My brief life as a farm worker Part 3

What was most important to me about working at Yoder Brothers during the summers of 1970 and 1971 was my fellow workers. It is also the hardest thing to write about. One reason for that is that 50 years later I recognize how self-absorbed I was at 19 and as a result I did not learn very much about the women with whom I worked, nor did I do much to keep in touch with them when I went back to college. Yet those women touched my life and my ways of thinking much more deeply than I realized at the time. It was their fellowship that brought me back to the job for a second summer, not the $1.30 that we earned per hour.  

This is something I haven’t mentioned yet. Minimum wage in 1970 was $1.65.  At college working as a waitress and in the cafeteria, I earned federal minimum wage.  I knew what it was. When I applied for the job, I was told we’d be paid minimum wage; when the first paycheck came, I was flabbergasted. We were being paid $1.30 an hour. My first thought was that this was illegal, that they were taking advantage of the fact that most of the workers were immigrants who only spoke Spanish and could not really advocate for themselves. I called the same Cooperative Extension agent that had told me about the job in the first place, and he explained reality to me. There was a separate, lower, minimum wage that applied to farm workers.  Therefore $1.30 was completely legal, but my view that it was exploitive and taking advantage of immigrant workers was also true.  I learned later that the men who worked there earned $1.65 because they had more options as to jobs and would have left to work somewhere else if paid less than non-farm minimum wage.

The First Summer

 When I started work there in June 1970 all of the other women who worked there were Hispanic in that they were all native Spanish speakers – despite significant differences in dialect. They came from several countries. The largest number were from Mexico, but there were women from both Central America and South America, the four countries that I am sure about are Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia, and Peru. All but one of the women had come to the United States as either teens or adults. That one woman, Conchita, had come to the U.S. as a very small child with her parents and had attended school entirely in the U.S. While she had grown up speaking Spanish at home with her parents, she was truly bi-lingual and spoke unaccented, colloquial English like anyone person who went to school here.

Connie as she was called, was my life-line in the beginning, helping me get up-to-speed in my Spanish. Like most kids growing up in California in the 1950's and 1960's I learned some Spanish vocabulary in grade school, and by middle school was taking formal classes in Spanish every year.  I studied Spanish in school for 4 and a half years (middle school, high school, and a semester in college) and earned mostly A's (except in college) but really wasn't fluent until working at Yoder Brothers. Connie helped me with the work specific vocabulary, that hadn’t been covered in my classes. She also helped ease me into the social network by inviting me to her home for dinner twice, where I got to meet her mother, husband, and six-year-old son – and have my first truly authentic Mexican cuisine! Yoder Brothers was a temporary stop for Connie who with a high school diploma and other skills soon found a less physical office job somewhere else.

It was harder to be part of the group after Connie left since everyone else spoke only Spanish, but nothing teaches a language faster than necessity and total emersion. I soon made my best friend at Yoder Brothers, Gloria. Gloria had come to the U.S. because her brother suffered from a congenital illness than could at that time only be treated properly in the U.S. Like the vast majority of immigrants, she had not really understood how difficult it would be for her to find skilled work like she had in Mexico, especially lacking English language skills. She was having difficulty saving up enough money to bring her brother to the U.S. working as a field hand.

Gloria was breathtakingly beautiful. She looked like the fairy tale description of snow white: ivory pale skin, ruby lips, shining dark hair. One of the things that I was quick to observe at Yoder Brothers was that “Hispanic” covers a very wide range of racial and ethnic groups. Gloria looked like she would have been at home on the streets of Madrid. By comparison the oldest, most senior worker at the plant, Irene from Peru had the deep bronze skin and high cheekbones that we Americans associate with native Americans. The rest of the women ranged somewhere in between those two poles, representing a wide mix of indigenous people and European invaders.

In many of their home countries these differences in racial and ethnic heritage mattered a great deal, social status and opportunity varied based on a person’s degree of European heritage. Here in the United States those differences were largely obliterated; from the point of view of the larger society and employers they were all Hispanic immigrants, they could not speak English, and they were vulnerable to deportation, even documented immigrants though the undocumented were especially so. Here tenure in the U.S. and knowledge of how the system worked were the primary forms of status, not racial and ethnic differences within the group.

Sitting and talking with Gloria before work, at lunch, and after work really pushed my Spanish fluency. Unlike the other women whose conversations revolved around their families or their relationships, food and clothing, Gloria wanted to talk about music, politics, and religion or perhaps more properly about beliefs. She wanted to tell me about her life in Mexico and her family and learn about my life and my family. We explored our similarities and differences and we taught each other songs.  I can only remember one of the many songs she taught me, because I have sung it often over the years to cheer myself up.

Ven a contar conmigo,

Si tristes estas.

Cuando te sientes deprimido

Ven a contar conmigo

Y el sol saldra.  

Translation: Come sing with me if you are sad. When you are feeling depressed sing with me and the sun will come out.

One of the funniest things that happened to me that first summer was due to an odd lacuna in my Spanish vocabulary. Gloria lived in an apartment with Bonita another one of the Yoder Brothers workers, about a mile and a half from the Yoder Brothers plant.  It was walkable, there were sidewalks the entire distance. But there was heavy traffic and in the summer it was hot. So early on, I suggested that I at least give them a ride home at the end of the day.  It was on my way and not at all inconvenient.  Our first ride was quite comical.  Neither Gloria nor Bonita knew the name of the major cross street where I would need to turn, so I told them to let me know before we reached the intersection. So I’m driving along, and the first major intersection is coming up so I ask izquierda [left] or derecha [right],  they replied “derecho” which I took to mean I should turn right, so I started to signal and make the turn and they started yelling “no, no, no” and pointing straight ahead.  We went through this two more times. Finally, I stopped the car and looked at them and gestured to the left saying “izquierda?” they nodded, then I gestured right and said “derecha?” they nodded. Then they pointed straight ahead and said “derecho!” In all my years of studying Spanish I had learned left and right, but I had never learned that “straight ahead” is derecho.  For days afterwards this was the subject of much discussion and laugher at lunch time.

In addition to providing Gloria and Bonita rides every day, I several times invited them to come to my parents’ house (where I lived) for meals, providing transportation to and from. At least once they both came, but two other times only Gloria came. They would invite me to eat with them, and I would accept their hospitality as to do otherwise would have been rude and insulting, but I would try to eat very little because they had so little. I felt very close to Gloria and I think she also felt close to me despite all our differences.

fairy stone crystal

At the end of the summer of 1970 when it was time for me to go back to school, Gloria and I exchanged lots of hugs and tears.  She also gave me an amazing gift one that I felt terribly guilty about accepting but knew that to refuse it would hurt her immeasurably. We had talked a lot about our religious beliefs, and one of the difficulties that I encountered in doing so was that for Gloria, a Spanish speaking Catholic, no distinction in her conversation was made between Jesus and God, she referred to both indistinguishably as “Dios.” As a consequence, I had been unable to explain to her satisfactorily how while I had a deep and abiding faith in God, I was not a Christian. This was probably made more difficult because I wore a necklace that had a small locket and a fairy stone cross on it.  I wore the fairy stone not because it was a cross, but because it was given me by my favorite Aunt and reminded me of trips on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I was overwhelmed when at parting she gave me the exquisite gold crucifix that she wore all the time when not at work. It had been a gift to her from her deceased mother.

At that point in my life I was pretty sure I wanted to be a Jew even though I was still ten years away from formal conversion to Judaism, I would have felt sacrilegious wearing a traditional Catholic crucifix with a tiny Jesus impaled upon it.  In response I removed my own necklace, removed the small locket, and gave her my fairy stone cross, explaining how it was a natural mineral that grew in the shape of a cross, and who had given it to me.  I kept Gloria’s crucifix close to me for the next 12 years, never wearing it, but holding it often and thinking about her. In 1975 my first graduate school roommate was a physician from Belgium, Arlette Lepot.  Arlette’s primary language was French, but she was fluent in Spanish and German. We discovered quickly that I was marginally more fluent in Spanish than she was in English, so we sometimes spoke Spanish together rather than English. For a variety of reasons Arlette reminded me of Gloria and I ended up telling her the story of Gloria’s crucifix and gave it to her, because she would wear it and honor it.

Gloria was the only woman at Yoder Brothers that I kept in touch with after I went back to college. We wrote letters to each other in Spanish. Mine were pretty simplistic. So I learned that after I left that she and Bonita had been able to get better paying (but still very hard, hot and miserable) jobs at a laundry. Then the letters stopped and my last letter was returned. I lost touch with her and it was not until the next summer that I was able to learn why. Both Gloria and Bonita were undocumented so an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) raid on the laundry where she worked, caused her to go underground and leave the area. I’ve always wondered what happened to her after that.

mind of the universe

It came to me in the early morning hours as I lie there trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or to get up, that it was an enormous human conceit not to believe in god* or at least not to believe in the existence of a mind/an intelligence greater than our own encompassing the universe. Moreover, that it is a western human conceit to believe that foraging humans like the Mbuti (pygmies) are wrong when they believe in the Forest as a living entity with mind/consciousness to whom they give thanks and offer prayer. 

We rational, scientific, folks of industrial societies don’t actually know why we ourselves have a mind (as opposed to just a brain), so how can we discount the idea that other organized systems (bees, dolphins, forests, planets, universes) composed of organic and inorganic materials just as we are, could not also produce minds and thought. 

Since we aren’t particularly good at understanding other human beings, why should we expect to understand the working of the mind of the universe/god? 
___________
*this is not to imply that any particular human conception of god is necessarily correct.

Color view of M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy), with M32 (a satellite galaxy) shown to the lower left. Credit and copyright: Terry Hancock. https://www.universetoday.com/33986/messier-32/

Live Each Day

Dropped in on Facebook this morning to find a lot of my younger friends were wishing their lives away:  "How I wish this day were over;" "If only this day would end;" "Pray for this day to be over."  I thought, how sad this is.  When you get to my age time moves so swiftly...reminds me of a song lyric from Eric Anderson in the 1970's "Time like a freight train..." Days, weeks, months, even years are gone before I realize it.

Whether one is faced with the problem of moments that drag or moments that vanish to quickly the solution is the same: work on being in the moment, noticing and experiencing life as it is happening to you. Not that this is at all easy. But it does not mean working all the time or being "on" all the time. Some times the best way to be in the moment is to relax, practice deep breathing, a quiet moment of reflection, a brief walk to the window or door, even take a nap (albeit few people have the luxury to nap at work).

{time out for a stroll to the mail box and a lawn mowing break and the sweet, sweet smell of morning grass, mixed with the pungent odor of gasoline from the mower; unaccustomed muscle use, sweat, and heart rate elevation!}

 I wanted to extend this thought to several people I know in a gentle non-judgmental way. I know their work is not always full-filling, their days often tiresome. I've noticed that people often respond to what I call "bumper stickers" on Facebook--images with meaningful statements on them--much more readily than direct advice. So I crafted the message above and floated it out into Facebook land.  I'm happy that it seemed to reverberate with a number of people, and has been "shared" repeatedly. I know I've going to post it prominently somewhere to remind myself of one of my better thoughts and try to put it into practice more often.

Good-bye Momma, Good-bye Christmas

I'm having a difficult time getting a handle on exactly what I am feeling this week. Several of my good friends who also lost their mothers this past year have expressed deep sadness and a sense of loss especially on Christmas.

I do genuinely miss my mother, and feel sad at her passing, but I also feel a sense of relief that I could finally let go of our three decade long battle over Christmas.  It stopped being my holiday thirty-two years ago when I converted to Judaism, but it continued being a bone of contention between me and my mother.

Our conflict had less to do with religion than with the mother-daughter relationship. My mother, although a life-long Methodist, was what I liked to call a "loyal dissenter." I have so many memories from childhood of my mother whispering commentary in my ear about how various things being spouted by preachers were "not believed by everyone." My mother believed whole-heartedly in God the Father, and thought that Jesus was an important teacher, but she was openly (to me) skeptical about most of the conventional Jesus story from birth to death (or resurrection). She didn't really understand my conversion, but she didn't overtly object to it either. However, she did object, frequently and volubly to my not celebrating Christmas. To her this was my rejection of our family history, but even more so of her as a mother and her efforts each year to create a "real" Christmas experience for her family. Something she felt cheated of in her own early childhood (her own mother was a severe asthmatic and would not allow Christmas trees or greenery around the home).

It is only from a distance that I can see that she did not really enjoy creating these family Christmas. She viewed it as a challenge, to find the right gifts, wrap them appropriately, have the right tree, and fix a perfect dinner.

My memories of the last Christmas that I spent in California with my family (1981) just before I began my conversion process, are dominated by Mom's anxiety about everything being just so. Her anxiety was so great and so grating that my brothers decided to go to a movie (The Life of Brian) during the hours while the turkey was cooking and invited me to come with them. At the time I was just so delighted that my (younger) brothers actually wanted to have me go with them, that I did not think about how our disappearance for two hours was going to increase my mother's frenzy.

For years following my conversion, my mother would actively pump me for details: Was I going to get a tree this year? Why not? Was I going to send cards? Who was I going to send cards to? What would I say in them? Was I going to go Christmas Caroling? Was I going to go to church?

Paradoxically, I never found it unpleasant to spend Christmas with my in-laws, who accepted our religious differences, did not try to change me, and simply welcomed me into their home for a family meal. Sharing another person's celebration is quite different from being pressured to engage in that celebration directly.

I consciously and deliberately avoided going "home" for Christmas for a number of years. I broke down one year (1985) because my first husband had just moved out, and I needed to go home and lick my wounds after the semester was over. It was not a good move. Much of my visit involved a battle with my mother over why I would not go to church on Christmas eve. Now if she'd been asking me to accompany her to church, I might have felt differently about it, but she didn't want to go, she just wanted me to go. I never went at Christmas time again. In 2001 I went for three days from Dec. 20 to Dec. 22 to celebrate my father's 90th birthday, but I would not stay for Christmas.

Our struggle over Christmas only ended with her death this year. Finally there was no one left to make me feel like I had abandoned her, when I stopped celebrating Christmas.

Anniversaries

This week we Jews celebrate an anniversary of a victory “of the weak over the strong, the few over the many, and the righteous over the arrogant.” (Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook, p. 642)


On the first night of this celebration we pray:

Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in days of old, at this season.

and

Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who gives us life, sustains us, and enables us to reach this season.

Then we light candles for eight nights in remembrance of this anniversary.

This Chanukkah also coincides with the 100th anniversary of my father’s birth (no longer his “birthday” as he died two years ago), and of significance to me, the thirtieth anniversary of my official conversion to Judaism. This means that starting now, I have been a Jew for more than half of my life.

I’d known that I wanted to be a Jew from the time I was about fifteen, but did not act upon that desire until I turned thirty. With my thirtieth birthday it seemed like it was time to make some changes, so I began studying with the Reform congregation’s Rabbi in Lexington, Kentucky in February 1981, attending services and becoming part of the Adaith Israel Congregation. In November 1981, I stood before the congregation during Shabbat evening services and spoke the words that made me officially bat Israel (daughter of Israel).

From a distance, in California, my father had shown in interest and expressed support in my transformation. So I asked him to make a Chanukkah menorah for me for my first official Jewish holiday observance. I drew a sketch of what I wanted, which involved simply drilling holes in a solid rectangular block of wood, a task that would be easy for my dad with his well equipped woodworking shop.

I made two mistakes. First, I asked for the holes to be sized to fit regular candles. Little did I know that proper Jewish observance requires fresh candles for each night of Chanukkah, and that adds up to 44 candles – and most Jewish families use Chanukkah menorahs sized for candles not much larger than those that go on a birthday cake. Second, I did not explain to my father that my little sketch of a block of wood with eight candles at the same height and only one elevated, was based on proper Jewish observance – only the shammus (servant) candle is traditionally at a different height.

My father, intent on doing an extra special job in creating this menorah for me, pulled out all his woodworking tricks. He built a graduated platform, and then with his lathe, turned individual wooden cups for each candle. He lined the bottom of it with green felt and burned the date into the base.

For thirty years, I’ve considered, replacing my father’s not very Jewish beautiful candelabra, with a small, more appropriately Jewish menorah. But I always end up rejecting the idea, and going out once again in search of 44 large candles to light my eight nights of Chanukkah.

bulletins from the land of dementia

In many ways my mother seems to have regressed cognitively to her youth. She has lost decades of knowledge and understanding and reverted to ways of thinking that she deliberately chose to leave behind.

Today she was speaking of neighbors down the street, of a "different religion, not like us." Forgetting that I, her daughter, am "not like" her. Yet it is my mother who made me the person I am. It was her expression of religious doubt, her questions posed in my child's ear, her failure to blind acceptance of the religion in which she was raised, that made me the seeker that converted to Judaism.

My choice caused her some mild consternation at the time, but we talked it through and she was always supportive. Each spring she would mail me a care package of kosher for passover treats and boxes of Matzoh unavailable in the wilds of eastern Kentucky.

I accepted easily that her decline in the last few years meant she would no longer be sending me care packages (indeed now I'm the one sending stuff her way). But it did not occur to me until tonight's phone call, that she neither remembers nor understands the choice I made to be a Jew, why I made it, or what it means ("you mean you don't believe in Jesus at all?" she asked in bewilderment tonight); and that for her the hurt of my desertion is totally new and a fresh source of consternation.

Etymology of "Christmas"

It's interesting that the earliest record of the use of the term Christ Mass comes more than a millenium after the putative birth of Jesus.

"The word Christmas originated as a compound meaning "Christ's Mass". It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. "Cristes" is from Greek Christos and "mæsse" is from Latin missa (the holy mass). In Greek, the letter Χ (chi), is the first letter of Christ, and it, or the similar Roman letter X, has been used as an abbreviation for Christ since the mid-16th century. Hence, Xmas is sometimes used as an abbreviation for Christmas."

-Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

According to the "On-line Etymology Dictionary" Christ Mass was first written as one word around the mid-14th century (1300's).

the miracle of Chanukkah

Not to make light of my religious observances, but we had our own little Chanukkah miracle -- the Chanukkah candles that kept burning for four extra days.

The last night of Chanukkah was the night the snow storm started - the night all eight of the Chanukkah candles plus the shammus (which makes 9) are lit. My menorah is not a conventional Chanukkah menorah. First of all it does not conform to Halakhah (Jewish rules of observance and ritual). Halakhah requires that the eight candle holders for the eight nights all be the same height, no one more important than any of the others, and only the shammus, the candle used for lighting, is at a different height.

The year I converted (1981), for my first Chanukkah, I asked my father to create a simple menorah for me. I gave him instructions, but he did not understand that the instructions were based on Halakhah. He assumed that I was just trying to describe the simplest possible design. He wanted to do more for me. So he created the beautifully turned candle holder pictured below, which followed conventional western, (non-Jewish) ideas of design. I decided that love trumps Halakhah and have used that menorah every year since, despite its failure to conform to ritual rules.


The second way that my menorah is unconventional concerns the size of the candles it takes. Because Halakhah requires fresh candles for every night, most families' Menorahs are sized to take small candles, just slightly larger than those for birthday cakes. But in my instructions to my father, I asked for a menorah that would take regulation size tapers. That I have come to regret over the years since it takes 44 candles for all eight nights.

Since one uses fresh candles each night, I have quite a store of partially burned candles from year to year that I use for other things. At this point I had nearly 50 such candles that were more than 3 or 4 inches in length plus a few brand new, unused candles from this year (we forgot to light candles one night).

When the power went out, we just kept the menorah on the mantel filled it with previously used Chanukkah candles and kept the family room alive with warm light. Not enough to read by -- for that we had our LED headlamps -- but it made everything seem cozy and added warmth literally as well as figuratively for the duration of the power outage.

P.S. Note the really intriguing way in which the wax from the center candle (which is not lit) is drawn towards the flame of the lower candle.

Rosh Hashanah

"HAYOM HARAT OLAM: Today is the birthday of the world." So it declares during the shofar (rams horn trumpet) service on Rosh Hashanah.

There are many themes twining through Rosh Hashanah. One important theme, as one might expect for the "birthday of the world" is creation. But the High Holidays Makhzor* reminds us:

"Creation, we are taught is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and for ever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. There is this present moment because God is present. Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is a perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation. Time is God's gift to the world of space."(page 329)

The Makhzor also tells us:

"Moreover, our Sages taught, the human being is "God's partner in the work of Creation." He and we create together. There is still much work to be done: disease to be conquered, injustice and poverty to be overcome, hatred and war to be eliminated. There is truth to be discovered, beauty to be fashioned, freedom to be achieved, peace and righteousness to be established. There is a great need to dedicate all the creative power which a creating God has given us, so that we may join Him in 'the continuing work or Creation.'" (page 149)

So Rosh Hashanah is a day to rededicate ourselves to being co-creators of the Universe, partners with G-d.

*Makhzor is a transliteration into English of the Hebrew word used for the book which contains the order of service, all the prayers, songs, poems (psalms), and teachings for Jewish services. The Makhzor used by my congregation, B'nai Sholom, is Makhzor Khadash/The New Makhzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, complied and edited by Rabbi Sidney Greenberg and Rabbi Jonathan D. Levine, The Prayer Book Press of Media Judaica, Inc. 1978.

Nino and the powers of the universe

It is astounding to me how resilient living beings can be. After yesterday's trauma of seizures and coma, Nino has rebounded, and although a tiny bit shaky and tired, he ate a huge breakfast. He is spending the day with our vet, who says that his blood sugar has stabilized in the normal range (he was diagnosed as diabetic this past summer).

I now feel certain that the powers of the universe (however one understands them)were working in our and Nino's behalf, for had our vet not been out of town yesterday afternoon, we almost certainly would have wanted to euthanize him. It did not seem at all likely in the midst of the coma that he could ever revive and be healthy again.

Here was a concrete situation where I wanted something desperately (to reach my vet and put an end to what I perceived as Nino's suffering), and I did not get what I wanted. Today, it is easy to see that my understanding of the situation was limited, that what I wanted so desperately was misguided, and that not getting what I wanted was the best outcome. This is not the first time that this has happened to me -- realizing later (sometimes days, sometimes years) that not getting something I thought was necessary and desirable made possible other, different, extraordinary and wonderful things to happen in my life.

These experiences have led me to believe that on a grander, historical and even cosmic scale there are reasons for things that seem tragic and horrific to us today; reasons that we may never be able to comprehend because they will always be beyond our finite, limited human understanding, but which exist nonetheless.

One Single Impression -- A Winter's Day

Today is the beginning of winter, the winter solstice, shortest, darkest day of the year in the northern Hemisphere. This evening at sunset is also the beginning of Chanukah, the Jewish festival of lights.

"The lights of Chanukah are a symbol of our joy, in time of darkness, our ancestors had the courage to struggle for freedom: freedom to be themselves, freedom to worship in their own way. Theirs was a victory of the weak over the strong, the few over the many, and the righteous over the arrogant. It was a victory for all ages and all peoples." (Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook, Central Conference of American Rabbis)

against winter’s dark-
Baruch ata Adonai
-we light the first light

shehecheyanu-
light of triumph, light of life
-vekiyemanu

vehigianu-
in the cold, a sacred light,
-lazeman hazeh.

***

against the winter’s dark-
Blessed art thou, oh Lord
-we light the first light

who has given us life-
light of triumph, light of life,
-and has sustained us

and enabled us-
in the cold, a sacred light
-to reach this season.


Photo of first night Chanukah menorah from Wikipedia

For more poems on the theme "A Winter's Day" see One Single Impression.

the human eye -- additional thoughts

Opponents to the theory of evolution frequently use the human eye to suggest that it is simply not plausible that such a complex structure could evolve through random mutation and natural selection. One of the many Internet sites that puts forth this argument against evolution begins thus:

The human eye is enormously complicated - a perfect and interrelated system of about 40 individual subsystems, including the retina, pupil, iris, cornea, lens and optic nerve.

And in this one sentence lies the key problem with the anti-evolution argument. Because, as billions of people on earth are aware every day, the human eye is far from perfect. For example, in the U.S. and western Europe myopia (nearsightedness) affects between 30 to 40 percent of adults (and approximately 20 percent of young primary school children), but in some Asian nations, myopia among young school age children is between 35 and 45 percent, and among adults is from 70 to 90 percent. (Reference: http://www.laser-eye-surgery-statistics.com/page/page/5961885.htm).

As for the farsightedness (hyperopia), the rate for young children ranges between about 6 percent to 15 percent around the world, and increases with age, so that the over 65 population, suffers from farsightedness from fifty to 60 percent depending upon ethnicity.

In addition to myopia and hyperopia there are (as one medical site states) "a vast array of hereditary eye disorders." Among the more common are congenital cataracts (one out of 250 infants is born with a cataract) and retinal degenerations which includes retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which affects one in 5,000 in the United States. Glaucoma and strabismus, or crossed eyes, are two other commonly inherited conditions.

Given the wide array of congenital problems with eyes, and the extent to which those problems are found in the human population, it would seem to me that an evolutionary explanation makes more sense than design guided directly by some omnipotent being.

I do believe with an implacable, unswerving faith, in G-d, divine power, transcendent power, unknowable power, infinite power, incomprehensible power (to us finite humans) and in the role of that divine power in the initiation of the universe and the processes through which it has unfolded for billions of years. But it seems to me, that if there was a direct, conscious, hands-on designer of the human eye, he/she/it could have done a much better job.

On the other hand, as a consequence of billions of years of accidental mutations and fortuitous benefits for enhancing survival, the human eye is pretty damn miraculous.

keeping the faith

A reminder, coming across the electrons:

From the Talmund
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

Thanks to Brian at HummingBunny for the reminder.

Elul 28, 5768

Had I not the assurance
that I would enjoy the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living...
Look to the Lord;
be strong and of good courage!
O look to the Lord.
Psalms 27:13-14

Elul comes to an end with sunset tomorrow (Monday) and Rosh Hashanah begins. Rosh Hashanah is a day without work -- a joyful day, a new year beginning. I end my thoughts about t'shuva, repentance and atonement, about choosing a better path for the future, by contemplating the last two verses of Psalm 27:13-14.
Noticing my sins, examining my failings, experiencing the regret, rejecting those actions and resolving to avoid them, to do better in the future is difficult work. And it doesn't end today, or with Yom Kippur. It's an on-going task, that just becomes more salient for Jews at this time of the year. It would be an overwhelming impossible task "had I not the assurance that I would enjoy the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." For that is what I think that verse, unfinished, hanging there in the air pregnant with possibility really means.

Judaism is not about finding eternal life (although certainly some ideas about life after death exist within Judaism), but rather Jews are focused seeking connection to G-d, to the divine, to the goodness the divine in this life. Judaism is about the sanctification of life here and now. Sin and wrongness dull our experience of the divine, so we must strive to reconnect and eliminate those things that tarnish that connection. So I will look to the Lord.

Elul 26, 5768

Do not subject me to the will of my foes,
for false witnesses and unjust accusers
have appeared against me.
Psalms 27:12

While this is not a story that I wish to go into detail at this time, in this forum, I was once denied tenure in large part due to "false witnesses and unjust accusers." Despicable lies were told and retold so often that despite any evidence to support them, they came to be believed by a number of people who were influential in recommending that I be denied tenure.

I spent many years being angry about the unjustness of this decision. I was particularly angry with one individual who knew full well that the accusations were lies, but had other reasons to want me gone, and used the lies to accomplish that.

For years, ten years to be exact, I allowed my anger with this one person to poison my life. Every year at the High Holy Days I would think about this and pray over it, and recognize that I needed to forgive this person and let go of my anger. But was unable to find a way. I knew that I needed to forgive the person who wronged me, but that I could not offer this person a simple "I forgive you." This would only anger and antagonize him, because he believed himself to be in the right and I in the wrong. To gain the repentance I needed to move on, I had to do something that was genunine and sincere, yet would not be taken as hostile or a put down, or showing off.

Finally two years ago, I found the right action to take, that would allow me to let go.

The fact was that being denied tenure was the best thing that could have happened to me. I left a college that had a poisonous atmosphere, and found a new college with a supportive culture. I left a college that talked about the importance of teaching but did not honor or reward it, and found a new college that genuinely focused on quality teaching. At my new college I had opportunities to write, to be creative, to learn entirely new forms of pedagogy that would never have come my way had I remained where I was.

So two years ago, I wrote a simple, genuine, heartfelt letter of thanks. This freed me from dwelling, over and over again on the injustice, and allowed me to face situations where he was likely to be present with equanimity, rather than avoid them. In fact, I had not thought about the whole situation for the past two years until reading today's verse brought it to mind.

The verse says "Do not subject me to the will of my foes." What I make of this, based on my own experience, is that G-d cannot make the false witnesses and unjust accusers disappear from our lives. G-d cannot prevent them from doing us certain kinds of harm. But turning to G-d and divine inspiration can free us from the corrosive affects of anger, resentment, fear and anxiety. It is the inner harm, the psychic, emotional and moral harm that our foes will upon us from which G-d can protect us.

Elul 23, 5768

Show me your way, O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my watchful foes.
Psalms 27:11

When I first read this verse, I thought -- these days most of our "foes" are internal rather than external. These internal foes are things like fear, jealousy, greed, sloth, indifference, callousness. But as I look at the notes I jotted down yesterday (the actual Elul 23), with the MSNBC running as background noise in the other room, I have re-evaluated.

There really are real, flesh and blood, foes that people must face these days. In many places in the world today, ordinary people have to worry on a daily basis about real, flesh and blood armed foes. Earlier today I read a compelling piece on Rickshaw Diaries about the most recent suicide bombing in Islamabad, Pakistan. Last week, I read an extraordinary poem by Gautami Tripathy about a suicide bombing in India two weeks ago.

Gratefully, such terrorism is not an on-going experience in the U.S., but that does not mean that people here do not face external foes. These foes are more abstract and harder to grasp, like a meltdown in the housing market, waves of job layoffs, a crisis in the financial institutions, rising prices, unaffordable health care, and so forth. However, they are no less real, and no less threatening to us and our families, to our livelihood and security.

We can turn to the divine, to ask for help in finding our way amidst these dangers and foes. These external foes (like the internal ones mentioned above) will not be vanquished by prayer alone. Prayer, meditation, contemplation and other "level paths" of the divine help us gather the emotional and psychological resources that we need to take the actions that are needed to repair our troubled world (tikkun olam).

A phrase reverberates in my memory, one I came across it first in Gates of Prayer (the Reform prayer book) but it certainly has older roots: "Pray as if everything depends upon G-d, and act as if everything depends upon you."

Elul 21, 5768

What constitutes t'shuvah? That sinners should abandon [their] sins and remove them from [their] thoughts, resolving in [their] hearts never to commit them again....One must verbally confess and state these matters which have been resolved in one's heart.
Moses Maimonides Laws of Repentance 2:2

The rabbis of ancient times had, as mentioned before, many different views about both faith and practice. Different teachers and sages offered up different approaches or systems for repentance. The one thing that all of them shared was that they viewed t'shuvah as a process that takes place is stages or steps. As I read and learn more this season of Elul about t'shuvah, I am struck by the similarities between the ideas of my chosen faith and those of twelve step programs like AA.

Judaism does not treat addictive behaviors like smoking, drinking, substance abuse, as sins in the same way that some other religions do -- focusing more on the damage we do to others than on that we do to ourselves. But there is a strong connection in Judaism between the process necessary for ridding ourselves of self-destructive addictive behaviors and stopping the sinful behaviors (such as those listed on Elul 18) which may also arise from deeply ingrained unconscious motives such as fear.

Verbal confession and verbal commitment are emphasized in twelve-step programs, and emphasized in Jewish texts on t'shuvah. Saying things out loud, even when we are our only audience gives power to our resolutions.

So I resolve and state for myself that I will work to pay attention and try to recognize and understand where the fear, panic or impatience is coming from before I open my mouth to say something harsh and hurtful, before I shoot off that e-mail with ALL CAPS, that will hurt someone.

Elul 19, 5768

Do not hide Your face from me;
do not thrust aside Your servant in anger;
You have ever been my help.
Do not forsake me, do not abandon me,
O God, my deliverer.
Though my father and mother abandon me,
the Lord will take me in.
Psalms 27:9-10

I sit in the quiet of my study, looking out on our neat green lawn shaded by huge maples and sycamore, the late afternoon sun hides behind the trees casting shadow across the yard. But it is not the sun that hides from me, any more than it is G-d that hides from us. Both the sun and G-d are there, hidden by the things that get between us.

It is easy to sit here, my work done for the evening, no children demanding my attention, my husband and dog out for their evening walk, and write about faith and practice. But most of the time life is not like that, most of the time the forest of our responsibilities to family and work, and the thicket of modern distractions (television, Internet) plunge us into shadow where the divine is hidden from us.

Human beings are often faithless and desert us, as the Psalm says even our father and mother may abandon us. It is hard for us to imagine that there is a force, a presence in the universe that is more constant, that is always there to be sought out.

It's easy for me to recognize the divine spark in the world as I drive to and from work -- looking out over our deeply wooded hills. It's the hours in between during which I have problems, and yet when I most need to be mindful of the divinity, to see past the shadows and the trees.

My most frequent sins, are the sins of impatience and intolerance with people who don't "get" things as quickly as I think they ought, who don't listen and don't read, and don't pay attention, who hold a piece of paper with big bold print that says "this test is due on..." and ask me "when is this test due?" This is really bad in a teacher. It is a form of arrogance and pridefulness. I have achieved the first stage of t'shuva -- I recognize these sins and regret them. I haven't yet found the way to successful break this habitual sins. I need to find a better way to interject a moment of reflection between the thought and the heedless action (the sharp tongue, the harsh tone).

Elul 18, 5768

There are sins that can be atoned for immediately and other sins which can only be atoned for over the course of time.
Moses Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 1:4

There are many levels of repentance through which one draws near to the Holy Blessed One. And although there is forgiveness in relation to each kind of repentance, the soul does not become completely purified...unless one purifies one's heart and properly conditions one's spirit.
Rabi Jonah of Gerona (1200-1263) Gates of Repentance, The First Gate

I decided that I wanted to become a Jew when I was 15, but did not act upon that decision until I was 30,twenty seven years ago. Shortly after I turned 30 I began studying with Rabbi Leffler of the Reform Congregation in Lexington, Kentucky. Those weekly conversations we had made an indelible mark on my life and my soul. In one of those conversations Rabbi Leffler drew a diagram on the chalk board that sat in his office, like the one to the right. He said that some religions place their emphasis on the leg of the triangle between "me" and "G-d" with the idea that if one "gets right with" G-d through faith and prayer, that relationships with others will fall into place. But, Rabbi Leffler said, Judaism places its emphasis on the base of the triangle, the connection between "me" and "others," and that by working on our relationships to others, through following the mitzvot, that through building those relationships we will build our relationship with G-d.

So what does that have to do with the passages from the medieval Jewish thinkers (above) about repentance and atonement (t'shuva)? The vast majority of sins for which Jews must repent and atone are sins against others. I have mentioned previously the beautiful Ashamnu ("We have trespassed") prayer of Yom Kippur. Here are some of the sins listed: "we have dealt treacherously; we have robbed; we have spoken slander; we have acted perversely...we have done violence; we have practiced deceit; we have counseled evil; we have spoken falsehood...we have oppressed...we have dealt corruptly...we have led others astray." These, the majority of the sins in the prayer deal with acts against our fellow humans, not acts against G-d.

For the sins we have committed against G-d (such as blasphemy), our regret, rejection and resolution to sin no more can bring immediate repentance and forgiveness. But our sins against others often require us to perform acts of atonement, of restitution and restoration; not unlike in 12 step programs (Alcoholics Anonymous for example) where in order to change the individual must make amends to those they have wronged (unless to do so would bring further harm). Repentance and forgiveness can only come over time, as we work on our relationships with others.

Elul 16, 5768

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;
have mercy on me, answer me.
In your behalf my heart says:
"Seek my face!"
O Lord, I seek your face."
Psalms 27:7-8.

In Judaism some prayers, such as the Shema, should always be uttered aloud, and other prayer is silent, internal, like the silent Amidah in services. It is not for G-d's ears that prayer is aloud, but our own -- it focuses our own attention on our words, our plea, on our reaching out to touch the source of power, the divine.

One of the traditions of Judaism is that in the beginning G-d created the universe as a material container into which divine light and spirit were poured; but the material container could not contain the G-d's infinite divinity, and ruptured in a great cataclysm, creating the dispersed universe of space and matter that we know. But G-d's light and divinity clung to the shattered shards of the universe. Every molecule, every bit of matter in the Universe (including living beings) carry within the spark of divinity.

Our prayer goes out through that spark of the divine within us, and the answer comes back to us from that spark within. Notice how the Psalm says "In your behalf my heart says..." G-d speaks to us through our own heart, and through the hearts of others that carry that divine spark.

I think that there is no question that G-d hears us and has answers for us. What is questionable is whether or not we can hear that response that vibrates in all of nature, in all the people around us, and in ourselves. We seek G-d's face, yet it is all around us, just waiting to be recognized. Prayer is an opportunity to draw upon the power of the divine that will help us see and recognize G-d's face in all it's manifestations.