Before this morning’s yoga class a fel­low stu­dent shared that to be inspired is to be “in spirit” and that to feel enthu­si­asm is to be with god (en+theos). This got me think­ing (as a lot of things do) about poetry. For a few years, before I had chil­dren and when time to read and write was plen­ti­ful, poetry was my reli­gion. It was my sun and my moon. I mem­o­rized scores of poems, in the event that I was trapped in a cave I wanted to be the per­son who knew more poems than my cave-trapped friends. (At this time in my life I wasn’t friends with any­one who might know some­thing useful—like how to get out of a cave.) Poetry was my inspi­ra­tion and my enthu­si­asm and, although I am not quite as steeped in it as I used to be, it still is one of my great loves. The first def­i­n­i­tion of inspi­ra­tion in Merriam-Webster is this: A divine influ­ence or action on a per­son believed to qual­ify him or her to receive and com­mu­ni­cate sacred rev­e­la­tion. And what poem, I mean what really good poem, is not a sacred rev­e­la­tion? Whether the poet is play­ing in the Read the Rest…

We’ve pub­lished Hal Sirowitz’s won­der­ful poetry in ear­lier issues of Tiferet. You’ll enjoy this recent inter­view with him on “Being Human.” Be sure to scroll down — there are two parts to the inter­view! http://www.riffraf.typepad.com/

As I step off the train into the flow of foot traf­fic, wheel­ing my unwieldy suit­case behind me, I am keenly aware that I look like a tourist. Yet, this is my city; the sounds and smells are as famil­iar to me as ever; the exhaust fumes and warmth gen­er­ated by hun­dreds of bod­ies wel­come me home. I join the herd of com­muters and vis­i­tors climb­ing the stairs from the plat­form to the lower con­course, and I can hear jazz music being played on a key­board: Gabriel Aldort leans for­ward into the micro­phone and his husky voice fills the room. It takes me a few beats to real­ize that he has switched to a Billy Joel song. I pic­ture the album cover in my mind, and lean against the pil­lar to enjoy the melody and the mem­ory. He takes a short break to chat with a tran­sit cop, and I round the pil­lar to get a closer look at his set-up. His key­board cover, open on the floor in front of him, is quickly fill­ing with sin­gles and a few fives. There is a photo of an infant, and next to it a sign indi­cat­ing that he is an MTA Arts Read the Rest…

The Etch A Sketch toy was invented in the late 1950s by André Cas­sagnes. He some­how put together the cling­ing prop­er­ties of alu­minum pow­der, along with rigged sty­luses and came up with one of the world’s most pop­u­lar draw­ing toys.  That he did so just in time to cap­i­tal­ize on the baby boom makes me won­der whether the toy is genius enough to sur­vive decades, vir­tu­ally intact, or if the momen­tum of inno­vat­ing a toy at the onset of a pop­u­la­tion explo­sion can make what’s sim­ple appear to be last­ing genius. Mil­lions of chil­dren all over the world have cre­ated alu­minum pow­der mas­ter­pieces, only to have them dis­ap­pear on a whim.  Kind of like life, isn’t it? We twist and turn our desires into cre­ative projects, and some­times they last for a long time, and some­times they are gone before we have fin­ished with them.  So it goes. But some­where within the Etch A Sketch, every cre­ation still exists, and each creation’s fate is only to become fod­der for the next one. No two cre­ations are ever iden­ti­cal.  Sound famil­iar? I have been try­ing my hand(s) at writ­ing for just over a year.  I’ve been in and out of writ­ing classes, every­thing Read the Rest…

Sleep peace­fully, for every­thing is within My hands. Take your rest in the know­ing that every­thing is com­plete; you are what you were meant to be and so rest in the full­ness of your own heart— that is car­ried on the wings of faith.   Yes, rest know­ing that every­thing is already what it was ever meant to be includ­ing you, in each moment where you are held within Our love.   So rest peace­fully My beloved child Of light.   By Morn­ing Star (Inspired by Divine Spirit)

Writ­ing From the Heart & Soul: a work­shop in Spir­i­tual Writing

Love bent down to lis­ten to what was in your heart, and found only good there —that you wished to impart.   Love then became a rain­bow that bridged the infi­nite sky, to bring to oth­ers all that it had heard, so that joy could impart and share its voice along with all the other rain­bow songs —that are born of the same love.   By Morn­ing Star (Sally Jor­dan Austin)

Don’t wait for inspi­ra­tion.
Show up for it.
Thurs., Feb. 9 | 8:30–9:30 EST

If you’d like to write spir­i­tual poetry – or if you admire the writ­ings of Rumi, Hafiz, Whit­man, and oth­ers – please join us for an online writ­ing group that will meet for four Tues­days from 7–8:30 p.m EST.

I was never emo­tion­ally attached to Steve Jobs in the way many of his fans were, though I have cer­tainly admired his Her­culean tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments. But his untimely death, just before Yom Kippur—the Jew­ish Day of Atonement—has awak­ened some strong and unex­pected feel­ings in me. From what I have read of Mr. Jobs, he had a spir­i­tual side to his per­son­al­ity that was less pub­li­cized and less obvi­ous than his inven­tive and man­age­r­ial genius. Robert Thur­man, a pro­fes­sor of Bud­dhist stud­ies who met Jobs in the 1980s, has noted Jobs’s inter­est in Bud­dhism, and in the “Zen vision” of sim­plic­ity. But I was struck most force­fully by Jobs’s reflec­tions on human mor­tal­ity, in a com­mence­ment speech he deliv­ered June 12, 2005, at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. (June 12 just hap­pens to be my birth­day). It had been a year since Jobs learned that had a rare type of pan­cre­atic can­cer, for which he had under­gone appar­ently suc­cess­ful surgery. (Six years later, alas, recur­rence of that can­cer would bring about his death). Here is part of what he had to say: “No one wants to die. Even peo­ple who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is Read the Rest…