consumate celebrations

In the US, today begins Marriage Protection Week. Support
your friendly neighborhood family therapists. The outpouring
of hatred and blame-shifting coming from this administration
is deeply frightening, and it feeds into the idea that
individuals are NOT responsible for their own relationships.
They are only responsible in the aggregate, for their combined
influence on other people's relationships. This meme is
probably more destructive to marriages than anything else
the government can do. Particularly when it comes to my
family, I want to be more than a demographic statistic pushing
and pulling other statistics.

I'm listening to the old Fred Small song, Everything Possible.
It was written almost 20 years ago, and it sounds it. Weren't
we supposed to have won the revolution already?

"You can be anybody you want to be, you can love whomever you will,
You can travel any country where your heart leads,
And know I will love you still
You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around,
You can choose one special one
And the only measure of your words and your deeds
Will be the love you leave behind when you're done."

We're making some progress. There are children, especially
the children of my friends, being raised in sheltered
environments with relatively little exposure to violence
and sexism. I had dinner in a sukkah last night, and the
young host was unsurprised that the young guest was more
aggressive than he was...but he was shocked that she bit
him. (People don't DO that!) Happy Sukkot. May you all
have peaceful shelters (with nobody biting you unless you
want it). I like the way my congregation is adding names
to the Amidah (very standard prayer - the traditional form
mentions Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.) More liberal forms
include Sarah, Rebeccah, Rachel, and Leah, either pairing
them off with the men, or giving them their own line. This
new version also include Bilhah and Zilpah. *blink?* Oh,
yeah, Jacob's other wives. Or concubines. Or secondaries.
However you translate it, they were part of the family.
(Which, even from the bare text, was a seething mass of
psychodrama. But nobody is saying we need to protect marriage
from biblical bad examples. Not this century.)

Happy birthday, Hiranu. I'm so glad I know you.

Happy Thanksgiving, to any Canadians who happen to be reading
this.