Nourishing My Soul

I am at a point in my life where I do very little for me, and that's (mostly) OK. I recognize that this big chunk of my life is devoted almost entirely to raising these three little beings I created and getting ready to launch them into the universe on their own. For the most part I don't resent the fact that I spend the majority of my time parenting, because I know that it's a great and important thing that I'm doing. That being said, I'm only human, and I occasionally feel a void—in between the school volunteering, the carpooling, the laundry, the endless errands, and the work.

The work. I need to point out that I do feel blessed to have a livelihood that gives me such satisfaction. When I'm not actively parenting and am instead actively working, I do feel fulfilled. I know I'm one of the lucky ones—to get paid for what I love to do. However, I have been known to take on too many projects at once, or to take on projects that provide little personal reward, and then I feel stressed out or frustrated rather than contentedly humming along like a little editing motor. Sometimes these things happen to me through no fault of my own—a project I agreed to ends up coming in late and crashes into another project I had also agreed to, or a project is not at all what I was led to believe it was and I must press on until the damn thing is done. So, as much as I love my work, I do at times suffer under the great pressure of deadlines or the tedium of a boring manuscript. But when it's all going well, it can feel a little like "me time."

But as for real "me time," which has nothing to do with earning a living or meeting a deadline or doing things because I'm supposed to ... well, there's not much time for it, and I don't even know what it would consist of. I despise exercise of any kind (I know, I know...), so don't tell me to go for a run. I don't enjoy shopping anymore, I don't know how to garden, and every now and then it's somehow not my turn in any of the 20 or 30 (eek!) online Scrabble or Words With Friends games I'm playing. Yes, of course I read, and I even occasionally make it to my book group; I cook when I can, although lately there haven't been too many big blocks of time I can devote to that either. A few weeks ago I had great plans to take myself to an early movie, but the only day when I didn't need to get Julie at school turned out to be a day when I had a work crisis that needed my attention.

So. Believe it or not, I have joined a Torah study group called "Maintaining Hope." It is held at my temple but is led by a wonderful, dynamic rabbi who doesn't have a congregation—he just roams the earth discussing Torah everywhere he goes. The program consists of fifteen 90-minute meetings that began last week and go through May. The way this came about is kind of interesting. Last spring Pete and I went to one of his Hebrew school classes where they were preparing the kids to think about their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and the little "lesson" they'd be presenting about their Torah portions. As an example, they had all of us think about and discuss the story of Noah and the ark. Lots of questions came up, from the big ones (How did God pick Noah? Was it OK to let everyone else die?) to the small ones (How did they get two of each fish and bird? Why didn't the big animals eat all the small animals?). I mentioned to another mom there (one of my old camp friends) how much I enjoyed both the picking apart of the words (which reminded me of my literary analysis days in college) and the search for connections and deeper meaning in life. She said, "That's what I've been telling you about this group I go to! Join us!" And she was right; she had indeed encouraged me to join a while back, but I didn't think it would be for me. I was wrong.

There are about 20 of us, some who have been studying with this rabbi for decades and some, like me, who are brand new to this little community. I've known two of the women since the early '70s at camp, I've met a few others over the last few years at temple, and the rest are all new to me. Some know so much Hebrew that they can get to the root of every word, and others know very little. Most were brought up Jewish but a few converted as adults. Everyone seems really, really smart.

Right away I learned that "Torah" means "teaching," and that "to teach" means to throw or shoot an object toward a target, so "teaching" is really an idea moving through space and time toward a target—and is thus eternal. Cool, huh?

We've so far met twice, and it is just wonderful. We started off talking about Isaiah 58, and every time I think about the lines "Then shall your light burst through like the dawn/And your healing spring up quickly," I get woozy. After the first meeting, I left with such a welling-up of emotion that I had a good cry when I got home, and then I felt positively buoyant. I can tell that this is going to be something I look forward to with each passing week, on many levels. It feels very much like a good way to start filling in that void.

Comments

[steve]

Yay for you!

[Kelly W]

What a lovely way to do something for you. :)