The Colors of Autumn

Driving along I-95 is often a headache.  Not so when the season is autumn and the leaves are in full color. That was my experience yesterday, October 27th, on the drive from New Jersey to Bridgeport, CT.

Full color was my spiritual theme for the day.  Arriving at B'nai Israel (the temple in Bridgeport), I walked through a lobby filled with the colorful books of their temple "book fair." I opened the door into a beautiful meeting room with a glass wall and light pouring in.  There were gathered a few of the women rabbis who were attending this one day "retreat" with author Dani Shapiro.  The faces of my women friends light up my memories and stir my soul.  For the next hour we talked one on one or in small huddles - catching up on family, career, challenges, life.

By 11 am we settled in at the long table.  We are a colorful bunch -- but I suppose that's true of any human gathering.  Like leaves, we knew how to settle softly into our place: quieting to listen to Dani describe her Jewish journey in her early years.  Then, softly adding our voices with comments and questions in between her reading of excerpts from her book, Devotion.  

There was deep sharing.  There was silence.  We pondered the hand of the divine in the coincidences and small miracles of life -- and the conviction that there is no divine deterministic hand.  We were in awe of the intertwinings that revealed themselves organically over the conversation: two women who had not seen each other in over a decade, since one had sat on the rabbinic admissions committee interviewing the other.  One held the key to reshuffle the other's memory of the day.  Tears were shared.

For me, the bright autumn glow outside was matched by a glow inside when I learned that Dani was a friend and student of Sylvia Boorstein. Sylvia was my meditation "teacher" for four wonderful weeks (spread over two years) during the contemplative meditation training I took at Elat Chayyim.  She is the person who I think of when someone asks: Who would you most prefer to be stranded with on a desert island.  When you are with Sylvia, there are no islands.  No desertion.  There is presence. I loved bringing up those memories during the hours around that table in Connecticut.

Full color.  That is what life sometimes offers us.  Soon the leaves will finish falling.  There are still acorns dropping on our roof, waking us off and on during the quiet fall nights.  Soon there will be silence and the colors will be evergreens and browns and blacks and whites all around the yard.

Inside each of us, though, there is still room for full color.  Even in winter there are blossoms in the spirit. New ideas, plans, adventures, books, music. We look for the brightness within.   Even in times of grief and change, there are the friends and family who stand like sentinels along the highways of our lives: who add the red color of laughter, the deep orange of fiery love, the yellow (almost transluscent) color of deep conversation.

I think I'll go out and gather a few leaves to remember this lesson.