December 01st, 2020

"Jewish Penicillin" is spiritual food for the soul. Really. It is. I actually made chicken matzoh ball soup from scratch for Passover this past year, all by myself, during the pandemic.  Yep, I even made the matzoh balls. People often ask me, "When did you start being so spiritual, Stu"? While my first spiritual awakening happened 14 years ago when I got into 12 step recovery, it was when I was about 7 years old when I knew I was "different" and "saw," "felt" and "knew" things that others couldn't or didn't. But it wasn't in synagogue or around any of the beautiful Jewish customs and traditions I love, where I experienced an awareness of spirituality for the first time, it was in what I call "Nature Sanctuary". While I was born Jewish and raised in a Conservative Jewish upbringing, had a brit mila (circumcision) a Bar Mitzvah, traditional Jewish wedding (a not so "Jewish" divorce), and raised a son who, too, became a Bar Mitzvah at age 13,  I felt my first 'pang' of spirituality on a random spring Saturday. It was one day when my family was outside on our backyard brick patio, that my next door neighbor "Uncle" Seymour walked over into our yard to say hello. (Oh, how I miss the Long Island home in which I grew up, and how "our property"  was actually literally connected to our neighbors' property. Can you imagine? Their concrete actually touched our brick! No fences or stuck walls or divided lots like here in suburban So-Cal. Well anyway, Seymour, a short-statured, clog-wearing, bolo-necklace-clad surgeon who walked with a limp due to a horse riding accident, was wearing turquoise and silver jewelry. A lot of it. Bangles and necklaces and button covers on his denim shirt. I loved Uncle Seymour. He was a nice Jewish doctor during the week, and an avid limping, saddle-lugging cowboy-horseman on the weekends. Okay, back to the jewelry. I was mesmerized by the turquoise blue stones and gun-metal rustic silver. I don't know why. I just was. Little did I know that I would later become an avid aficionado and collector of all things turquoise and silver, but that day, I seemed to notice the plants in the garden differently. They all, each one of them, seemed to feel more alive, and like independent beings to me. Today, I believe that spirituality is present in each and every breath we take, and that all living things "breathe".  Energy pulsates in and out and around all things. I know because I have seen it.  I learned that the latin word "spiritus" literally means "breathe".  Someone is not spiritual beacause they go on retreats, or do a lot of religious training or practices, or have an annual yoga pass and an overflowing drying rack of lululemon. Someone is spiritual, because they are aware of the sacredness of each and every breath in... and breath out.... and they are aware that we are all connected, and all made of the same energy as Our Creator. That's what COVID is all about. A modern plague to remind us all to wake up to the ways we have been living, and to adjust, and mostly to get so uncomfortable that we need to remember--or learn for the first time-- how to rely upon the ONE who gave (gives and takes away) breath. How ironic that COVID affects the lungs, which in metaphysical medicine relate to issues of "grief". The earth and all of us inhabiting her are certainly going through a period of intense grieving right now.. But alas, have faith. Do your work. Pray. Meditate. Cleanse. Detox. Consult your guides, healers and clergy... and when you have an hour or two, throw some onion, carrots, celery, salt, and a chicken in a pot, cover it with water and call your Mother to tell her you made yourself some Jewish Penicillin.