Thirty Years: An AIDS Anniversary

Thirty years ago today, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the first cases of AIDS in the United States.

My friend Wormwood's Doxy, an HIV/AIDS education professional, has written a moving anniversary essay at her blog. Read it here.

Once you have recovered from reading it --it may take you a few hours; it is an intense and beautiful essay-- come back here and read my offering for this day, written 23 years ago, in 1988, when I was in my thirties.

This commentary, minus the three paragraphs in red brackets, was published and distributed by Religious News Service (now called Religion News Service) on July 12, 1988 under the title "The Names Project Quilt Makes Beauty Out of Horror."

At the time I wrote the essay, I was working on my first book, Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today (William Morrow, 1992; pbk Triumph/Liguori 1993), and was employed as a program developer raising funds for The Hospice at Mission Hill, the first residential hospice for people with AIDS in Boston.

The AIDS Quilt was on its first major tour around the U.S. and was displayed in its entirety on the National Mall in Washington, DC in fall of that year. I went to see it at what was still called the Boston Armory.

I have altered only a few tiny grammar and style details and have left in the language I used back then, only seven years after the anniversary we commemorate today. (For instance, I never use "minority groups" or "minorities" to mean people of color or minoritized groups these days, but I did then. The Soviet Union was still the Soviet Union in 1988, so I left that in. What is now the U.S. Postal Service had another name.)

The pandemic is still with us, all over the world. This essay is a slice of life.

Many of the students I teach were not even born when I wrote these words.

The Quilt

Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 23, 1988

In Stockholm last week, medical researchers from around the world tracked the elusive virus and its deadly mysteries. In Boston a massive quilt unfolded for four days, stitched by thousands of Americans as a memorial to people who have died of ADS. The quilt, sponsored by the Names Project, is as different from other memorials to the dead as AIDS is different from the other diseases that have plagued us. It is not made of stone and anchored in the ground, but portable and soft, organic, making its way around the nation, still growing.

More than a week after my visit to the Quilt, its impact will not go away. The first emotional shock, for visitors, is the sheer magnitude and diversity of the project, row upon row of remembered lives, presented in sophisticated patterns and hesitant stitches, in all materials from denim to organza. Some panels show only a name and dates of birth and death. Others literally bear pieces of people's lives: articles of clothing, photographs, locks of hair. One has the ashes of the person it commemorates sewn into a corner.

The Names Project is meant, according to its founder, San Francisco gay activist Cleve Jones, to give "a glimpse of the lives behind the statistics" as it travels around the country. Men, women and children sewed for relatives and lovers and for people they had never met. There are crosses and stars of David, hearts and teddy bears and pictures of cats, insignia representing the military and the medical professions, pennants from Yale and Columbia. On one panel is the portrait of a proud, handsome Black man, with a written tribute to his character and commitments. Another, with a child's pink dress sewn onto it, says only "La Hijita de Dios," "the little daughter of God." All over the panel, serving as background design, are small diaper pins.

And then there is the second shock: youth. Over half the panels bear dates of birth and death. I stared and subtracted: twenty-five years old; thirty-nine; twenty-two; two years old. The overwhelming majority of those who have died, who are now ill, who are HIV-positive, are young. Mothers embroider love letters to lost sons on the cloth. Nothing prepares one for this, even the experience (which I share) of having young loved ones among the dead. It is like walking in an old New England cemetery and coming across a child's stone marker among the graves.

We speak a lot these days about the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug users, among heterosexuals, into minority communities, through mothers to their babies. The Quilt is beginning to show the impact of these facts. But still the names are mostly those of men --young men, gay men. I am reminded of the population charts in the Soviet Union, on which the curve dips at the males who were young adults during World War II. We have not even begun to measure the trauma and devastation which AIDS has brought to an entire generation of an entire community. "I am angry," says a friend, "that at the age of 29 I must deal constantly with multiple deaths, with friends losing their strength and the use of their bodies, with grief and hospitals and burials and loss. " "Many of us are finding it hard to plan for the future," says another: "Is there a future for me? Will my closest friends till be here in five years? Will I?"

I think of the shock after the death of a single loved one, how it leaves one numb and split open all at once, with the feeling of being both wrapped in cotton wool and bled raw. Multiply this by six and twelve and fifty in the life of one person; multiply that by hundreds. Only after doing this can one measure the emotional impact of AIDS, the massive grief of whole communities, spreading around the nation.

"Wrenching" and "healing" --in the same sentence-- are the words I have heard and used most often to describe the Names Project. This witness to multiple deaths is also about the fullness of life. Most of the panels remember people not as they were in their last days, weighting eighty pounds and unable to bathe themselves or walk to the toilet, but as they were in life, designing theatre sets and playing ball, lovers of glitz and glitter or of hikes in the mountains, speaking and singing in Spanish and English, eating and drinking. A panel dedicated to a mail carrier features the arm of his blue uniform with the "U.S. Mail" emblem, cradling a small teddy bear. The rest of the panel is an uproarious burst of color: a golden peacock, a sunflower, cloth letters of a name in rainbow colors, pictures of California life.

Still, for some of the survivors, the colors battle against bleak memories. "I can no longer remember him healthy and live," says a woman I know of the friend for whom she made a panel. "I always remember him the other way."

All the panels tug at the heart. But for each visitor there were a few that hit the core and that linger, triggering floods of anger, grief, or tenderness. For me one of these was the pink "Hijita de Dios." Another featured two men's shirts sewn on with their arms entwined. "Though lovers shall be lost love shall not," Dylan Thomas wrote in "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." The first verse of this poem is printed on the third Quilt panel that lives on inside me. Long before AIDS, before the wasted bodies and lost minds, before the dementia, Thomas wrote:

"Though they go mad they shall be sane
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again."

"Death shall have no dominion." I cannot shake this phrase from my mind, trying to summon the stubbornness of life against the slow creep of death.

[The Vietnam Memorial changed forever our experience of monuments to the dead. Like the Vietnam Memorial, the Quilt is a live place, no lonely obelisk in the town square but a place of meeting and community. The Vietnam monument grows bits of life; the first day I went, on a wet December morning, a small flag with a spring of heather tied to it was propped up against the wall almost lost in the mud and brown oak leaves. The rain cause the black wall to shine and reflect my face back to me. There were names on my reflection, some of them familiar last names. The people I knew who bore these names were still alive; but I began to wonder. Was this a relative of the person I knew? Could it have been my friend, given a different lottery number, another set of circumstances? The boundaries crumbled. There was no barrier left between "them" and "us."

The Names Project takes this kind of memorial experience further, deeper. At the Vietnam Memorial, people talk, embrace, weep, ask questions. The dark stone brings forth stories because of the power of the names. The Quilt itself tells the stories, spells out the memories in material that almost seems made of flesh. It is also an organic reality: a whole piece of art, but an unfinished one. The epidemic has not stopped growing. Neither, until it does, will this quilt.

It is impossible to stay passive before the Quilt, even more so than before the Vietnam Memorial. This is because it tells stories directly and because live stories lead us to act and to hope, like the retelling of the Passover or the account of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Memories like these do not mire us in the past; they move us to shape the future. But first we go down, into the grief, into the struggle, through the retelling. Without memory, there is no possibility of hope, nor of bringing about the changes that will stem the tide of death.]

As I walked into the exhibit, the first people I saw were a very pregnant woman, a man, and a child. The mother bent over and spoke to her child about a man who had "died of the bad disease." She asked the child, pointing to a panel with a basketball shirt attached and an embroidered basketball, "What do you think this person really liked?" Five years from now, will I be the woman explaining to her child about the bad disease? Fifteen years from now, will this disease still claim lives? Will the Quilt sit in a museum? How many more stories will we need to tell? "No more names!" read a tee-shirt worn by one of the visitors.

The Quilt is a wondrous work of art --colorful, homespun, soft and resilient, quintessentially American, spiritual and political, beautiful in itself and charged with moral energy. It chronicles a catastrophe, like Picasso' s "Guernica," but is crafted by a community rather than a lone genius. Like "Guernica," it makes beauty out of horror. It leaves the viewer torn: grateful for such beauty, for the redeeming power of names and memory, for the healing; and wishing that this thing of beauty had never had to exist, knowing the names will not go away.

* * * * * * * *

This was, of course, long before the internet. The Quilt is now online here. Nothing, however, replaces having seen it, walked around the panels, bumped into a colleague who wept in my arms, and heard the names of the dead read aloud, as has happened at all public showings of this work of art.

To those for whom the New Year is difficult

Special warm wishes to those for whom New Year's Eve and Day are difficult. May you discover hope and consolation in the struggle; may regret and resentment melt away as time goes by; may peace of mind and heart and body visit you and dwell in you; if grief is your companion, may its company be gentle; if you are in recovery from addiction, may you find strength to persevere; may you know true friendship, human and divine.


I just posted these words on Facebook. I have decided there is nothing wrong with duplicating posts here.

Photo: Jane Redmont

Apollonia, the toothy saint

I had oral surgery a few days ago and have been meaning to write this post since last week, but life has been busy, first with a little road trip out of state to a family Bar Mitzvah (photos on Facebook for those of you who are FB people) and then a wedding of two young Guilford alumns (ditto, smaller album), then getting ready for the surgery, and finally the surgery and recovery. I am doing fine, healing slowly and being creative with liquid and soft foods, but the point of this post is the saint for tooth trouble and dentists, Apollonia.

Apollonia was a Christian woman from Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3d century of the Common Era. Part of her martyrdom involved getting her teeth smashed and/or pulled out; hence she is often represented in Christian iconography with pincers and a big tooth.

Apollonia's torturers threatened her with death by fire if she did not renounce the faith. In her zeal for the faith she threw herself on the pyre before they could take her there.

One of my old friends says she bets that it had nothing to do with zeal for the faith and much more to do with the fact that the tooth pain was so horrid that anything was better than enduring it any more! She's got a point... The fact remains, though, that Apollonia had already lived a long life of holiness and service and that she was a woman of deep devotion and determination.

The image above is from an English church. You can find it on an interesting website on Norfolk churches.

Both Orthodox and Catholic Christians observe Apollonia's feast day (February 9). I think we Anglicans should join them. After all, she is an ancient Alexandrian martyr.

Note: Alexandria was a virgin but probably also a deacon. parthénos presbûtis, the phrase used to describe her in the martyrologies, does not necessarily mean "an older virgin" but more likely, according to the scholars, an ordained deacon/ess. There is plenty of scholarship on women deacons, not just as deaconesses as an unordained order, but as ordained deacons.

Did you know there has even been an international Orthodox conference on women in the diaconate whose proceedings, published in 1998, have been endorsed by His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch?

Here's a rather dreadful 15th century painting of Apollonia's torture. I mean the torture is dreadful, not the painting.

And then there's this (Heilsbronn Cathedral, Bavaria, 16th century):



This is likely a modern facsimile of medieval iconography. It is the illustration on a dental office called "Apollonia House" in the U.K.

This is a serigraph from the 1980s.

This is probably the best known representation, a painting by Francisco de Zurbarán (early 17th century).

I am rather more fond of the English one at the top of this post.

There are images of Apollonia all over Europe.

There are also reputed pieces of her in several countries including Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Portugal.

Saint Apollonia, pray for us!

Cecilia's meeting with the congregation leaders

Here's an update from Cecilia on her meeting. It went well!

A little music for the occasion.

It's music time: Let It Be

I just posted this on Facebook for a friend who is deep in a writing job and thought I'd share it here for the assembled multitudes. I'm enjoying watching and listening to this video. (Sorry MP, I still love the Beatles.) And for you religious types, this has Mother Mary in it, too. What's not to love?

Enjoy.

With thoughts and prayers for the people of Mexico as they face the swine flu epidemic and the aftermath of an earthquake.

The Disabled God - and some appropriately disjointed thoughts on resurrection

"In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing.

I think I neglected to post this obituary for theologian Nancy Eieslund last month. I have finally ordered her book The Disabled God, which may be pertinent to next Sunday's sermon. (No preaching this Easter weekend, but I'm on for Low Sunday.) As may this, of course.

And then there's the rich reading in the book of Acts, the one about what we contemporary Christians mostly don't do. Except in some very poor communities, like the one I just read about in this book. Hmmm.

Kevin preached a kick-a** sermon at St. Mary's House this a.m. about the importance of how Jesus died (crucifixion) in relation to how we are to live post-Resurrection (in a way that subverts the powers that be - intentionally). There was more, but that is the part related to what I've been starting to think about for next Sunday. Of course, things could change between now and then.

This morning's sermon (one of them - I was also at the early Vigil at All Saints') also reminded me of Krister Stendahl's excellent essay "Immortality Is Too Much and Too Little." (Originally this essay was his 1972 Nobel Conference lecture at Gustavus Adolphus College. It is available in Stendahl's book of essays Meanings: the Bible as Document and as Guide.) Stendahl's point is that we confuse resurrection with immortality of the soul. We don't proclaim the latter. We proclaim the resurrection of the body - and the victory of God's justice. Not, as Stendahl in his inimitable way put it, "what this has to do with little me."

Alleluia. Go forth.

He Qi: After Resurrection

Prayer Posse update, cont'd

More updates. Bless your hearts.

Deborah has gotten over her virus and is out and about.

Mimi's wallet turned up! An honest cab driver and St. Anthony did what they do best.

I am still writing. (With a break for church this a.m., the last of my Lenten Series session in the late afternoon / early evening, and supper and conversation with +Maya Pavlova. Also, I have to read and grade some exams and papers sometime before tomorrow morning.)

The funeral for Aunt Anne is Tuesday in Yonkers, NY. I won't be able to make it, nor will the other members of the Acts of Hope family (my 90-year-old parents who can't travel this week plus my Beloved Sibling and two generations of offspring who all live in Europe) but Anne's granddaughter, who was away in India with her (Indian) husband and children, was due back today with her family (this was already planned) so I think all of Anne's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be there. Thank you for your kind messages.

Update on those Prayer Posse requests

Thank you, all, for your prayers. We welcome your weekend prayers too!

An update on how everyone is doing.

1. I spoke with P. yesterday. He is taking short walks every day. His voice continues to sound good. The sternum takes a long time to heal so he won't be able to lift anything heavier than a bottle of milk or to drive (seat belt is problem when you're recovering from chest surgery) for a while, but he is making steady progress. The dog is a little frustrated because she can't go on long walks, but sometimes there are visiting humans who take her out for a romp. B. (P.'s partner) is tired.

2. Deborah hasn't checked in but I am assuming no news is good news, because if there were trouble I would have heard from her spouse. I've left a message for her.

3. I am still writing. There wasn't much time for it during my teaching week but since Thursday I have been back at it almost nonstop. Big push today and tomorrow (outside of liturgy and Lenten Series). Keep prayin'.

4. Moira has a tiny faint squeak of a voice. This is good news. It means the larynx is still functional.

5. Mimi didn't find her wallet, but she got a new credit card, and she hasn't let a nasty English cold stop her. She continues to enjoy England in the good company of Doorman-Priest and his delightful wife.

We remember Ian, who died yesterday, and his beloved Lisa, who has lost the love of her life. Paul has a moving memorial post and also posted another beautiful piece of music as Ian was dying.

It's a rainy day in Greensboro. Yesterday was a rainy day in Greensboro. The day before yesterday was a rainy day in Greensboro. I am gearing up to do some writing and also to visit the computer people a bit later.

Time for the Prayer Posse again

Some updates and prayer requests in the vein of what Paul the BB calls the Heart Thread over at his place.

1. My friend P. continues to heal after his triple bypass. The medical people are paying close attention since P. has limited kidney function and everyone wants to avoid complications. (There were a few after surgery, but nothing that they couldn't deal with, Baruch HaShem.) P. was in very good spirits last time we spoke. Recovery will take some weeks, but at least he's home with his partner and their dog. Prayers of thanksgiving and continued prayers for healing.

2. A friend of mine who is living with HIV infection and AIDS and generally in good health thanks to ongoing treatment has a bit of a virus. It seems to be a mild sort of thing, but nothing is ever minor when one lives with AIDS and worries about the immune system at all times. My friend is taking good care of herself and has attentive medical people and a dear wonderful spouse, but prayer is always good. You can call my friend Deborah.

3. I need to finish up a Big and Important Piece of Theological Writing in the next few days, a mighty task that holds as much internal fear as external challenge. This is one of those "bring out the big prayers" times. Please pray for the Holy Spirit's power and peace. Thank you.

4. Speaking of big prayers, I have a request for a dear old friend of mine - not old in years, she is younger than I and still in her late 40s, but we've been friends for many years. She's had multiple surgical interventions in the last couple of years and the most recent, just this past week, was especially scary because it involved a malignancy. (The other surgeries did not, though they were delicate and difficult.) The good news is that the surgeon excised the entirety of a malignant tumor in my friend's neck and that the tumor appears not to have spread to the lymph nodes. The bad news is that my friend can't speak. People often have sore throats after having been intubated, but this is not a sore throat: my friend has no voice at all. She is persuaded that the surgeon and anesthesiologist damaged her larynx during surgery. In a few days she will know more, but she is terrified. And weary, weary, of all the assaults on her body (especially parts of her face and head) in these last years. Please pray for my friend. Let's call her Moira.

5. And while you're at it, there is the matter of a lost wallet in England. Hello, St. Anthony? Would you help out our friend Mimi?

Thank you, dear Prayer Posse. Do your thing.

P. is being discharged from hospital - and "A Prayer for Prayer"

My friend P. is being released from hospital, just a week after his surgery. I spoke with him mid-day and he sounded well. There will be long weeks of healing, but it will be nice for him to be back in his own home, with his partner B. and their very nice dog K.

Here is a final excerpt from the book, a kind of postscript called "A Prayer for Prayer," by Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman.

O My God

My soul's companion

My heart's precious friend

I turn to You.

I need to close out the noise

To rise above the noise

The noise that interrupts--

The noise that separates--

The noise that isolates.

I need to hear You again.

In the silence of my innermost being,

In the fragments of my yearned-for wholeness,

I hear whispers of Your presence--

Echoses of the past when You were with me

When I felt Your nearness

When together we walked--

When You held me close, embraced me in Your love,

laughed with me in my joy.

I yearn to hear You again.

In Your oneness, I find healing.
In the promise of Your love, I am soothed.

In Your wholeness, I too can become whole again.

Please listen to my call--

*****help me find the words

*****help me find the strength within

*****help me shape my mouth, my voice, my heart

so that I can direct my spirit and find You in prayer

In words only my heart can speak

In songs only my soul can sing

Lifting my eyes and heart to You.

Adonai S'fatai Tiftach--open my lips, precious God,

so that I can speak with You again.

From Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed. Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

Special thanks to Anita D, who gave me the book lo those many years ago, around the time it was published.

Art: Modeh Ani, prayer of thanksgiving upon waking up. Dvora Black, art for children.

More on that 10th healing psalm, a day (or two) late

A couple of days ago, I posted the 10th in the series of Ten Healing Psalms according to Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (Breslov).

I did not have time then to post the commentary from the book I've been using, so here are some excerpts.

The rabbi commenting is Rabbi Nancy Flam, and her commentary on Psalm 150 is called "Praise, Joy, Breath."

From the section entitled Praise:

***How can one praise God in the midst of serious illness? Praise God for one's situation not being worse? What if it is nearly as bad as one can imagine? Praise God for the memory of health? What if one was born with a congenital disease? Praise God for the depth of experience and insight which can come through suffering? Who wouldn't trade a little insight for a modicum of relief?

***The psalm says "Praise God for God's mighty deeds. ... What are these mighty deeds, this abundant greatness? The poem is vague; I do not know the author's intention. ...

***The mighty deeds might refer to God's intervening in history: Performing miracles such as splitting the Read Sea. Personally, I cannot conceive of God this way: A power who willfully changes the laws of nature to help a particular people. But I do affirm and praise God as the One who makes miracles everyday, according to the laws of the physical universe and the human spirit: The awesome power we sense as we witness fall turn to winter, and winter to spring; the One we feel when we experience true love and compassion; who has willed th natural cycle of growth and decay; in whose presence we find company in prayer.

***Such greatness pertains whether I am ill or well. Praise of God is not about me or my condition; it is about the reality of God.

Joy

***It may require a psycho-spiritual tour de force to praise God with joy and gladness in the midst of illness, but Rabbi Nachman challenges us to do so. Psalm 150 is nothing short of ecstatic, a glorious symphony which rises to a dazzling crescendo.... Perhaps the wildness expresses something crazed. Or perahps, in a rare moment of grace, one might play the music without fury, in touch with happiness, miraculously connected to God with praise in one's heart, lamrot hakol: Despite everything.

Breath

***HalleluYah: Praise God! The most breathy name of God is used here: Yah. Praise the Creator who breathed the breath of life into Adam and Eve and each one of us.

*******"The rabbis, of blessed memory, said, 'Let every soul (neshama) praise God.' This means: Praise God with each and every breath (neshima), so you can say at every moment and continually, "Blessed is the Merciful One, Ruler of the Universe, Master of this moment.'"
*************************Or HaGanuz LaTzadikim, p. 45

***The last line in the final psalm of Rabbi Nachman's tikkun brings us to an awarensss of the breath, rooting our being in the present moment, its reality and blessing. Fully present and mindful, we recognize that at all times, sick or well, we "have only moments to live" (Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, 17).


From Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed. Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

The series began a little over ten days ago, before my friend P.'s bypass surgery, and continued each day with one Psalm (or excerpt from that Psalm) and a bit of commentary by a contemporary rabbi.

I posted every day, for instance and here. You can just scroll down to the first post and the work your way up if you are just arriving here.



Miriam and Jerusalem tambourines, Miriam tallit by Yair Emanuel

Speaking of healing: I haz a little of teh sick

It's not teh sick in a humongous way, but it is sniffly and headachy and tired, so we are going to nip it in the bud and not let it get worse. The Editorial We has cancelled things right and left, begged out of this afternoon's funeral (just attendance, I didn't have any liturgical involvement), and found a replacement for at least one classroom commitment. No school for us today. We are being old-fashioned and Taking To Our Bed.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone. Have one for me - I'm on ginger tea and quiet.

Healing Psalms, Day Ten - part 1

I am going to make this 10th healing Psalm last. Mostly because I have had a huge, long day and am cooking a little sniffle and want to take myself to bed and get a good sleep so that I don't get sick.

So I will post the Psalm tonight and then commentary tomorrow.

I'm posting the Psalm twice here, with the traditionally used pronoun in the first version and the other pronoun in the second. If G*d has no gender, then let's use all genders or none.

Psalm 150

Halleluyah/Praise God!
***Praise God in His Sanctuary;
***Praise Him
******in the vast expanse of Heaven!

Praise Him for mighty deeds;
***Praise Him
******according to His abundant greatness!

Praise Him
***with the blowing of the shofar;
******Praise Him
*********with the lyre and the harp!

Praise Him
***with drum and dance;
******Praise Him
*********with string instruments and flute!

Praise Him
***with resounding cymbals!
******Praise Him
*********with clanging cymbals!

Let every breath of life praise God,
******Halleluyah/Praise God!


Psalm 150

Halleluyah/Praise God!
***Praise God in Her Sanctuary;
***Praise God
******in the vast expanse of Heaven!

Praise Her for mighty deeds;
***Praise Her
******according to Her abundant greatness!

Praise Her
***with the blowing of the shofar;
******Praise Her
*********with the lyre and the harp!

Praise Her
***with drum and dance;
******Praise Her
*********with string instruments and flute!

Praise Her
***with resounding cymbals!
******Praise Her*********

with clanging cymbals!

Let every breath of life praise God,
******Halleluyah/Praise God!

Scroll down to posts below for previous Psalms and explanation of the origins of this custom of praying ten specific Psalms for healing of body and soul. Thank you, Reb Nachman. Blessings, all.

Healing Psalms, Day Nine

Psalm 137 is today's Psalm, the ninth in the series of ten healing Psalms according to Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav.

This beloved, well-known, poignant Psalm is best known for its first six verses.

The end of the Psalm makes it one of the "angry Psalms," and a particularly shocking one at that, with its violent image. What shall we do with it? The other "angry Psalms" can be consoling, especially if one is despondent, depressed, feeling powerless, turning one's anger inward. But calling God's rage upon the children of others is another matter entirely. It feels far more horrible than calling God's rage upon one's enemies.

I have no answer for this, and today's commenter from the book, Rabbi Amy Eilberg, does not really address this dilemma.

Jewish and Christian traditions, including African American Christian traditions, have embraced this Psalm of exile and clung to it, and even transformed it (there is a fine book on African American Catholics called Taking Down Our Harps) - but they usually stop at verse 6.

Is the end of the Psalm something we need to say no matter way, lest we edit the Psalms at will and edit out their anger and passion?

Or is it one of those "texts of terror" that we should study like other texts of terror but not recite or listen to as holy scripture?

Here's the Psalm. Tolle lege, and see what you think and feel.

By the rivers of Babylon,

***there we sat and we wept

******as we remembered Zion.

Upon the willows on its banks

***we hung up our harps.

For there our captors demanded of us

******words of song;

***Our tormentors asked of us (with) joy:

*****'Sing to us the songs of Zion!'

But how shall we sing the song of Adonai

***on alien soil?

If I ever forget you, Jerusalem,

***may my right hand forget its cunning!

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,

******if I remember you not;

******if I do not set Jerusalem

*********above my highest joy!

Remind the songs of Edom, Adonai, about the days of Jerusalem--

***Remind those who said,

******'Raze it, raze it to its very foundation!'

Daughter of Babylon,

***it is you who are the annihilated one;

******Happy is the one who will repay you

*********for all that you have done to us!

Happy is the one who will grab your little ones,

***dashing them against the rock!

Rabbi Eilberg writes that she "had always read Psalm 137 only in historical terms, the homesick lament of the Jews in exile in Babylon, weeping for Jerusalem, their home. But to read the Psalm through Rabbi Nachman's eyes is to imagine the lament as my own, as a cry of despair and longing in my own times of pain and lostness and confusion, when I am disoriented, forcibly removed from the normal, comfortable times and places of my life. Rabbi Nachman invites us to read the psalm as our own cry, our own prayer, inviting us to move, as the psalm does, from despair to joy to power."

I gave you my commentary as much as Rabbi Eilberg's (there's more of hers in the book, but the paragraph above is a good summary introduction) and would be interested in knowing how you read and hear this Psalm, especially when you read it in the context of your own illness, suffering, troubles, and healing.

This makes me want to go to Reb Nachman's teachings to find out what he said.

Commentary and Psalm translation from Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed., Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

Art: "A rare large framed Hungarian 19th century Jewish oil on canvas painting depicting the remembrance of the destruction of the Temple, in Hebrew "Zecher Lechurban" above the words of "The Rivers Of Babylon." Very vivid and colorful oil with various Jerusalem scenes, the painting is signed by an unknown Hungarian artist. It is a Jewish custom leaving a small part of the home unfinished in memory of the destruction and this painting covers that particular place. 88cm X 72cm." Via IVAntiques

Healing Psalms, Day Eight: Breaking the Spiritual Gridlock

I spoke with P.'s partner B. earlier today and P.'s recovery is proceeding as well as can be expected. He's at the grumpy-and-in-pain stage, which I remember well from when my father had his CABG. But he's where he is supposed to be and the medical and nursing care at the hospital is excellent and very attentive. And kudos to the staff, all up and down the line, for courtesy and warm behavior toward B. as a same-gender partner. We shouldn't have to notice when people who are family to each other are treated properly, but since it's not the norm everywhere, especially with same-gender couples, we do. Would that this courtesy and kindness were the case all over the U.S. and all over the globe.

Today's Psalm from the Tikkun HaKlali, the Complete Remedy according to Reb Nachman of Bratslav, is Psalm 105.

Note: The commentator uses "He" a lot for G*d. Do not let the language keep you away from Godde. Change the gender if you need to. I am not doing so because I am quoting from a book, but in prayer I would change the language.

Rabbi Maurice Lamm writes in "Breaking the Spiritual Gridlock: An Introduction to Psalm 105," one of the chapters in the book we've been following (see bottom of this post):

****If we are going to heal from illness we need to break two kinds of spiritual gridlock. One paralyzes us so that we become passive and resigned; the other steals the very song from our throats, leaving us with only a groan. The spirit evaporates from our souls and we become submissive and flat. Psalm 105 teaches two positive ways to heal, and healing is the essence of health.

****First, when illness de-activates us, we follow a prepared script and act like victims--we become couch potatoes, helplessly watching ourselves get weaker. We are fed and injected and analyzed and tested and predicted and watched over and prayed for and spoken of behind our backs. It is a gridlock and paralyzes us and makes us feel worse. Psalm 105 tell us: "Don't act like a victim."

****Notice how the psalmist erupts and fires off ten staccato charges in five sentences--give thanks; call Him, make known His works; sing to Him; praise Him; speak of Him; glory in Him; search for His presence; seek Him; remember Him! To heal, to become whole, we must respond even ten times; energize our minds; and not allow ourselves to sink into victimhood.

****... It will require heroism to take our mind off our condition, to take control of our souls, to be courageous, to feel empowered again. You may say: "I can't think of anything else." Perhaps you can't, but try it. ...

****Now break the second gridlock. In the ten charges of the psalmist, one appears not to fit --"Sing to Him!" What's the value of a song? In our sophistication, we think of singing as an art form; but the Torah teaches that to sing is a blessing. In terms of the spirit, singing is on a higher level than speaking--it is why the Levites sang in the Temple. The word shir, meaning song, also derives from shur, meaning insight. When we sing we raise our souls to God, and we gain insight into Him. Through song we address God.

****And through song we learn to better endure our hardships. When life is not a song, sing! When King David was ill, he sang; when Cervantes, the great writer, was ill, he said: "He who sings frightens away his ills." ... Singing is an antidote to panic. The Hasidim taught us that. It lightens the burden, lessens the fear, steadies the nerves. Singing gives voice to our deepest feelings; it enables us to express ourselves even if we are the only ones who hear it. And we will have made ourselves heart. Singing lifts the heart.

****Even if all we do is chant "Oy Vay," over and over, to a tune we improvise--Shiru lo, "Sing to Him." Even a melancholy song somehow takes us out of ourselves and gives expression to our inner being. Sometimes I break out in a niggun--a melody that uses sounds shaped only by my emotions. It articulates a groan that forces its way oout of my interior; sometimes, it expresses an indescribably joy inside me that's in search of an audience.

Note from Jane: I am struck by how related this is to the African American Spirituals, the "sorrow songs" of slavery which are classics and still sung and listened to today. Many of them, like the Psalms of old, are laments. In naming suffering, they transcend it and in some ways also revolt against it. Laments help us both to survive and to resist.

******

Singing with friends, says Rabbi Lamm, harmonizes our own souls with the souls of those who empathize with us. The harmony, in magical ways, transfers the energy of the group to us fragile individuals as we lift up our voices and keep time together.

****Sing what you like; help others by offering to sing with them. ....

****To groan when we are ill is common; to sing is courageous. Think actively, sing passionately,. It will break the most common gridlocks of illness, and let our souls soar to new heights.

As for Psalm 105, it is really long.

I'm just going to post a few pieces of it, including the one to which Rabbi Lamm refers at the beginning of the long passage from his chapter (oops, sorry, Fair Use people; this really is fair use):

Give thanks to Adonai, call upon His name;

***Let all nations know about His deeds!

Sing to Him, compose songs, play instruments for Him;

***Tell all about His wondrous acts!

********

Take pride in His Holy Name;

***The heart of those who seek Him rejoices!

Search for Adonai and for His might,

***Seek His presence always!

Remember the wonders He has performed,

***His miracles, and the laws from His mouth.

Then comes the story of Adonai's relationship with the people of Israel from Abraham on, with Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron (no Miriam, no women), the Plagues and the Exodus, quail and manna and water from the rock...

For He remembered His holy word, His promise

******to Abraham, His servant.

He brought out His people with gladness,

******His chosen ones with joyful singing.

He gave them the lands of nations,

******they inherited that which nations acquire by labor.

So that they might keep His statutes,

******and treasure His teachings,

*********Halleluyah!

I know, it's an Alleluia during Lent, but I'm quoting. ;-)

Besides which, we're doing this in the context of a Jewish commentary.

Commentary and Psalm translation from Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed., Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

Illustration above:

***

***Commemorative International (in the text about an Israeli coin modeled on this image) writes:

*****

*****The Bible abounds with stories about Miriam, Moses and Aaron's eldest sister. We learn about her heroism and her compassion, as well as her great intellectual knowledge and leadership abilities.

*****The book of Exodus, describing the Exodus from Egypt, offers a depictive description: "And Miriam, the Prophetess, Aaron's sister, took the drum in her hand and all the women followed her with drums and dance" (Exodus 15:20). While others were complaining about the desert conditions, Miriam was giving thanks for the great and miraculous Redemption that had just occurred after the parting of the Red Sea.

******

*****The drawing ...was chosen from "The Golden Haggadah" printed in Barcelona circa the year 1320. The pictures in this Haggadah, among the earliest and most spectacular of the Sephardic Haggadahs, portray the events and characters beginning with Adam in the Book of Genesis and ending with Miriam's song in the Book of Exodus.

Healing Psalms, Day Seven: Crisis and Confidence

Continuing to pray with and for my friend P., who has just had a coronary bypass, and with all who need prayer and all who pray for others.

Psalm 90 is the seventh in this series of healing psalms according to Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, and the commentator today is Rabbi Eugene B. Borowitz.

Rabbi Borowitz speaks of "the simple shifts that are part of the quiet rhythm of the everyday. They raise us from the stability of routine to a warm feeling of confidence, or lower us into doubting that anything really matters or is worth our effort.

Our psalm speaks to me of this alternation of temper. We begin it confidently enough. After all, it is a psalm, part of our sacred literature, something Jews have recited for millennia and perhaps familiar from the early part of the Shabbat service. ..."

I am keeping the quotes from the commentary short because the Psalm speaks powerfully for itself.

A prayer of Moses, a man of God:
***Adonai, You have been a refuge for us

***in every generation.

Before the mountains were born,

***before You brought forth the earth and the inhabited world,

******from world to world--

*********You are the Almighty.

You bring people down

***from arrogance to contrition;

******You say,

*********'Return to Me, children of Adam and Eve!'

For a thousand years are in Your eyes

***like yesterday, which has just passed,

******like a watch in the night.

**

The stream of human life is like a dream;

***In the morning, it is as grass, sprouting fresh;

***In the morning, it blossoms and flourishes,

******but by evening, it is cut down and shrivels.

So are we consumed by Your anger;

***were are terrified by Your rage.

You have placed our sins before You;

***Our hidden misdeeds

******are exposed by the light of Your countenance.

All our days vanish
***in the glare of Your wrath;
***We have used up our years;
*******which pass like a word unspoken.

The days of our years may total seventy;
***if we are exceptionally strong, perhaps eighty;
******but all their pride and glory is toil and falsehood,
*********and, severed quickly, we fly away.

Who can know the force of Your fury?
******Your rage is as awful as our fear!
To count every day-- teach us,
******so we will acquire a heart of wisdom.

Return, Adonai--how long?
******Take pity, have compassion on Your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning
******with your Hessed/Lovingkindness,
******and we will sing and rejoice all our days!

Give us joy
***that will challenge the days of our affliction,
*********the years we have seen evil.

Let Your work be revealed to Your servants,
***let Your splendor be on their children.

May the pleasantness of my Master, our God, rest upon us,
***and may the work of our hands be established;
******Establish the work of our hands!

Rabbi Borowitz writes of the many shifts in mood in this psalm. He concludes:

"Will our prayer be answered? That is for God to determine. But in one sense, it already has been, for we end this prayer different from when we started it."

The sentence that strikes me is "Give us joy / that will challenge the days of our affliction, / the years we have seen evil." Is it not usually evil and affliction that challenge our sense of joy? Here the prayer is for Godde to do the opposite: to give us joy that challenges us! that challenges our past sorrows. That challenges even evil. And if we ask Godde for this, we must believe that it is possible. It will happen. Joy will challenge the worst of our memories, the deepest of our sorrows, the most terrible of evils. Joy will. Joy.

Photo: In the Woods (France), by Sébastien Lallement

Healing Psalms, Day Six

We continue our series of the Healing Psalms of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav. Information on the series, Reb Nachman, and previous psalms and meditations here - or just scroll down.

Today's Psalm is Psalm 77.

The commentary or meditation is by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis. Here it is in its entirety - today without the Psalm. It is titled

The Echo of Your Promise - Based on Psalm 77.

When I cry my voice trembles with fear
When I call out it cracks with anger.

How can I greet the dawn with song
when darkness eclipses the rising sun

To whom shall I turn
when the clouds of the present eclipse the rays of tomorrow

Turn me around to yesterday
thatr I may be consoled by its memories.

Were not the seas split asunder
did we not once walk together through the waters
******to the dry side

Did we not bless the
bread that came forth from the heavens

Did your voice not reach my ears
and direct my wanderings

The waters, the lightning, the thunder
reminded me of yesterday's triumphs

Let the past offer proof of tomorrow
let it be my comforter and guarantor.

I have been here before
known the fright and found your companionship.

I enter the sanctuary again
to await the echo of your promise.

From Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed. Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

Healing Psalms, Day Five

P. is out of heart surgery and now begins the recovery, some of it short and some much longer. (The sternum takes a while to heal.)

Modern medicine is amazing, when you think about it, and so is the human body. Glory be to Godde for both of them, the science and the person. And please, Congress of the United States, can we have decent health insurance for all, and soon?

Back to our sequence of Psalms, recommended for both R'fuat HaGuf (Healing of the Body) and R'fuat HaNefesh (Healing of the Spirit). Rabbi Nachman of Breslov identified these ten psalms as the Tikkun HaKlali, the Complete Remedy.

Rabbi Nachman, or Rebbe Nachman as some call him, lived from 1772 to 1810, not terribly long. People died younger in those days. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. He lived in the era of the French and American revolutions, deist philosophers, the days of the Terror in France, and Napoleon - and very far away from them all, both geographically and philosophically, in Czarist Russia. He was a Hasidic master and the great-grandson of the Ba'al Shem Tov, the great Jewish mystic and leader whom the editors of our book call "the progenitor of the Hasidic trend in Judaism." This movement stressed the mystical and emotional dimensions of Judaism to complement its intellectual and carefully structured dimensions. Rebbe Nachman was --among many other things-- a great believer in the power of prayer.

Today's Psalm is Psalm 59, with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg as commentator. I'm going to be brief because I've just realized I'd better stay within Fair Use. And you really do want to buy this book. (Info at bottom of each post.) It's quite wonderful and you don't have to be Jewish to use or appreciate it. It might make you a little more Jewish, though.

Rabbi Peltz Weinberg writes:

This very personal psalm contains the cries of someone searching for help in the face of life-threatening danger, beginning with a plea in despair and ending with a song of praise and thanksgiving. It moves from terror to serenity in a three-fold structure telescoped into a mere 18 lines.

Just a few lines tonight, and then you can read the full psalm on your own.
...
Rescue me from enemies, my God:
***from those who rise up against me --strengthen me!
Rescue me from those who act treacherously;
from bloodthirsty people --save me!
For they lie in ambush for my soul,
***brazen ones gather against me;
***yet I have not transgressed,
*******nor sinned against them, Adonai!
...

But you, Adonai, You laugh at them,
***You scorn the evil among the nations.
***My Strength--
******for Your Help I wait,
******for God is my Haven
God, my Hessed/Faithful One,
***You will go before me. ...

Rabbi Peltz Weinberg writes:

... As the enemy is named and acknowledged, so is God, source of help, strength, and support. Three words appear in the Hebrew. Each word as it is pronounced allows the suffering person to leap across a chasm of hopelessness. The words are names of an intimate reservoir of help, an answer to the cries at the height of panic. The words are personal - ozi, My Strength, misgavi, My Haven, and hasdi, My Faithful One. As we name the unseen hands that cradle us in our most bereft moments, we can allow ourselves to lay some of our heavy burden in those hands. The psalmist takes a breath. We pause. Selah.

Previous posts on the Healing Psalms are here:

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

From Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed. Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

Surgery update

My friend P., for whom I have been praying the healing Psalms in your company, had a triple bypass this morning and is now out of surgery and in the recovery room. Thank you for your continued prayers.

Healing Psalms, Day Four

We continue praying the healing Psalms, the Tikkun HaKlali or "Complete Remedy" recommended by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. I am praying these especially to accompany P., who is having major surgery tomorrow. He is Jewish and this form of prayer seemed most appropriate.

My friend P. leaves his house at 4:30 in the morning to get to the hospital and check in around 5:00 a.m. and get prepped for his coronary artery bypass. Surgery will last several hours. He'll be "under" most of the day. I expect to hear from his partner B. sometime during the day or evening. Recovery after will take some weeks. They get you up and walking pretty fast (my father had a slightly more complex verison of this in his 80s and I was there during his surgery and recovery) but there is long-term rehab and one's sternum has to heal, which takes a while.

I have had a long day (I'm writing this third paragraph at 1 a.m. after interrupting the composition of this post for several hours) so will keep this as short as I can.

The Psalm for today is Psalm 42. I wonder if any of you have thought of it as a "healing Psalm." I must say that I haven't, as I tend to focus as many of us do on the first verse or two of longing for Godde. But the commentator for today, Rabbi Charles Scheer, calls this "The Remarkable Faith of a Downcast Soul" in his chapter title. Or maybe that's what the editor of the book called it.

To the Chief Musician; Instruction to the Sons of Korah
Like a hind crying for spring of water,
***so my soul cries out for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
***for the living El/Almighty;
***O, when will I come to appear before God?

My tears have been my food,
***day and night;
******my enemies taunt me all day, asking,
******"Where is your God?"

This I remember, and pour out my soul within me--
***how I used to walk with the crowd,
***moving with them, the festive throng, up to the House of God,*
*****with joyous shouts of praise to God
*********a multitude celebrating the festival!

Why so downcast, my soul?
***Why disquieted within me?
******Have hope in God!
*********For I will yet praise Him
*********for deliverance, for His presence.

My God, my soul is cast down within me;
***as I remember You in the land of the Jordan River,
******and Mount Hermon's peaks,
*********and the smaller mountain of Sinai.

Deep cries out to deep,
***the sounds of the opened sluices of heaven;
*******all your breakers and your billows
*******have swept over me.

By day, Adonai will command his Hessed/Loving-kindness,
***and at night, His resting place will be with me;
******This is my prayer to the Almighty, God of my life.
******I say to the Almighty, my Rock:
*********"Why have You forgotten me?
*********"Why must I walk in dark gloom,
***********oppressed by enemies?"

Crushing my bones
***my adversaries revile me,
***taunting me all day with,
******"Where is your God?"

Why so downcast, my soul?
***Why disquieted within me?
***Have hope in God!
******I will yet praise Him,
*********my ever-present Help,
***********my God

* Rabbi Scheer has a note here that the reference is to the festival pilgrimages to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

From Rabbi Scheer's commentary:

... [A]s the psalmist bares more of his tormented soul, he continues to use water as the organizing metaphor. Whereas earlier water was depicted as a nourishing agent, it now becomes a terrifying and destructive force. ...

... This psalm may hint at the only possible response we can make to overwhelming pain and loss. The psalmist asks himself, "Why so downcast, my soul? Why disquieted within me?" His answer is instructive. Having poured his heart out, he does not deny the reality of his pain nor does he present simple pieties to explain God's design. Instead, in the face of adversity, he presents a human response rather than an answer.

***The psalmist uses two words in the text that connect the faith of his past with hope for his future. In his concluding declaration of faith he says, ki od --"yet." This terminology suggest that, in the indefinite future, the exile will end. Although the current reality seems to preclude all reasonable hope, he reminds himself that there might yet be other options: "I will yet praise Him."

From Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed. Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

See below (scroll down) for the first three posts on the healing Psalms.