Tisha B'Av

So, it's Tisha B'Av again.

I observed Tisha B'Av last year for the first time, and now it's come around again. It kind of snuck up on me--I didn't really come in with clarity about how I would be spending it, or what my intention for it would be this year.

Tonight, without consciously planning it, I found myself dropping my work and my job search and spending time studying liturgy. Then I was like...hmm...I seem to have entered holy-day mode. Guess I'll go with it.

I'm thinking a lot about Psalm 137 -- in particular, the concept of exile, and the concept of being asked by one's captors to sing and celebrate while under conditions of exile and slavery. I'm also thinking about the complexity of exile and homespace -- ways in which exile can exist within purported homespace.

I'm thinking a lot about the way that women in particular can become detached from awareness of their own needs and preferences by external demands that they take on the preferences of others as their own, as well as by demands that they always be "pleasing to behold," whether physically or emotionally. I'm also thinking about how integral food is to this equation -- first, because food is a fundamental need and thus women's distorted relationships to their own needs so frequently play out in this arena, sometimes with serious physical and emotional consequences; and secondly because food behaviors are equated (erroneously, on so many levels) in this culture with appearance and "presentability."

Finally, I am envisioning a kind of "breaking-out": the decision to opt out of being physically and emotionally "pleasing to behold" as a first step to reclaiming an awareness of and relationship to one's own self.  I'm thinking about the extreme vulnerability this creates, and the courage required.

In terms of Psalm 137, then, I'm thinking about exile from the self, and how that psychological exile is produced by the demand to sing under captivity -- and, how this demand is something that can take place intensively in ostensible "home space"-- in intimate and family relationships.  And I'm thinking about how to break free.

(By the way, I love the Shape Note/Sacred Harp song, "Wood Street," the lyrics of which come from Psalm 137. Check it out on YouTube here.)

Lev Tahor (Four-Part Round)

The text is from Psalm 51:12.  I've been thinking about meditative breath practices and this verse seems to fit right in.