Every religion has holidays (holy days) that contain prescribed rituals, prayers and texts, but there are also holidays that have more secular roots and come unadorned with any ground rules. Such is the case with Thanksgiving and New Year’s. I was thinking about this last night, New Year’s Eve, as we enacted rituals that are deeply rooted in our family history. They may bear some resemblance to...
On one of the last days of Chanukah, I was the beneficiary of my own small miracle. I had just finished up the piece I was planning to post on my blog this week when I heard from my long-time friend and thought partner Kimberly Folkening. If you’re one of the rare regular readers of my postings, Kimberly’s name may be familiar to you because I’ve written at length about our work together which...
Light(s) Light is on my mind today. It’s overdetermined. The sky is grey, reminding me of a comment my Michigan alum daughter made after she had served her time. Although she loves her alma mater, she had the impression that in four Ann Arbor winters the sun was present for a total of eight days. That takes a toll on the psyche. And here I’ve stumbled into the other factor in that...
The Messiah in a vial is coming. Not only does it promise to restore your lives to their past grandeur, but it contains an additional positive unintended consequence: lifting from your shoulders the daily burden of guilt over all the projects planned for these months of lockdown that were never completed – never even begun. The closets to be re-organized. The basement or storage locker to be...
Recently, when my wife was moving a pile of unread books – of which there is no shortage in our house – she brought me one that seemed out of place. Indeed it was. It was a Young Adult novel by Renee Watson called Some Places More Than Others. I have no recollection of how I came by this book. It would not have attracted much attention during my years as a YA reviewer which I’ve mentioned...