite sweaty from climbing up the steep hill to get there!) a young neighbor took an interest in my bike.

Here's another pic of the bike loaded.

It was a fun little ride! :) . . . . . Part of what I'm hoping to do, by the way, during my time in Jerusalem is to connect with the simplicity of life that I had when I lived here during my rabbinical school Israel year. . . . . Little things like not owning a car and walking almost everywhere . . . . Shutting off the water in the middle of the shower (in this water-poor country) to soap up and then only turning back on the water when it's time to rinse. . . Going shopping for fresh food -- vegetables! -- almost every day (in contrast to the processed-food and carbohydrate-heavy diet I have back in the States). . . . All those things are good for my soul. . . . . I remember how hard it was for me when I returned to the States after my Israel year and found myself in one of the most ostentatiously consumption-oriented places on the planet. Seeing all those people driving huge Mercedes SUVs and Ferraris and Hummers. . . Well, that was bad for my soul. . . . . Bringing a bike with me here for things like shopping is part of that wish to be good to my soul by living simply while I am here. . . . So, it wasn't just a fun ride, today. It was a soul-nurturing ride.

[X-posted to smamitayim]

Self-care as getting away -- my century, my spirit

With my chaplaincy students this summer, we paid a lot of attention to the issue of self-care. Taking good care of yourself is important for everyone of course, but it's especially important for people in helping professions where our work with people in need pulls on our hearts and souls. Call it burn-out or compassion fatigue or whatever else you like -- the bottom line is that people like clergy are at high risk for it.

My students had a lot of ideas about what self-care meant for them, but the most common theme was some form of "getting away". For one student that was a physical getting away -- she needed to get physically away from the hospital and be somewhere else. For another student, getting away meant nothing physical. Rather, it meant something that took his mind elsewhere, like reading.

During the 11 weeks of our summer program, I was the one trying to teach others about self-care. But when the program came to an end last week, the rubber hit the road, so to speak, for me -- how was I going to "get away" in a way that would be restorative to me after what was a great, but profoundly exhausting -- especially spiritually exhausting -- summer?

People who know me will not be surprised that I chose bicycle riding -- I went on a three-day bike tour this week (that started with a "century", only the second 100-mile bike ride of my life). But that might give you a false impression about how I understand self-care. You might think that means that I think physical exercise is the essence of self-care. Or you might think that I believe (as so many people do in our body-image obsessed society) that the essence of self-care is maintaining excellent physical condition.

But for people in a spiritual profession, maintaining the body is just not enough. Things that nurture the spirit are much more important.

So, for me, one of the most important things that self-care is about is the same thing my students cited -- getting away. I don't just bike ride; I bike tour. That means putting packs on my bike with my clothing and other gear. It means moving, under the power of my own legs, through physical space away from where I started. This gives that sense of physically getting away that was so valuable to my one student.

But bike touring also means the mental getting away that was so important to my other student, and, for me, this is much more important than the physical getting away. When, for the last hour and a half of my century ride, I unexpectedly found myself riding in heavy rain on a two-lane road with no shoulder as darkness started to fall, very quickly the only thing that mattered anymore for me was the task of riding (and doing everything I could to remain visible to the passing cars and to keep out of their path). All the things that had obsessed me in the closing weeks of the program -- all the painful and touching stories my students had brought me about the struggles in their lives and in their work with patients -- passed away. In those moments, I was able to get away in a profound way. That was real self-care for the caregiver.

I had another student who said that the essence of self-care was something a bit different than getting away -- it was to work to maintain a sense of inner peace and balance throughout everything he did. One of the deepest moments of inner peace I had in recent years came on another dangerous, rainy bike ride in the dark a previous summer. On that ride, I broke through the fear and focus I had on this week's ride to a place of freedom and joy. I was at peace with where I was, with who I am and what I was doing. I did not feel any need to question, only to be. That, in particular, is real self-care for the caregiver.

Even though I did not have such a deep moment of inner peace on this bike tour, there were many moments where I did experience profound peace. I felt free, and aimless.

I've written before about how an aimlessness can nurture our spirits and help restore us. What I wrote about is the potential for Torah study -- especially Torah study done for its own sake, or תורה לשמה/Torah Lishma -- to create this restorative aimlessness for us. It can allow us to get away in a profound way and enter the world -- and minds -- of our ancient Sages, people for whom finding the way of a proper service to The Holy Blessed One was their highest value. In this way, our spirits can be restored and we can find our way back to a new purposefulness in our efforts to best serve in the world in which we live.

May it be the will of The Holy Blessed One that you should find your own path to caring for your spirit and your body. And may that restore you in your efforts to find -- and walk -- your true path of service.

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By the way, here is the (approximate) route of my century ride, starting here in Reading and ending up in New Hope via downtown Philly.


View Larger Map

I took two days to get back from New Hope, ovenighting in Kulpsville before taking the final ride back.

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Self-care, of course, does not start at the end of an intense program. One needs to work to care for oneself along the way. For me, one of the biggest challenges in this kind of self-care is to pace myself. My pattern throughout my life is to get very excited at the beginning of a new semester or a new job and to ride that excitement to great accomplishments in the early weeks and months. But, as with all 'highs', that excitement eventually fades and then I find it hard to find the energy to just fulfill my basic obligations.

With my awareness of that pattern in mind, I didn't a better job this time of caring for myself through pacing. In the opening weeks of the program, I intentionally worked less in the evenings and on Sundays compared to my usual pattern. Bicycle riding did play a role in this self-care plan and I was able to get out on the bike for an hour or two most evenings in the first half of the program. As the program went on, however, I did experience something of a collapse. This wasn't as bad as in the past and I was able to do a very good job of having enough energy for my students and for my work throughout the program. Bike, riding, however, did fall off the plate and I did not ride nearly as much in the second half of the program.

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I was struck in the final minutes of my tour about how there was something of what you might call a parallel process between how my ride went and how the summer program went for me: In the first part of the ride, I had lots of energy and excitement for the task of doing a century (162 kilometers) that first day. I was so excited when I made it to the Philadelphia Art Museum at around 1pm (about 95 kilometers in). [The pic to the right, by the way, is of the "Rocky" statue at the Art Museum; there was an international crowd of tourists taking pics of each other there.] But soon I started to tire and the remaining 80 or so kilometers I did that day were largely a struggle, as were many of the kilometers of the two 'return' days. As I was doing the last 10 kilometers or so back to Reading, I noticed that I was passing some milestones -- like the last bridge over the Schuylkill river I would cross -- that should have been making me feel excited. I should have been able to feel a sense of accomplishment building as I passed each of those milestones. I should have been able to slow down and savor it.

Instead, all I cared about was finishing. I just wanted it to be over and to be able to get off that bike and get my sore muscles (and rear end, especially) into a hot bath. That was a little sad.

The summer program ended for me in kind of a similar way. In the last week or so, I had to do two all-nighters to finish all the written work I owed to students and others on-time. So, at the end, instead of being able to savor what a huge accomplishment the summer was to me and share that joy with my students, I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to be able to finally stop working.

But, while I have some sadness about that, mostly how things went represents an accomplishment. I was indeed able to get my work done on time (and I never really faced the crippling dread that I would perhaps not be able to make my deadlines, a dread I well know from the past). And I was able to give my students what they needed from me in those final days; I don't think they were cheated in any way by my need to 'sprint' at the end.

This was my first time supervising a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) unit on my own. My supervisor told me I did an excellent job. I agree with that assessment, something that it is not always so easy for me to say. . . . . My efforts at self-care are a lot of what made it possible. I'm thankful to my students for their work and to my supervisor and my peers for their counsel and guidance. I owe them all a lot.

Torah as self-care

I was reading Pamela Cooper-White's Shared Wisdom: the use of the self in pastoral care and counseling, today, and was reminded of some thoughts I've been having lately about self-care. White (pg. 130) articulates a vision where self-care is not just about the caregiver preserving his or herself from burnout or overwork. For White, self-care is central to the practice of spiritual caregiving itself. And, for her, the most important element of self-care is not the things people usually list -- exercise or working shorter hours, or alike. Rather, she emphasizes paying attention to one's spiritual life and one's relationship to God:

Daily renewing of one's relationship to the Holy One puts one back in touch with the sacred foundation of all healing, all care. This, in turn, prepares us, again and again, for a use of the self in pastoral care that can be a channel of grace for both participants in the caring relationship.

White's approach, of course, has a more Christian focus than mine. She emphasizes the role of grace and the role of personal prayer in the God relationship. For me -- as for many Jews -- Torah, and the study of it, plays the more central role in maintaining that relationship. The lesson is that Torah study -- especially study for its own sake (Torah Lishma ) and the curiosity it cultivates -- is the ultimate Jewish approach to the kind of self-care we are interested in for spiritual caregivers. Its aimlessness renews us. It invigorates us and prepares us for the rigors of facing the pain and loss of others with an open, curious and caring heart.

Other non-Jewish thinkers whose works I have been reading, especially bell hooks and Parker Palmer, also emphasize the importance of self-care for the truly effective teacher or spiritual caregiver -- the kind of teacher/caregiver who can help people engage in the kind of learning that involves personal transformation and growth.

I also found this recently in reviewing Henri Nouwen's The Wounded Healer with my summer chaplain students. Nouwen (pg. 76) talks about a "promise", one that was first given to Abraham and later to Moses. This promise -- not any "self-confidence derived from . . personality, nor on specific expectations for the future," is the true foundation on which the spiritual leader must find his or her strength, Nouwen says. "Without this hope, we will never be able to see value and meaning in the encounter with a decaying human being and become personally concerned. This hope stretches far beyond the limitations of one's own psychological strength, for it is anchored not just in the soul of the individual but in God's self-disclosure in history."

Nouwen goes on to say that the spiritual leader who hopes to find satisfaction in seeing "concrete results" from his or her work is "building a house on sand instead on on solid rock."

If all I could do this summer is leave my students with an understanding of the wisdom of those last words I have quoted from Nouwen then I will have more than done my job. The work of a person in ministry -- whether he or she be a rabbi, like myself, or of some other faith tradition -- only rarely is manifest in concrete results that we will see with our own eyes in our own lifetime. We do not know how -- or when -- we truly touch the hearts and souls of others. Thus, we must have faith. Our faith has to be in our understanding of our task, of what we do, and in the authority of what we do. And we must renew the source of that faith regularly. Torah is our way.

Summer self-care (and Rhode Island)

One of the greatest challenges for me this summer (of an intense 11 weeks of leading a Clinical Pastoral Education unit solo for the first time) will be taking care of myself, what I like to call self-care. My history -- when I have a challenge I am excited about -- is one of working myself into a frenzy and burning out before it's over.

That may happen, again. But I'm going to try and be conscious about maintaining more of a balance this time. Bicycle riding is an important component of self-care for me. We're only in the fourth day of the unit, but so far I've managed to go out for two after-work bike rides, both of about 15 miles. And I'm going to try and go for a longer one Sunday (instead of doing prep work all day!).

More importantly, I think, is that I started out with a bike ride. That is -- on the very wise advice of my supervisor -- I took a week's vacation before the unit started. My girlfriend and I went on a wonderful short bike tour in Rhode Island, starting in Mystic, CT, and going to Block Island and back. It was great!

Here's a map of our route:

View Larger Map

Trauma -- is it catching?

When a study came out recently suggesting that you can 'catch' obesity from your family or friends, it sure got a lot of press. But a tendency to gain weight is not the only non-viral or non-bacterial thing we can pick up from other humans -- we can take on their trauma, too.

Anybody in chaplaincy or the other helping professions knows this. If you talk to someone who has undergone a great physical or emotional trauma you start to feel the weight of it, too. You may even start to develop the same physical symptoms as the person you are caring for. If they can't sleep and wake up in the middle of the night with terrible nightmares, you may start having trouble sleeping at night and might start waking up with terrible nightmares. But how does this process of contagion of trauma actually happen?

That was the question the speaker was pondering at a lecture I went to the other day on vicarious trauma (sometimes called second or secondary trauma). An answer occurred to me that I think might help in understanding this. It occurred to me to think of secondary trauma kind of like the way we think of the fight or flight impulse, something that was very useful to the humans who lived before civilization, but that is now potentially deadly for the modern human who is divorced from the pre-modern context.

Fight or flight refers to the physical changes that a person undergoes when he or she feels under threat. These changes -- including the release of adrenaline, the increase of the heart beat and an inhibition of digestion -- are quite useful if the typical threat one faces is a physical threat: they help one either fight stronger or run away faster.

But for most of us -- for example, those of us who work in a modern office environment -- the threats we face ("am I going to lose my job if my boss doesn't like this report?") are not physical at all. We don't need physical strength or speed to cope with them. But we still suffer from increased heart beat, upset stomachs and sweaty palms. And these can be much more than uncomfortable symptoms -- they can contribute to real medical problems like heart disease.

I postulate that the process of trauma being able to be communicated from one person to another may also have had a pre-modern function that is of little help to the modern person (especially the modern chaplain). Way back when, people lived in small bands. Any trauma that affected one person in the group had the potential to affect all of them. Thus, the transmission of trauma from one person to another helped the group to act as a collective against the threat that caused the trauma. And, therefore, the ability of trauma to be transmitted from one person to another within the group helped the group to thrive and survive.

But that same function is of no benefit to the chaplain of today. We take on bits of trauma from folks who are not part of any group we both belong to. But that received trauma doesn't lead us back towards a change in the behavior of a group that both we and the directly traumatized person belong to.

This all underscores, once again, the importance of self-care for chaplains and others in the helping professions. If we don't figure out ways to take care of ourselves amidst our work, then our work literally can kill us.

What have you done for yourself, today?

Al HaTzadikim (about Art Green)

The great difference between traditional Jewish prayer and prayer as Christians know it is that Jewish prayer is scripted: Instead of composing prayers for ourselves in our own heads, the emphasis is on reciting words written in a prayerbook that was composed hundreds and thousands of years ago. On weekdays, for example, the tradition demands that we say the exact same 19-blessing prayer three times a day.

The words of this central prayer -- called the Amidah -- are not left to us to change. But there is no limit on what we can think or feel when we recite them. And what I love so much about the familiarity of the Amidah is that each of the 19 blessings can all of a sudden become an unexpected opportunity for a sudden, deep outpouring of a certain kind of emotion. It's as if you drive past a beautiful lake every day. Most days you might notice it and its beauty, but seeing that is really no big deal. But every once in a while, for some reason, it strikes you just how truly incredible is the vista of this blue water with the light playing upon it and something incredible rises up in your heart that would never have happened if you did not drive past this lake every day.

Yesterday afternoon it happened on the blessing that we call על הצדיקים/Al HaTzadikim -- "about the righteous". Many times I just run through this blessing quickly, reciting its words without thinking much about them. But when I came across the words "about the righteous", yesterday, an image of Art Green came into my head. It has been, as I wrote recently, a dream of mine for so long to have the privilege of studying at the feet of this גדול הדור/Gadol HaDor ("great one of the generation"). And this week -- amid five days of learning with other rabbis here in the woods of New Hampshire -- I have had that opportunity.

I especially thought of Green when I came across the words על פליטת סופריהם (about the remnant of their scribes), which my prayerbook explains as meaning "about the wise ones who remain in Israel." This concept of a "remnant" runs strong in Judaism. There is a sense that -- amid our long and tortured, often deeply painful history -- so much has been lost. And, that it is our wise ones -- our Sages -- who remain with us that perform a great Holy task by helping preserve that which makes us "us" despite those loses.

Green is definitely one such great Tzadik of this generation, and it was such a pleasure to finally have a chance to hear some of his wisdom. One piece of that is what was chosen as the topic of this retreat: It's been about miracles, miracles and the wonders of that which God creates.

But this has been anything but an abstract discussion. It's been clear from the beginning that we're talking about miracles and wonder because of their potential to help sustain us through the challenges of our work as rabbis, especially the work of accompanying people amid great grief and loss. In other words, we've been talking about how our faith can be an element of self-care that can sustain us and allow us to keep caring for others.

This emphasis on the importance of self-care -- and the pursuit of ways of doing it from within our holy texts and tradition -- is so important, but so often neglected. It's a sign of Green's wisdom that he is willing to put so much energy into this pursuit. And, so I felt such gratitude yesterday afternoon when the image of Green came into my head. What a gift from God to bring such a Tzadik in the world and then to actually arrange things such that I should have the opportunity to learn with him! I hope it is the will of the Blessed Holy One that Green should have yet many years of teaching before him and that many students can bathe in the light that he brings us.

Torah as self-care -- can the miracles sustain us?

We had a great day of learning here at Oraita, yesterday, including an amazing tour of the local woods where our guide Tom Wessels, opened our eyes to a new awareness of the complex web of human and natural systems that had gone into shaping that seemingly simple and ordinary landscape.

The tension between developing awareness and of seeing things as ordinary (ההרגל/hahergel in the language of the Kedushat Levi we reading the day before) has become a central theme of this retreat. Yesterday, we started to talk about how these themes apply in a very real way (I'm intentionally, _not_ using the word, practical, here) to our lives as rabbis. Art Green asked us what it is that sustains us as rabbis in the face of the challenge of working with people amid death and pain and suffering? How are we able to keep ourselves -- and our spirits! -- from being destroyed by all of that?

There is, of course, no one answer to this difficult and challenging question (of self-care). But the most common thing that people said connected directly to the texts about miracles (נסים/nisim) and (פלא/peleh) that we have been reading -- that it is cultivating an awareness of the "miracles that daily attend us" (in the language of the siddur) that sustains us.

For me, another way of saying this might be to think of a river (take a look a the imagery of Ezekiel 47). That is, my religious and spiritual life has cultivated in me a sense of life and the world as one unified thing that is flowing (creating, being created, renewing, dying). And that one thing is so beautiful . . It is so amazing. It fills me with awe, and I know it is the work of the Blessed Holy One.

And, so, when I see a thing floating in this river that is not beautiful to my eyes -- something that might even cause me deep pain to see like the unfathomable suffering of parents who have just lost a child -- I still have the river. I still know that somehow it is part of the river, that it is somehow part of that incredible thing that flows around me. . . . . The irony is that these can be for me the moments of the greatest awe at the greatness of God. I stand there before a person's pain and I say (in my heart, not my head) that I experience a profound acceptance that this, too, is part of God's design of the world. And it is part of the incredibleness that makes up the river.

But, it is certainly not everyday that I can both see the pain of a person (and feel a genuine sense of injustice about that) and the beauty of the river. In fact, most days I cannot. It takes work to be able to do that dance. It takes spiritual work. And that spiritual work is a form of self-care. And it's why I'm here at Oraita -- I'm here to let the waters of Torah, as presented to me by my teachers, wash over me, and (may it be the will of the Blessed Holy One) heal me.

Surely God is in this place, but I did not know it -- seeing the miracles

The most famous case in the Bible of someone realizing the possibility that the Great Holy One can be right before you and still you might not truly see that incredible Holiness is when Jacob awakes from his "Jacob's ladder" dream (Genesis 28:16). But it is not just Jacob who has this kind of experience. All of us face this possibility all the time. We live in a world full of amazing wonders -- the mere fact of the existence life itself is an incredible miracle. And, yet, we can easily go through the normal routine of our days without a single awareness of the "miracles that daily attend us."

Yesterday, the great scholar Art Green shared with us at Oraita a great teaching on miracles from the Hasidic master Kedusaht Levi. Writing about Hanukah, the Kedushat Levi tells us that we need spiritual "exercise" in order to help sensitize us to the נסים שבכל יום -- t the miracles that are in the "every day." Building on the work of the great Medieval Bible and Talmud commentator, the RambaN, the Kedusaht Levi says there are two types of miracles:

• נס נגלה -- Miracles that are revealed. That, is miracles that are obvious because they involve obvious changes in the natural world (eg, the splitting of the Red Sea).
• נס נסתר -- Hidden miracles. Miracles that do not involve any supernatural change in the natural order (eg, the wonder of the leaves -- for no apparent reason -- turning brilliant colors before they fall from the trees or the softening of a heart that was so hard that one could never imagine it ever softening -- a miracle I see often in my work as a hospital chaplain).

This final category, he divides into two types

• A hidden miracle that is purely God's work (here, he cites the miracles of the holiday of Purim).
• A hidden miracle that does have human involvement in its success (here, he cites the miracles of the holiday of Hanukah, where humans made their involvement when the Jews fought their war against their Greek oppressors).

What the Kedushat Levi is suggesting about this hierarchy of miracles is that the the obvious miracles like the splitting of the Red Sea and the hidden miracles that have some human involvement help sensitize us the the kind of miracles that are truly the most amazing of all -- the "little" ones that we can not go even one step in our lives without coming across.

In terms of my own development as a Jewish person developing a practices as a trainer of chaplains and other spiritual caregivers the significance of this is that it helps me develop a Jewish language for things like spiritual training and development. The importance of this should not be minimized. So many Jews -- and this described myself as well not so long ago -- are repelled by spiritual development (or Clinical Pastoral Education) because it feels Christian. Being here at Oraita -- and learning with a great mind like Green -- is helping me find my own Jewish way forward. And it is giving me the tools to share that with my own Jewish students going forward.

Honey, I stretched my bicycle!

Last night I took my new Xtracycle out on the road (and to the supermarket!) for the first time. It was a blast!

The Xtracycle (see photo, below) is a kit that stretches your bicycle frame about 15 inches, making room for super-big bags on the side that allow you to carry much more cargo (eg, groceries) than you could otherwise. Buying one is part of my long-term dream to be kinder to the earth by becoming as car-free as possible.

After I loaded more groceries on it than I've ever put on a bike before, I was amazed last night by how stable the bike felt. It was just like the promotional materials had promised -- the Xtracyle bags allow you to carry your cargo unusually close to the ground. This means a lower center of gravity. The Xtracyle bags also center the weight laterally by keeping the cargo close to the wheels, and this adds further stability.

Something else stretched

But, it hasn't been all peaches and cream. The project of properly installing the kit has really stretched the limits of my bicycle-mechanic expertise (and my set of bicycle tools!). I still haven't managed to connect any of the rear cables, so I have no rear brakes (not as dangerous as most people seem to think; front brakes are more effective than rear brakes if you use proper technique) and only three working gears (on a bike designed for 27!). The lack of proper gearing has contributed to not one, but two chain breaks so far. The completion of this project will have to wait until I am back from Oraita.

I really hope that having this kind of bike available will help me to keep riding reliably throughout the fall and winter. I'm very excited about it! (#*#)

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Relighting the fires -- next week at Oraita

On Sunday I will be making the long drive to Northwood, NH, to take part in an exciting new program from Art Green and the other folks at Boston's Hebrew College, which has made a mark in recent years as one of the most dynamic institutions for educating Jewish leaders.

The program is called Oraita, which is the Aramaic word for Torah. But the word means more for me here: with the flames rising from the Alephs on either side of the logo above -- along with the sound "or" at the beginning of the word Oraita -- I very much think of the Hebrew word or, which means a light or a candle flame. And it is for flame that I am heading out to the New Hampshire woods for a week.

I, and the 15 other rabbis who will be there from across America, are coming in search of the flame that we know is in Torah, the flame that we need to light our heart and our spirits. The flame that is best found from studying together in pairs and in groups in the room we Jews like to call the Beit Midrash, or The House of Inquiry. In that place we can find like-minded souls and minds to inquire after the flame, together.

For us rabbis who are "out in the field" this kind of community can be very difficult to find close to our homes. And that is why a place like Oraita is so important. Our communities count on us -- us rabbis -- to help them light the flames in their own souls and to help them connect with their passion for Judaism and for the Jewish people. But if our own flames are not burning -- if we have not done the "self-care" necessary to keep our own spirit fires alit, we will have nothing to give our communities. And, so we go to places like Oraita not just for ourselves, but for our communities and for the Jewish people as a whole.

But, for me, Oraita is not just any retreat. For me it will be -- God willing -- the culmination of a long-held dream: the dream to study with Arthur Green. I have admired him -- and the great minds he gathers around him -- for many years, but have only had a chance to hear him speak once. Green is one of those rare folks (Dani Matt is another) who are able to bridge the worlds of 1) academic excellence and 2) spiritual inspiration. The project of bridging those worlds is one that is particularly important to me. One way I think of that now is to say that who I really want to be becoming is both a "Talmud Scholar and Spiritual Healer". Put another way, I want to live up to the words that my colleague and dear friend Rabbi Shawn Simon spoke about me when he introduced me at my ordination a little more than three years ago:

[I]n the book of Jeremiah we learn that the voice of the Lord is like a hammer shattering stone. In Talmud Sanhedrin this verse is explicated: Just as the hammer splits rock into many shards so too one biblical verse can project multiple meanings. Take the verse –split it, carve it, shape it – this is the rabbinic enterprise. Bamidbar Rabba idealizes a student who successfully derives 49 meanings from each verse studied. This Midrash concludes that the student himself is a chip off of Mt. Sinai. From this we learn that it is not an object we received but rather a process. In essence, what was received at Sinai was the obligation to constantly study text.

Tonight I am presenting someone who embodies this ideal. My own studies greatly profited from having learned with Alan in hevruta. Our sessions always distinguished themselves by being both intellectually vibrant and passionately religious. His approach posits that text study: is both a critical source of knowledge for personal and communal development and our most reliable interface with God.

Who could ask for more than a Hevruta who envisioned each and every session of our studying as an opportunity to renew the Sinai experience!

It is my prayer that it will be the will of the Blessed Holy One that I should have the privilege of having the flames of Torah kindled brighter in my heart and soul as I learn with my colleagues and blessed teachers at Oraita. And that this learning will move me closer to upholding the promise of the above words about me.

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It is, by the way, an important time for me to focus on the part of me that is about finding inspiration in Torah study. The last month and a half or so has been an intense and exciting time for me in my work (and the intensity of that has been one reason I have not posted here much, the other being that with so many Jewish holidays over the last month there were many less days available to me when I was permitted to write).

The excitement has been about our chaplaincy students here at the hospital. We have four full-time residents who started at the beginning of September and four part-time interns who we started orienting in the middle of September. My passion for the work of spiritual care -- and for assisting others in taking this work upon themselves and building their skills at it -- has been alit by my interactions with these students, and that flame has been burning bright, oh so bright, for me over the recent weeks and days. It's been a great time, but caring for myself and my ministry means maintaining a balance. And so I'm off to the woods of New Hampshire! :)

Refilling the tank -- the loneliness of the caregiver

I was sitting on the floor in a circle in a yurt this morning with a bunch of other Jews interested in spiritual direction when one person asked the teacher if it could be lonely being a spiritual director (a person who helps guide people on their spiritual journeys).

The question sat with me all day. Loneliness can be a very serious issue for people who make their living -- as I do -- by caring for people in crisis or who spend their days immersing themselves in other people's spiritual issues and concerns. Back in the spring I was working our hospital's cancer units. I was talking with dying people and their families every day, trying my best to offer them comfort by lending a compassionate, non-judgmental ear to hear their fears and concerns.

When the day was over, I was full of all the energy from those encounters and really needed somebody to talk to about it. But I quickly learned what it mistake it was to try to talk to my girlfriend about it. The overwhelming nature of these experiences threatened to crowd out everything else -- including the best stuff -- in that relationship. And so I was left in this strange lonely place where I couldn't connect with the person closest to me about the things that were foremost on my mind. This is the loneliness of the caregiver. And it's why we spiritual caregivers need to do self-care.

In chaplaincy, we talk a lot about "self-care". But, I think people get confused about what that really is for us spiritual caregivers -- sometimes we talk about it as if all it was about was making sure to take time "off" and not working all the time. But no amount of time off alone will renew you in the way you really need to be renewed if you are going to be able to keep doing the work and keep your heart open to people. Self-care also has to mean at least two other things.

First, it means allowing yourself to be cared for -- to be cared for in the same way you offer care to patients and clients. Your friends and family -- as I suggested above -- can't do this for you. You need other spiritual caregivers -- whether it be peers, a psychotherapist or a chaplaincy supervisor -- to be there for you and to hold you (figuratively, usually) in the way you need you, and your experiences and grief from your work, to be held.

And second it means "refilling the spiritual tank". That's what I'm trying to do this week. I'm at a great place -- the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center -- for the week. I'm here for a lot of reasons. Some of it is indeed time to relax. But mostly it's about Torah. It's about studying Torah in community and, through that, reminding myself of all the different ways to connect with God. To remind myself of everything that God means to me. To remind myself of what it is that called me to service -- to become a rabbi and a chaplain -- in the first place. To remind myself of what means to feel God wash over me. To remind myself what it really is I have to offer people who are suffering and hurting.

I'm taking a great class with Daniel Matt -- one of the world's greatest scholars of Jewish mysticism, and the Zohar in particular -- and his wife Hana. Today, Hana led us in a powerful chant of the second half of the sixth verse of psalm 30:

בָּעֶרֶב, יָלִין בֶּכִי;
In the evening, I go to sleep crying.
וְלַבֹּקֶר רִנָּה
But in the morning, I arise singing in joy.

I went for a bike ride after the class and as I was plunging down this one long hill -- feeling the exhilaration from the air rushing by my flesh and the pull created by the gravity of God's earth on my body -- I suddenly realized that I was singing these words to myself over and over again. It's the brilliance of Judaism in the face of life's hurts and wounds. We can't avoid the hurts that inevitably come as long as we walk this green earth. But hope does not die in us. We remain ready to accept that morning of רינה, of joy. What a comfort knowing that the psalms' author -- thousands of years ago! -- felt the same things we do. Suffered the same things we do. And overcame them in a way we still can.

I have so much more I want to write about from this week. So much great learning. So much Torah. Most of that writing will have to wait.

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One of the main things I am here for is the Jewish spiritual direction class I opened this blog entry with. It is part of the Lev Shomea program led by Rabbi Howard Avruhm Addison and Dr. Barbara Eve Breitman, DMin. It's been a great introduction. I'm considering seeking spiritual direction training as something to augment my pursuit of becoming a certified Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) supervisor. I hope to write more about that soon.

This week in Boston!

This evening I will be heading off to Boston for the Rabbinical Assembly's annual convention.

It will be a great chance to reconnect with some old friends and colleagues, and an opportunity for some great learning. I am especially looking forward to hearing Jonathan Sarna, and hearing some of the sessions on Rabbinic Self-Care.

As I continue with my chaplaincy training, I am building skills and experience to help rabbis in this very important area of making sure to take care of yourself at the same time you are taking care of others (a very challenging thing to do as anybody in a caring profession well knows). I am looking forward to hearing more about what people are currently doing in this field.

Spiritual teaching (and self-care)

Over the first two days of Passover -- the Jewish people's great celebration of journeys into freedom -- I spent some time reading Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom by the African-American feminist author bell hooks.

Her words reminded me some of what I had written just before the holiday -- about self-care and about the work of another person who takes a spiritual approach to teaching (Parker Palmer and his work using clearness committees.

What I really loved about what she (and Palmer) say is their contention that you really can't be an exciting and compelling teacher if you don't take care of yourself and your own spirit. Hooks also contends -- as I do! -- that ideology is never enough if it does not lead to action.

Two authors she takes great inspiration from are the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. These are two authors I am really not that familiar with yet, but reading what they have meant to Hooks, makes me more curious about them:

In his work Thich Nhat Hanh always speaks of the teacher as healer. [But w]hereas Freire was primarily concerned with the mind, Thich Nhat Hanh offered a way of thinking about wholeness, a union of mind, body and spirit. His focus on a holistic approach to learning and spiritual practice enabled me to overcome years of socialization that had taught me to believe a classroom was diminished if students and professors regarded one another as "whole" human beings, striving not just for knowledge in books, but knowledge about how to live in the world. (Hooks, 14; emph. mine)

Hooks argues for teachers to be concerned with their spiritual and emotional health, something she seems to sum up as a process of "self-actualization". She recounts how painful it was for her to have professors who were scornful of her efforts to unite her mind, body and spirit in her academic work and says,

Memory of that pain returns when I listen to students express the concern that they will not succeed in academic professions if they want to be well, if they eschew dysfunctional behavior or participation in coercive hierarchies. These students are often fearful, as I was, that there are no spaces in the academy where the will to be self-actualized can be affirmed. (Hooks, 18)

I'm not sure Hooks really has a really well-developed view of what she means by self-actualization, but I like the direction she seems to be heading in.

It was a joy to be able to spend part of this holiday of freedom with the words of an author who is striving to find ways to make a learning environment a place where people can free themselves from the things that are enslaving them or holding them back. And I look forward to reading more about spiritual approaches to learning and teaching -- especially those of Palmer -- over the rest of the holiday. I hope any of you reading this are finding your own paths to freedom.

Next year in Jerusalem!!!!

What is self-care?

I think people often get confused about what self-care is for a chaplain (or rabbi, or social worker, or other helping professional). I remember hearing a fellow chaplain say, recently,

I'm great at self-care. I have a great life [outside of work]. I love my family. I have a great time when I'm not working.

Making sure that you have a personal life outside of work surely is one part of caring for one's self. But it is only one part and may not be the most important part. True self care is not just about looking away from the work; it's also about engaging the work directly, or, at least, about engaging the world in which your work takes place directly.

It's all about passion. Most of us in these kind of professions are in it because we are deeply passionate about the work. We consider ourselves to be called to it. We believe we are doing something incredibly Holy. That's what keeps us going.

But the irony is that the work also drains us, and, if we don't take care to make sure that it remains meaningful to us, we lose our passion. We become empty inside. We need to be refueled.

The most important way to refuel is to allow ourselves to be cared for. When we witness a suffering so powerful that it shakes us to the core -- if, for example, we sit calmly and lovingly with a mother screaming at the sudden loss of her child -- we need to have someone who will allow us to cry in front of them about it when we are done. We need to be reminded that what makes our work truly Holy is that it is about creating a community of caring people -- people who care for us and whom we care for.

But, we can't take these kind of wounds home to our families. If we did, we would destroy the relationships we have there; for our loved ones, we would just be the person who brings tales of hurt and suffering into the home -- a place that is supposed to be a refuge and a place of light, not death. That is why self-care of this type davka has to happen in the workplace, or at least with colleagues. This is what self-care is about -- about finding peers who will care for us, and help us recharge.

For the congregational rabbi, it's a bit different perhaps. It's not necessarily the capacity to care that is drained, as it might be the capacity to teach Torah and to communicate a love of Torah. You surely can't effectively share a love of Torah if you do not feel such a deep love yourself.

Thus, the core of a rabbi's self-care might be allowing oneself to experience love of Torah and finding people with whom to share that love -- as peers, not students! -- and the process of study.

I saw this expressed recently in one of the flyers for the Rabbinical Assembly convention I will be attending in May. In promoting one session, it said, all self-care starts with Torah study.

This is what Torah Lishma -- Torah study for its own sake -- really means. It is a spiritual practice that refuels us davka because it has no purpose other than its self. It is self-care.

As I look forward to the holiday of our liberation that is so close now, I think of how I need to free myself more in the coming months. One of my hopes is to add more self-care -- in the form of Torah study -- to my life. I need it. I hope to use this blog more in the coming months to share it.

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