Beltane!

Happy May Day!

We've been celebrating by reading Elsa Beskow's delightful The Flowers' Festival and by starting what might become a new tradition.

I loved our spring egg tree and so enjoyed blowing out the eggs and decorating them. As the buds were drying brown on our "tree trunk," it was obviously time to make space for the coming solstice. I had read and heard that we could save the eggs from year to year, and maybe when the children are older and can do their own blown ones (they only worked on the hardboiled eggs this year), we'll save the keepsakes. For now, though, I know I'll want to do at least as many next year and how many eggs do we really need?

They've been hanging on our fairy tree this week--which is in full bloom with deep purple lilacs--and we've been waiting to see what the fairies do with them.

Today--which in addition to being May Day was also Isaiah's first day of a Montessori home-based preschool!--Isaiah and I decided to help the eggs along. We're never far from a bat these days, with baseball fever upon us, so he slugged away at each egg strung up on the tree. Many of them got batted down whole, at which point I pitched them to Isaiah and he smashed them to smithereens in mid-air. I got to do one, too. Fun!

What's next? Skeet shooting?

pesach on the beach

We took advantage of the full moon rising to have a memorable seder on the beach. Isaiah said the 4 questions and found the afikomen for the second night in a row, and Miel really got into dipping (and drinking) the 10 (or 40...) plagues.

Celebrate everything!

Clearly, the insanity continues. Though I think I'll adopt craftsanity as a more enabling mantra, inspired as I am by the craftsanity podcasts (yes, that's right, I'm listening to podcasts, pulled into the 21st century after all).

Note the lambswool bunnies--my first sewing machine project!--ready for equinox weekend and Easter Sunday. The egg tree came out of nowhere, I swear. Claire came over yesterday with all the fixins for coloring eggs and I was left today with the gorgeous hardboiled ones we did with the children and the delicate blown-out ones Claire and I played with late night (minus the exploded by bicycle pump egg that was a failed engineering experiment). At 10:30 this evening I went into the yard for a branch and voila, a tree to wake up to.

As I was putting together the photo albums in the children's baskets, I came across fall equinox pictures from the Garcia River at Oz. Here we are, half a wheel later, emerging into the bright, outdoor time. Children growing so quickly, trying to still let them be nature beings.

This is the first time I've ever put together Easter baskets. We celebrated the equinox all week (especially with a fabulous tiedye party, thanks K!), lit the shabbot candles, I went to a goddess dance gathering this evening and came home and put together the baskets and tree as a surprise for the morning. I know you could peg me for a spiritual dilettante, but I beg to differ. It is intriguing to me that the best of each religion shares at its root a call to celebrate nature, respect one another and hold ourselves to the highest moral standards. I will always be drawn to Judaism because it is the tradition and nourishment of my ancestors, but I embrace the thread that connects the points on the spiritual compass and love to find the heart in all traditions.

That is why you will find me celebrating everything. The daily rituals of arising, naptime, dinner; the weekly rhythms and the wheel of the year mark our days and ultimately our lives. We might as well take note, eat well and find plenty of reasons to dance! And tomorrow, we'll hunt.

I guess egg salad would be a little too obvious for today's food idea. But the frittata I whipped up with the blown-out insides and leftover shrimp and asparagus was definitely tasty. I added 3 extra beaten egg whites to the rest of the eggs to make it so light, as much a souffle as a frittata, perfect for the lightness of spring.

Tot Shabbat

I've never been the "good Jew" in my family, but I've always loved the ancestral and familial traditions and was given a religious school education replete with Sunday school, Hebrew school, Bat Mitzvah and confirmation. I've struggled throughout my adult life to find my own truths in Judaism specifically and spirituality in general as I've tried to embrace the aspects that resonate deeply while holding aside the pieces that don't fit for me. Lately, as they tend to do, the children have drawn me back to the basics of my own childhood and shed a twinkling light on the rituals of Judaism.

We've returned to Tot Shabbat, a monthly Friday evening candlelighting "service" at our synagogue where the children are invited to sing, share in the handwashing and candlelighting, eat a yummy potluck and even run onto the bima. Our gifted, gracious and generous Rabbi Naomi wrote some Shabbat reflections to share with the congregation and the thoughts are too lovely not too share. She says...

Here are some suggestions for enjoying the Meals of Shabbat:

• Imagine you are dining in the Garden of Eden
• Avoid talking about work, money, politics or sad subjects
• Meditate on your food as a gift from the Creator
• Use a pleasant, quiet voice
• Look at one another with soft eyes
• Imagine the Shabbat table is the altar in the ancient Temple
• Take breaks from eating to sing or learn Torah
• Feel the presence of your ancestors celebrating Shabbat with you

We could all use a little more Shabbat in our lives!