The plane was lifting into the sky now, and I felt my hands begin to sweat. But my fellow passenger was compelling, and we continued to talk.
It was when I told him about my dad that I suddenly noticed and remarked, “Your eyes are so much like his, it’s strange.” Dark brown slanty eyes with the same twinkle, sadness, and depth.
“What’s your name?” he asked and then told me his, “Matusow. Job Matusow.”
“Matusow?” I repeated. “That was my dad’s mother’s name, Helen Matusow.”
We soon discovered we were cousins, distant cousins who had never met.
Job looked at me with my father’s eyes and said softly, “Your dad is still with you.” And I knew it was true.
Which is why when Aunt Sally calls, sick and grumpy, and it’s snowing outside and I have work to do, I go and see her. How could I not? It’s a mitzvah.
THIS BEING WINTER.
THIS BEING HUMAN.
It’s snowing. Again. I sit upstairs at my desk, staring at my laptop. John emails me a photo he just took from a downstairs window. I instantly delete it. Snow scenes that charmed me a month ago have now lost their charm. Outside, all is white under a gray sky. Inside, I sense a grayness descending. The newspaper says, “Cold and unsettled weather will continue into early next week.”
Right. Cold and unsettled. That’s how I feel.
Where’s the lovely calmness I was enjoying just last week? The hopefulness of new beginnings that came with January and the new year? Why this disharmony, this feeling out of sorts—with myself and with others? And why are moods so inconstant, so shifting, so, well, unsettled?
I pour a cup of Yogi tea and read the message on the tea bag: “An Attitude of Gratitude.” Humph.
Think, Rivvy, I urge myself. Remember the recipes that uplift you, that lead you to a sacred life.
So I stumble through the alleys of my mind and review what I’ve already written. Sometimes I remember whole stories: “For Days When It’s Hard to Feel Grateful.”
Other times it’s enough to recall just a title—“This, Too, Shall Pass”—or an ending quotation: “Come, come, whoever you are . . . Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times . . .”
Ah yes, I say, reassured. This is life, and I’m only human.
And then I remember a saying I know: I forgive myself; I’m only human. I forgive them; they’re only human. I had originally included it in an early draft of this book. But my friend Helen, who was one of my first readers, said, “Being human is no excuse.”
So I took that saying out. And yet, when I’m feeling edgy, guilty, angry, or down, I often find myself repeating those words, and they help me settle into a better place. Being human is not an excuse—it’s just the truth. And when I say these words of forgiveness, I feel a sense of relief and more compassion—for myself and for us all.
But what does it mean to be human, only human? To accept the winter of our soul along with its spring-like moments and ecstatic summer? I think Rumi, the Persian poet and Sufi mystic, answered that well in his poem “This Guest House.”
“This being human is a guesthouse,” Rumi wrote, and every morning, a new guest arrives—“a joy, a depression, a meanness.” Welcome them all, Rumi said, even “a crowd of sorrows,” for each one teaches us, clears our house, and makes us ready for whatever comes next.
Remembering his poem helped me accept this day of darkness. Then I went downstairs, stepped out into a world of whiteness, and saw a single black bird fly across the gray sky, making me smile . . . and yes, feel grateful.
The woman who strikes the gong
For morning meditation—
The woman who sits—
Is the same woman who
Throws rocks at the peacocks
For entering the garden,
Hitting her neighbor’s car instead.
—ELLEN STARK, 2019
A WAY TO DANCE
A funny thing about the spiritual is how often it’s physical. It’s not about leaving your body but being fully in it. Then, with a little help from grace, your energy merges with the energy around you, and you are fully present, fully alive.
For me, this alchemy happens when I deeply engage in the following:
Walking, simply walking, and seeing things I never see from a car.
Free dancing with the music, myself, and the room—and the sky as well, coming in through the window.
Making love, making love, making love!
Circle dancing with the Sufis, swaying, whirling, and chanting, chanting the names of God.
Hiking on trails where I feel myself guided as I look for each marker painted on trees and follow that path through forests and glades until reaching the place where I first began.
Dancing the hora at Jewish weddings, all holding hands in a swirling circle as the klezmer music gets louder and faster and the bride and groom are raised high on chairs.
Bicycling down country roads, passing farms and wild roses, and watching the world go by like a movie.
Doing yoga, especially outdoors, when the birds are singing, a breeze is blowing, and it becomes, more than ever, meditation in motion.
Square dancing so fast I can feel my heart beating, and my cheeks get red and hurt from smiling. Faster and stamping, doing the reel, so everyone dances with everyone else. Bow to your partner, bow to your corner, a way to honor each person you pass.
In each of these, I feel the ecstasy of being. And each of them is a way to dance.
To dance then, is to pray, to meditate,
to enter into communion with the larger dance,
which is the universe.
—JEAN HOUSTON
TIKKUN OLAM
When our country was at war in Vietnam, there was march after march in a movement for peace. Each time, it seemed, more people came marching—parents and children, students and workers, hippies, seniors, and
