The early summer abundance is everywhere. Those who can, plant and tend; the rest of us go to the Farmers’ Market. Last week, Reid came home with sweet cherries and tiny, delicious asparagus from Michigan, bags of baby greens, ripe tomatoes, blueberries. We are produce ravenous, and fill our bellies with all these choice offerings. How clever of God to have made them all. We relax over our evening meal and give thanks.

There is something so right about the custom of waiting a year to dedicate a gravestone. A year ago, I received word of the death of the husband of a close cyberfriend. It had been expected. But the pain of its reality vibrated the airwaves as she wrote her sorrow. We have been writing and instant messaging all this past year. I have been privileged to listen as she gathered her life and her children’s lives and went about the tasks of living and recovering. What strength and courage! And so she wrote me about this milestone on her path of grieving and adjusting and continuing.

More changes are taking place at my shul, Beth Emet The Free Synagogue. Last Shabbat we said good-bye to Cantor Jeffrey Klepper, who has been with us for 18 years. He is following his wife Deanna to Boston where she is a new professor at Boston University. It was another evening of bittersweetness, made more so by the Beth Emet Adult Choir and musicians playing violin and mandolin, flute and saxophone, and string bass. Jeff has been called “one of the stars in the constellation of contemporary Jewish music.” He is a gifted composer and possesses a truly beautiful neshama - soul. Rabbi Knobel related a story from a visit to France where, in a Sephardic synagogue, the congregation sang Jeff’s melody for “Shalom Rav.” When questioned, the officiating rabbi could only say that the melody had come “mi-Sinai…from Sinai.” We had always suspected as much of Jeff’s melodies.

It was a Shabbat of bittersweet celebration last Friday at my congregation. Our associate rabbi, Eleanor Smith, who has graced our congregation for seven years, is leaving to pursue a new aspect of her rabbinate. She hopes to become a physician, to blend the spiritual with the physical to heighten and enhance her abilities as a healer.

In the non-Orthodox community, Shavuot seems to miss out by falling as the religious school year is ending. There doesn’t seem to be as much time to spend on the nuance and observances of this festival. We place such an emphasis on Pesach - on feeling as if each of us had personally been present on the flight from Egypt - and we neglect its culmination, the giving of Torah on Shavuot. Maybe we need to let our spiritual imaginings be present at Sinai. The custom of studying all night before Shavuot prepares us for the miracle that made us a holy people.

We attended an open house on Memorial Day for cousin Toby, who just graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. Of course, I remember her birth - she is several months younger than E.G. - and share her parents’ pride in her accomplishments. Other cousins were there as well, along with aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends. I had a chance to talk with one cousin whose father is ill, perhaps approaching his final illness. So much of what happens can be looked upon as chance, until we reach for a deeper answer to our eternal questions. How we nurture each day and each opportunity can lead to a fullness in our lives, no matter what stage we are entering.

I have been taking a “Distance Learning” course with the Jewish Theological Seminary called “Finding Spirituality in Prayer.” Taught by Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, we have been grappling with the problem of finding meaning in the act of prayer. We have talked about the role that silence plays in prayer and what things can lead us into prayer. Most people’s experience of prayer is in synagogue while mine is primarily a solitary activity as I daven at home for the most part. Many of the students have expressed frustration with noise and distraction during communal prayer. I know I am frustrated when my words feel like they are on auto-pilot and my mind has trouble focusing on their meaning and intention. Rabbi Diamond has writes that “the main point is that God is present.” He continues: “Sometimes I experience that presence simply through my own breathing - or the breathing of others. I think of the morning prayer ‘My God, the soul (literally breath) You have placed within me…’.”.

In the midst of a torrential downpour, Reid and I went to share Shabbat dinner with our friends. A tornado watch had been posted, and we briefly drove through hail. We wondered aloud what on earth we were doing out in this kind of weather. Then we arrived and amid a flurry of umbrellas made our way inside. After a few moments spent drying off and catching our breath, we gathered around the table. Hyma lit the candles and we joined hands to sing the blessing. The fury of the storm faded. We raised our glasses and sang kiddush.

Sunday evening, my husband’s family gathered to celebrate his father’s 70th birthday. My mother-in-law arranged the dinner. The three sons and their wives and 6 of the 7 grandchildren were there - only Ben, the second oldest, unable to get away during freshman year finals at Emory University was missing. The dilemma of “what to get” was solved for this special day by asking the grandchildren to write essays about their grandpa. The three sons also contributed their thoughts. This is part of what my husband had to say:

Two friends, Beth and Bonnie, and I got together last week to begin to study - Psalms! My secret is that I am not well versed in Biblical psalms, even though I seem to be able to write new ones. Our first study session was a little disjointed. Now we have decided on the text we will use - the Soncino translation - and have given ourselves a first assignment before we meet again.