Confessing to a new spiritual home

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Yom Kippur is a time for confession, and okay it was last week but I didn't have a spare brain cell between the High Holy Days, chairing my church's Worship committee, and getting smacked down by a brute of a cold.

I wanted time to reflect on these words before posting them, unlike my hasty High Holy Days impressions posted on Facebook.

At some point during the Rosh Hashanah first day services, I looked out at the Beth Israel congregation from my side podium. it all felt strangely familiar and I realized:

This is my community.

This is home.

The memory of this is bright in my mind, I can picture it exactly, but I cannot tell you when. It was like a moment out of time.

It felt the same as when I look from the choir stalls into the Good Sam congregation and they are:

My community, my home.

Neither is lessened by the other. I feel the same way when I stay at Mt. Calvary monastery in Santa Barbara: another home for me.

These aren't just moments  out of time, but recognitions of breathing flesh and blood communities where I belong.

Growing up, I couldn't imagine having any other home than the one I grew up in. I still call that place home. But after 17 years in the United States, here is home too.

"Home" isn't an either/or proposition for me. And so, Good Sam is home, Mt. Calvary is home, and Beth Israel is home.

I encounter God in each of these places: in the music, the liturgy, the real humanness of those who make up these communities.


I am triply blessed.

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