Another Shabbat approaches, another week has gone by.
Part of the beauty of Shabbat is letting go, part of the beauty of life is holding on.
In that spirit, here are a few life lessons I’m carrying over from my week and into Shabbat:
- Every day is somebody’s birthday.
- Meanings aren’t fixed. Instead, we construct them. And in constructing them we construct our lives.
- Sometimes it takes years to know what you meant a long time ago.
- Sometimes there are words that can’t be sung until the right melody arrives.
- Everyone loves a little friendly competition.
- Each of us longs for meaningful experiences that bring us closer to the ones we love. Some of us are more quick to identify the abundance of opportunities that daily life offer us to do this.
- Sometimes a reschedule is really just a reschedule.
- You have more in common with the person whose gym locker is next to yours than the fact that your gym lockers are adjacent.
- For the most part (to paraphrase Elvis Costello) our aim is true. We just don’t know how to let the arrow fly.
- Nature is our truest home. 10 minutes of a shared experience in the woods can add a layer of depth and connection to even the strongest relationships.
- When we sing like no one’s listen God smiles.
- The truest beauty of the text message is that it allows for the radical possibility of an old and long lost friend interrupting your afternoon routine at any time.
- Some of our most profound relationships can be sustained with only a few minutes of conversation a year.
- Inside each of us is a poet, theologian, and liturgist.
- Everything conflicts with something.
- Our faces change dramatically as we journey through life.
- Even when given good news, a part of us is listening for the bad news.
- There’s no avoiding the fact that we, simply by existing alongside one another, increase the amount of work that needs to be done.
- Rare is the grandmother whose face doesn’t glow with the pride of generations.