hands off! It's MINE!

I found myself faced with an interesting dilemma recently. Sitting on my backporch early one morning, I saw someone walking past my fence on the side near the street.They were walking slowly, peaking through the slats, bending down and walking again. It did not take me long to figure out that they were taking the pecans from my tree that had fallen on outside of my fence. No WONDER I never found any over there when I went to gather them!

When my sweetheart went over to meet the new neighbor, he found the culprit. Without shame, the man said "I've been taking and eating the pecans that fall in your yard by the sidewalk. I'll take any more pecans you have that you don't want!"

forgiveness only goes as far as murdering a child

So I read an interesting study recently done by an American University. In the study, participants were taken into 2 separate rooms.
The Rules: There are 2 participants in each experiment. One of them must receive a good reward (such as a candy bar), one must receive a punishment of doing something undesirable (such as writing the same sentence 100 times).

One participant is given the opportunity to EITHER choose whether to assign the prize unilaterally, OR to flip a coin so that the prizes are decided fairly. The other participant would not know whether the coin was flipped or the prize was assigned unilaterally.

The majority of participants opted for flipping the coin, because it was more fair, BUT in 85% of the coin flips, the prize was awarded in the flippers favor. So it would seem that APPEARING fair is more important to the participant than actually BEING fair.

In similar blind studies, when the deciding participant was given complete privacy from the experimentors, the participant chose the reward over the punishment.

Equality and Fairness are ideals that we embrace... to a point.

FORGIVENESS... and other ((impossible)) things

Source

One of the things that stands out to me most in Buddhism is their dedication to compassion and forgiveness. I recently watched a documentary called "10 Questions for the Dalai Lama"(it's on Netflix. You should watch it).

As I watched it, I was struck by the Dalai Lama's level of love and tolerance and forgiveness for those who had harmed him.

New beginnings [and] Ocean Depths

I realize I've sort of taken a detour from Judaism. I should have wrapped up my Jewish experience with this wonderful interview I had with a beautiful and intelligent Jewish woman and her husband already. I have that interview and conversation halfway typed and saved as a draft. The thing about my visit with Mary Blye Posani is that she made me think differently about God. She was the culmination of everything I had been learning for the past months. She made me think about sacred spaces and mystery and seeking out those things for myself... and I couldn't really just type up what we talked about and move on. I had to process it all for myself, and figure out what God was saying to me... so I apologize for the detour into my own life and heart and experience... and I will eventually get to that talk I had with Mary on Shabbat, and wrap up Judaism properly, and move on to my next experience. I promise! 
*****************************

On November 6th, at 6pm, I am going to be baptized.

I was baptized as a kid. Maybe 9 or 10. I accepted Jesus when I was 5 or 6. I didn’t understand what either of those things meant, and besides all that, what was God washing away? The sins of a child – lying to my parents, disobeying, hitting my brothers... I didn’t really get it.

So I grew up and made different choices, and when my husband and I split in 2006, I left God and the church, too. Only, I missed God. I blocked him out and I tried to fill up the spot where he was, and instead, I just made a big mess out of my life.

ashes - as I was leaving

Last thoughts on my silent weekend.

After facing my biggest fear, of being alone with myself and hearing my thoughts, I decided that on my way home, I had one skeleton in my closet to face: my home town. While the town itself is not evil or bad, I associate it with all of the pain that I carried during my life. I made a slight (100 mile) detour on my way home from the retreat, full of peace, yet apprehensive of  facing all of the shadows that darkened my world for so long.