I should be sleeping, but I’m writing instead. I head back to Chicago in the morning after a brief, but wonderful weekend in Durango, Colorado. I was able to spend time with all of my close friends and eat all of my favorite foods. And for the most part, I even kept kosher. My only exception was Green Chile, but I’m taking home a can of freeze dried vegetarian (pork free) Green Chile.
I’ll write more when I get home tomorrow night, but things were great. We spent this afternoon soaking up the sun at Tremble Hot Springs and chatting while we boiled our cares away.
This morning I heard my good friend give his first post-seminary sermon. This was my first church service after starting my conversion. While I stood and sat with the congregation, I remained silent during the prayers and tried to think the jewish prayers that would relate. Like the Shema during Our Father and the Mi Sheberach during another prayer and the Amida during another. I was surprised to realize how much of the service I knew, that I never realized before. How many christian prayers I had memorized during my life, although I never attended regularly.
While we were soaking, this same friend said one of the kindest things I’ve been told recently. I think I’ve worried that he and his wife would be disappointed that the god I found is not the christian god. Or that I found god through a different belief system. Instead he said that he was overjoyed when he read my first email when I “came out as a jew.” He said that he thought I’d always drawn my energy from a deep and pure well and he believed that Adonai would only make the pool deeper, richer, and more pure. That he meant it as encouragement and had struggled to find the right words to tell me that. It really moved me–as it will when a friend comments on their perception of your soul.
I got a lot of laughs this weekend retelling dating horror stories and stories about life in the BIG CITY. I also spent a lot of time talking about my conversion process, how I found judaism, why I’m doing it. I told good friends and I told strangers at the temple and I tried to find the words to tell an Israeli woman with limited english. It is hard enough to explain when I can use my entire vocabulary.
But it is one in the morning and I have to be up in five hours for a 7:30 flight. That is me, signing off.
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