Our next guest is a clinical psychologist specializing in grief therapy. .She was a great consultant to the Hebrew School I was directing, where I taught her boys. She worries about living in such a non-Jewish environment She can tell you every good gluten free cupcake around.
I experience the most peace when I am swimming. I don’t mean swimming laps but when I let myself, swim underwater for a few seconds. It is this moment that I feel total peace-free from any worry or concerns. I discovered this, as a child at summer camp but returned to it while raising my two sons. Swimming underwater is a favorite pastime of mine. Being submerged underwater I don’t see or hear anything.
Dr. Nancy Cohn
Last night I went to the mikveh. It is part of how I prepare personally for the chaggim, the holidays. For me there is a sense of at-one-ment and peace. It is a place of healing and calm. I never understand why it works, but it always does. I leave feeling renewed, refreshed, energized. It recharges my batteries and makes me feel whole. Unlike Nancy, I am not sure when I realized that floating in the water was one place I could feel peace. But I remember a poem I wrote after living in Israel about floating in the Sea of Gallilee, Yam Kineret.
The Summer Before the Lebanese War
Bouncing on a red Egged bus
Through Upper Galillee,
We are returning from a tiyul
to the Good Fence
the bridge between
Israel and Lebanon
We pass through Kiryat Sh’mona,
Streets still deserted
From last night’s ketushya raids.
We pause. . .
Yam Kinneret
The Sea of Galillee
Where Jesus is said to have
Walked on water
and fed the multitudes with
Two loaves and five fish.
“Swim break,” the madrich calls out
“Everybody out, lishdot, lishdot, lishdot”
I am sick of drinking tepid water from hot canteens
But I do as I’m told.
You must drink here, in the desert.
We tumble down the stairs of the bus
Anxious to be the first to reach
The cool, soothing waters.
Israeli jets stream overhead
Shining silver against the cloudless sky
Splitting the sky in two
Adding a straight streak of white smoke
That melts into the Michigan blue sky
Heading to and from
Lebanon
Answering every Russian-made Ketushya
With a bomb of their own
Boum!
Another sonic boom.
The water is calm today
And reflects the Golan Mountains
As if they haven’t a care
As if they haven’t seen forty years of fighting
And we pretend not to be afraid
As we race each other
To the water’s edge
I swim out a bit
Loosing sight of the shore
And flip over to my back
For a while I watch the mountains
On the other side
As they meet the water.
Once the Heights were Syrian and a threat
Every night the PLO would bomb the kibbutzim
Killing kibbutzniks, destroying schools,
Shattering a night’s sleep, every night.
Now the hills are Israeli and no longer feared.
But it is a fear I know.
Now there are new threats.
We spent last night in a bomb shelter,
Waiting and listening and praying and hoping,
Ketushiyot sound like thunder from afar.
We were amazed at how calm the Israelis were
They have been through this
For four wars and thirty years
Life must continue normally
They must not know we are afraid.
And I wonder
What would it have been like
To float here
Two thousand years ago
In this ageless sea
Before there was fear?
As I continue to float
I forget about
politics and war and bombers overhead
The water gently caresses my body,
Supports me, holds me,
Makes me trust it
It eases my fear
Nothing seems separate
Everything seems to be a part of the whole
The water, the sky, the hills
All look close enough to touch
Even G-d is touchable
As I melt into the sea
And become one
with it all.
Summer 1986 for Deborah Diggs poetry class at Tufts University as part of my masters in education
Melting into the sea maybe that’s what it will take to bring peace.