Debra Darvick
enhance your now in word and imageQUESTIONS
BEFORE NOW
What Does Patience Mean?
The Hebrew word for patience is סבלנות, pronounced sav•la•noot. I learned the word when my brother was in nursery school; it seemed the teacher used the word with him in those days. I had occasion to use it with three-year-old Leah recently when she got into the loop of asking when we were going to the park. “Soon,” “When Grandpa gets back,” “After your nap,” did nothing to short circuit the loop. When three-year olds want something they want it NOW! (So do 67-year-olds but we’ve learned to curb the agitation. Outwardly, anyway.)
Thinking back to my brother I said, “Savlanut, Leah. Have a little savlanut.” I could have been offering her a plate of spanikopita for all she knew. “Do you know what savlanut is, Leah?” She looked up and me and replied, “God?” Out of the mouths of babes.
Leah sensed I was using a Hebrew word, and she knew that Hebrew had to do with synagogue and synagogue had to do with God. It was a perfectly logical guess. I love it when my children’s and grandchildren’s innate leaps of wisdom stop me in my tracks. They cut away all the clutter and get right to the essence. Jewish tradition holds that there are seventy names for God among them: Shepherd, Healer of the Sick, Master of the Universe. Why not Patience?
I imagine if I were the Divine I would often look down and think, “Again? Again you haven’t learned to get along? Still bickering, stil polluting? Still taking lives? How many more millennia is it going to take? OK, so I’ll wait some more.” Maybe there are days the One Who Sees leans micro. Divine patience is offered in silent compassion to a couple struggling with infertility or a patient aching to be well.
I went over to Leah and told her that savlanut meant patience and that she was right it is a Hebrew word. “And,” I continued, “I think Patience is a great name for God, too.” With that, I got her sneakers and we headed out to the park. On the way, we called Grandpa to meet us there.
What Are You Thinking?
It’s taken me a long time to recognize how my negative thoughts affect my body. Recreating an old argument in my mind instantly sets my heart to pounding. Reliving a sadness weights my heart. Judging imparts a feeling of ickiness. I’m working on being judgmental, on ceasing stemming the tide of those myriad mental pronouncments that so often pop up of their own accord. And then there are the judgments I make knowing full well what I am thinking or saying. I’m working on it.
But before I could attend to the judginess, I had to develop the awareness of my judging. And before developing this awareness I had to remember having set the intention to develop it in the first place. The process is ongoing. Some days are better than others. More often now I recognize the constricted icky feeling when Judge Debra surfaces. I try to remember self-compassion for this human flaw of mine and to send kindness toward unsuspecting human just bonked by my inner gavel.
I recently attended a terrific concert at the Detroit Symphyon Orchestra — Frank (Sinatra) and the Great Ladies where “Broadway brass meets old-school class in a fresh take on songbook classics with award-winning vocalists.” The female singer wore a dress that instantly set my inner judge railing. That dress does nothing for her. Too tight. It needs better undergarments. Wait, are you here to focus on a dress or on the singer’s stunning voice? Then a post-intermission costume change: a body-skimming silver-sequined dress scattered with geometric shapes in black sequins. Glimmer. Shimmer. Total style and stupendous.
Judge Debra approved. Human Debra remained aware of the inner thought-circus and its attendant sensations. Criticism and approval are simply two sides of judgment’s coin. Judgment is judgment. Kismet, by way of Reverend Galen Guengerich’s First Light Meditations, sent this quote my way today. Once again my man Marcus shows the way to learn, to live and to walk from a higher place of being.
Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason. It enables you to learn from experience, to live in harmony with others, and to walk in the way of the gods. Marcus Aurelius, 121 – 180
What Are the Chances?
It was just too gorgeous to go inside. Dinner had to be made. We’d been gone the whole day and there now were things to be done. But some wiser hand stayed my adult impulses. I grabbed a rake and began clearing the lawn. Once again. It was beautiful. Late afternoon sun shone through the maple leaves surrounding me in golden light. A woman walked by.
“Isn’t it totally glorious?” I exclaimed. She removed her earbuds and agreed. We stood for a moment rapt with delight and wonder. The door to conversation magic swung softly open. We shared a spark of connection. A few more sentences and the Jewdar clicked in. It’s like gaydar but Jewish.
She, let’s call her Z., told me the following story:
“I was at a community gathering. The crowd was breaking up. The men in the group were bidding farewell to a man in the group who, by his dress, was an Orthodox Jew. ‘See you tomorrow,” each one said to the rabbi in parting.
“I approached the rabbi, curious about the references to the next day’s gathering. ‘Excuse me,Rabbi. I am not [particularly learned] but I know that tomorrow isn’t a holiday. What’s happening tomorrow?’
“He told me about a program called Partners in Torah, told me I would love it and that he had a partner [a woman] for me to study with.” Z, recalled her resistance to the whole idea. She was busy; she wasn’t sure she could make it the next day; please don’t have the person you have in mind for me to study with commit because she might not show up. The rabbi listened and then, I imagine with a knowing smile, gave her his card.
When she got home, her older son was in the throes of a mild rebellion. “I’m not going back to Hebrew school! It’s meaningless. I have better things to do. Besides. I had my Bar Mitzvah. The Jewish community already considers me a man. Men can decide for themselves what’s important.”
Z. began to entertain the thought that something larger was at work. “It’s important to both Dad and me that you complete Hebrew school through your senior year. I’ll tell you what. You continue your schooling and I’ll let you pick a class for me to attend.” I’ll give you one guess which class her son found for his mom to attend. Z.’s study partner became a fast friend and teacher. Over the next few years, their weekly Torah study took them to places of deep intellectual and emotional engagement with the text and with one another.
One week, a challenge arose when Z.’s Torah partner said, ‘There are no superfluous words in Torah.’ The two had been studying Leviticus — lots of laws about sacrifices and other messy entanglements with bodily fluids, human and animal. “OK,” Z. said. “Let’s do an experiment. I’m going to close your book [the copy of the copy of the Torah she was reading from.] Spin it and when it stops spinning, open it and point to any three words in the text. We’ll see if the three words you point to are necessary or not.”
The book opened to the Akeida, the story of the binding of Isaac. What are the chances it would have opened to this horrifying and eternally inexplicable scene? They read the sentence, “A ram was caught in the thicket by its horns.”
“I said to her, ‘You see? Three unnecessary words. Why do we need to know the ram was caught by its horns? The text could have just as well told us the ram was caught in the thicket. Period. Done. If there are no extra words in the Torah, why the words ‘by its horns?’ She didn’t have an answer for me. I gestured toward the shelves in her husband’s book-lined study. ‘In which book does it say by its horns is a necessary description.’ “
Mind you, I am retelling this as well as I can. I was so caught up in Z.’s story, I know that I am missing some details. I don’t have Z.’s phone number nor her email. I am honoring her request to remain anonymous. Here’s what happened next:
“So we made a deal. We turn back to Leviticus. The deal was the first sentence we would come to would have to prove the necessity of the phrase we read in Genesis — ‘by its horns.’ ” I began to get the shivers as Z, continued. “We flipped back to Leviticus and read ‘an unbelmished animal.’ Sacrificial animals had to have perfect bodily intergrity. No illness, no cuts or abrasions on skin that would have bled or left the animal actively bleeding.
As Z. spoke, I experienced the electricity of their moment of study and revelation. What were the chances of these two texts being chosen at random — one a horrific enigma, the other an impeccable response. “The ram had to be caught by its horns,” she said. “If the ram was to be a sacrifice in Isaac’s place, then by virtue of Leviticus, it had to be unblemished. Had it been caught in the thicket by anything but its horns, the ram’s hide would have been gouged. It would have bled, making it unfit for sacrifice.”
We read the Akeidah each Rosh Hashanah as well as in its rotation of weekly Torah portions. Z.’s story had shone a new light upon an eternallly troubling text. There are those who say Abraham failed God’s test, that the intention was never for Isaac to be sacrificed. Others say this teaches we are to have faith in God no matter what. I’ve always gone with the explanation that God was teaching Abraham that child sacrifice, though a common practice at the time, was henceforth never to be done by Abraham and his descendents. Child sacrifice was simply wrong.
Writing these words, a new thought comes to me. Was Isaac blemished in some way? He is portrayed in Torah as a pretty passive kind of guy. Perhaps his blemish was a scarred soul. He may have physically survived the experience; we can only imagine what it did to his spirit, not to mention his relationship with his father. The text can be interpreted to tell us that father and son never spoke again.
Z’s story ended on a bittersweet note. Cancer claimed her study partner not even a decade after they met. But she lives on in my friend’s heart. Their learning and discovery forever erected a three-word bridge spanning from the Akeidah to the book of Leviticus. Every year when this Torah portion is read, Z. remembers that day of learning in the book-lined study. And now, though I was only present in the retelling of it, I shall remember it too. I’m so glad I listened to that little voice urging me to stay outside in the golden glow of the afternoon sun. What are the chances?
Who Am I?
I took Olivia and Leah into the Hall of Mirrors at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Lots of fun, uncertainty, confusion, a bump or two on the nose and ultimately a deeply human experience. We stumbled our way through the mirror matrix, losing and finding our way step by step. Everyone we met was laughing and as confused as we were. “If we see ourselves,” I told the girls, “we have to go another way.”
Little did I realize how profound a metaphor that would be. At one point, I came face to face with a fellow maze traveler. She was laughing and smiling. So was I. She was disoriented. So was I. Without thinking I exclaimed, “Are you me? Am I you?” I felt as if I had ceased to exist knowing that her face was reflecting to me exactly how I felt. It was quite surreal to feel that I’d lost my sense of self only to regain in the face of another. Eventually the girls and I found our way out.
The memory of meeting that woman, and my own confusion over where I ended and she began, stays with me. Isn’t that the crux of so much philosophical musing? Hillel’s do-unto-others admonishment? The Holy Grail of pursuing peace and loving our neighbors as ourselves? How do we see the other in ourself? How do we see ourself in the other?
Perhaps the world is nothing but a grand hall of mirrors. We stumble along trying to find the way out of our confusion. We bump up against our own foibles, limitations, pain and missteps again and again until we (hopefully) take a new path. There is surely less laughter in such halls.
What if we could cultivate that sense of fuzzy boundaries? What if we could meet eye to eye, forgetting ourselves while recognizing in the other a similar sense of disorientation? What if we observed ourselves convinced we are on the right path, only to crash into our own strictures again and again?
I have no ready answers. This drawer in the curio cabinet is named Questions, after all.
photo by Debra Darvick
Do You FaceTime?
Every now and then a word or phrase snags my attention and its meaning completly changes. “Do you FaceTime with your granddaughters?” someone asked me recently. After answering her, my mind went back to her question because what I heard was, “Do you face time with your granddaughters?” The answer to that is a resounding, “Yes, as never before.”
I have been facing time a lot, lately. Maybe it’s the accumulating creaks in my bones and creases across my forehead and upper lip. Dear friends are ill with wrenching diagnoses. My father, God bless him, is still alive and doing well. Few daughters are so fortunate at this stage of the game. Covid has done a big number on us all. The lucky ones have lost only time, not life or loved ones.
Despite inheriting my parents’ age-blurring genes, Olivia and Leah have placed me solidly farther along my own personal timeline. I am a grandmother. I sense my wisdom deepening and with it the need, and perhaps the responsibiilty, to share it, judiciously but share it nonetheless. It is hardwon. Life continues to provide opportunities to deepen it further.
Facing time these days means that I am adored by two beautiful little girls for whom there is no past or future. There is only the delicious present given over to dancing, singing, art making, sliding, swinging, reading, cuddling. As they grow older, the ings will expand: sleep-overing, traveling, asking and answering hard questions.
Yes, I face time a lot these days; with gratitude for what is and has been and with hope and prayers for might yet be.
photo credit: by France 1978 ShareALike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
How about Florence?
Of all the places we visited, Florence was the most familiar and brought back the most memories from prior visits — once during college and then with friends in the mid-nineties. We arrived late in the evening and took a quick walk to the Piazza del Duomo before walking back to our hotel. To the left is Giotto’s Bell Tower a freestanding tower that is part of the Florence Cathedral.
Pandemic restrictions meant that when we visited the Galleria dell’Academia, we could see the David right up close. No tourists ringed five deep jostling for a view and a photo. What can one say about this magnificent sculpture that hasn’t been said before? I think no words at all. I will simply offer awe and gratitude that Michaelangelo Buonarotti was born and answered an unceasing call to create. That at the age of 26, he turned the world of sculpture on its head when his chisel met a new block of marble. That he lived to the age of 88 and up until nearly his final breath labored to wrench meaning and narrative from stone.
Our three hours in the Uffizi passed quicker than the Arno flows beneath the Ponte Vecchio. The collections have been reorganized in such a way that a visitor can move through the entire museum methodically and easily. It also helped that, as with viewing the David, there were many fewer people than normal. The most poignant moment was watching a docent describe a statue to a sightless man who moved his (archivist gloved) hands over the statue as the docent spoke. There are many ways to appreciate works of art.
I spent a lot of time in the portrait galleries, taking in the reality that the artists’ subjects had all lived once upon a time. I’ll share these two by the Italian artist Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo, 1503 – 1572). Centuries later, the subjects’ faces are still luminous; their clothes look as if they’ve just been taken from the wardrobe.
Little Bia (Bianca) de Medici, the illegitimate daughter of Cosimo I de’Medici, died soon after her portrait was painted. The use of the deep blue against her white dress takes my breath away. This shade of blue was often requested by those commissioning portraits and other paintings. The paint, made from crushed lapis lazuli, was quite costly, a detail recognized by the Joneses of the day and those trying to keep up with them.
In contrast to little Bia’s portrait, Bronzino placed his subject, Lucrezia Panciatichi, against a barely discernable background. To my eye, this choice “disembodies” her. She doesn’t seem anchored. But oh those sleeves…
In Florence, as everywhere else, we spent much of our days walking through history, crossing ancient bridges, passing under arches and marveling at how much that was old was also completely contemporary.
Strolling over the Ponte Vecchio.
Play “Where’s Debra” in this photo of the outdoor sculpture garden of Piazza della Signoria
Martin could tell you how many steps it took to reach this overlook.
Now let’s head to the Amalfi Coast!
Photo of Giotto’s Belltower courtesy of Martin Darvick.
Others on this page courtesy of Debra Darvick.