First Night

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. We don't have anything super exciting planned, but we kind of like it that way these days. Sure, it would be nice to have some family around with whom to eat dinner and exchange gifts, but that isn't possible this year so we'll just have our own little family holiday experience. I'm going to make dinner (I was banished to the upstairs while Hubby wraps my gift and so took advantage of some blogging time) and then we'll light the first candle and give Bebe her first gift. She poked her little head into the laundry room earlier today and spied me wrapping one gift. I wasn't aware of her presence, but suddenly I heard a tiny voice say, "Hey, what's that Dora present?" I think that when it comes time to celebrate I'm going to turn Hubby's cell phone off. What is it with people making business calls at dinnertime? To me, it's so rude. I don't ever call people during dinner hours, although I do realize that dinnertime hours vary from household to household.

I've posted at different times about the spiritual path I walk, and how it, at times, separates greatly from any one solid organized religious way. I feel so strongly pulled toward my Celtic roots that it's hard for me to completely look away from them when it comes to how I connect with a Higher Power. That said, I am also intensely happy to be a part of the Jewish people. I might not be the "best Jew" around, I might not live my life in a completely kosher way, I might not believe everything Judaism tells me, but I love being Jewish just the same. Maybe someday I will completely walk the path of Judaism. I did recently find a book in a catalogue about how Judaism is connected with the wilds of nature and that interested me. To me, any sort of spirituality has to come from what's "out there": in the woods, on the beaches, in the wild grasses of mountain meadows, in the swampiness of the everglades, in the sparkling northern snowfalls. I do feel close to both my Irish roots and my Dutch Jewish ones; I need to celebrate them both, but maybe one day I'll find a way to accomplish that within the boundaries of Judaism. Right now, I'm where I'm at today, and I'm happy today with that!