Another Mountain for Moses

               Speak to the rock.

            In the thirty-ninth year of my two-week journey from Sinai to Canaan, I was beyond calm speaking. I wanted to strike something or someone…better the rock than one of God’s complaining chosen.

            Water exploded from the rock, God honoring his promise. God had always called me his friend, but now I had dishonored him and there was a price to pay: The covenant he had sworn to Abraham God now snatched from my hands. I would never homestead in Canaan. Though I had successfully pleaded for other offenders, the Holy One would not consider my case.

            So he stood with me on Mount Nebo, two old friends who had traveled countless dusty miles together, and we looked toward the horizon:  fields green with new barley, olive groves and vineyards, hills and valleys—a breathtaking panorama, a fertile land that would soon be a home for my people. God dried my bittersweet tears, and I slept with my fathers.

            But I’m awake now—though I can’t understand how or why—standing again on a mountain. No longer distant, the green fields and lush groves seem close enough to touch, a promise returned to my trembling hands.

            I turn and shade my eyes from the white-hot brilliance of the man before me, but he grasps my shoulders and pulls me close. Gazing into his eyes, I recognize the holy fire I had first glimpsed in a burning desert bush.

            Welcome home, Old Friend.

           (I wrote this several years ago and just rediscovered it in my files. It is based on events in Numbers 20 and Mark 9.)

Magnetic Vocabulary

            My classroom desk is a melting pot of magnetic words. 

            Fueled by my love of all things Star Trek, I bought a set of space words years ago. It contains astronaut, asteroid, accelerate, and android, plus dozens more.

            Fed by my love of all things Jewish, I sprung for the Yiddish words some time later. Klezmer, klug, klutz, and kvell join a multitude of vaguely familiar words.

            I don’t know where the other three sets came from. The pet words showed up like a stray cat. There’s a set of school words, including homework. And a set of generic English words. And some more English words that seem to be geared toward emotional health. Gutt, I could use some.

            And they’re all mixed together on the front of my metal desk because bored madelas and pishers like to create silly sentences combining words from multiple sets. Problem is, the school has closed, not just for summer but forever, so I must pry my words off my desk and take them home, along with everything else that’s been mysteriously multiplying in my classroom for the last fifteen years. Feh!

            But I must sort them into the correct packages first. The space words blessedly are white print on black background, immediately distinguishing them from the other sets. I don’t have to read them, but I end up reading some anyway. Cargo bay. Planet. Meteor. I noticed yesterday that several smaller words have lodged themselves into the seam of the desk. I will have to bring tweezers since I can’t transport them out, and I don’t want them to be Lost in Space.

            The pet words are larger and orange. The set includes a picture of a dog and a cat and a fish skeleton. I suppose the stray cat ate the fish. I think I will send them to a friend, so she and her newly adopted kitten can bond while they play with them on the refrigerator.

            This sorting would have been a good activity for my young fraynds during final exams week; we could have kibitzed while they purged my desk. But I didn’t know the first week of June would be my last final exams week at WCA. Oy vey!

            I’m fairly certain I will not find all the words that settled into the crevices and crannies of the classroom. Even the industrial vacuum cleaner will likely not locate them all. That’s okay. I gladly (and sadly) leave little pieces of myself behind to bless the space that has so blessed me..

A Tale of Two Employees

            Being a procrastinator with no Independence Day plans, I went to my local grocery this morning to hunt hamburger and bun bargains. I found both. I also found two employees, strangers to me, who unwittingly taught me a lesson.

            The first was a young man, maybe high school age. 

            As I navigated my cart towards produce, an upbeat song started to play on the store’s sound system. I felt the rhythm. I wanted to dance, but I usually save spontaneous public dancing for Jamaica. The young employee also felt the beat and had no geographical inhibitions. He danced. Even when he saw me watching him and grinning, he danced. He continued to dance as I followed him down the aisle.

            The second teacher was an older woman, maybe my age, maybe a bit younger.

            I chose her checkout lane…and wished I hadn’t. She didn’t want to work this holiday and she made sure I (and everyone in earshot) heard her. She kvetched* about her wages and the company which pays them. She whined about not having time to prepare a dish for the picnic she would go to when she finally got off work. (I assured her the hosts would be happy to have her anyway.)

            After I escaped her tirade, I asked, “God, what are you teaching me?” I encountered two employees experiencing the same circumstance:  working on a holiday. One chose to boogie, while the other chose to bellyache. Their choices were likely unconscious, but were still choices.

            Those of you who know me in real life (as opposed to online) know I act more like the grumbling woman than the grooving young man. God and I are working on that.

* kvetch  (kvɛtʃ)
— vb
	slang chiefly  ( US ) ( intr ) to complain or grumble, esp incessantly
[C20: from Yiddish kvetshn,  literally: to squeeze, press]

kvetch. Dictionary.com. Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kvetch (accessed: July 04, 2014).