It's All Relative

So I am like a million miles from anything I know. Before I got here, I was very anxious about the High Holy Day services themselves. I spent a great deal of my time this last week prepping them.

And now that I am here, they are a source of great comfort to me. The high holy days themselves will be the one familiar thing to me in all of this. As I use the prayer book I have dutifully marked up with different colored sticky notes, pencil marks and my own versions of musical notation, I will be thinking of and connected to the time I spent doing that. I will be thinking of my dining room table and the private cubicle in the library I hid out in all day Wednesday. I will think back to leading services at MIT for the last two years and my experience there. I will mental join myself to all the high holy days with my family and friends-mostly at Beth El in Sudbury. I will think of my mother's perfume, my father's tallis, sitting for 2nd day with Dave as an adult, Lorel's voice, Larry's sermons, HUC, Baka, break fasts, salmon mousse, grav lox and the Bernsteins, sukkah building and origmai at Arn and Deb's...etc etc.

The list goes on and I think we all have that. Because we do, I get to connect to all of you as well. I know most people reading this will be celebrating the high holy days as well this week and next. I will be in services with you and you with me.

And thank God for that. Because, like I said, I am a million miles from everything I know. I am taking great comfort in connecting to something familiar.

I have to run-off to brunch with the lay leader here. (And a good thing too because I am SO hungry right now!)

Oh and speaking of running, I ran today (because no matter how far away I go, I am me all the time) and it is hot and muggy here at 7 am but the bay (and I am not sure which bay I was on) is beautiful in the mist. There were ships everywhere and it smells like low tide, but it was gorgeous. Now, since everyone drives on the left, should I run on the left too?