It's My Job To be Me

Etta being Etta: we have so much to learn from our young ones who are determined to be them self!
Blessings of Being Awake: "It's my job" she said with great pride and ease to my thanking her for being so naturally out as lesbian. "Its my job", I repeated to myself several times as I walked away from Alix Dobkin, singer, song writer, author. What a role model and sister collaborator I thought. She is inspiring me to continue on my path of self love. A path I am not sure I could be walking if Mona, of blessed memory, was still alive.

My Spiritual Challenge is to go to find the edge and then to leap. I am learning to know and stay true to my core beliefs and then to walk the talk, to live as if I were 'treating myself as if I were my own lover." To do this I must stay connected to the moment and to the One Without End who wraps Her Self around and inside of me, forever faithful, protective.

My Spiritual Practice is as always to breathe deeply, expanding the narrow spaces anxiety brings. When I go within, I am led by The One Without End, HaRachamana, The Compassionate One down the path of righteousness. "Be proud of your differentness", I hear my heart saying. "Enjoy your outsider status", you are Kadosh-separate, unique...You". "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think!"
Blessings of the Vav: As I evoke the 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet within me, I walk between heaven and earth. I am a connector, a hook, a holy priestly letter. I am standing erect in my own uniqueness ready to connect. What chutzpah it took to listen and then validate by giving attention to the thought 'society of the vav' so it could grow! Nothing new for me, if I look back on my life. I have been here before and answer "but" to my ideas. And this time I am integrating those moments as I write another chapter in this holy life I have been given. What is your amazing miracle story?

Just be You

Blooming: I look at these flowers and I wonder if they ever doubt themselves, compare their bloom to others and come up short or feel desperately alone. And then my tears start doing their thing as I laugh out loud remembering 'I just need to be me.' Isn't that what I have been practicing all these years. Just do it your way and it will be right. It might not get me an A by someone elses' standard. And no one else is grading me but me! " Just be average", I hear Pat saying, and I know my 'average' is amazing!


Blessings of Being Awake: Tonight I will have an hour to impart my joy of Hebrew Wisdom and meditation to a group who is paying to learn from me. I am anxious and I am relaxed. I want to do it right and my intention is to be improvisational and learn while having fun. So I am reading some new information and remembering all my classes and my own practice. I know whatever happens in that 60 minutes will be perfect and direct from my heart that sits in the body that holds wisdom.

I feel grounded in my experiences and the many people who have imparted their wisdom to me. I have learned directly and indirectly from many people and to them I dedicate our time tonight: Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Stephen and Rosemary Weisman and students at Wat Kohw Tam, Thailand, Abby Karp, Thich Nhat Hanh and everyone at Plum Village, France, Joseph Goldstein, Rabbi David and Shoshanah Cooper, Rabbi Sheila Perltz Weinberg, Rabbi Jeff Roth, Rabbi Joanna Katz , Sylvia Bornstein and all my teachers at the Metta Center of Barrie, Ma, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man and Nan Fink, and Richard White, Beth Lynn and Brett Ferrigan and students at Shambala House and many others yet to be named.

I have practiced by myself, reading books and driven by something I did not understand. And I have been given instruction and space to learn. In Thailand I walked away knowing that the teaching had saved my life. I have taught others and they were appreciative. Today is different. And I know nothing and I know everything I need to know. So whether it is because there is no one in between me and the Divine; or because I am finally living that there is something bigger than me and I am paradoxically surrendering while being an active partner by just saying 'Yes'.

Listening to the inner voices, led me to the Society of the Vav, that led me to 'Yes and' exercise in improv. And there is no time like now, Hayom Yom, this day, this moment to continue the saga of this life. And I am doing it, Ahni, I, TZiPi Radonsky, woman in all my permutations of roles. And I am in joy!! Come join me, so we can play Ahnachnu, we, together.

Getting the Whole Picture

A close up a piece of the Tree of Life, does not say everything about the tree, just a moment in the viewers perspective and time.
Blessings of Being Awake: As I was walked into the auditorium that was quickly filling up for the show last night, I saw Edie standing in a row looking around, as if she was waiting for someone. My heart got excited as I walked over to greet her. I have loved this woman from our first meeting in the workout dressing room when I first moved to Century Village. She had lived many years in Israel and loved to speak Hebrew with me, as I with her. She loved to sing in Yiddish and was so full of fun and joy. She endearingly called me Tzipila. Yet, this woman I kissed and spoke in Hebrew with last night was engaged in make believe. She called me by another name, looking blankly in my face and appeared cautious, not wanting me to know what she knew she did not know. As I left her to find my seat, I remembered the picture I had taken of her last November. She was standing at the voting entrance holding the sign for Obama over her head with a big smile on her face. I imagined that as her family went through her things, they would see this picture and remember this other time when she was full of life. And I felt full of many emotions, wanting to hold this whole picture, the variations of her life of her life.
Several week ago in the "Adventures in Intimacy" workshop, Hedy talked about having many marriages; and what we were seeing that weekend was a another marriage to the same man, a different incarnation. So When Yumi said at one point that in one of those marriages that he had been a jerk, i had to remember the plethora of roles we each play in a life time. And I had to welcome myself back into my heart and forgive me for all the expectations i have that makes me my enemy. I am my friend, my best friend, and as Kahane writes on, I study both love, living the 'we', and the power, fulfilling my soul's mission.

Laughing out loud, I say to myself , I am being forced by various experiences to hold multiple realities, not only am i expanding my lungs through being at very high altitudes and breathing deeply as I sing with my shruti box, I am also expanding the mind, proving that old dogs can learn new tricks and fulfilling my mother's comment "you are my Einstein".

Blessings of the Vav and Ecclesiastes and Solomon. Believing in the transformation of the soul, in its many season while holding the variant colors of possibilities is having faith and hope in something bigger than me, the Mystery of Life, The One Without End, the Compassionate One.

Hallelu Yah, Praise The One Without End

Crisp October Boston morning after a wonderful visit with my beloved cousin Linda.
Blessings of Being Awake: Sometimes being awake is not fun. I wrote this poem after a Sunday of being the only chaplain in a hospital in Greensboro, NC. It was a day full of many challenges. When I reread the words of the poem, visual and visceral memories arise, from the new born in the NICU whose mother sat beside the incubator, very confused as she watched her child struggle to hold onto life to an elderly woman whose husband sat beside her crying as she took her last breath. At the time, I was more easily using the more familiar word for The One Without End, god. Today, this word feels flat and I want a more active word for the Never Ending Love. Also, at the time, I was finding again my identity as a Jew. I was discovering that the word I said in Hebrew, Halleluyah, was also being said by my sister and brother Christians, Praise God! I was living in the in the bible belt where these words rolled of the tongues of the people around me. And I felt those words were their language and if I said them I would be less Jewish. I laugh as I write this thinking that we are such funny people with our small minds. And I felt uncomfortable speaking their language, especially with the same intensity. In writing the words of this poem, I was getting used to their language, trying it on for size, making it mine, learning from them what I did not think that I knew; that The Rachamana, the Compassionate One, the One I desperately wanted to know, had saved my life for some purpose I have yet to understand.

Praise God for creating home
Even when we cannot find it
Praise God for bringing us home
Even when we do not know when we get there
Praise God for spitting us out
Even when we are not ready
Praise God for catching us
Even into awkward hands
Praise God for each breath, tear, sigh
Even when we are embarrassed by the emoting
Praise God for the voice that sings your praise
Even when out of tune
Praise God for every life you take
Even when the anger exacerbates the pain
Praise God for each life you give
Even when we cannot appreciate your miracle
Praise God for the resiliency modeled
Even when we cannot get unstuck
Praise God for the vulnerability we often experience
Even when we are shamed into silence
Praise God, Praise God, Praise God!
Why not praise God
Better than damming the pain in my heart
for all those whose grief I witnessed today.

Blessings of the Vav: AND I will always have another chance to make another decision, to re-look at the decisions I have made. Hebrew Wisdom teaches me that I always have the Right of Return, tshuvah, returning to my true self and to be true to my souls's journey. I want to continue to grow the mochine d'gadlute, the big mind, to gain perspective, to give myself the time to learn what an amazing soul lives within me.

National Coming Out Day: Smiling at Fear

Phyllis & TZiPi at the Valentine's Day Sweetheart Ball for the Sonia Plotnick Health Fund, St Petersberg, FL, 2010.
Reflections on National Coming Out Day, October 11
Blessings of Being Awake: In 1977 I met my first Jewish lesbian and fell in love. Today we are still friends and still in love enough to keep working on our relationship. I was just coming out as a woman loving women. I was recently divorced, a single mom and a second year Occupational Therapy student. There were so many new experiences, so much to learn, so many trips and falls and so many fears that I could neither name nor face. There was so much I did not know that I did not know.

Spiritual Challenge:

• Laughing with myself as an act of self love as I begin to notice and then let go of the fears of not wanting others to know stuff about me, when the fact is they already do.

• Remembering that loving another is often easier than loving oneself and that when I do not love myself there is so much pain. Although I have practiced since 1995 to "treat myself as if I were my own lover", I am still a beginner.

• Accepting myself in all of who I am. Now that I am the oldest I have every been, with all those physical changes I do not like, takes a maturity and perspective I know I do not always have! Despite these challenges, I am going to keep heading toward the unknown, as it is an act of love. As the Hebrews spoke, "We will do and then we will understand."

• Learning that coming-out is a moment to moment, self-discovery experience. My coming-out must be done with love and a commitment to my soul's mission. Therefore, I hold the Torah's teaching that The One Without End, The Compassionate One is Holy, so, too am I Holy.

Spiritual Practice: To smile and remember that I am made in the image and likeness of the Divine. I am amazing most of the time and sometimes, as my Uncle Harry, the Doc, of blessed memory, would say, a jerk. I breathe deeply and say, "I am holy, sagging boobs, varicose veins, wrinkled face, gray haired wizened one." I can not hide from the Unending Love within me, nor do I want to hide from the mirror. I am good, kind and loving even when I wonder about that truth.
Blessings of the Vav: The Vav reminds me it is never to late to face the fears and come-out. Kathy Bates in the movie Unconditional Love is a great role model of the bravery of a warrior. So, I ordered the shruti box, a small wooden box that makes droning sounds to use while I am making voice sounds that Deborah, my voice therapy coach taught me. I am coming out as an experiential learner. I am experimenting with the Divine, being at one with all my fears. I am smiling at my fears as they evaporate. I am enjoying myself, my shruti box, my sounds and this life gifted to me.
May your coming-out be blessed, too!

Reminders of the Joy in Being Me.

Blessings of Staying Awake: Alicia taught us during the vision quest preparation and debrief to pay attention to what nature was trying to teach through her many and varied gifts. I had asked the mountains to offer me insight on the pilgrimage. Here are two cherished gifts that i am still allowing the knowing to evolve. This is where I sit today.
On the afternoon of the first day of the trek I was walking with Del and responding to her questions about what happened to the sacrifices in the Old Testament. At one point I was distracted and looked down and there was this piece of wood that looked just like a bird. I quickly picked it up and carried it carefully as a treasure; explaining my excitement to Dell in finding this piece of wood that my name means little bird in Hebrew. In getting back to the sacrifices, I explained that the root of the word for sacrifice is Korban, which mean to bring close. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the rabbis created prayer services, contemplation from the heart, to create the opportunity that the sacrifices offered. Those prayer services are now moments of being close with the Divine three times a day.
On the third day of the trek, Len and I had gone for a short walk where he was coaching me in how to slow down, take baby steps and be totally in the now, to use my breath carefully and deeply. Our conversation related to many things including my mother's death and the grief work yet I had to do. As I came to my tent feeling ready for the next day's walk up to the highest peak, I bent down to unzip the tent and there was this huge stone in the shape of the heart. I feel a connection to heart shaped hearts and quickly placed it inside the tent to be carried with my gear. I was taking this home, no matter the weight! And this morning as I told the story of finding the heart to Chuck, i spoke to my first attraction to the text in the Torah, 'circumcise your heart and don't have a stiff neck.' I need to circumcise my heart, remove the covering, learn something new about me, or as it says later in Deuteronomy, ' the Divine will circumcise it for you!'
Spiritual Challenge: To notice the gift and go deeper than the physicality of what presents itself. I will try to notice when I 'judge a book by its cover' as I may never open it and may miss what there is inside that will nurture my soul. I want to remember that everything has a spark of Ayn Sof, The-One-Without-End in it. I want to continue to believe that I am worthy of the gifts and keep turning them over until I find the essence.
Spiritual Practice: I will keep telling the story, until I unpack the secret message just for me. Today I am honoring my choice of using the Hebrew word TZiPi to introduce me by and to take pride in my connection to the tradition that continues to feed me. What I did naturally is who I am. And i am unburdened and free to be that me that i am.
Blessings of the Vav: We are told in Hebrew Wisdom, 'never stop doing' while 'knowing we will never finish'. There will always be a 'yes, and' moment, another opportunity to see a different point of view, gain perspective from some one else or even myself. The River of Light is endless and is flowing. I am learning how to swim!

Coming and goings of eternity: meeting again, still tasting delicious
Blessings of Staying Awake: Today my friend ME called from Canada. She reminded me of 'guest consciousness', a phrase that arose in the mind of me while I was traveling in New Zealand and a guest in Annette's home. ME has been using the phrase frequently, while I had forgotten it after I took it off the title of my book.
Spiritual Challenge: To remember that whether I am birthing from the womb or birthing from the heart, each is a holy offspring that needs to be nurtured. 'but no one listens' is not an option, I am need to listen. I need to listen!
Spiritual Practice: Make a list of the ideas that have come through me honor them some how!
Blessings of the Vav: I have fallen in love with AND because I want to de-but the world. First, I have to de-but my world and begin noticing how often i say 'ya, but! ' to my birthings. And LOL!!