Sunday, March 23, 2014

I Complete My SPCA Training

I continued serving in the Purr Posse for most of the past year. I also started knitting little cat blankets for the office to sell as fundraisers, and am occasionally called in to help with mailings to donors. I actually enjoy stuffing envelopes now and then.

I took a little break from volunteering last month, when I developed a rash on the palm of my right hand that wouldn't have benefited from being stuffed into a rubber glove, and might have been contagious.

After the rash healed enough, I went back to the adoption center, to ease myself back into the swing of things without the complications of gowning and gloving. Turns out, I've gotten better at this over the months. I visited three singleton cats, and two of them climbed into my lap (which hardly ever happened in my early months in adoptions). The third cat had behavioral issues and a full page of detailed warnings that volunteers should wear long sleeved shirts to avoid bites on the arms and instructions on how to remove your hand from his mouth if bitten. I treated the cat with respect and he was a perfect gentleman with me.

Then I thought I might as well take the last training, on matchmaking visitors with cats or kittens. I don't expect to be doing much of that, but wanted to complete my training and get my own Cat Volunteer apron, so I could quit relying on whatever tattered rags were in the bins for partially trained volunteers. It's particularly annoying to have sanitized items falling to the floor through holes in the pockets, and having to replace them with clean ones.

So a week ago I took the class, and am now the proud possessor of my very own maroon apron, a brand new one, with no holes! I have arrived.

Sermon on 29th Anniversary of Congregation Sha'ar Zahav

Here's a sermon that I delivered in 2006 and somehow never got around to posting on this blog:

Sermon on Chukkat and Synagogue Anniversary, July 7, 2006

Last month I marched with the synagogue in the Gay Day parade for the first time in several years. I first marched in the parade in 1979, and marched every year after that for about a decade. Every year I marched, I collected the official parade pin. At the parade this year, I wore a necktie on which I displayed my pin collection. The first pin said simply 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration. Several people asked me what the parade had been like back in ’79. Smaller, I said, and less corporate and marchers didn’t give beads to the watchers. The real difference, though, was that marching back then was much more serious and risky. If we marched in public in a gay parade, somebody might see us.

Those were different times. Back in ’79, most homosexuals were in the closet – our families didn’t know we were gay, our friends didn’t know we were gay, our co-workers didn’t know we were gay, and most especially, fellow congregants of our churches and synagogues didn’t know we were gay. Most religious organizations believed that homosexuals were sick and sinful and unfit to pray to God. When we were allowed to pray, it was only to acknowledge how sinful were our desires and actions and to pray that we might be converted to heterosexuality.

But the gay rights movement had been percolating along for several years, and it was beginning to reach into the hearts of religious people. Congregation Sha’ar Zahav was founded on July 9, 1977, by three gay men – Daniel Chesir, Shamir Ofel, and Bernard Pechter. 1977 was a particularly intense year for gay rights. Anita Bryant had spearheaded the passage of a law in Miami that prohibited gays from being teachers. That hateful slap at our humanity galvanized the gay community and our supporters into the largest San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade so far. I haven’t asked Daniel, but I suspect it’s not an accident that the three of them decided to claim their Jewish gay identity shortly after that year’s Gay Freedom Day parade. And I don’t have to ask them to know that they wanted to create a place where they could be Jewish and gay at the same time – a place to be Jewish without having to give up being gay, and a place to be gay without having to give up Judaism.

So, Monday, July 9, marks the 29th anniversary of the founding of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. The challenges of founding a gay synagogue included finding a regular place to meet, finding publishers who were willing to accept advertisements for Sha'ar Zahav services, and gaining acceptance from Jewish organizations.

I first attended the synagogue in 1980. At that time, services were being held at the Jewish Community Center. The first night I came to shul, I was asked to do a reading. That made me feel welcomed and honored. I had grown up in a Reform synagogue; so some parts of the service were familiar and other parts were new to me, but not for long. After a while I was asked to deliver a guest sermon, even though I was a member of a Lutheran church at the time (it’s a long story). I grew away from the church, and joined the synagogue.

The congregation was small then; maybe 40 people came to Friday night services, and most of them were men. There was a part-time rabbi named Allen Bennett. He and I had already met, having served as co-chairs of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual for a couple of years. Then more women started attending services, and there was some wrangling until feminism took hold.

The congregation grew, and we moved from the smallish room into a gymnasium. After another while, we bought the building on Danvers Street and hired a full-time rabbi. We joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. In addition to Shabbat worship, we conducted weddings, and funerals, and baby namings, and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. We acquired land in a cemetery and started taking congregational trips to Israel. We became a full-sized, full-fledged, full-service synagogue.

In this week’s portion, Chukkat, the Israelites are still developing into a congregation. The portion opens with the laws concerning purification of those who have touched a corpse by anointing them with the ashes of a red heifer. Eleazar the priest is commanded to sprinkle the heifer’s blood towards the Tent of Meeting before the heifer is burned and turned into ashes, which are stored outside the camp. Everyone who touches the heifer or its ashes becomes unclean by so doing, but the ashes are to be used for purification. It’s rather mysterious.

What draws my attention is that the blood sprinkling is to be done by Eleazar, the son of Aaron. Sometime between last week’s portion and this week’s, 38 years have passed. This week’s portion records the deaths of Miriam and Aaron, and we know how much time has passed because the Torah tells us elsewhere that Aaron lived 40 years after leaving Egypt. In this portion, also, God tells Moses and Aaron to take the rod and assemble the community and order a rock to bring forth water. Instead, Moses hits the rock with the rod, and is therefore condemned to die outside the promised land.

A changing of the guard is happening; the generation that left Egypt is dying off, and only Caleb and Joshua of that generation will survive to cross the Jordan. Those whose minds were shaped by slavery could not get the hang of following God’s laws and depending on God for food and water and safety. Only a new generation could trust in God enough to succeed in conquering the land and making it home.

We’ve been having something of a generational shift at Sha’ar Zahav, too. We’ve shifted away from a synagogue founded by and for single gay men to one that consists largely of families, of all configurations, and many of them with children – there’s an aufruf, a wedding, or a Bar or Bat Mitzvah nearly every week. Children of members are starting to co-lead services. Not to fear, the synagogue is still a good place to meet someone special; there are still some single members (such as yours truly). In fact, there are some liturgists among us who are interested in writing rituals for non-family occasions such as menopause and retirement.

A synagogue is a place for communal prayer, and is also a place to make friends, to learn about Judaism, to receive prayers for healing, to be comforted on a loss. Sha’ar Zahav has for 29 years been the place where we come to present ourselves to God in all our diversity and uniqueness. And it’s where we come to help each other with our life journeys, and to get encouragement and guidance in our task to help repair the world. Long may its banner wave.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Latest Writing Workshop

Yesterday I went to Alameda for an afternoon writing workshop using the Amherst Method of writing to prompts in a group. My favorite way of writing. There were three prompts, and I'm willing to share my responses to two of them with you.

Things My Mother Said to Me

"When I'm alone, I'm in bad company."

"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."

"Pray for potatoes and pick up the plow."

"You can do that; you're free, white, and over 21."

"That was an E-ticket ride."

"They tell me I was a cuddly drunk."

"That poncho is ugly." The one I designed and made for myself out of fake fur.

"I want you to complete the following sentence: Mother, I hate you because ..." I declined to respond, knowing that I wasn't ready to say, and she wasn't ready to hear, what might come up. My brother, not so canny, had replied - 'I don't hate you, but I don't love you either, since you weren't there while we were growing up.'
Because of her alcoholism, we were raised by grandparents, and didn't come to live with her until we were in high school. Anyway, after my brother's response, she turned against him for the rest of her life.

"Action is the magic word." As she put on lively music to help us with house cleaning.

What I really want to say is - we only spent holidays with her until we were teenagers, so it was an unusual and odd relationship, more like playmates than family. Then when we came to live with her, she told us in so many words that she figured we were grown up enough, and that she wouldn't try to raise us. She'd just make meals and write checks from money that our father had left us when he suddenly died, and she had finally stepped up to be our mother to the best of her minimal ability.

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If

If I could convince the crowd inside my head to all be on my side, at least most of the time, at least most of the crowd.

If I remember and love my inner child, and wish her a nourishing balance of play, structure, and security.

If I look to each new day with hope - if not instead of, then at least along with dread or numbness or boredom or shame.

If I pick up the phone and write email in the assurance that I am worth spending time with.

If I look in the mirror, if not with appreciation for what I see, then at least with compassion and a kindly curiosity.

If I set pen to paper every so often, knowing that either something interesting will come out or the practice will do me good, maybe even both.

If I walk, or dance, or yoga or tai chi most days, knowing that it's good for me and that I'll probably feel better for it.

If I pay attention to what I choose to eat, getting full enjoyment from it and letting my inner wisdom help me make those choices.

If I read my email like it contains buried treasure, and I can find new people, places, and activities that will enrich my life,

If I choose to go to workshops and demonstrations, and dances, giving myself permission to make the choices that seem good at the time, and knowing that there's no blame in deciding to make different choices next time.

If I allow myself to have dreams about how I could share my experience and abilities to add beauty and justice to the world.

If I can enjoy reading my mind candy and occasionally read some non-fiction or literary fiction, or magazine articles that I allow to make me think.

If I dust off my music collection and allow the notes to touch my emotions however they will.

If I really live this part of my life, who knows what could happen?