From the Field: When A Toe In Is All In

So already, earlier this summer, my husband Scott finally did what he'd been thinking about doing for years: extended the path that ran along one side of the field directly in front of our cabin so that it now rings the entire field. 

I was used to looking at the field from the vantage point of our cabin, and from that original stretch of path that gave us easy access to the brook that flows through our property to the Little Hoosick River. But this lengthened, circling path immediately offered "new" ways of seeing the the cabin and the field and understanding both their relationship to each other, and our relationship to the two of them. 

Confronted with these new perspectives on the beloved familiar, I felt like something important--a provocation rather than a confirmation--was being presented to me. So borrowing my poem and title form from Wallace Stevens--and keeping in mind something I'd once heard Jorie Graham say about writing poems to arrive at answers to persistent questions or to address nagging problems of understanding--I wrote a poem called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Field" and posted it on this blog.

Frankly, I've been "in dialogue" with this field since I got into the habit a few years ago of preparing for the Jewish High Holy Days. Before that, I simply loved it as a field, enjoyed looking at it, especially in the month of August when the goldenrod blazed in it and the late afternoon shadows at its perimeter were dark almost to the point of blackness. 

But a popular Jewish metaphor for God's nearness and accessibility during the month prior to the Days of Awe made, and continues to make, the field more than just a beautiful, peaceful, natural place for me. According to tradition, during the preparatory month of Elul, God is like a king who, anxious to greet his subjects, has descended from his palace into the adjacent field in order to meet them, to hear how they are, what they need, and what they want. Therefore, Jews are encouraged to go into the field, and to take advantage of His even more-than-usual receptivity to their wishes, needs, and news.

On some level, I probably should have rejected this particular metaphor straight out: it always feels too patriarchal, too monarchic for a 21st-century American woman such as me. But I've hesitated to reject it because that field in front of our cabin really does feel like a repository of spirit and holiness to me. And so the poem I wrote included not just the field and the cabin--referred to as "the house" so it could stand for any place one might dwell in or near nature and spirit--but also the King.

Since I shared my poem, first with the No Name Poets, my poetry writing group, and then in revised form on my blog, I've received a number of heartfelt responses that have challenged me both spiritually and artistically. Hence this blog now, and probably a further revision of this poem in the future.

When one generous respondent said she wished the poem's speaker would walk into the field and ask for something, perhaps even a hug, I explained that she had identified my spiritual problem: annually, I have a really hard time walking into that field, despite the possibility of a fulfilling encounter with God. Recently, I had hoped that by circling the field time and again on the path carved out of it, by sitting on chairs set along the new parts of the path, by taking photographs of the field from new vantage points, even by writing a poem about all the changes and my associated observations, I might get myself into the field. 

 

But I already knew that wasn't happening, even though my relationship to the field was changing.

And then I had a request that, I think, pushed me into the field, though I didn't know it at the time. Scott and I had been planning all along to visit our cabin the second weekend of September--which turned out to be just after I'd published my poem online, and just after Pat Adams, one of the No-Name Poets, had asked me if she could share my poem with her husband and sister. I said yes immediately, pleased that she wanted to share it with them.

Very soon thereafter, Pat contacted me with a further request: she'd written a poem-prayer that she wanted me to read at the field in order to up the chances of God's hearing it. With her permission, I share "Note to the King as He walks the field during Elul":

God
 
we can't hear You
All that we get is static
The chaos is way to loud
 
Would You please, please
raise Your Arm, flag us down?
those of us who crave You
we can link together
 
our hands, our arms
be wire Your voice can travel through
be rope You can rein us in
with Your strength
 
we can be love
all embracing in You
becoming the one perfect body
You meant us to be
 
Is that still true, do You?
What... I can't hear You
 
God?

The first night we were at the cabin, I read the poem and Scott listened; the second night, Scott read it and I listened. I loved reading and hearing the poem while sitting in front of the house. Having always had trouble speaking to God directly in my own voice, I was particularly grateful that I could read Pat's love-, hope-, doubt-suffused poem-letter that not only addressed God directly, but asked Him to speak up and make Himself heard at the end. Pat really wanted a response, for everyone's sake, and she was doing whatever she could to get one. I felt both Pat's courage and her concern about the present moment enter me.

Pat wrote to me a few days later, wanting to know if I'd had any sense of the prayer's having elicited a response--had I felt a "nudge," she wanted to know. She also shared that for her--Pat's observantly Catholic--"just knowing that Elul exists as an opportunity to communicate so closely with God gave me an indescribable sensation...peace? joy? awe? expectation? hope? wonder?  Maybe wonder, maybe more.  I am not sure." Funny Pat should mention wonder: Abraham Joshua Heschel, in describing the spiritual problem of "civilization," the prevalent distance between humans and the divine, said, "'What we lack is not a will to believe, but a will to wonder'" (This, 163).**

I couldn't report that I'd felt a nudge. But I could report some selfish good news: I now felt like I had at least stuck my toe into the field. I was speaking to God in the field, though I was using Pat's words, her gift to me, to do so--and though I allegedly was doing Pat the favor of reading them.

Then she said something that made me feel so much less alone: "I am soooo glad . . . that it helped you as well on the path. I feel sometimes if I am too honest it will be offensive to God, but God knows what God knows, like the path knows, the house . . .." Like Pat, I've often feared God wouldn't appreciate doubting, negative candor.  

I've often expected God to turn away from me disapprovingly. After all, Jews are held to certain standards, bidden to carry out mitzvot, expected to be our best selves. Hence the preponderance of articles we've been reading this week about the importance of remembering Ruth Bader Ginsberg as an exemplar of Jewish righteousness--and of following her example in terms of working toward a just, peaceful world.

Then there's the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. While the "Une Tane Tokef" prayer heartens and consoles us by reminding us that "'Teshuvah and Prayer and Righteous Acts transform the severity . . . of [God's] decree,'" it still lays out graphically the harsh destinies and decrees that God might assign to us for the following year (This, 114). Given the severity of those decrees, the pain and sorrow they potentially promise, it's not easy to believe in our own power to mitigate them.

But that's why, at least for me, Rabbi Alan Lew's This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, is so important: it makes teshuvah possible--challenging, yes, but also comforting, inspiring, rewarding. Though teshuvah is defined variously as repentance, as atonement, as turning, or as returning to God, Lew's book presents it as an ongoing process of transformation that brings us closer to--leads us home to--both God and our true selves (This, 154). Our three-fold challenge is, first, to see ourselves as clearly as we can; then, to forgive ourselves for our shortcomings and harmful behaviors; and then, to transform those aspects of ourselves that most need changing.

For me, there's one additional personal challenge, since according to Lew, we need God to help us forgive ourselves: to get myself to enter the field to approach the King:

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

"Self-forgiveness is the essential act of the High Holiday season. . . . That's why we need God. We can forgive others on our own. But we turn to God, . . ., because we cannot forgive ourselves.  . . [It] is difficult largely because we hold ourselves to such high standards, . . .." (This, 126-7).

 

 

Lew goes on to clarify the nature of authentic self-forgiveness, which involves recognizing the positive, transformational power of our flaws--in part because they have something of God in them: "Even the behavior we took to be wrongful, we now realize, has a holy spark at its center waiting to be released. This is the essence of self-forgiveness" (This, 126-7).

I have three reactions to Lew's words. First, self-forgiveness is hard: I know this personally. Second, this holy spark idea could easily be abused outside of this spiritual context. Third, experiencing a divine spark within, trusting in its existence, can be as hard or harder than forgiving oneself, at least in my experience.

Still, I see important, liberating truth here, too, and I'm grateful to both Alan Lew and Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest who wrote Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, for their discussions of our shadow selves, those parts of ourselves we're not at all proud of--but that feel so natural and authentic.

According to Rohr, "One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with with their own struggles and failings" (Falling, 136).*** Lew explains the same necessary phenomenon, and even takes it a step further, by talking about Jacob's transformation from Jacob to Israel in Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life:

"Apparition (#2)" by Scott Ketcham*****

"The angel of God tells Jacob that the very thing he can't stand about himself . . . is in fact his divine name. Yisrael [often translated as 'who struggles with God']--he continually struggles with God and with man, rails against his lot in life, tries to take that which is not his. Yet here we learn that he is this way because this is how God made him. This is his uniqueness, the source of his power in the world, . . ..

"This, . . ., is the most significant moment of personal transformation we ever reach in our lives--the moment when we realize . . . that the thing about ourselves we have been avoiding, the thing we hate to see, is the very thing that . . . gives us our unique power as human beings" (Be Still, 30-31).****

In both Lew's and Rohr's books, our shadow selves are assets--potentially important natural aspects of our best selves--though they can burden and confuse us at times. We don't need to tame or eliminate them before walking into the field to meet the King.

Unbelievable, I thought when I first contemplated that idea. Lew was saying those non-conforming parts of myself needed no apology, no explanation, no eradication. Also that I didn't need to do anything to improve myself and my chances--I, who was so used to hearing what else I could be doing to be "better." In fact, Lew said I really should do nothing and see what happens. I liked Lew's general advice to stop trying to fix things, to stop striving, rushing, doing anything because "we get back to heaven by doing nothing" (This, 121).

What a relief! So I began the next stage of teshuvah--it was now the week before Rosh Hashanah--by "doing nothing." I cooked a lot in preparation for the Friday night holiday, visited my parents, took a friend to an inconveniently located doctor's appointment, walked but only when I felt like it, recorded my parts for two virtual choir videos for my singing groups' mid-October online musical soiree--but I didn't try to improve myself. When I felt tired, I sat down on my sofa and either read or watched reruns. I didn't think, deliberately.

It felt great. I felt energetic. I felt peaceful. I felt ready for the holiday. And when I heard about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, I felt very sad and worried, but not desperate. Feeling that I needed this holiday, that we all needed to step back and breathe, I deliberately adopted a "wait and see" attitude for the next few days and reminded myself that the sky wasn't falling though the days ahead would be difficult. 

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

Meanwhile, the apples and honey on my dining room table brought to mind the wild apple trees at the end of our field. Given my peacefulness, I guessed I was fully in the field, at least for this one moment, though I could have sworn I'd placed only a toe in it.

The next morning, I went to virtual synagogue on Zoom. And so I end this post with a poem by Denise Levertov published in the margin of my prayer book. I'm sure I read it in other years, but this year it really spoke to me, probably because its "net of threads" image brought to mind the tangle of apple tree branches through which I'm often seeing the field anew from the circling path.

The Thread

Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven't tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.******

I'm going to share this poem with the No Name Poets on Friday morning. I especially hope it speaks to Pat. One good poem deserves another, and hers--the poem itself and the experience of it at the field--so helped my teshuvah journey this year.

* Some previous blog posts about the field: "The King is in the Color Field"and "Field Notes for the Month of Elul."

** Lew, A. (2018). This is real and you are completely unprepared: The Days of Awe as a journey of transformation. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company.

***  Rohr, R. (2011). Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. John Wiley & Sons.

**** Lew, A. (2005). Be still and get going: A Jewish meditation practice for real life. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

***** Apparition (#2) by Scott Ketcham: https://www.scottketcham.com/image/124185289327 

******Levertov, D. (n.d.). The Thread. Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://allpoetry.com/The-Thread