Touch

I love kissing the cross almost as much as I loved kissing the Torah at Simchat Torah. I’ve participated in the ritual twice, and each time I was blinking back tears. Sure, I have secretly caressed my Complete Works of Shakespeare, the pale green hardback one that all the English majors have. But the Bible […]

Wined and Dined

Only once a year were mass quantities of wine served in the basement of the Lutheran church: on Maunday Thursday. Someone had a lamb roasted. The lamb was a source of stress for me and my sisters. We didn’t eat lamb at home (we weren’t that exotic) and visions of wooly Jesus-guided lambettes danced in […]

Giving Up

This year for Lent I let everything fall apart. Primarily, my belief that if I practiced some technique carefully and fervently enough, I would feel good. For the second year, I let my abstention from alcohol and chocolate go. I picked up meditating again for a while, and then I let that go, too. I […]

Requiem

Barkley Andronovich was a difficult dog. I gave him the Andronovich when I was reading a Russian novel. Not War and Peace. (Hey, when you’ve read War and Peace you’ll work it into conversation, too.) Probably Anna Karenina. Russian novels are so comfortable to read, and the people are so itchy. Barkley was itchy. We’ve […]