Dreams Into Actions

Normally, on Shabbat, I take a break from the computer. I unplug for a little more than 24 hours and try to bring that portion of myself, the self who is out there in the world, back to myself and my family. I've made an exception to this practice during this time of every day writing.

Shabbat is a time of renewal, punctuated by a deadline with the sunset, bringing the light inside, raising a glass of wine and breaking bread. A ritualized closing of the work-oriented week; a break from what Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi calls "commodity time." And quite honestly, I've never felt more intensely ingrained in commodity time, the time of money-making energy, or in the case of the past couple of months, sheer financial survival.

Each Friday morning, as I head off to work, I'm happy in the knowledge that when I see them again, Shabbat is close at hand. The furrow between my brows is just a little less indented because I know the permission for taking a break is almost here.

Each Friday night, I close my eyes and draw the light of the candles toward me. I hold my hands close to my face and feel the warmth and glow and recite a simple prayer. A prayer of thanks, of blessing our family, friends and the world. A prayer of peace.

Shabbat is also the one time during the week when I feel I have time to think about the life I'm, the life I'm creating for my kids and the kind of person I've become. Some Shabbats are a time of joy and relief. Others I find it incredibly difficult to leave the week behind and make the transition. But every week I try. 

Tonight, my Shabbat intention is to make the internal space so I can begin to seek out the dreams I want to turn into action. A committed set of actions that I will make visible and public, as I did with this series, on a monthly basis. 

My tendency is to rush and make a list, but instead, I'm going to slow down and think. Think about what are the dreams that are flowing below my surface that I want to bubble up and bring into this realm. Even as I begin to think about this, the dreams start talking to me and each one has a story to tell, but they all can't be told and I have to make some choices. One by one. One month at a time. 

March starts on Monday, which means that we're already into the third month of 2010. January was spent in a state of shock, but I'm close to the end of February and completing the first month of a dream turned into action. 

My goal for Shabbat is to get some rest and by sundown tomorrow, to have the next two months figured out. I'll have a few other things to discuss about this as well and hope that some folks reading this might want to join in. My hope is that by the end of this year, I'll have developed the discipline and experienced the satisfaction of returning the favor to a few of my dreams, which have kept me company below the surface all these years, and breathing some life into them.  

My dreams deserve it and so do I. And so do we all. 

I hope you'll be able to bring some light into your house with those you love and find the space you need. 

Good Shabbos. 

A Dungeon of My Own

I wish I could say that the weekend was splendid, filled with wonderfully educational and relaxing family-filled events, but for the most part it sucked. I came home, or to the mess that used to be my home, on Friday night and that makes me very grumpy. Blame it on religion, which in my case is a renewal version of Judaism and one that encourages the  non-commodity time known as Shabbat. For me, it is a time to decompress and unplug from my weekly life of computers, running around and general unconscious living. So the last thing I want to do is clean my little house and do a hundred loads of laundry. And I am not always very nice about it, so my children and DH found out...

The good news is that despite a rather bleak Saturday, that second day of the weekend (thank goodness for that) - aka SUNDAY - was just lovely. I read the New York Times, drank coffee and gazed out the window at the snow while the kids played. At some point, my oldest DD snuggled up on the love seat next to me and said, "Mama, when you get mad like you did yesterday, I sort of wish I could put you in a dungeon." 

Now this is the same child who used to call me a "bossy mama," which I seriously considered titling my blog, but went for the more sensational of the titles. 

A dungeon. I wouldn't mind a dungeon, as long as it was clean, heated, had wireless and cable capacity and good cellphone coverage. And as long as it was mine. As far as I am concerned, a dungeon is just an 8 year old's version of sending me to my room for an extended time out and that would be just fine with me. A dungeon is a basement crossed with a cave. I'd even take a bat or two, as long as no one else was allowed in it. I've been wanting to move to a house with a basement, but on second thought, I will take a house with my own dungeon. A dungeon of my own. Sounds good enough for me!