Leaving and Returning

The last few days have had the undercurrent of ending. I have known in the back of my head that my time of travel, my time abroad has been coming to an end. I am so sad that this month is over. I have been thinking back to what Joe said when I left New York and was feeling scared of what this month would bring, as I expressed my concerns I would waste the time somehow: Rachael, you can go and come back exactly as you are and that would be just wonderful. He was convincing me that just going was enough.

Joe, you were right. Just showing up was enough...and yet, I am changed, I am different somehow...but how, is not yet clear. I think maybe I am just more intensely just who I am than I was before I left. I have learned much about myself, what I love, what excites me, what I am passionate about...my mission is coming clearer, the fight I want to fight, the task I want to take on is coming in to focus.

Right before I left, Rabbi Larry Hoffman asked me, what do you need to find out about before becoming a Rabbi...He was not askinh, what additional skills do I want to acquire. But more, what do I need to know, to kopf, to groc to understand, to own and internalize before I, ME, can BE a rabbi. I will get the title May 2, 2009 (God willing.) But what do I need to have the mantle of that title rest comfortably upon me?

I need to find about me and where I am going, amongst some other things as well.) I have promised that I will not commit to DOING anything next year. I will learn, explore, and do finding out. That is my job, that is my next task.

The rest of the summer, I will be working with Jewish Community Action in Minneapolis, MN. That is my next stop. I think working on and with those tools and skills will be an important next step in the finding out process....

On a more personal note, some part of me went on this trip looking for something. One day, in a small village in the middle of nowhere in Kampala Uganda, a girl asked me, what makes you happy? And I said coming home to people I love. She then asked, but how can you ever be happy if you are alone? Culturally, she could not conceive of happiness existing outside of family, community and connection with others.

She raised an obvious contradiction in my life. I live alone. I go and do on my own. And sometimes, I have not been sure where my home is. I feel I have been away, looking for home for a long time. And I finally have found it. I think I have been thinking so long that I am alone. And now I know. My home is wherever I am. As my Grandpa Sy (z”l) would say, Well, you take yourself with you, now don't you...This is a man who believed in leaving before you outstayed your welcome. This is a man who I think, was always looking for his home...He is right, you do take yourself with you.

For me, that means I am never alone. Not because I am always with myself (which is also true and I do love taking me with me...we have really come to have so much fun...I come home from this trip, the thought and worry lines on my face softer, the laugh lines deeper....) but because I am never without you. I am never without those of you who read this. I am never disconnected from everyone I love. Even if I cannot call or write or touch...I am never without you.

As I stood at the edge of the Nile, thinking of the enormity of the task at hand of working to make the world better, feeling overwhelmed by it...My internal google earth map image zoomed back. I saw myself standing alone in a tiny corner at the end of a long road in a land far, far away from everyone and everything I know. I felt, in that moment so far away as the mental camera zoomed further and further back, I got tinier and tinier and the distance to those who I love got larger and larger...

But then, as I could see me and each of you as tiny points on the map, the image was clearer. I am never alone in this world. I am never alone in this world. How can I be happy if I am alone? I do not know because I am usually pretty happy and I am never truly alone.

I am content within the sad of leaving the world of travel because I am journeying to the world of Boston where I can not only feel the presence of but also touch many of the actual people there who I hold so dear to me. I will call my grandmother and hear her voice which I have missed so truly. I will be greeted at the airport by my parents who will hug me and kiss me. I will go to coffee with my cousin, Eve, ice cream with my friend Dave, a wedding with another of my Daves, and many other connections with lots and lots of people who mean the world...who ARE the world to me.

So Joe, I am coming home, one month later neither the same nor different. The New York Times fiction story I read (while staying in my since-college friend, Tami's extra bedroom because she loves me enough to take me in and share her home with me...) right before leaving New York said, If you want to get to know yourself, sleep in a bed somewhere else. It is so true...so very very true...

Thank you to everyone who made this month possible. I am grateful to you (and dare I say it, I am grateful to God) for being the fabric of who I am.

With much love from the airplane as I fly away from Italy and slowly make my way to Canada and Boston,
Rachael