I have "unpublished" almost the entire blog again. I didn't delete stuff, I just unpublished it to avoid the awkward experience I had last time an employer went scrumming around the internet looking for me. My name does not appear on my own blog, which makes it a little more under-the-radar, but it does show up elsewhere on the BigWhoop, and if someone was really persistent, they could get from one place to another and find the Bigwhoopdido and all my blather about alternative living. And since I have just applied for a couple kind of high-paying, potentially high-profile jobs, I expect that the standard reference-and-criminal-background check could be expanded to googling. I would never hire ANYONE today without googling them.
Anyway, nobody 'round here would be looking in the archives anyway, so no worries. But that's where they went.
(Sorry, can't get rid of the wierd coding conversion.)
An old Jewish man is riding the train in Manhattan one morning and sees a young Jew standing near him listening to his ipod. His eyes are closed and he's mouthing words just slightly. After a while the younger man opens his eyes and the older man asks him what he’s singing along with. "Actually, I’m not singing, I was davening shacharis (the morning prayer service). I got nine of my friends together and we recorded ourselves doing the service, so now I can always have a minyan of voices with me wherever I go."
A minyan is the mandatory minimum of 10 required to recite certain services of the Jewish liturgy. If you can’t get 10 people together to pray, you can’t say those prayers. The clever young man seemed to feel he had used his modern technology to overcome obstacles of modern living that make it increasingly difficult to gather a minyan for daily prayers, e.g. differing work schedules, trouble stopping at the synagogue before the morning commute, etc. He believed his recorded service provided the perfect take-along solution, the portable devotional.
I suppose in some ways it’s better than giving up on prayer altogether, but he kinda missed the point. Judaism emphasizes the significance of communal prayer out of a recognition of the interconnectedness of the people, and the importance of preserving it. We are commanded to say certain prayers at certain times, but forbidden to do so in isolation, and in this way, HaShem compels us to remain part of our community. It’s actually a lot easier to pray alone. We can achieve better concentration and move through prayers at our own pace, including any additional petitions or devotions we wish.
But HaShem's requirement of a minyan reminds us that the connection to Him is achieved, in part, through our connection to other people. The sages tell us that whenever 10 pray together in shul the Shechinah is present. (Interesting, that, because the Shechinah, or Divine indwelling, is regarded as the female aspect of God, but women, of course, were not to be counted in a minyan. You could have 100 chicks, but if there were only nine men, you couldn’t do the prayers. Go figure.)
We cannot flourish as Jews in isolation. For Rosh Hashanah, I always get ahead of myself and start thinking about the confessional of Yom Kippur, ten days away. Most of the confessional liturgy is written in the first person, plural. "For the sin WE have sinned against you, forgive us, pardon us…" There's a collective notion of responsibility that makes all sins easier to bear.
Similarly, all hopes are bolstered by the similar hopes of others. In the most logical way, hope precedes intention. It must. And action without intention can’t really amount to much, which is why, I suppose, depressed people become more and more ineffective until they give up doing anything. They're hopeless. I've never been a big fan of hope. It always seems kind of pollyannish to me, but when viewed in this light, it makes much better sense.
So we get a fresh start at Rosh Hashana. We seek to be better people, and if our actions are infused with spiritual intention, with kavanah, we stand a much better chance of delivering on our own hopes and intentions.
That’s my sermon to myself. Get off the computer. Go to shul. Be with your people. Pray in community with other Jews, and quit stalking Jesus.
Happy New Year.
I'm pretty sure I have mentioned this before, that back in 1987, I signed up with one of these surrogacy agencies that are basically matchmaking services between infertile couples where the male is not the biological problem, and women who will carry a baby for them, either with or without contributing her genetic material. In my case, I did.
So it worked out pretty great, with the woman and I becoming pretty good pals during the course of the pregnancy, and then weaning away over the years that followed. I saw him a couple times when he was little, and then again year before last when he was in Orlando for a lacrosse tourney. But I don't stay in regular contact, you know, as he's a kind of shy adolescent male and she's a nice woman, but not someone I would normally hang out with. The dad was always kind of a non-entity in the relationship all along. He is a football dad kind of guy, and the boy grew up into a hocky and lacrosse kind of kid, and now, well...
My son Alex found him on Myspace the other day and sent me a link. That puts me in the wierd position of having a peek into the somewhat personal life of my progeny. He apparently smokes a bit of bud and parties and who knows what all else. He's always been a very good student, but that sort of thing can get in the way of collegiate aspirations, you know. I just don't know what to think about any of this.
Also, my son Alex has become a union machinist while taking a "semester off" from college. Yeah, like I believe that. Nobody who takes a semester off and starts making union wages goes back to starving student status. Which leads me to wonder...
Drugs=bad for college
Union job=bad for college
Union jobs are as bad as drugs???
My GOD, the GOP was right all along!!
Larry lost in the primary. I'm friggin' shellshocked. We lost. In the PRIMARY.
The dude walks on water and I ran the best campaign of my LIFE. And we lost. In the PRIMARY.
The conventional wisdom is that if you come close, you have to go through that post-mortem hell of shouldawouldacoulda. But if you bust your ass and you still end up with that much of a gap, the conventional wisdom is that the voters just didn't want you.
They didn't want him. The voters are fucking idiots, okay? He's a saint. And smart.
And now I have to go back to whoring out PR and marketing services to any and all, or I have to get a real job.
Thanks to those who touched base to make sure I had not fallen off the planet.
I had, but I have re-entered.
I think I will be celebrating my two-year Bigwhoop anniversary.
I have lost about another 15 pounds, so I will also be eating again. Food is good. Sleep is good. We are worthy, we are worthy. Amen.
Also, I prayed to Jesus. Right to him. He was kind of tickled, but again, referred me to the appropriate department.