Dear followers,
I will be away from affordable interweb technology as of this Saturday. I'm very much excited about this trip. I will leave you with this wonderful clip to keep you entertained! Enjoy and see you in March!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Guilt!
Today's question, for all of you reflective types, is "where does guilt begin?" What is the origin of guilt?
What is guilt, really? Maybe it's tied to regret: you feel guilty when you know (think) you should have done something, but, for whatever reason, you did something else instead. Maybe, at the time, you did what appeared to be right, but now you feel that you were wrong (this is getting pretty heavy). Some people are also accused of trying to make you feel guilty (they often succeed at this). Hence the term, "guilt trip" or "guilt tripping." According to popular folklore, Jewish mothers are especially adept at this and, I hear, Catholics do a pretty good job of it as well.
Being made to feel guilty is a fascinating topic, and would be worth exploring another time. But often (and maybe always), it is you yourself who triggers your own guilt (if only in allowing yourself to feel guilty). I think we tend to feel guilty especially when our actions affected someone who is close to us. And so I come to my confession.
I feel privileged to a piece of knowledge: I already know when I first experienced guilt in dealing with my child. It was a couple of weeks ago, when the child was a wee 16 weeks. Sixteen weeks in the womb, that is. Unborn, for the love of God!
For those of you who have been paying attention, I've been mentioning the phenomenon of pre-natal communication, apparently a highly beneficial activity for the unborn child. So I did something awesome: I read a whole story to my unborn child! It is one of my favourite childhood stories in my mother tongue (you will probably recognise the cover of The Giving Tree, even if you don't happen to read Hebrew).
This is awesome, you see, because, with repetition, the unborn child will learn to recognise my voice, even some of the words, heck, maybe even the story itself! And if some people have it right, this can become a comforting story that will make the little guy shut up when he's otherwise inconsolable!
Alas, I have not read the story to the fetus again. I even think that he's asked for it and I have not found the time to read it. What a horrible father I am! Guilt-ridden already.
What would the giving tree say?
What is guilt, really? Maybe it's tied to regret: you feel guilty when you know (think) you should have done something, but, for whatever reason, you did something else instead. Maybe, at the time, you did what appeared to be right, but now you feel that you were wrong (this is getting pretty heavy). Some people are also accused of trying to make you feel guilty (they often succeed at this). Hence the term, "guilt trip" or "guilt tripping." According to popular folklore, Jewish mothers are especially adept at this and, I hear, Catholics do a pretty good job of it as well.
Being made to feel guilty is a fascinating topic, and would be worth exploring another time. But often (and maybe always), it is you yourself who triggers your own guilt (if only in allowing yourself to feel guilty). I think we tend to feel guilty especially when our actions affected someone who is close to us. And so I come to my confession.
I feel privileged to a piece of knowledge: I already know when I first experienced guilt in dealing with my child. It was a couple of weeks ago, when the child was a wee 16 weeks. Sixteen weeks in the womb, that is. Unborn, for the love of God!
For those of you who have been paying attention, I've been mentioning the phenomenon of pre-natal communication, apparently a highly beneficial activity for the unborn child. So I did something awesome: I read a whole story to my unborn child! It is one of my favourite childhood stories in my mother tongue (you will probably recognise the cover of The Giving Tree, even if you don't happen to read Hebrew).
This is awesome, you see, because, with repetition, the unborn child will learn to recognise my voice, even some of the words, heck, maybe even the story itself! And if some people have it right, this can become a comforting story that will make the little guy shut up when he's otherwise inconsolable!
Alas, I have not read the story to the fetus again. I even think that he's asked for it and I have not found the time to read it. What a horrible father I am! Guilt-ridden already.
What would the giving tree say?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
"No tips"
We had another midwife appointment today, to which I grudgingly took the bus. The bus! I hate taking the bus! I don't really mind streetcars, which I took several times last week in Toronto where I attended a library conference. Streetcars, somehow, are not so bad. Maybe it's the predictable track, the smooth ride, and the easy suspension. Buses in Ottawa also smell like sweat I find.
Back on track. We got to hear the fetus' heart again today. It's a sound you just want to listen to forever; they always turn that dopler thingie off too soon. Rose's sister, who now has two great kids, rented her own dopler and listened to her first baby's heartbeat every night in bed. Something soothing about that.
But the real topic of this post is circumcision! Hurray for circumcision! I'm not here to engage in a debate about circumcision. In my case, anyway, nobody asked me and, also, nobody asked me if I wanted to be Jewish. If we happen to have a boy (or a girl, for that matter), our child will face some choices, later in life, about his religion. It'll be up to him to question and ask himself, and others, some questions and come up with the answers that will suit him. But I'd like to set him off on his life's journey the same way that I, my father, his father, and the rest of the fathers in my paternal lineage all the way down to a decisive day near Mount Sinai, have been started off: with a snip on the eighth day of all our lives. Rose and I have had this discussion a long time ago and we're in agreement on this.
Now a few months ago, around May of last year, I started taking Torah classes. Which is to say that, once a week, more or less, I sit down with a learned Rabbi and we study the Torah, the five books of Moses. We read it in Hebrew, line by line, and look at the commentary. This Rabbi also happens to be a mohel, a person who performs ritual Jewish circumcisions for a living. So it seemed natural to me that this wonderful, gentle, kind, and soulful man (not much older than I and with four children already!) whose work is really cutting edge, will circumcise my son in due course.
What I forgot to consider is my Rabbi's own position on this question. My son (or daughter), you see, will not be, halachically-speaking, Jewish because Judaism is passed down through the mother. So it is not so natural for my Rabbi to circumcise someone who is not born of a Jewish mother. Also, it is also not so natural to Rose to be around when this happens, because of the Rabbi's reservations.
So I gave my Rabbi some time to consider. And the next time I brought it up, he said that, on important matters such as this, he consults with his own Rabbi.
I'll keep you updated.
Back on track. We got to hear the fetus' heart again today. It's a sound you just want to listen to forever; they always turn that dopler thingie off too soon. Rose's sister, who now has two great kids, rented her own dopler and listened to her first baby's heartbeat every night in bed. Something soothing about that.
But the real topic of this post is circumcision! Hurray for circumcision! I'm not here to engage in a debate about circumcision. In my case, anyway, nobody asked me and, also, nobody asked me if I wanted to be Jewish. If we happen to have a boy (or a girl, for that matter), our child will face some choices, later in life, about his religion. It'll be up to him to question and ask himself, and others, some questions and come up with the answers that will suit him. But I'd like to set him off on his life's journey the same way that I, my father, his father, and the rest of the fathers in my paternal lineage all the way down to a decisive day near Mount Sinai, have been started off: with a snip on the eighth day of all our lives. Rose and I have had this discussion a long time ago and we're in agreement on this.
Now a few months ago, around May of last year, I started taking Torah classes. Which is to say that, once a week, more or less, I sit down with a learned Rabbi and we study the Torah, the five books of Moses. We read it in Hebrew, line by line, and look at the commentary. This Rabbi also happens to be a mohel, a person who performs ritual Jewish circumcisions for a living. So it seemed natural to me that this wonderful, gentle, kind, and soulful man (not much older than I and with four children already!) whose work is really cutting edge, will circumcise my son in due course.
What I forgot to consider is my Rabbi's own position on this question. My son (or daughter), you see, will not be, halachically-speaking, Jewish because Judaism is passed down through the mother. So it is not so natural for my Rabbi to circumcise someone who is not born of a Jewish mother. Also, it is also not so natural to Rose to be around when this happens, because of the Rabbi's reservations.
So I gave my Rabbi some time to consider. And the next time I brought it up, he said that, on important matters such as this, he consults with his own Rabbi.
I'll keep you updated.
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