On the day of my son's bar mitzvah, the rain fell in mist around us, dripping in perfect rivulets off the roof of our tent at a local farm. The Torah was placed on a tent pole in an REI bag while my son, Asher, and Rabbi Ebon Yakar stood behind an 8-foot-tall table on the damp grass and chanted into microphones. It was hung on one. His son says he finds God most in nature, so I created an unconventional bar mitzvah immersed in the natural environment.
Our guests said it was the best bar mitzvah they had ever attended. The day before, Ravi took my family on a hike around the farm grounds. He stopped us on the gravel road, halfway between the barn and the woods at the edge of the property. “Behind us,'' he said, pointing to the barns and pens and buildings outside, “that's man-made. That's a weekday.'' He turned toward the forest. “What we have before us is the Sabbath, the Sabbath, which humans cannot create. We can reproduce, but we cannot create plants and animals out of nothing. That's the difference between weekdays and holidays.''I grew up in a Reform Jewish household that was so worldly that there were more eye rolls than wine at Passover. There were a lot.
We attended a High Holidays service with friends and lined up behind a rope in a movie theater to get a good seat on the “shift” (the service was held in a crowded temple with three took place at different times). Despite the stand-and-sit regiment, my father always fell asleep during the service, and by the time the sermon started my sister and I would always hole up in the bathroom and talk to the other girls hiding there. . When I was dating a Catholic guy in college, he asked me how I could be “Jewish and he doesn't know anything about it.”
After 12 years of going to Catholic school, going to church on Sundays, and not eating meat on Fridays, he answered all my questions. But every time he spoke to me, I had to call his grandparents. I knew that if religion meant anything to me, I needed to think about what role I wanted it to play in my life. So I spent his 10 years living an Orthodox lifestyle, which made me feel uncomfortable with my religion. When I filed for divorce at age 37, I felt it was time to put up with it or shut up. It's time to think about how you can live an authentic spiritual life where this feels like home, not someone else, not your rabbi, not your husband, not your parents, not your community around you. Ta.
Not many people ask themselves what they believe or how they want to observe it. It's not about how we're conditioned In countries around the world, religion and spirituality are tailored to a person from birth, and people protest when you try to shake it up. Creating a DIY religion isn't easy, but I'm so happy I did it. I can't say which denomination is better because it hasn't been decided yet. I like Judaism. A little bit of orthodoxy, a little bit of reform, and some degree of renewal and reconstructionism, with the enthusiastic support of conservatives. I draw spiritual inspiration from Christianity and Hinduism, and wisdom from Vedanta and Sikhism.
A rabbinical friend calls my family “post-denominational.” I think that's the trend of all religions. On the first day of Passover this year, her husband and I took our four children for a hike in the woods and fields. As I walked along the winding path through the yellow grass, I heard a rhythmic thud that was getting louder and louder. It was so powerful that at first I thought it was a man-made object, or perhaps a speaker system from a house a mile away on a hill. But as I listened, I realized it was a bullfrog symphony. On the first day of Passover, we faced one of the plagues head-on and felt our religion was right in front of us.
My ex-lover, who is Orthodox, would have blamed me for driving to this sanctuary on holiday. (Orthodox Jews do not drive on the Sabbath or certain holidays.) But if they didn't, they would never have truly immersed themselves in the symbolism of the holiday. After our hike, we stopped at a coffee shop in a nearby town. Its logo—his three figures in haloed robes, the middle figure holding a steaming mug—takes its identity from a chapter in the Bible's book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach. , conveying Abednego's triune identity.
Christian coffee shop…first day of Passover. The seder the night before was meaningful and fun, with additional questions and various haggadahs (books outlining the Passover ritual) creatively assigned so that everyone could offer insight. And when the children had had enough, they went out to play – no harm, no foul. The coffee the next day was delicious. We were spending a spiritual day together as a family, in our own way.
I never liked being locked up. Don't tell me you have to fast or how many hours you have to fast. Let me find my way there. Please don't tell me what meaning I should take. Let me find my own. Once, a friend and I had a discussion about the meaning of couplets. One night we went to hear the poet read and I approached him and asked him which of us was right and what he meant by the poem.
“That doesn't matter,” he replied. “Once the poem leaves me, it means everything the reader gets out of it.” That's how I look at religion. When I was in college, I went to church with my Catholic boyfriend and was always inspired by the priest's sermons. Last year, I traveled to India with a client to blog and photograph at her yoga retreat. In this Hindu mecca in the foothills of the Himalayas, I discovered an incredible spirituality. As I boarded the plane for departure in two weeks, tears streamed down my cheeks as I thought about leaving this mystical environment. I did not convert to Hinduism. I simply incorporated the wisdom I gained there into my daily activities. That is the beauty of spirituality. I'm the type to do it myself anyway. At least, that's how it should be.
Lynne Meredith Golodner is an author, journalist, public relations professional, entrepreneur, and author of nine books. Her byline has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Better Homes and Gardens, Chicago Tribune, Good Housekeeping, Midwest Living, and Parents Magazine.