Talking About It All - It's getting easier to explain things in conversation lately, mostly because I've told the same couple of stories over and over again. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking around with a sign that says, "Ask me why I'm converting" on my chest. *laughs*

At dinner last night, I was with a group of eight other friends. A couple are Jewish (to varying degrees), a couple are Buddhist (I think), one is Catholic, and a few I wasn't sure their preference (if any). It's fairly frequent now that some kind of discussion comes up to address some of the "why?" things. Every time I talk about it, it makes more sense. It's amazing (to me) how the spoken word shapes thought.

Of course, there are some of those coincidence moments (sign-posts?) that bubble up in my memory every now and then. For instance, I ran across a journal from 15 years ago in college, when apparently I'd been trying to teach myself the Hebrew alphabet. I'd forgotten about this completely.

Or I look back on discussions in the dorms I used to have with my friend Ken, when he was struggling with questions like "I'm in my 20s, I'm on my own, now what does my Judaism mean to me? Do I want to be Orthodox? Does it even matter?" Ken used to ask me, "Why do you know so much about Judaism?" or "How do you know more about this than I do?" and I would simply answer, "I don't know, but I've always loved it. It's worth studying."

He's the friend for whom I cooked a kosher meal during Passover, so that he could avoid the uncomfortable feelings of being in the dining halls for "Easter dinner" on Sunday that year. This was back in the days before the Web, when the internet consisted of forum discussion boards and usenet communities. Three different rabbis answered my posts and questions about how to kosher my kitchen, what rules to follow for the meal ingredients themselves, how to kosher the chicken if I didn't have a kosher butcher in my area, and some other details. Ken's compliment to me is still one of my most treasured memories, when he said, "I would serve this meal to my Jewish grandmother!"

I can remember several Passover Seder meals that I attended. There was a Hillel dinner when I was in college, that several friends from our student (Christian) fellowship and I attended together. I think that was the first Passover Seder I ever attended. There was a mingled sense of "Gee, what is all this?" along with "Some of this feels so familar but I don't always know why" and some of the "Obviously Christianity sprang from Judaism because I know *exactly* how this is paralleled in my own upbringing." I left feeling very honored to have been allowed to share in the meal with everyone.

There was a Passover Seder meal with Lev and Gayle before they moved from my Shire to Portland, OR. There were other things going on at that meal (*blush*), but most vividly I remember being the youngest one there, so I had to open the door for Elijah, and try to find the Afikomen. (I didn't find it, as I remember now.) The issue of Elijah coming still to herald the messiah seemed very foreign to me then, and I don't think it truly made sense until this most recent Passover. But that has to do with my Christianity in years past, more than anything else. It's hard to herald the messiah who hasn't come yet, if you already believe he has come. I'm sure I'll describe this (and deal with these details) more later.

Back when I was teaching 3rd and 4th graders in Sunday School at my church in college, I created a Passover Seder book and we held a seder with all the kids. The seder was in English, but I hand-wrote it and copied it "backwards" in the handout, so they had to turn from right to left in the book. I think I still have a copy somewhere in my files. I really want to see what it looks like now.

And then there have been several Seder nights in the past couple of years with Jeff & Adrienne, and the B'nei Caid group in my SCA kingdom. [B'nei is usually transliterated B'nai in English, but the guy who started our email list spoke Spanish first. To me, B'nei Caid should always be spelled with an E. *grin*]

This year, I'm playing hostess. It makes me nervous and excited, all at the same time.
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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Rabbi Laibson