Jewish Musings, Tuesday 2/7

[lee058]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Angelika
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting — you are welcome to do that but you are also welcome to chime in!

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well. My shoulder hurts, but I am taking Tylenol and it does help as long as I continue to be careful about movement. Other than that, things are good; it is supposed to go up to 70 degrees here in VA today!!! This is astonishing for February, and I am very happy. Of course, it may snow on Thursday (boo!), but if it does, it does. This weather is weird, but I love the warm weather (while it lasts).

I've been thinking about what everyone wrote yesterday, and today's topic was touched on but I think it deserves more notice. Have you ever had any experiences with sensing the presence or having a very strong memory of someone after they died? I have. When my beloved grandma Goldie died, I was out at a concert. I had a strong feeling that I was being watched, or that something around me was different, although I couldn't put my finger on it. Finally, I felt this so strongly that I left the concert and went home. As soon as I got home, the phone rang, and it was my mom telling me that my grandma had just died.

Other times, I have dreamed of my dad and my sister, sometimes so vividly that I could "hear" them talking.

How about you? Any similar experiences? I'll be back later. Have a peaceful day, Lee

[savtele]

Boker Tov All! As mentioned, on the Fathers' Day the year after my dad died, I heard him singing behind me. I was in a black gospel choir at the time, we were performing for a Fathers' Day fundraiser to put a new roof on an historic church. I was on the risers, 3rd row up, on the L end (nothing but air to the L of me) and suddenly I heard this voice, tenor, with that strong Yiddish/German accent, to the L & slightly behind me. I remember looking over my shoulder - no one there. 2 guitarists, a keyboardist & a drummer a little farther away on the L, but they were the only ones, none of them were mic'd - so even if they had been singing, I would not have been able to hear them. I knew that voice immediately - and then it was gone!

In dreams I have had conversations with my Oma & with Tanta Lena - but I'm not sure they were "visiting" me. Those may just have been dreams. Or not.

Frieda - "What Dreams May Come" is one of my favorite movies! (have Kleenex handy!!)

I'm heading to the gym in just a little while. But 1st, more coffee.

Have a good day, ladies!

[gazelle18]

Hi everyone! I am loving India, and will be here another week. Have been too busy to post....

I have a superstition that when I see a penny on the ground, it is a message from my dad. I feel the need to pick it up and keep it.

Love to all!

Namaste

[hollygail]

Oh, my, yes... Numerous times. Numerous people... Usually it's not a voice I hear (although it has been). More often I feel a presence. My father has sat on the front seat with me while I was driving somewhere (not for many years, but he did! some years after he died). My mother at least once. A being I didn't know in this life. I've received "messages" not always in answer to a question I had posed (and also to questions I've posed)... I totally believe that sentience exists on a plane we are unable to "see."

[louise]

I don't recall having had this with someone who died but have definitely had experiences of someone who is alive that came to me through the airwaves. I had to leave my therapist of 19 years because of this. This goes along with Holly's "sentience exists on a plane we are unable to "see."

[happysavta]

No, I haven't heard any voices or felt any presence nor seen anyone I thought I knew who had passed. But yes, I have had dreams of both my mother and my father, usually together, though I can't recall details, except that I was trying to help them get to some place.

My own take on life and death is that the body expires, that individual person is gone, and I don't think there is anything after that, no heaven or hell or an olam haba. And I'm OK with that.

But on this side of consciousness, what remains, besides memories, are echoes of the strongest feelings we had for that person. Love remains and endures, which is awe inspiring. But anger, hurt, disappointment and resentments also remain intact, at least for most people.

Dylan Thomas wrote a poem in 1951, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." It's typically part o high school English lit curriculum, so probably we all studied it.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.