Tonight, for example, I feel blessed all of the tornadoes have passed me by (I really, really hate windstorms; I really don't even know why God invented them, quite frankly) (see? there I go again...windstorms are blessings from God, according Rachel Naomi Remen's grandpa, and I am not acknowledging this and giving them their holy respect) (because they scare the crap out of me).
And so I am sharing these with you, in case you'd like to think about what may be your own blessings--we all have them; some that are similar, some that are exactly alike, but most that are very, very different for each of us. And hopefully none of your blessings will scare the crap out of you...even if having the crap scared out of you can occasionally be a blessing.
BLESSING by Rachel Naomi Remen (from the book My Grandfather's Blessings)
On Friday afternoon, when I would arrive at my grandfather's house after school, the tea would be already set on the kitchen table. My grandfather had his own way of serving tea. There were no tea cups and saucers or bowls of granulated sugar or honey. Instead he would pour the tea directly from the silver samovar into a drinking glass. There had to be a teaspoon in the glass first, otherwise the glass, being thin, might break.
My grandfather did not drink his tea in the same way that the parents of my friends did either. He would put a cube of sugar between his teeth and then drink the hot tea straight from his glass. So would I. I much preferred drinking tea this way to the way I had to drink tea at home.
If it was Friday, after we had finished our tea my grandfather would set two candles on the table and light them. Then he would have a word with God in Hebrew. Sometimes he would speak out loud but often he would close his eyes and be quiet. I knew then that he was talking to God in his heart. I would sit and wait patiently because the best part of the week was coming.
When Grandpa finished talking to God, he would turn to me and say "Come, Neshume-le." Then I would stand in front of him and he would rest his hands lightly on the top of my head. He would begin by thanking God for me and for making him my grandpa. He would specifically mention my struggles during that week and tell God something about me that was true. Each week I would wait to find out what that was. If I had made mistakes during the week he would mention my honesty in telling the truth. If I had failed he would appreciate how hard I had tried. If I had slept for even a short nap without my night-light he would celebrate my bravery in sleeping in the dark. Then he would give me his blessing and ask the long-ago women I knew from his many stories, Sarah, Rachel, Rebekah and Leah to watch over me.
These few moments were the only time in my week that I felt completely safe and at rest. My family of physicians and health professionals were always struggling to learn more and to be more. It seemed there was always more to know. It was never enough. If I brought home a 98 on a test, my father would ask "And what happened to the other two points?" I pursued those two points relentlessly throughout my childhood. But my grandfather did not care about such things. For him, I was already enough. And somehow when I was with him I knew with absolute certainty that this was so.
My grandfather died when I was seven years old. I had never lived in a world without him in it before and it was hard for me. He had looked at me as no one else had and called me by a special name, "Neshume-le," which means "little beloved soul." There was no one left to call me this anymore. At first I was afraid that without him to see me, and tell God who I was, I might disappear. But slowly over time I came to understand that in some mysterious way, I had learned to see myself through his eyes. And that once blessed, we are blessed forever.
Many years later when, in her extreme old age, my mother surprisingly began to light candles and talk to God herself, I told her about these blessings and what they had meant to me. She had smiled at me sadly. "I have blessed you every day of your life, Rachel," she told me. "I just never had the wisdom to do it out loud."
EPILOGUE by Rachel Naomi Remen (from Kitchen Table Wisdom)
Anything that is real has no beginning and no end. The stories in your life and in mine do not stop here. Many kitchen tables await us and over time we may sit again at the kitchen tables of our past. One of my fondest memories is of the Sunday afternoons of my childhood. While the rest of my family would assemble in the living room after lunch, discussing world events and politics, my grandfather and I would meet in the kitchen and talk about God. These meetings were secret, as my parents, proud to be modern, viewed God as slightly more than superstition and laid the solutions to all of life's problems in the lap of science. They would not have been pleased with such talk.
So, as the policies of Roosevelt were hotly debated in the other room and Churchill's speeches were read aloud and admired, my grandfather and I would sit at the kitchen table talking about the holy nature of the world. He would teach me the special blessings for the many bounties that life offers or read to me from one of the ancient texts he always carried in his pocket. Occasionally he would encourage me to memorize a passage, usually from Psalms or Proverbs or a little book called Pirkey Avot, Sayings of Our Fathers. The psalms and proverbs were beautiful and easy to remember, and the blessings too, but the Sayings were difficult for me, as they were complex and subtle, a bit much for a six-year-old. But I could see how much my grandfather loved these words, and supported by his love, I would try to understand them and learn them by heart.
When my attention flagged, my grandfather would encourage me to continue with the tiniest sip of the Manischewitz Sacramental Concord Grape wine which he kept hidden in the back of the refrigerator. It was a blatant bribe. I loved the wine.
I remember struggling with one of the Sayings. It was the Jewish koan:
If I am not for me, then who is for me?
If I am just for me, then who am I?
And if not now, then when?
The words made no sense at all to me, and even my grandfather's patient explanations did not help. Finally I cried out in frustration, "Grandpa, I don't know what it means." "Ah, Nashume-le," he said, "then remember it and wait. Someday if you need to know it, its meaning will come to you." I looked at my beloved grandfather, shocked, seeing for the first time that he was old. Perhaps he would not be with me to share my questions for all of my life. Perhaps someday he would die and I would be alone with them. I burst into tears, overwhelmed.
Manischewitz has bottled wine in the same square bottle for more than seventy years. Many things come close to me whenever I pass a bottle in the supermarket. Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time. And anything good you've ever been given is yours forever.
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