faith

How Lucky Can You Get?

Posted on by Sally Wiener Grotta

Glass Half Full or Half Empty by Sally Wiener GrottaThe other evening, we were driving home from a photo workshop I had just given at the McBride Library (Berwick, PA). I was in the back seat. Daniel was driving, and my Dad was in the front passenger seat. My two best friends. The two loves of my life. Whenever they can, they attend all my seminars, lectures, book signings, and exhibit receptions. Always there for me in good times and bad. I don’t know what I would do without them.

Suddenly, a thump and a slight swerve. We had hit a deer, a young, not insubstantial buck. I saw it fly off our front grill, onto the hood, headed for the windshield and straight for Daniel and Dad.

In the blink of an eye, everything could have changed. Read More

Opening Myself to What Might Come

Posted on by Sally Wiener Grotta

My Faith by Sally Wiener GrottaI don’t know what I believe about a God. I find it difficult to accept an all-powerful being who is, at the same time, able to dwell in/be the entire universe and, yet, anthropomorphically dabbles in the second-to-second trivia of 5 billion individual human lives on a flyspeck of a planet, when that planet is just one among billions upon billions, in our one insignificant galaxy.

My faith is rooted in the connection we can make when we meet another person, when we hold a child or fully experience a mountain vista.

Yet, I am now part of my temple’s woman’s Torah study group. Not only part of it, but the facilitator for our first session, and our rabbi – Peg Kershenbaum — asked me to write a prayer to start our first meeting. As Rabbi Peg wrote to me, “The traditional prayer begins in the standard way (Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe Who sanctified us by commandments and commanded us) and ends ‘to engage with the words/matters of Torah.’ La’asok b’divrei Torah. The word engage is the same word as that used for earning a living or actively plunging into a project or transaction. We roll up our sleeves, flex our muscles and sharpen our intellect and dive into the fray!”

How was I to write a prayer that would be true to who I am, if I don’t really believe in the kind of God that is represented in the Torah? After many hours of conflict and contemplation, this is what I came up with:Read More