Poland Pilgrimage #7
Bringing this Ashkenazic Ancestral Journey to a close is no easy task. I am certain I will be alchemizing and integrating this experience for the rest of my life.
As I set to publish this closing entry on our two weeks of travel, I have already been back in Oregon for almost a week. The Ma’ariv/blended zone of travel and re-entry has been less accommodating to focused linear thought… I’m starting to receive little glimmers of insight from a lot of learning that happened on this journey.
I learned what it feels like to travel through a country that was only 80 years ago, a brutal field of war, of fascism, of violence in its most barbaric manifestations. I had my own experience of what the land feels like, what the sound of the voice is here, what the movement of the eyes, what the posture of the bodies.
No matter how you might like to romanticize war, to wax of heroes and nobility and mighty destroyers and defenders, my sense is that war’s effects are at the root of SO MUCH of the world’s pain.
War is at the root of so much of my pain and yours too.
This journey has me contemplating a research project dealing with the concept in the Tanakh of “Adonai Tzvaot” or “God of Hosts”. ‘Adonai Tzvaot’ is a name for Goddexx that occurs frequently in the books of Judges and Kings and it has this interesting double meaning of “G-d of heavenly array of luminaries” and “G-d of armies”.
God of Stars, God of Armies.
When I put myself in the position of a soldier on an earthly battlefield I can imagine the feeling of believing that G-d is on my side and even helping me to “win” the war.
And it’s very likely that the ones with guns pointed at me believe the same thing.
Honestly when religion, politics, and military force congeal, when is it ever not a s&*t show?
Who is this, Adonai Tz’vaot, G-d of War? Is it time to examine our relationship with that concept?
In my travels these past weeks I sensed that any peace to be found only came with willingness to find sacred gleanings in humanity’s shadows and our light. In holding and accepting the entire spectrum in each of us.
All the darkness, all the brilliance and all the blended places.
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On morning ten of our journey, I woke with a feeling of the grit of the trip trying to form a pearl in my heart. This was to be our final day with artist-educators Jules Weitz and Danya Vosoboynik beginning at the edge of the forest of Bialowieza.
Danya teaches that some of the last old growth forests in Poland are here and they are only standing because activists presenced themselves and protected the trees from machines prepared to harvest them for lumber.
My heart lifts up the mirror of the coastal redwood trees of my beloved Northern California. My heart conjures the memory of many friends who have risen to defend these sacred ancestors. I wonder, how far do we think we can go with our consumption of this earth body which is our body? What good will our money and our homes built of wood be when ecological imbalance prevails and flood, famine, and fear are persistent symptoms?
This was the busy content of my mind as I began my hike deep into the forest my great grandparents knew. My thoughts were mirrored by the dancing orange and blue butterflies fluttering in pollinator parties on low purple flowers.
I arrived before a giant tree shaped like the Hebrew letter Tzadee and I copied its shape with my body. I felt my chest open and expand looking over lush meadows.
On the way out of the woods I shared an inspiring conversation with Julie Weitz, dear bold artist sister, discussing the flow of the barn-theater variety show our group was about to host and perform that evening.
Yep, that’s right Jules knew that the perfect medicine to all the tragedy would be creativity. We were about to take it to the stage.
You know I love creative alchemy baby! Let’s GO!
But first!!
A bit of lunch and then a group bicycle tour through the Jewish history of the tiny town of Bialowieza. Our tour guide and committed memory keeper Kajia pointed out wooden homes that still stood built before WW2. Jews and Eastern Orthodox families shared walls and lived in intimate proximity and community with each other. She showed us where the synagogue once stood, and the building that held the mikvah just a little farther on.
On we rode, and our hearts soared as we cruised in the sun. We were accompanied by puffy clouds in a deep blue sky and rolled bales of hay in the fields. The group synchrony and the sweet scent of the earth brought whoops and shouts of joy.
After a few miles, Kajia turned onto a bumpier dirt road my intuition pricked up …hmmm. Where is this leading?
A gravel quarry. Where German and Russian soldiers had executed hundreds of Polish and Jewish residents of the town in 1943.
We stood there, only 300m from the border with Belarus. Check out the film Green Border for more about this area’s current challenges in creating safety for refugees.
The monument to the Poles that stands in this gravel quarry is a huge, formidable iron eagle, a Polish national symbol erected during communism in the 1960s. The Jewish portion of the memorial has only been there for the past 10 years. A heart-mission manifested by Kajia and intended to harmonize with the forest. We lit memorial candles and prayed together. I could feel my mourner’s kaddish fatigue starting to kick in. It’s a real thing in Poland. One wonders how there can still be more to mourn? And yet.
I didn’t need to linger there. It felt good to get back on our bikes and ride together to return them to town. On the way we saw several border patrol cars. Borders, which have shifted in this region countless times, are a huge piece of living here. This is true in a way that most who live in a country as big as the US don’t experience on a daily basis. I’m still contemplating the function and impact of their existence.
OK, bikes returned. And now…
Within two hours, create a piece of theater.
This was a much needed invitation to alchemy.
Camped on a shady grassy strip, beside a cafe with the most delicious soup and best cappuccino in Poland, we weary and wondrous travelers pondered and wove. We wrote out chord charts, found pieces of music to move to, thought through the creation of props and collaborative storytellings. We opened the doorways of the creative soul and magic poured through.
Hosted in Kajia’s barn theather by our inimitable Master of Ceremonies, the Psychedelic Tzaddik aka Jules Weitz., as darkness fell, we filled the room with magic and play. Jen created a piece using letters her family had sent back and forth between Poland the the United states after some members immigrated. Wowlvenn created a dance/movement piece where folks embodied the mystical animals we had seen in the intricate paintings on the ceiling of the Lancut synagogue.
I embodied Leybeshke, the elder cemetery measurer. Her croaking refrain and question to the audience was “Do you remember me?” It was part gleanings from some free writing earlier in the day and partly improvisation. So much more to play with here and with her! I loved giving her expression through my body.
So much more to share here about this theater/therapy room/emergent alchemical playground. My belief in this type of play to do what cognitive thought alone can never touch was reinforced a millionfold.
The next day a long drive to Sejny where we found a crystal clear lake to mikvah in before receiving Shabbat through the musical prayers of the Sejny Klezmer Borderlands Orchestra. I honestly did not know what to expect. Would this be klezmer music offered as a kitschy musical memorialization of those who are not more than a name painted inside the walls of an old abandoned synagogue?
My heart was laid bare after the first few notes from the trumpet player who opened the show with the melody to a chassidic niggun called “Ohr Ayn Sof/Light of the Infinite”. Thirty minutes later we were whirling and dancing in full communion with the ancestors. It was the closest I came to seeing visions on the trip.
After the concert it felt like the bus floated in the openness of the music echoing inside. We arrived at our residence where a beautiful Shabbat table was waiting for us. We blessed the candles, the bread lovingly baked for us, and the wine. We blessed the children of the earth and the children within each of us. We welcomed angels and memory keepers and our wise and well ancestors. We felt surrounded and astounded.
‘One more day’…that was my last thought as my head hit the pillow.
Next evening’s farewell dinner at the JCC in Warsaw included improvisational musical cutlery jam and an extinguishing of the flame of the Havdallah candle performed as a slow motion dance. We sang and prayed on the small platform in front of the JCC while rowdy guys laughed and shared beers at a pub across the street.
We shared hugs, gratitude and goodbyes all around before our molecule dissolved into the solution once again.
To be continued….
