calamity's child

tomorrow, school starts. well, sort of. it’s the first of two days of orientation and school doesn’t start for another couple weeks. which is great, because i need those couple of weeks to get settled back into my job and to work out financial aid. hunter is remarkably disorganized in its aid process. i’ve been on vacation since 12/23 and i have done very little of what i had set out to do. what i have done, though, is totally relaxed and had a real vacation in san francisco and spent some good and significant time figuring out Next Steps In My Life (leading up to a hopeful westward move, eventually. have you heard? they don’t really have winter there!).

but now i’m here, after years of plannning, i’m at this moment of just being on the edge of starting school again. i have gone back and forth so many times, and even over this break, even a week ago, was questioning, is this really what i’m doing right now? is this really the right choice for me? and really, it’ s the only choice. it’s the only thing that i can do at this moment that will give me forward direction, and that is what i need. i need to know that i’m building towards something that will let me not be a case manager for the rest of time. because, while it’s incredibly important work, it drains everything out of me: all of my energy, compassion, drive, it’s gone by the end of the day, the week, the month, the year. i need to have something that is more stimulating and puts me less in contact with the catastrophe and trauma of the day-to-day and more in contact with ongoing processes and growth. and social work school can totally help me get there. but i am so worried about being in school again. about how it will feel, about if i’ll make friends, about if it will pound me into being a middle class liberal (i know, it won’t make me into that. but i’m afraid that it will gloss all my rough edges away, and it is definitely the newest step on my slow class ascension). all i can do, though, is be in it, go through it, learn what it has to offer and try my damndest to be myself through it all.

it is also going to be for real, the first day of Being A Girl. my gender is pretty complicated, and i’ve definitely edged back towards being read as a girl most of the time. i know, and i’ve decided to let this happen, that people are going to read me as That Big Dyke at school. i’ve been that person before, and i know how to do it. but it’s weird, because i am trans. not a boy, but trans. and in all this planning for school, i’ve let myself just pretend that it’s not that big a deal, that it’s not really coming, that somehow, it’ll just keep on not being a big deal. but i’m going to get to school and they’re going to call me she/her (at work and with friends i use they/them), and it’s going to be the first day of that happening in a consistent and unquestioned way. and i’m going to let it happen, because, for my professional life, that’s how it’s going to be. and it’s weird, and it’s one more on-the-brink feeling.

this week is parshat bo. god wins out finally over pharaoh in the magicians war that is the plagues, we are given instruction for the observance of pesach, and pharaoh demands that moses and aaron leave egypt and take with them all of israel. they do, and they take with them a “mixed multitude” – we can assume that includes lower-classes of egyptian society that also suffered harshly under pharaoh’s rule – and start what will become around 40 years of wandering through the desert towards the promised land. the whole parsha is the on-the-brink feeling. israel is waiting, in mitzrayim, as god and moses duke it out with the pharaoh. finally, they’re ostensibly given their freedom, only to be chased into the sea of reeds and then wander in the desert. moses doesn’t even make it to the promised land. they are waiting, building towards, but also waiting, for their freedom to be actualized, to see what all this hard work and fighting is going to get them. it’s a good parsha for this time of year, filled with latency and struggle. will we get through this snow and cold? will we make it through the current utter absurdity that has become american politics into something that is just and reasonable? is there any way the few resources we have will cover everyone? and then, for me, more personally, will this step of going to social work school really work out in the end? is it the right decision to default to being a “girl” professionally and at school? are my decisions as strategic as i think they are? will the confines that i’m putting on myself right now lead to space and openness and the kind of life that i want in the future?

i don’t know any more than moses, aaron, miriam, and the rest of israel did the day they were pushed out of israel. all you can do at the end of the day, i guess, is sit there on the brink and take steps out, off, into, to see how things hold up. that’s what nachshon did, and it turned out allright then, didn’t it?

in keeping with the overall liturgical intent of these days, ideas relating to return keep coming into focus in my life. even in new activities, this is the case. for example, today i had my first rehearsal for a play i will be in in november, which is about training as a classical musician and the particular kind of tension that is produced in classically trained musicians between doing what we are taught and doing what we feel. i cannot count the number of times this lesson has popped up in my life. here are some things that have either returned to me or that i am returning to:

• desire to be making classical music

• yoga
• serious contemplation of becoming an academic in religious studies or philosophy
• vegetarianism
• biking
• reading
• spending quality time with friends
• laughing and joking around
• eating well, by which i mean, healthy rounded meals and not whatever schmutz i can put in my mouth

… to name a few.

there are also other things, that are kind of returns, but in the way that, in a spiral staircase, you return to the same place, but it’s up or down in latitude, so it’s not the same place at all. i have started reading weekly parshas, which is like when i was reading the lectionary texts when i was a young christian, but different because the cycle and intention and molding of the process is completely different. i am in my friend’s play/puppet show about the relationship between a classically trained violinist and her teacher, and the subject material is so familiar – classical training, ghosts, breaking through into a creative process that one can claim as one’s own. i am in the midst of a formal conversion process that is not at all like when i was in formal ordination process, but the approach to education is the same, and it is leaving me reconsidering what kinds of possibilities exist for me in congregational or religious leadership. i have cycled around and around and it’s left me in some cases, in the same place on the same plane, and in many other cases, it’s left me in a parallel place, on a much more comfortable plane.

when jonah gets spat out by the giant fish that swallowed him, after he’s gone to ninevah, he sits himself down indignantly and waits for the mortal peril he warned the people of ninevah of to happen. when it doesn’t, he gets frustrated with god, who finally says to him, don’t you get sad about the plant i just caused to die? don’t you expect i would get sad about the deaths of all these people? jonah has spiraled around so much, running from god, hiding, getting flung to the see, finally getting to ninevah, anticipating the city’s demise, only to find that he is still there, alone, with god, while ninevah is still keeping on keeping on; he feels frustrated and desolate and angry that his struggles have been for nothing, when god reminds him: this is exactly where you need to be, here, with me, with my people. jonah’s come around, many revolutions in the cycle, and so in being there with god and with gods people, jonah is both the same as he ever was, and also a different person completely. this is the point of teshuva and repentence, of returning. even god in jonah repents, returns to god’s self and to working for life and away from god’s plans of destruction. if we cycle and return, how much more so does god?

i am eager for the newness, and thankful for the familiar, eager to move forward in this new year.

today is the birthday of the world. it’s been quite a year that has brought me to this place today, and i must say that i’m more than a little trepidatious about starting a new go around right now. the last few weeks have left me feeling sad, isolated, and scared, and given the past year which has starkly alternated between being totally alone and being surrounded by love, i’m unsure how to feel about anything. i don’t know what to think about what this year may bring, who it may bring in or take out, and how things will shake out in the end. i do know that more than any other time in my life, i’m starting a new year feeling ungrounded and unprepared, scared, even, and unclear about how to gain my footing.

Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test. He said to him, “Abraham,” and he answered, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” So early next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and he set out for the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his servants, “You stay here with the ass. The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we will return to you.” . . .
They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”¹

There are two images that stick out at me from these readings. The first is Isaac and what he must have been doing and thinking while all this was happening. In the drash at shul today, the reader had Isaac willingly complicit in his own coming death, the model sacrifice all the way. This, I cannot stomach. It mirrors too much narratives about survivors being complicit in their own abuse, lauding them for their strength at enduring these episodes, not once suggesting that strength is also found in objecting, leaving, resisting. In families, this is just how things go, after all.

I can only imagine Isaac screaming as Abraham wrestles him down enough to tie him up. Did Abraham hurt Isaac to be able to bind him? Did he gag him? Did he hit him? It is impossible to think of this moment on this mountain in any kind of ritually pure way if you must also recognize that in addition to the murder to take place, Abraham had to hurt Isaac to even get him onto that stone. The violence to Isaac is much more complete than the aborted sacrifice/murder. Isaac was lying there, bound, when he saw the glint of Abraham’s knife above him. The father who, as far as we know, was eager to have Isaac in his life, has turned against him to be able to fulfill the desire of a God he wanted to be in good with. But this very request from God goes against everything Abraham knows about him. What did Abraham’s eyes look like to Isaac next to the glint of that knife? That’s the image I can’t get out of my head.

The other image is of Abraham in this conversation with God. What must he be thinking? I can only see him sheepishly standing there, wanting to make sure God liked him, like we stand before teachers we admire or peers we want to befriend us. Some part of us, deep in there, is thinking “I will do whatever you ask if only you . . . ” Most of us, though, we know that there are limits. We will not violate our selves, family, friends, commitments, morals, for the chance at affections from an admired one. There are prices that are too high. I am constantly wondering what happened to Abraham in this moment. Where did his scruples go? What values and parts of himself did he abandon in order to grant God this request? I can’t imagine that this was what God was after. It says in the text, yes, that Abraham’s “faithfulness” was what proved to God that Abraham fears God. The story itself is situated awkwardly: Sarah inexplicably becomes pregnant and gives birth to Isaac, then in a fit of jealous rage expells her slave, Hagar, and her son, Isaacs half-brother, Ishmael; Abraham and Abimelech have a business deal, and next thing we know, Abraham is moving up the mountain with Isaac towards sacrifice. Why has not Abraham fought with God about this? Why has he not protested? Why has he not tried to alter the course of this particular moment in his life? The very existence of this son is improbable already. I cannot think that it is God’s plan that Abraham actually follows through on this plan, for many reasons, not the least of which it is not unfathomable that God’s chosen leaders fight back against God all the time. I can’t imagine that the outcome of the event would have been that different if Abraham had stood up to God in this moment to say, “I cannot do that, God, I cannot do what you ask me, my son is precious and I love you and I love him, and to both of you I say, I choose life. My own life, and that of my son’s.”

That he didn’t makes me wonder about Abraham. We know clearly that he fears God, but we do not know too much about what he reveres about God, or what he is prepared to do about it. What is Abraham prepared to do to say yes to life in the sight of his God? That is what I wonder about today.

As we stand in the beginning days of this new year, I suppose that is the question to ponder. What am I prepared to do to say yes to life in the sight of my own self and God? What am I doing to celebrate the world I live in on its birthday, and how am I aiding in the production of the world to come? Another yearly cycle begun. L’shana tova.

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¹From Day 2 Rosh HaShana Readings: Genesis 22:1-23. Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society.

y’all should definetly keep your eye on salty femme, a blog produced by some of my favorites, not the least of whom being and she took a bite, who offers up some reflections on torah portions. the first/most recent one is about the strange fire and how we name guilt, sin, innocence, and separation from the divine. it’s aces.