Not Jewish yet, but I'm practicing

A Facebook friend of mine, a Unitarian Universalist minister at that, posted something a day ago asking people about intentional spiritual practices and how we are changed by them.

This friend knew me back when I was a Seminary student, a fellow UU for part of that time and a Unitarian Considering Christ* for another part, and if he had asked me back then, at a time when I was devoting my career life to spirituality, about my intentional spiritual practice…well, he would have gotten little more than a blank stare for his effort. 

Me, set aside particular times in advance to…do what, exactly? Pray? Meditate? Play with rosary beads? The idea seemed not only impractical but laughable.

And yet, at the same time, if you had asked me to describe myself spiritually back then? Words like adrift, unrooted, and unsettled come to mind. I was fraying at the edges with no center to hold. 

Fast forward the better part of a decade and I have left the D-I-Y religious paths of my young adulthood for a religion chock full of rules and prescribed practices. Okay, for progressive Jews the rules act more like guidelines, but the guidelines are certainly still there and quite a few of the. have the force of multiple millennia of collective experience to recommend them. 

But I'm dodging the subject. What are the intentionalspiritual  practices that I have come to in this past year or so of experimenting with Judaic traditions? 

I can actually now list off at least five, and they are...

1. Morning thankfulness. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: prior to learning the modeh ani prayer, it had never occurred to me in my adult life to be thankful for mornings. Now, every morning before I swing my feet out of bed, I thank God** for returning my soul** from dreamland and giving me the chance to greet another day. How has this practice changed me? When it works properly, it changes my whole outlook on the morning, on the coming day, perhaps even on life itself. Life is not one more thing we have to do, it is one more opportunity to do all we can. Slowly, I am trying to add a few other traditional morning thankfulness prayers: for the coming of a new morning itself, for the soul God has given me, and for the wondrous workings of the body that soul inhabits. Each thing opens my eyes a bit more to what a miracle it is simply to have a chance to inhabit this world, and to start again at it each morning. 

2. Seeking beauty. Jews are encouraged to bless God ("blessed are you, Adonai our God, for…") a hundred times a day. One of the things we are supposed to seek out to bless God for is beauty in the world. This is a tall order for those of us living in Houston, but I have started a practice of trying to seek out beautiful moments, or moments that make the ordinary look beautiful, each day. I'll be posting one such photo each Monday on Facebook. How has this changed me? It has made me realize that the world we inhabit is not segregated into good places and bad places, but rather into moments when we find it easy to see the good around us and moments when we just don't, and it has made me look for the good more actively than I used to. 

3. Daily reading and meditation. Every work day, at the time of day when I used to just frenetically work through my lunch period, I now take about 15 minutes to read something of a spiritual-religious or otherwise thought-inspiring nature and then a similar time to walk around campus pondering what I've read and how it fits in my life. This is the first meditation of any sort that has really worked for me. I've tried more traditional sitting or mindfulness walking and neither worked all that well for me: I suppose I'm just too monkey-minded for either one to "take". But having something in my mind worth mulling over? For a brief time, that something can crowd out those monkey-mind concerns-of-the-day or the week or the however-long. How has this practice changed me? It has put a big moment of calm and centered-ness and focus-on-what's-important in the middle of my otherwise moment-to-moment teaching day. It has made it, oddly enough, easier to get down to work the rest of the day, and easier to leave work behind when it's time to do that. It has reminded me that I am in control of my work day to some extent – at least to the point that I can put some of its time aside for myself and then put my full self into the time I have left – instead of my work day being in control of me. It's like a little Shabbat in the middle of my day. 

4. Mealtime thankfulness. Growing up, I was taught to pray at meals like this: "God, bless this food for me." It was all about me. As a Jew-to-be, I have learned to pray like this instead: "Blessed are *you* our God, for making all of this wonderful food!" As a way to expand this thankfulness, Jews are encouraged to bless God separately for foods we are about to eat that fall into separate categories: breads (separated out because of the manna-in-the-wilderness thing), other grain products, fruits of the land (veggies and ground fruits like berries), fruits of the tree, fruits of the vine (wine or grape juice is a big deal in Judaism, because it represents joy, which is something Jews are all about), and shehakol: everything else. How has this practice changed me? It reminds me each time I eat quite how much of the earth, of its life and it's people, has to contribute to feeding me and my family. Trees, vines, grains, plants, animals: a whole world of agriculture we depend on. It makes me feel thankful, but also responsible. My family doesn't generally eat mammals (there are too many issues with mammal agriculture, and it works out well as we try to start eating kosher anyway!), but we try to obtain milk from well-treated cows, eggs from well-treated hens, and fruits and veggies from well-treated land. Some Jews call this another intentional practice: "ethical Kashrut". I call it a way to make my thankfulness for food real. 

5. Bedtime shema. Finally, as the time for another sleep approaches, we sing (Jews sing a lot of their prayers, especially the Hebrew ones - who knew?) a prayer called Hashkiveinu that asks for a peaceful sleep followed by a waking up again to life. Again that message: sleep is a blessing, but so is waking up, and so is life itself. We bless our children. And then we sing the most important words in Judaism to remind us who we are and whose we are: "Hear, Israel: Adonai is our God, Adonai is One." And we wrap it up with the v'ahavta: "and you shall love..." Because what better words to fall asleep to?

These are just five of the spiritual practices in a vast library of Jewish tradition. There are more. Maybe I'll add to my list in days, weeks, months, years to come. 

Until then, I'll keep practicing.  


---
* this is by no means a slam against the United Church of Christ – it's a statement about me. I actually was a Unitarian who was considering Christ. I considered Christ for about half a decade, and settled on Hillel instead. 

** for Unitarian Universalists reading this article: yes, I am going to use words like "God" and "soul." I probably do not mean what you think I mean by any of these words. Progressive Jews have many of the same unorthodox thoughts about who or what these words refer to as UU's, but we use the ancient words to describe them anyway. Translate as you need to in order to make it work for you. 

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