Islands In Time

Autumn in Warsaw is especially magical this year; more so than in years past (so I've been told). We have not yet had a frost so the leaves are still fluttering on their branches casting lace-like shadows when the sun shimmers down at the right time of day. Yellows, browns, and reds blanket summer's remaining green making comfortable naptime beds for nature-dwellers and their playmates. But with lingering splotches of color comes Poland's infamous season of darkness. The days have gotten shorter and soon the sun will set by 3pm.

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One time after dark, I tried to describe the smell of Halloween to my grandmother. I don't remember which words I used but I do remember my "preparation." I marched around the neighborhood as a California Raisin (clearly this was in my youth) stopping periodically to arc my neck to the sky and breathe in the night. I intended to know the smell well enough to bring it back whenever I wanted; I intended to give it a name. My grandmother did not celebrate Halloween; neither does the Polish nation. But my ex-pat posse and I had our own special festivities in Warsaw. We carved jack-o-lanterns and drank hot honeyed wine while listening to Loreena McKennitt (to honor the inner-Wickan in all of us). After carving, we baked pumpkin pie from scratch and roasted pumpkin seeds in the oven. Then we slept. Ah, how rich life is in scents and senses!

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November 1st was "All Saints' Day," a holiday that has been celebrated in Poland and in the rest of the Catholic world for many centuries. In the days preceding the holiday, families spend hours cleaning graves to prepare the souls of the deceased for their journey toward the living. On the holiday itself, people travel great distances to place candles in colorful tinted glasses beside the graves of their loved ones so the departed souls can find their way to life through the darkness. After sunset, I went to the cemetery in Warsaw to visit the graves of a friend's family. I lit candles at the memorial sites for those who'd died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and in concentration camps. Unlike the manicured grid-like cemeteries in the States, Polish cemeteries are lush and overgrown, hugged by pine and oak trees whose roots curl under tombstones and nuzzle into the grass. Once I arrived in the thick of the cemetery, my spatial perception was entirely transformed. Dots of glimmering color-tinted light seemed to stretch into eternity. They had no particular arrangement but seemed strangely ordered against the black night sky. For a moment, the world was a series of directionless spiritual corridors void of pain and anguish; glowingly transcendent.

Twenty-four hours later was the Catholic celebration of "All Souls' Day." This year it coincided with Rosh Chodesh, the Jewish celebration of the New Moon which marks the New Jewish Month. Perhaps ironically, the new Jewish month of Cheshvan contains the yahrtzeits (annual commemorations of a person's death) of several significant Jewish women -- Rachel Imeynu (our foremother), the poet Emma Lazarus, and Zionist war hero Hannah Senesh. The month of Cheshvan is often referred to as Mar Cheshvan or "bitter" Cheshvan as the month contains no holy days and often coincides with the arrival of colder weather. "Mar" can also mean a drop of water and, commensurate with its meaning, Cheshvan is the "wet" month during which the biblical flood occurred in the time of Noah. On the evening of this new month, a group of women reflected upon Water and all of its varied energies as sources of life, destruction, healing and renewal. Water is so powerfully elemental, so integral to our existence, so much a part of the earth and the human body; yet how often is it something we acknowledge or celebrate?

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"Turn me like a waterwheel," writes Rumi, and thus I turn from one thought to the next – from darkness, to death, to water, to life. The passing from life to death is a theme not so foreign to my work at the Welfare Commission. At the end of the month, the Welfare Commission will host a conference on "Death and Dying" in connection with Jewish living. Judaism is known as a "portable" tradition and in nearly every respect -- from keeping Shabbat, to making a dish Kosher, to menstruation rituals -- it is a tradition centered upon sacred time rather than sacred space. In a world so concerned with material comfort, artificial environments, and stymieing the aging process with surgical "enhancements," I often wonder how we can sacralize time. Space, beauty, and comfort are fleeting phenomena; but time is always inherent. It shapes our memories, tells us when to eat, marks the sunsets and the snowfalls. Irrespective of circumstance, time travels with us. And so, as Abraham Joshua Heschel explains, we must make for ourselves "islands in time" and dwell in them before we pass.

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"It shall come to be from one month to the next
That your hearts will rejoice
and your bones will flower like young grass."

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- Isaiah 66:23, 14

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:

To love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;

And, when the time comes to let
it go, to let it go.

- Mary Oliver