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The Charlotte Jewish News - January 2012 - Page 4 Synagogue^- Tongregations Let our family care for yours. When you need assistance with a senior family member, adult or child, we are committed to providing compassionate home care through an experienced, caring staff. Affordable Care Solutions • Transportation • Nurse Supervised • Specialized Dementia Care • Flexible 3 to 24 hour Care • Perfect Caregiver Matching Homewatch Csace^ivers' Charlotte: 704-503-4660 Cornelius: 704-987-1802 www.homewatchcaregivers.com/ charlotte Is Spiritual Direction Jewish? o By Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede I sat with a bat mitzvah student a little over a year ago to study the Mourner’s Kaddish. I spoke to her about the history of the prayer. I asked her if she could explain why a prayer said in memory of a loved one didn’t mention death. “I guess so that we remember to love God even when our heart hurts,” she said. We talked more about grief and sadness, about the way having a community around you to help you with something as elemental as saying a prayer can help pro vide comfort. Then I asked her to read Mourner’s Kaddish. By b’al’ma di v’ra khir’utei, her voice had lost its steadiness. By ba ’agala uviz 'man kariv I saw the first tears fall. We stopped the prayer reading. I asked her to tell me what her tears were about. She did not have the opportunity to say goodbye, she told me. She was crying because she hadn’t been able to say goodbye. My student had lost her grand mother the previous summer. Her mother knew that the child’s grandmother was past talk ing in those last days, and told her so. “But I could have talked to her,” she said. “Do you think you still can talk to her?” I asked. “Would she hear you if you tried?” I was really asking her about the Holy One and what the girl believed about life after death. How would it feel, I asked, if she wrote out all the things she would have liked to tell her grandmother before she died? She liked the idea. Do you ever stop thinking about what the future holds for your child? Neither do we. At the American Hebrew Academy, a one-of-a-kind boarding high school experi ence awaits your child. An academically rigorous environment where Jewish iden tity is nurtured, the Academy opens the doors to your child’s future. It’s everything a high school should be, and some things you never dreamed it could be. What doors can we open for your teenager? Learn more at www.highschoolmeansmore.org or call (336) 2iy-yoyo. Now accepting applications for 2012-2013. American Hebrew Academy Because high school can mean so much more. 0 f- I asked her if she knew her grandmother’s favorite eolor. Could she buy a pretty box of that eolor to store letters and pietures in, eould she write to her grand mother for years to eome? Spiritual direetion is trying to diseem God’s presenee in the real and aetual life of the individual. The direetor’s kavannah (inten tion), is to guide the seeker in exploring his or her relationship with God, with what is saered, with the state of their own soul. Wisdom, intuition, and staying open to God’s presenee helps both the direetor and the seeker to be aware of God’s nearness - or dis- tanee. Prayer, meditation, journal ing, ritual - all these ean be part of spiritual direetion. Spiritual direetors must meet people where they are. Do they find God to be present in the dilemmas they faee and the fears they experienee? If not, do they yearn for that Presenee? Do they rage or hope? Spiritual direetion is to listen, above all, to the heart. Though many Jews might not think of spiritual direetion as a Jewish dis- eipline, it is fair to say that rab- binie traditions - partieularly Chassidie ones - provide plenty of historieal preeedent for the way spiritual direetion is praetieed in our time. Rebbe Naehmann, who advised meditation and talking direetly to God was most surely engaging in a form of spiritual direetion. While I studied for the rab binate, I learned that being able to offer spiritual direetion was as eritieal as knowing how to lead an engaging Torah study group, or a rewarding and enriehing serviee. My eongregants had questions - about how to expand their Jewish praetiee, about how to eonneet to the Holy One beyond the bound aries of the siddur, about how to eope with loss and grief This January, I will be ordained as a spiritual direetor, after a three-year training program with ALEPH, the Allianee for Jewish Renewal. I will be grateful for that training, for it has served to help me serve. We all ean aeknowledge eaeh other’s hearts - that takes nothing more than quieting ourselves and listening for the presenee of God. As we meet whatever life brings us, may we know that these things are elementally Jewish praetiees, ones we ean all embraee. ^ Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede is a spiritual director on staff at the Davidson Centre for the Professions and the spiritual leader of Temple Or Olam, serv ing Cabarrus County and its envi rons.
The Charlotte Jewish News (Charlotte, N.C.)
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