Every Happiness

Rabbi's Notes - October 2006

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

This afternoon I looked out the front door to find Mickey out in our driveway near the basketball hoop, standing up on the very top shelf of a six-foot ladder, big, long loppers extending overhead, reaching, reaching, practically jumping high over his head to catch fir and redwood limbs in the blades and give them a chop. After a few minutes of this (with me, needless to say, nattering away about how he should come down a rung or two) there was a nice little pile of green boughs on the ground. "Oh," I say to him, "s'khakh!" "Not yet," he answers, laughing, but motivated: "not s'khakh. It's a clearing. When you shoot a basket, the ball needs room to arc. Those limbs were in the way!"

It's suddenly fall, with those chilly, Milky Way-nights and warm days, breezes high in the trees, yellow fir needles flying through the air like rain, brilliant gold afternoon light. It's z'man simchoteinu, the season of our joys. Sukkot will be here so soon -- the festival of pure happiness, out in our sukkahs in that chilly air with branches over our heads ("s'khakh" being the word for those exact branches, the ones on top of our sukkahs -- meaning that Mickey was right: the ones in our driveway were presently only impediments to the arc of a basketball -- they won't be s'khakh until we build our happy little shelter and toss them across the bamboo rafters. But ahhh, we will!) The High Holy Days have come and gone. We've been to the Holy of Holies and emerged yet again. The harvest is in, to whatever extent it will be this year. Whatever our worries, they are more or less behind us for the time being. Now it's time for regular life again -- and the first item on the agenda is joy.

I thought that for your joy I would share a few words of poetry from the master of joy with whom I have the joy of sharing home and life:

(A few lines from yesterday's poem, floated down from the loft to me in the big chair, where I've been wrapped up, sniffly and coughing, all afternoon.)

out of bounds sun
cowers behind trees
as the whistle blows
fall leaves tumble
end of summer heat
time out

(From last week's verses about splitting firewood.)

the maul arcs swiftly downward
and, with a crack
the tight fir log splits
into two juicy pieces

(Before the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival this summer.)

not for everyone
this excess of fun

(After he got smacked in the face with a racquetball.)

but, the next few days
began an oddly beautiful
enhanced discoloration:
under the eye
dark black and deep blue
and on the eye-ball, blood red

(Upon watching a near-fight in the health club locker room.)

as he brought his sweaty face
right up to the older
and shorter player's graying head
snarling out profane accusations ready for a sudden murderous action
then, the older player, said:
"good game"

Firewood, black eyes, watching people fight -- Mick has a knack for finding the incipient joy in all of it, like the BTUs of heat in those juicy fir logs. I remember years ago, before we owned a home (and before we had propane heat!) Mickey had neatly stacked and tarped two cords of firewood in front of our house, an afternoon of sweaty labor. No sooner had he finished than the phone rang. Our landlord was calling to say she didn't like how the wood pile looked where it was placed; would he please move it? Mickey said that he realized in that moment that he had a choice -- he could be mad the whole time, or he could enjoy touching each log yet again. And he happily moved the whole stack.

We talk about that experience now and then, rolling our eyes a bit, but gratefully. It's so true -- there is often a choice, even in a situation we didn't choose.

In this season of our joys I wish you a season of every happiness: exuberant and subtle, shared and private, joy right on the surface and joy where you have to split the log open to find the juice. And then another such season and another after that! Chag sameach -- a joyous festival season, my dear community!

© 2006 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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