From the Rabbi

IT’S … TODAY!

A Bear, a Pig and some Monkees walked into a …

Nope, that won’t work.

Try this: “What day is it?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favourite day,” said Pooh.

~ ~ ~

With the secular new year behind us, along with the reading of the whole book of Genesis, there’s a great compulsion to consider – once we’ve done all of our recapping and best-of listing – what’s coming up.

But what if we learned a lesson from “Rebbe” Winnie the Pooh? What if we just got into the groove of celebrating todays, as the fabled bear suggests?

This doesn’t mean we don’t plan, make shopping lists, look ahead so that we can prepare for an upcoming Torah reading or holiday. Oh no! It can mean that we can make some choices about the present moment that can serve us so well, belief or practice or state-of-learnedness notwithstanding.

This is the kind of thing we explore each first Thursday of the month in our Jewish Mindfulness Meditation “sit.” Well, this month, don’t you know, it’s the second Thursday, so that we didn’t bump into that other great pay-attention-to-this-moment-attention-getter New Year’s Day! For a blessed hour and a half, we don’t furl our brows in concern about the next thing. We may not even know what to do, so … we just be.

The boyband of my childhood sang: “Look out, here comes tomorrow …” Nah, I’d rather not. How about just sitting, breathing, and noticing? Make it a favourite thing to do, any day.