Cosmic Well

(Please note this post mentions sexual assault, climate crisis, systemic violence of many kinds, and death. proceed with care)

“When evil men assail me to devour my flesh…my heart would have no fear”

In my first ever practice with Psalm 27, this line struck me. I was fresh off a couple years of deep healing from sexual trauma, and it was profound to see, reflected in ancient text, a line that spoke to that pain. It’s almost graphically perfect, to describe sexual violence as flesh devoured. In many ways that’s exactly what happened, and not just physically. This trauma left me gobbled up, gone, no morsel of myself left. I speak more about how it was through Lilith I clawed my way back in my conversion essay, but this line in the Torah came to me after, and still spoke to a better, stronger future. A future where I could be unafraid, come fearlessly back to who I had been and go on with courage. I found in these words comfort that came from a strength both inside of and beyond – greater – than I.

This is one reason I so enjoy exploring Psalm 27 in more than one form; I leave open the chance that something new will grab me each year. This year that line is:

“I sacrifice in His tent with shouts of joy…”

I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions about sacrifice since I first made the decision to leave New York City after 8+ years and return quite literally to my childhood home where my wife and I now live with my parents. I’ve written about some of what we might call “sacrifice” before. A home all to ourselves (as much as an apartment can be), certain relationships, arguably the career paths we had been following, were sacrificed to start a new life.

To make a return.

A friend of mine once said of moving from a more industrialized city to a place with more trees “I feel like a different person.” And I feel that too, the simplest outer show of this my sudden desire for short hair after a lifetime of wanting it long and longer, and the desire to return to my natural hair color after thirteen years of my dream red. It doesn’t escape me that I initially took the plunge on dying my hair after freeing myself from the person who predated on me, and that I feel freer and farther from that time in my life than I ever have before.

There’s been a lot my beloved and I have gained from this move, but a lot was given up. Sacrificed. And I’ve been finding myself thinking, this Elul, about the idea of sacrificing with joy. So often sacrifice, giving up something of value, is frightening. But what could I give up joyfully? And how might these sacrifices bring me return and allow me to do my part for tikkun olam – repair of the world?

Certain brands of coffee, stores run by corporations funding geocide – these felt easy to give up. Other things, that have become more ingrained in my daily life, like putting my phone down, have been harder to do. Time spent staring at my phone – especially when I can’t sleep – that has been less joyous to sacrifice. And yet, when I manage it, I do feel not so much like I’ve given up something as gained it. There was a time in my life I could watch a whole episode of television without looking at or doing anything else. I try to now. To focus, as I am learning from mindfulness and Buddhist teachers, to leave the phone aside and focus on breath instead. I actually feel an ease come over me as I type that. It’s hard, but it feels good when I accomplish it.

Awhile ago I was recommended some Jewish resources for sleep. Prayers to the angels for protection before sleeping:

Goddess Grant Me:
Michael on my right
Gabriel on my left
And in front me Uriel
And behind me Rafael
And above me and all around me Shechinah, the in-dwelling

There’s also these less angelic and more immediate words, a prayer for when one cannot sleep. This blessed Elul, I will work to turn and return to these resources once more.

There are some changes I’d like for my body, my health. May I find it joyful to sacrifice inactivity, joyful to sacrifice eating in a way that makes me feel unwell. May there be joy in “sacrificing” the time it will take to strengthen my body in the way I want to. To that end, I am using the kick in the ass of Elul to spend more time stretching and moving my body, attempting to expand my capacity for endurance. Endure what? Survival, sex, dancing, anything that requires stamina and the engagement of my whole self. I’d like to have more self to offer up to every embodied experience.

There are other, still theoretical yet visceral sacrifices I think on. I can feel a deep-in-my-soul coming to terms with the fact that I may die in the climate crisis. So too may people I know or even love. With increasing transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and white supremacy, I may be demanded, at some point, to put my body on the line for my beliefs or to protect someone more vulnerable, and I might not survive this. I choose not to see this as despair. The reality that I might find the strength to fight to the end, my own, literal, end, is not despair to me. It is hope. The incredible Hebrew Priestess Dori Midnight collaborated with other luminous beings to create a queer invocation of the Jewish morning blessings. One of these, a favorite of mine, is “Blessed are You, who moves us to stretch and expand towards freedom.”

When I stretch my body, seeking to make it more flexible, I am stretching toward freedom. When I run or dance until my blood pumps and my breath comes hard, I am expanding my lung capacity toward freedom. When I sit with the frightening realities of what may come and let them inspire courage, not despair, I am stretching and expanding towards freedom.

Though evil men assail me to devour my flesh

Because evil men assail me, us, in so many ways,

I must not be afraid to sacrifice with joy and courage.