Ripple in Still Water

           I heard the most re-assuring sound this morning. We sleep with our bedroom window slightly opened. Well, around the time when I normally wake up along with the sunrise, I heard the sounds of birds chirping. It took me a second to realize that birds were chirping, but as I opened my eyes and saw the clear blue sky and the first rays of sunlight, the sweet sounds of birds chirping re-assured me. It sounded like spring outside, it looked like spring outside and when I went downstairs and stepped outside for a moment to breathe; it started to smell like spring. It used to be, that after the smell, sounds, sights and inhaling the fresh spring air occurred, I would check the baseball scores and see how my team did the night before. Well, with no baseball due to COVID-19, there was no baseball.  Still, I felt a sense of reassurance, a sense of normalcy, a sense that something out there was working correctly. Yes, spring technically began two weeks ...

It's early Friday morning. It is still dark out. For now, the house is quiet. Coffee is brewing and I have a quiet moment to spiritually breathe. It has been a long time since I have looked forward to Shabbat as much as I have this week.  It has been a trying, difficult week for the world. For me, I have conducted 9 funerals over the past 11 days. 9 different lives, 9 different narratives, 9 families grieving for the loss of a loved one. My wife, sensing that I needed to see or experience something happy, hopeful and life-affirming showed me a very unique wedding that happened "down south" on the Lawrence& Bathurst section of Toronto. A wedding, in this environment? Yet there it was. With neighbors standing on their porches, and cars lined up in the streets, there were perhaps 15 people outside, practicing social distancing  and parents walked their daughter down the sidewalk on to their driveway, there was a chuppa and there was a Chata. They stood there and a weddin...