​Written on the 12-week anniversary of Burt's passing.

 
Shabbat morning. I go to draw a bath and encounter a small centipede scurrying about the tub on its many legs. I’ve encountered such centipedes around our condo from time to time. Surprised perhaps by the sudden burst of light when I flip the switch, this one is now doggedly trying to mount the cool porcelain walls, only to slide down over and over into the bowl of the tub.
 
“Oh, hello,” I say. “You’re here again,” though I have no idea whether I’ve ever met this particular centipede before. How does a centipede find its way to a second-floor bathroom anyway, and why choose the tub, such an exposed spot, to idle? Maybe it’s seeking water in this dry California season. “Hoi, khol tzamei, l’khu la-mayim,” “Come to the water, all who thirst!” exhorts the Prophet Isaiah. In Jewish tradition “water” is life, a sign of divine beneficence. Sometimes it’s also a code word for Torah. Yam Ha-Torah, the Sea of Torah, is how we refer to both the ancient Jewish wisdom texts and the 2000-year-long conversation through which passionate students have engaged in interpreting their mysterious and hidden meanings. Maybe that kind of “water” is what this little arthropod is really in search of—it is Shabbat, after all, traditionally a day of prayer and study.
 
In any case, I prepare to save my many-legged  friend. I wouldn’t want to kill one of God’s wondrous creatures on any day, but especially not on Shabbat, a day dedicated to peace and goodness, to dreaming of a time when the lion will lie down with the lamb and the homeowner will at least tolerate the subterranean swarming termite…. Perhaps this centipede in my bathtub is a harbinger of that Day of longed-for blessed cohabitation, a Day which, these days, seems farther off than ever.
 
And there’s something else—on the Shabbat that Burt, my husband, died at home, just after he drew his last breath, a double inhale, a centipede appeared. Probably not this centipede, but nevertheless. As Burt’s final intake of air gradually seeped back into the space around his hospital bed in a long imperceptible exhale, the centipede circumambulated the room. Slowly, assiduously, it climbed the wall behind Burt’s desk, stacked with books on Jewish mysticism and Hasidut, disappeared behind his computer table, then reappeared near the ceiling above the overflowing wooden file cabinet on the opposite wall. Eventually it completed its circuit of the entire room, dropped onto the floor and was gone. 
 
I’d never seen a centipede climb a wall, especially a light mushroom-colored wall that would expose it to any predator who might be present. When I’d glimpsed centipedes in our home previously, they seemed to be seeking shadows, hugging a baseboard or hanging out under the bed, or occasionally, in an apparent quest for water, sliding into the tub or the kitchen sink. I wondered if maybe this bold little crawler was Burt’s spirit guide to the next world. 
 
Burt’s old friend Ken Cohen, a world-renowned qi gong grandmaster and China scholar who trained early on in Native American ways, thought that the centipede had showed up as a protector, to keep away any imbalanced forces during Burt’s sacred time of transition. And maybe also as a carrier of ancient wisdom transcending time and space. “Fossilized centipedes go back 420 million years,” Ken wrote. “They herald the vast unbounded realm that beloved Burt has now rejoined.”
 
Perhaps today’s centipede, the one in my bathtub, was a talmid chakham reincarnate, a holy sage seeking to dive into the Sea of Torah on this Shabbat, twelve weeks to the day after Burt’s transition from this world of joys and woes into the mysterious Sea of—what? non-being? unending love? infinite peace? When asked where he thought he was going as he approached death, Burt responded only, “It’s a mystery.” And so it is, much as this life of soul-breath animating flesh, of steaming coffee brewed to perfection and loving caresses exchanged in practically the same breath as bombs exploding, children burning, and other tragic human barbarities, is also a mystery. 
 
If, as the Hasidic master Rebbe Nachman teaches, every blade of grass merits an angel standing over it, exhorting it to “grow, grow!”, then so must this centipede, whether a harbinger of an invisible world beyond or simply a many-legged neighbor, another of Creation’s unheralded masterpieces, now gingerly accepting my proffered kleenex as its ticket to freedom. It drops onto the bathroom floor, scurries across the tile seeking safe haven astride the molding beneath the vanity, then disappears from sight.

                                                                                            –Rabbi Diane Elliot
                                                                                               9-14-24

My beloved husband, Rabbi Burt Jacobson, passed away on June 22, 2024. Grief is a tricky and mysterious process, almost, but not quite as mysterious as death itself. A poem emerged today.

​Missing
 
Alone
in a house
full of you
your shoe
your coffee cup
lift me up
over the lip
of the deep
deep well
of wail
tears that
tear the heart
apart.
 
Down I fall.
“He’s in a
better place”
they said.
You’re not--
though I am
glad you are
no longer
trapped
in that
cramped and
narrow bed.
 
But no,
I say,
the best is 
here
where touch
and smell
conspire
to light
a fire,
and all
the wrangle
and murk
of night
fall away
in the light
of day,
where heat
meets cold
and we
grow old.
 
Where did you 
go?
Breathed back
into the womb
of earth--
birth
in reverse.
Leaving
a dearth
of you,
an empty
place
a gaping
space
where once
you sat
and ate
and laughed.
 
Miraculous
how in the
midst of woe
pain falls
like rain
and makes
love’s garden
grow.
     ––Diane Elliot  

A new poem, inspired by my yearning and urgency to bring a larger, more capacious frame to the difficult surfaces of life in this moment....





Inviting God to the Party
 
What lifts up our words, our prayers,
and spreads them beyond the walls 
of sanctuaries, buildings, 
all structures and containers 
in which we house 
our finite lives?
 
The Mystery, Beyond-Me, 
More-Than-Human, 
The Luminescent, 
Bubbling Spring, 
The Well, The Place, The Source, 
Ohr (Light), Ahavah (Love), 
Ground of Being, Beingness, 
Creative Force, Presence, 
Unconditioned, Eternal, 
Ein Sof, You,
Intimate,
Infinite…
 
many names to touch
what is beyond touching,
beyond containing,
beyond naming–
to summon Zot, This,
which we cannot see
with ordinary eyes.
 
Light filters through 
sapphire (sapir),
colored, focused by its 
crystalline structure,
enters the eye,
touches the retina,
flows back through the
axonal aleph of the
optic chiasma,
synapses into the visual cortex,
radiates through consciousness. 
 
Words (sippur) can only 
point us toward It
or tell the tale
of the encounter,
recording its traces
on light-loving surfaces. 
 
We have to choose
to remember
to make space
for those flashes,
to attune 
to the shining.
We have to choose
to be reminded 
over and over of
That. This. Here.
 
We pray together
in order to connect, 
to raise the power
of intention, 
to stretch the limits
of imagination, 
to sigh with 
the sheer relief
of being freed
momentarily
from the cozy,
cramped dwelling
of our singular
body house,
to reach for Mystery,
to breathe Wholeness,
to awaken to Unity,
to illumine a warm
cone of space,
a friendly lamp 
beaming into the darkness,
and so to each become
a tiny winking 
beacon,
among the trackless stars.
 
                 –Diane Elliot 
                      4-29-24

We've entered the sixth week in the the counting of the Omer, the potent seven-week period of spiritual practice that connects the season of liberation, Pesach, with Shavu'ot,  the festival that commemorates the receiving of Torah at Mt. Sinai. Each of the seven weeks is associated with one of the seven "lower" sefirot, the Divinely Emanated Qualities that comprise the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As each day is counted, we focus on embodying that week's quality, in combination with each of the seven--49 permutations in all. This week we find ourselves steeping inYesod, ​Foundation or Tzadik, examining and refining the ways we channel love and discipline, will and humility, purpose and receptivity, into relationship. I've always found the Omer period--which originated in Biblical times as a theurgic rite, a kind of daily agricultural mindfulness practice to support the growth and abundance of the all-important spring wheat crop--an extraordinarily creative time. Many inspiring Omer counters, volumes of poetry, and art projects have welled forth from this attention to keeping count and applying the lens of two particular spiritual qualities to each day of this seven-week journey. Today, the 37th day of the Omer, combines the qualities of Gevurah (strength, boundary, discipline) with Yesod (the foundation of right relationship). That recipe inspired the poem below.  

Cleaning the Pot
The pot of oatmeal
that almost boiled over,
which would have 
become encrusted, 
hard to scour clean,
had I left it
to sit on the stove
after pouring out 
the cooked oats,
rinses easily
when I 
pour in warm, 
soapy water
right away
and rub lightly with a sponge--
same as those
boiling words,
spilled out between us, 
which would’ve 
stuck and hardened
and made for a 
messy clean-up,
maybe stayed caked that way
for decades,
had we not poured on
the cleansing waters of remorse,
forgiveness,
and rubbed a bit
with a light touch.
 
                     ––Diane Elliot, Gevurah sheh’b’Y’sod , 5782
 

​My great grandfather Abraham Katz, peace be upon him, a jeweler and silversmith, emigrated to the United States from Kyiv, Ukraine in the late 19th century. His daughter Ann, my paternal grandmother, was born in Chicago in 1892, one of seven children. On retreat in my friends' cabin last week, this poem woke me up. I dedicate it to Great Grandpa Katz, to my Grandma Ann, to all the family left behind, and to the Ukrainian people now fighting and fleeing for their lives. 

Lace
 
The day after Russia invaded 
Ukraine, I awoke to sun streaming 
through the lace curtains in the 
cabin on Sonoma Mountain, etching a
delicate filigree pattern of light
and shadow on the soft green
duvet cover, light and shadow
fluid, stretching and shifting with
Earth’s turning and the play of
sun on leaves outside, eyelets 
of light connected by threads 
of shadow, the same light shining 
on the opposite side of the world, 
on the people in Ukraine and 
Iraq, Beijing and Bangkok, 
Calgary and Cameroun, similar shadows 
falling on us all, reminders of 
how delicately and artfully and 
inextricably our lives are interwoven— 
such delicate filigree!--and of how 
suddenly, deliberately and brutally 
they may be torn apart. 

                    © Diane Elliot 2022