I knew for certain that I had wisely allocated my scarce free time even before the trip officially started. As part of a pre-trip orientation I asked students to talk about their religious or non-religious identity and was immediately inspired by the offering of a student who identifies as a Pentecostal Christian. She spoke with ease and honesty about her efforts to grow in her relationship to God—something I’d like to do, but a subject almost never discussed in any Jewish community where I have spent significant time.

During trip downtime I read portions of Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America by Eboo Patel, and I come across his distinction between “faith club”-style interfaith activity, on the one hand, and building an interfaith social movement, on the other. In faith clubs, a small, religiously diverse group draws inspiration from one another by sharing their spiritual journeys. Building an interfaith social movement, on the other hand, means “rallying the masses” in support of religious pluralism, to drown out “the thrash metal of religious prejudice.”

Most of my own interfaith experiences fit into the “faith club” category, including the inspiring moment at the pre-trip meeting. Moments such as this one have catalyzed my growth as a Jew and a human being. Early on in the trip, however, I was reminded of the need for a powerful interfaith movement. I asked Abby Stamelman Hocky, the executive director of the Interfaith Center, why she helped found the organization more than nine years ago, since there didn’t seem to be any religious violence in Philadelphia.

In response to my question, Sharan, our trip coordinator, spoke up. She belongs to a Sikh community and she very patiently explained, as she has probably found herself doing all too often, that the Sikh community faced profound suspicion and hostility in the wake of September 11^th, and even suffered numerous hate crimes, including murders, of which the shootings at the Oak Creek temple in Wisconsin is just the most recent. I already knew Sharan was Sikh, and I was somewhat ashamed that I forgot about the prejudice and violence that I already vaguely knew menaced Sikhs, but I had never met a Sikh, so my knowledge and empathy were shallow. (My question and Sharan’s answer also demonstrated to me that I had forgotten the lessons of my Jewish ancestors’ experience of being religious “strangers”—not just in the Jews’ mythic past in Egypt but also in my baube and zayde’s American childhoods—further proof for me that we can’t “remember [we] were strangers in Egypt” unless we cultivate relationships with those who are strangers today.)

A few days later, the leader of another Interfaith Encounters trip told me her students met with a religious leader who disparaged other religious groups. The leader told me she found this very discouraging and at first I actually tried to convince her that it’s a good thing to hear directly from opponents of pluralism--this was my liberal arts training talking, perhaps. Having just been reminded that lives depend on the creation of an interfaith movement, however, I stopped myself and really listened to my colleague and thought more about what I had read in Sacred Ground. According to Patel, people will be more likely to join the interfaith movement if they meet allies, and in this meeting the students encountered a powerful obstacle. In that sense, it really was a discouraging meeting.

When Passover begins next Monday night we will retell the Israelite slaves’ liberation and I will have new appreciation for the interfaith connections that catalyzed it—between Pharaoh’s daughter and Miriam, Moses and his Midianite father-in-law and wife. May they inspire us to create the interfaith social movement our world needs now.

This is what Elie Wiesel concluded based on his studies of Jewish literature, and I love the idea, even though I must be a real disappointment to God since I can’t seem to tell stories, at least not orally.

My relationships with friends, colleagues and the members of the congregation I serve haven’t been threatened by my oral story-telling disability, and neither have my relationships with loved ones. With one significant exception. Let me introduce you to my daughter. “Hi. I’m Tina and I’m a story-holic.” (Using her newest favorite word, she might tell you she has a “story craze.”) Whenever I’m with her, she asks me several times, “Dad, do you want to tell me a story?” And I almost always oblige, unless I’m still chewing my food, in which case Tina will wait 10 seconds and ask again. When a story starts it becomes the most important thing and flows from one activity into another—from the car to the dinner table to bath time to bedtime, sometimes picking up again in the morning. Teaching me to become a storyteller (albeit a very unpolished one) is just one of the many ways Tina has helped me to become a better person.

At first Tina was satisfied with retellings of her favorite books and then I expanded my repertoire to include mash-ups of familiar characters and plotlines (e.g., Dora and Boots prevent Swiper from stealing the baa baa black sheep’s three bags of wool).

In a confluence of her mental development and being a typically contrarian two-year-old, Tina has lately become a considerably more critical consumer of stories. As soon as I introduce the story’s topic and cast of characters, she’ll say, “NO, I want a different story.” (She pronounces it “dRifferent,” though.) Or she’ll say, “NO,” and then correct me—introducing a different scenario and, quite often, more characters—NO, they go to the CIRCUS, not the zoo, and it’s me and my neighbors and grandparents and cousins and most of the major and minor characters from Dora the Explorer and Caillou and maybe Arthur. At first this was frustrating—I am a budding auteur, I can’t work under these conditions!—but I’ve learned to be grateful for her creative input because of the opportunity it affords me to sit back and marvel at human development.

A few days ago I came across an old On Being program in which child psychologist Robert Coles identified the fundamental propensity shared by children and religious traditions for pursuing understanding through stories and asking the hard, important questions. Then I witnessed this for myself when, while telling Tina the Passover story for the first time, her questioning went into overdrive. It wasn't just the sheer number of questions she asked—Why did Pharaoh enslave the Israelites? Why wouldn’t he let them have children? Why did Moses flee Egypt? and on and on—but also the repetition of certain questions. She was especially concerned about why the “bad king” did not want the Israelites to have children. I can see why this would be especially troubling to a child, but it should be troubling to everyone else, too! Why would someone do something so evil? Children ask questions most adults have given up on, even though giving up on the questions means surrendering much of our power to solve the problem the question identifies.

Sitting on the bathroom floor, with Tina in the bathtub, I thought about Pharaoh's actions in a new way. I did not tell Tina the answers I had accepted before—because Pharaoh was a tyrant and that’s the kind of thing tyrants do, or because his magicians predicted that one Israelite child would be their future redeemer so all children had to be killed. I told her, “Because when people have children they won’t let them be mistreated. They will fight for a better life for their children.”

And of course she asked, “Why?”

Because, we love stories.

The part of the book of Genesis read last week features two bereaved parents. Joseph's father, Jacob, has already lost Rachel, his favorite wife, and Joseph, his favorite son. Now he is threatened with losing his sons Simeon and Benjamin, the latter his only remaining son born to Rachel.

The other bereaved parent is Benjamin. According to a midrash, when he and Joseph meet again, Joseph asks if he has children and Benjamin names his ten children and explains that all ten names recall his lost brother Joseph--his sweetness, his closeness with their father--and the suffering Joseph endured--his disappearance, his isolation. One can only imagine the deep imprint of grief that will be left on survivors and their children, even some not yet born, in the aftermath of the murders in Newtown.

When facing the prospect of losing Benjamin, Jacob prays that his sons will be treated with mercy, invoking the mysterious divine name El Shaddai. One interpretation of this name draws on the similarity between Shaddai and shaddayim, the Hebrew word for breasts, connecting this divine name with the attribute of mercy, which in Hebrew is related to the word for womb.

The rabbis, noting that dai in Hebrew means “enough,” understand the name El Shaddai to mean, “God who Says, ‘Enough!’” As I read the midrash, what Jacob means is, “God who knows and feels the love of parents will say of my suffering, enough!”

There is a catch, though. El Shaddai says, “Enough!” to suffering, but, according to the rabbis, also says, “Enough!” in the process of creating the world, curtailing divine activity to leave enough room for human beings.

If God had created a perfect world, there would be no place for humans in it, no need for our initiative.  This divine decision demonstrates incredible faith in us--we have the ability to complete the world.

So it our role to give voice to El Shaddai’s cry of “Enough!” and then take the actions that will make it real and bring healing.

Image source:  Owen Jones (attribution via Wikimedia Commons).

When Rosh Hashanah begins, the Jewish calendar will enter the year  5773.  According to the tradition, exactly 5773 years ago, the creation of the world began with God’s words, “Let there be light,” and resulted in a world of staggering beauty and goodness--"And God saw all that She had made, and found it very good."

The rabbis taught that the light created with those first words, "Let there be light," was unlike the light associated with the sun, moon and stars, which were created on the fourth day.  The first light made it possible to see from one end of the world to the other and God, afraid that evil people might use this light for destructive purposes, hid the light away, reserving it for the use of righteous people in the world to come.

I never had a very good idea of what kind of misuse of the primal light God feared, but now I do.  The internet and global communications make it possible to see from one end of the world to another, so that a film made in California can be seen in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Iran. And in the hands of those who want to cause harm, like the filmmaker responsible for Innocence of Muslims, it is terribly dangerous.

In Philadelphia, back on the other side of the world, this same light brings me the news and stirs up several strong reactions.  I'm horrified by the violence, saddened by the pain of my Muslim brothers and sisters who see their religion slandered, frightened by the far-reaching destructive power that can be wielded by a small group of people using the power of technology and my inability to do anything about it.

It is so tempting to cut myself off from this light that makes me aware of the suffering of others a world away.  I have learned from the teachings of Joanna Macy and my teacher Rabbi Yael Levy, however, that fully facing and accepting the world's brokenness and our personal limitations are the first step in moving ahead.

At the very least it can relieve us of the crushing burden that results from feeling we must do it all--that I can prevent people from spewing hate like Innocence of Muslims, or relieve the suffering of millions and millions of Muslims.  Recognizing our personal limitations may even lead us to create and nurture the kinds of  human relationships and spiritual practices that will enable us to address the problems on a global scale we all face.

On Rosh Hashanah, when I participate in the tradition of fully prostrating myself as part of the great aleinu, I will do so with the intention of embodying my submission to the reality of my inability to control so much of what goes on in the world, and as I hear the one hundred shofar blasts, I will pray that they help me to stay fully awake and present to the world, its pain no less than its beauty.

Image by AS990 (Own Work / Trabajo Propio), [GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

Next month, countless Jews will go to synagogues for the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and then take a respite from Judaism until it's time to light  Hanukkah candles or enjoy a Passover seder.

Someone: "I went out with your friend Judaism."

Me:  "How did it go?"

Someone:  "It was kind of awkward.  I don’t think I’m going to call him back."

Me:  "That’s a shame. Judaism has such a great personality!"

Someone:  "Actually I thought he seemed like kind of a downer."

Me:  "Really?  I think Judaism is so much fun.  Where did you guys meet?"

Someone:  "At High Holy Days services."

Me:  "No wonder!"

While they stress the vital themes of facing our mortality, scrutinizing our deeds and doing teshuvah (repentance), Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services do not give a full or particularly attractive picture of Judaism.  You’re not likely to fall in love with Judaism while fasting!  I once made the mistake of taking a date to a Holocaust movie and that relationship didn’t survive, either.  Judaism has a tremendous amount to teach us about living moral lives, but Judaism is so much more.

Me:  "You should definitely go on a few more dates.  Let Judaism take you outdoors (Sukkot) or go dancing with Judaism (Simchat Torah) or go to a costume bacchanal (Purim) or have an intellectual discussion (Torah study) or just relax together (Shabbat—every week!)."

Someone:  "Hmm.  That does sound nice."

Giving Judaism more chances to reveal its sparkling personality would be nice for Judaism and for those of us who have devoted ourselves to it, of course, but I think it’s very likely it would also be good for Someone, too, if Someone is looking for community, comfort, insight or meaning.  After all, Judaism is just the many paths worn by the footsteps of millions of ancestors looking for all of these things and, quite often, finding them.

Me:  "Judaism can be really romantic, too (Song of Songs, Tu B'Av, and Elul--the month we're in now)."

Someone:  "I never would have guessed."

Me:  "Yeah, you just have to get to know him."

Source:  "The Awkward Turtle," by Nesnad (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons).

A few weeks earlier I had graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.  Before the graduation ceremony I had the foresight to ask my partner Ali to sit near the aisle where my classmates and I would process into the synagogue sanctuary.  As my turn to march approached and I got closer to the sanctuary entrance I was thrilled to see Ali holding Tina a few rows away, and then Tina called out, “Rabbi Da-da!” and repeated it a few times.  (Here's a link to the adorable video.)  At this stage, Tina was only making two word phrases, and she couldn't have picked a better one.  When I started rabbinical school six years ago I never would have said I felt called to the rabbinate and couldn’t even imagine what that would mean.  After six years of spiritual and emotional growth and two years of parenthood, however, when I heard, “Rabbi Da-da,” I felt like Isaiah:  “Then I heard a divine voice saying, ‘Who shall I send?  Who will go for us?’  And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” (Is. 6:8)  Send me to be Rabbi Da-da!  This is my calling and it’s what I must do (perhaps that’s the definition of a calling).  Because if I’m not being Da-da, I won’t be any use as Rabbi.  Spiritual direction has helped me to realize that loving relationships are my strongest connection with divinity and if my relationship with Tina is not strong and positive, my ability to bring love and holiness into the world is crippled.  It now makes perfect sense to me that Moses didn't receive his ultimate calling at the burning bush (Ex. 3:2 ff) until he had already become a father (2:22).

For the last two years of rabbinical school I was almost-rabbi Da-da. I have spent lots of time taking care of Tina and Ali and I have made good on our commitment to equally shared parenting, so I didn’t anticipate great difficulties in making the transition to Rabbi Da-da.  Shortly after graduation I started work as the education director at Temple Beth El in Newark, DE.  My colleagues are wonderful, the work is fulfilling the rewards will be great and I am determined to do a good job.  Although in the summer I work just 15 hours per week, and I do some of my hours from home and Ali and maintained our equally shared parenting arrangement, after my first few days of work suddenly my relationship with Tina was off.

A few mornings I left for work before Tina woke up, so I missed her determined but (mostly) good-natured resistance to having her swollen night diaper changed, getting dressed and getting to the breakfast table.  And I missed a few evenings, because of a board meeting and painfully inefficient public transit, so I missed sitting on a plastic stool reading her stories (or Spanish-English picture dictionaries, her choice) as she perched on a pile of pillows and stuffed animals in a cushy rocking chair, and then singing her songs and leaving the room and, when she cried, coming back in and singing songs and repeating this until she fell asleep.

And I missed everything in between.  The part of our routine that I find the most moving is our frequent visits to the nearby public playground. There’s a sprinkler system, good for beating the heat and a fascinating phenomenon for Tina, whose current obsession is pouring water from one cup into another. But as soon as an older child shows up at the playground, some instinct in Tina is triggered and she makes a beeline to the child, stands way inside the kid’s personal space, looks at him or her (usually a her) out of the corner of her eye, and if I have followed her, says to me, plaintively, “Hold hand. Hold hand.” I facilitate introductions and explain to the big kid Tina’s goals for their relationship—to watch the kid and follow her around and hold her hand. Every time I get to see this it breaks my heart. The way it demonstrates the fundamental human need to connect is part of it. And, related to this, I'm moved by the way Tina makes herself so vulnerable in pursuit of this connection. The upshot is that my days as Tina’s best friend and primary playmate are numbered.

And all of Tina's activities are accompanied by ever-increasing talking. She is way past , "Rabbi Da-da," now.  I read in one book that she learns a word every two hours and all kinds of new sentence structures in which to use her words.  What she does with these abilities is highly dependent on her here and now—who she met at the playground or which Sesame Street Youtube videos she watched or which family members she skyped with. When, after missing an entire day, I would see her again awake (because of course I went into her room to adore her while she was asleep on the nights I got home late) it was as if we were speaking different languages. Imagine waking up one day unable to communicate with your favorite person.

Tina re-entered a phase of clinging to Ali in every possible way.  When all three of us were together, if I attempted to wash Tina’s hands and face after a meal or lift her out of her high chair, it was always, “No Dada do it!  Mama do it!”  I couldn’t sing anything to her—“No Dada sing it!”—and I don’t think this was my daughter’s internal music critic making itself heard, although she would certainly have been justified.  There was something else going on, and I felt it, too.

I had spent entire days apart from Tina before, but reconnecting hadn’t been so difficult after those absences.  One Shabbat after I started my new job I was next to Tina in the backseat of the car and, presented with this ideal opportunity to read to her or sing with her or simply try to talk to her, I couldn’t keep myself from reading a magazine article on a subject I don’t care about at all.  I realized this was wrong even as I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop.  I couldn’t seem to give Tina the complete, undivided attention I had been giving her before.  Perhaps I was afraid that failing to connect with her would increase the pain I already felt at our disconnection.  And perhaps I was distancing myself from her because I felt rejected, and/or she was doing the distancing because she felt rejected.  I was disconnected from Tina and the Rabbi and Da-da parts of me were disconnected.  The separation hurt.

At the end of last week I took my sister-in-law’s recommendation and read some sections in the book Becoming the Parent You Want to Be about how to handle when a child prefers one parent.  My heart opened at the authors’ suggestion that in this situation, the unpreferred parent has the chance to demonstrate unconditional love to his child.  This offered me extra motivation to persist in the face of Tina’s discontent.

Then, as often happens, keeping Shabbat made possible something new and beautiful.  As always, I made the effort to set aside my work in body and spirit and turn my full attention to what matters most.  It helped that Ali went out of town with friends and my in-laws babysat for Tina Friday night so I could join friends for renewing Erev Shabbat services and dinner.  I started Saturday morning with Tina feeling optimistic and grateful.  (It also didn’t hurt that we then spent the day with my in-laws, who have air-conditioning, and who Tina loves and who help take care of Tina in countless ways!)  And we had a wonderful day.  As we bounced on the bed I laughed at Tina’s efforts to tickle me and her sheer delight.  The deepest notes of my laughter, however, were relief and wonder at the joy of reconnecting with Tina.  I felt like I was one and my name, Rabbi Da-da, was one.

How can I maintain this unity?  I have already started to arrange my work schedule so as to avoid missing entire days with Tina and I can make sure to check in with Ali about the latest developments in Tina-ese. There are many Jewish teachings, however, which suggest that constant unity is impossible.  While this might seem discouraging, I find affirmation and hope here. According to Genesis 1, separations are at the core of the natural order—separation between light and dark, between land, water and sky—and this helps me to accept that my roles as rabbi and parent will be in tension and I will be divided between them. And the same Jewish mystics who teach about the separations within divinity itself teach that simple human actions can create healing holy unifications.  So I pray for the wisdom and strength to take the pain of separation on bad days and turn it into intentions and actions to have more days like that Shabbat, and I have faith that I can and will.

This photo of Gabriel Decker is in the public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

• We should not assume truth will come from the recognized, established, accredited sources in the expected places. The Torah was not given in Egypt, the advanced but oppressive civilization where the Israelites had lived for hundreds of years before the exodus.  Nor was the Torah given in the Land of Israel, which is remarkable given the Land’s centrality in the Jewish tradition.  Instead, Torah was given somewhere in the wilderness between these two places.
• Hearing the truth may take practice. The Israelites did not receive the Torah immediately crossing the Red Sea and escaping Egypt.  Instead, the journey to Sinai lasted seven weeks, a period marked now with the practice of Counting the Omer.  On the way, the Israelites purified themselves from the idolatry they had practiced in Egypt.
• Truth emerges in relationships. Before God begins with the Ten Commandments, the first divine laws revealed at Sinai, God summarizes the history of the relationship between the Israelites and God (Exodus 19:3-6).  After God reveals the Torah, Moses returns to God frequently to clarify issues the initial revelation left unresolved.  In Jewish tradition, the classic form of learning is with a study partner, hevruta.
• Truth is given by humble teachers to humble people. According to the midrash (stories layered onto the stories in the Torah), Sinai was not a very big mountain and God chose it for the revelation of the Torah to demonstrate the importance of humility.  While the Israelites only heard part of the Torah given at Sinai, Moses heard it all, which many commentators attribute to his being more humble "than any human being on the face of the earth." (Numbers 12:3)

These conditions for finding truth rule require us to look beyond NPR and Wikipedia and most of where we get our information.  I think the Passover seder attempts to prepare us for revelation when it instructs us to proclaim, “Let all who are hungry to come and eat,” and later when we open the door to let in the Prophet Elijah, who according to tradition often wears the disguise of a destitute person.  If I really made sure that I shared the seder with a person who does not usually have enough to eat I would almost certainly be forced to begin to see the world through different eyes and disturbing truths would undoubtedly emerge.

My most recent revelatory experience came under circumstances like the revelation at Sinai.  The synagogue where my family belongs, Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia, PA, belongs to the New Sanctuary Movement and we’re accompanying an immigrant family facing deportation.  When Pedro, the father of the family, has a hearing in immigration court, a group of synagogue members shows up to demonstrate our support and hold the court accountable.  No less important, we also welcome Pedro's family into our community, which serves to relieve at least somewhat the profound sense of isolation and vulnerability they feel.

On a Sunday morning in March, Pedro and his family visited our congregation for the first time.  They spent part of their visit participating in a religious school assembly, which mostly consisted of Pedro sitting in the middle of the room, bravely struggling to explain his legal situation to the members of our community, who like most Americans, myself included, are barely aware of the details of our broken immigration system.

Then Lety, Pedro’s sister, asked to speak.  Speaking in Spanish from the edge of the room, her back literally against the wall, perfectly fit her marginal position in American society as an undocumented female immigrant.  In a soft, shaking voice, she explained the terrible situation of being in a place where you don’t want to be and where others don’t want you and yet not being able to leave.  “You come to the US thinking you’ll just be here for a short time.  But you wind up staying longer and longer because the success you’d been led to expect doesn’t materialize.  And then you have to explain to your children why you’re here when people are so cruel to you.”

It takes great courage just for Lety, Pedro and others to admit being undocumented in our country today, with the number of deportations steadily escalating.  (Surprisingly, President Obama has deported more people than his predecessor.)  Lety demonstrated even more courage by revealing a profoundly painful experience to strangers who belong to a society that tends to blame immigrants for their own suffering (and almost everything else).  But the humility Lety demonstrated in admitting the pain her choice to come here causes her children, thus exposing herself to criticism as a negligent parent on top of being an “illegal immigrant,” is what really left me in awe and made me realize I’d been standing at Sinai.

While the truth we learn from NPR or Wikipedia is often fascinating, it comes with no strings attached.  The truths we learn at Sinai, on the other hand, require us to take action.  So may we all venture beyond our comfort zones and hear the truths constantly being spoken there and take the action these truths demands.

(Source of image unknown.  Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

I didn’t change any diapers, clean any food off the floor or wash several loads of clothes (just one or two!).  And I got to do things I have rarely done since T was born:  I slept past eight AM a few days in a row, I went to the campus where I work early on Friday and stayed late (to hear Winona LaDuke talk—awesome!); I rode my bike to our synagogue and attended the whole Shabbat morning service, then lounged for awhile exploring some feminist theology I’d been wanting to read.  Afterwards I joined a group of friends for a long, leisurely Shabbat lunch.   Then I biked home, took a nap, and started to study Torah (which I interpret liberally—both the words of the sacred text and which texts are sacred—my recent Torah study has included Thoreau’s Walden).

I started with reading the text from Exodus that we’ll read in synagogue on the first day of Passover and I was struck again by the commentary on the verse, “and he [Pharoah] said, ‘Get out from among my people … and go and serve God!’” (12:31)

The Talmud explains this means the Israelites went from being servants of Pharaoh to servants of God.  Surprisingly, this means that there is actually no complete freedom in the Exodus, just a transition from one form of servitude to another.  One seder tradition I appreciate is each year choosing important questions upon which to focus. My question for this year is now clear:  Who or what will I serve?

Since Shabbat still wasn’t over (I’m so glad the days are getting longer!), I had time to start finding an answer, and it came from an unexpected place.  I started reading Shir ha-Shirim, the Song of Songs, another  text we will read on the first day of Passover.  The first time I read it I was amazed by Shir ha-Shirim’s eroticism, and was disappointed to learn that rabbis had reinterpreted it to be an allegory of the love between God and the Jewish people.  I never got around to asking what it has to do with Passover.  Reading commentary on it this past Shabbat, I found the great Medieval commentator Rashi explaining that the verse, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away,” (2:10) corresponds to the comparatively prosaic verse in Exodus, “I will lift you up out of the misery of Egypt.” (3:17)  Love is what drew the Israelites out of slavery.  The service we enter after we escape Egyptian bondage is the service of love.

When I first heard the Indigo Girls sing, “The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free,” (“Power of Two”), I was a tired teenager.  I brooded in the no man’s land between jock-dom and nerd-dom, yearning to define my own identity, and resented my feminist older sister who drove me to school and made me listen to her music.  But now I realize that freedom in the bonds of love is the only freedom I want.

My partner and daughter came home Sunday and I am free not just to hug and kiss them but to once again wait on my daughter while she sits interminably on her little potty producing nothing, or stands in her crib after waking up and refuses to have her diaper changed but sweetly demands I bring her milk and read her books. On Sunday night I even drew unusual satisfaction from discussing our family finances with my partner!  Who would have thought freedom would look like this?

Image by Daniel Lobo via Flickr