Love Isn't About Things

By Susan Esther Barnes

Friday was my birthday. My husband took the day off work to prepare. I didn't know why it would take him a whole day to bake a cake and wrap a present or two, but as it turned out, he needed the time.

My day went smoothly. There were no unexpected crises at work, and at my company they take you out to lunch at the restaurant of your choice for your birthday.

I also had a collection of birthday cards: One from a department store, one from an airline, one from my HMO, and one from our mortgage broker. It seems like it's only the large companies that haven't yet entered the digital age of online greeting cards.



Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, it seemed everyone around me knew it was my birthday. At the synagogue that evening, I received a steady stream of hugs and smiles and wishes for a happy brithday.

Afterward, I met my husband at a local restaurant for my favorite birthday nachos.



After we sat down, my husband said, "Happy birthday! I had a bad day. Feel free to write about this on your blog, photos and all." Uh oh.

He knows I love popcorn, and he wanted to get me a big tin of it. Just a couple of months ago, he had successfully ordered one for me online, but he had recently spotted a sweets shop in our town and had assumed he could get one there. Alas, they had none.

A while ago, when he had asked what I wanted for my birthday, I had suggested a particular kind of potted plant. At the time, he had replied, "Why do you want to kill a plant for your birthday?" (See my post Wanted for Multiple Planticide to learn why he would say such an awful thing). So he stopped by the local nursery, and discovered they didn't have the type of plant I wanted.

Apparently, he hadn't picked up on my hints about the accessories I would like for my new iPhone, so he went home empty-handed to eat lunch and to regroup.

He searched online for a place that sells popcorn, but couldn't find anything, so he opted for stopping by the local movie theater to get some.



What he didn't know at the time is I think fresh movie theater popcorn is way better than what you get in the tins. As they say, blind dog finds a bone.

As for the plant, he found a florist and called to confirm they had the right thing. It wasn't until he was in the car on the way there that he realized all they would have would be cut flowers and not a live plant, but he figured with those at least I wouldn't feel so bad when they died. Hrmph!

When he got to the florist, they presented him with some stems of the pretty blue little flowers he had asked for by name. He was a bit confused, since they didn't look at all like the big red flowers on the plastic plant we have at home. Nonetheless, he was in a bit of a panic by this point, so he purchased this gorgeous bunch of hyacinths



instead of the potted hibiscus I had wanted (see below). Of course, this was probably my fault, because I always get the names mixed up.



Then he went home to make the cake. Either one side of our kitchen recently settled, or the oven rack wasn't in right, or something else odd happened, because both halves of the cake came out higher on one side than the other.

When he tried to frost to bottom layer of the cake, cake bits kept coming off on the knife. As if that weren't enough, the top layer stuck in the pan. He finally got it out in pieces, and desparately tried to frost over the crumbling ediface, resulting in the interesting specimen on display at the top of this post.

Defeated, and with his stomach churning in acid, he retreated downstairs to his computer to await my phone call announcing that I has ready for my birthday festivities to commence.

Compare all this effort and care to my experience a dozen years ago, when nobody around me knew it was my birthday. That evening, on the way home from work, I picked up a perfectly formed slice of cake from a local restaurant, and ate it alone, sitting on my bed, watching TV.

Did I get everything I wanted for my birthday this year? You bet I did - and more. Love isn't about things. It is about caring and effort, and those things I received in abundance on Friday. And although I'm sorry my husband suffered so, it was a very, very happy birthday.

Discovering Meaning in Ritual

By Susan Esther Barnes

Often, when I hear people say they are not religious, or they want to explain why they don’t come to services more often, they say they’re not interested in meaningless ritual. That sentiment is certainly something we have in common! What is implied, however, is that they find most, if not all, ritual to be meaningless. I would argue this is a misconception.

Ritual is so much a part of our lives, it’s easy not to recognize it for what it is. Ritual, and its inherent meaning, is more easily recognized when it stops, because that is when you miss it.

For example, I’m one of those people who can’t sleep through the night without having to get up at least once or twice. When my husband and I were first married, every time I crawled back into bed I would find a piece of him – a hand, his head, whatever – sticking out from under the covers, and kiss it.

Then came one very cold night. When I got back into bed, I saw he had the covers pulled up over his head. There was no skin sticking out anywhere at all. I didn’t want to lift the covers off of him to find a place to kiss, because I didn’t want the cold air to rush in and wake him up. “He’s asleep anyway,” I thought, “It’s not like he’s even aware I’ve been doing this.” So I lay down to go to sleep.

Suddenly, I heard a drowsy voice beside me saying, “What, no kiss?” To my surprise, even though he had never mentioned it, he had been aware of the ritual, and he missed it the first time it didn’t happen.

Similarly, most people in the US are used to receiving a cake on their birthday, as well as a chorus of people singing, “Happy Birthday to You.” If, for some reason, this doesn’t happen, most of us would feel disappointed, let down, almost as if the birthday hadn’t really happened.

This is because ritual is meaningful to us. It connects our present to our past, and to other generations. We are hard wired for it. If we don’t have enough rituals in our lives, we will invent some, whether it’s pizza every Wednesday night, or a stop by Starbucks in the morning, or whatever fits the bill.

TV producers picked up on the importance of ritual long ago, and they have never forgotten the lesson. Carol Burnett ended all of her shows by singing, “I’m so Glad We Had This Time Together.” What would the show “Good Times” have been without Jimmie Walker saying, “Kid Dy-no-mite!” or what would happen if the creators of “Survivor” suddenly decided not to snuff out a torch every time a person is voted off the island?

These actions are rituals. On the surface, they may appear to be meaningless, but we know they are not, because we would feel a sense of incompleteness, almost a sense of being cheated, if they were omitted.

Who could have predicted that a particular song, or phrase, or a snuffed torch, could become important to us? We couldn’t know for sure in advance. The first time we experienced each of these things, for most of us, they felt like no big deal. It is only through repetition and familiarity that they grew in importance and gained in meaning.

And so it is with religious ritual. It makes no sense for someone to light Shabbat candles just once and then say, “Well, that did nothing for me, so I won’t ever do it again.” It is only by repeating a ritual multiple times, giving it a chance to sink in and become a part of our lives, that we can start to discover what meaning, if any, it may have for us.

We were told on Mount Sinai, as recorded in the Torah in Sh’mot 24:7, “na’aseh v’nishma” – “We will do and we will understand.” It is the doing that comes first; the understanding doesn’t come until later. When contemplating a ritual that is new to me, I need to see how it fits, through repetition over time, before I can even begin to decide whether it is something that will have meaning for me.

After all, the first several times you try almost anything new, it’s hard not to feel self conscious and awkward. It takes time and repetition before you can relax and actually experience a new thing in its own right without having these kinds of other feelings get in the way.

And while having cake on my birthday is delicious, and seeing a torch snuffed gives me a certain sense of finality, it is only religious ritual which brings me a sense of closeness to God and to something bigger, and more universal, than I get with those secular rituals.

No, I am not interested in the least in meaningless ritual. To the contrary, since I know I’m going to have ritual in my life one way or the other, I want to find the most meaningful rituals I can. That is why I am willing to put in the time and effort to repeat new religious rituals over time, in order to discover what depth of meaning they may hold for me.