Tapestry – Part 4 – Forgiveness

  I recently rewatched the episode of “The Chosen” when Mary Magdalene, after having been redeemed and now a follower of Yeshua, falls back into her old ways. Her life is so representative of each of ours, perhaps not to the depths of her sins, but our sins are all on the...
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Tapestry – Part 2 and Part 3

  Last week we noodled on how everything seems to be connected, as a fine tapestry, how as we open the divine portals to Him by our choices, more connections to the divine are seen, and experienced. We begin to feel His Presence in so many ways. We experience the intimacy of...
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Tapestry

  Sometimes we are in times of our lives that are so busy, so demanding, that we can barely think about Shabbat. Or it’s combined with that wonderful feeling, “ Finally, the weekend!” Or sometimes we feel like we’re going 24/7 even then, so Shabbat just gets swept along with...
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The Joy of the Lord

  Last week I shared with you my huffing and puffing experience as I jogged for the first time in awhile. It was such a disappointment since those times are typically my most uplifting of the day as I listen to Messianic Jewish worship music, share my deepest thoughts with...
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Got any small change?

  As this new year begins, we are once again given an opportunity to make meaningful changes in our lives, another opportunity to take better care of our health, our finances, our relationships, especially the one we have with God.   So much travel this past season. I...
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To every season

  It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to jog along the path near my sister’s house in Westford. So much change since the last time, which really wasn’t that long ago, maybe a couple weeks.   Last time I had my precious morning time with HaShem in nature, the leaves...
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These Days of Awe

  These are the Days of Awe, the days of repentance and renewal between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This week that term has revealed itself in yet another way.   My most treasured client that has been so for almost 20 years historically holds its annual meeting in mid...
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Oh Deer!

  Last Thursday evening I had a traumatic experience. On my way home I hit a deer with my car. I had never before hit an animal while driving. It literally came out of nowhere, just broadsided right in front of me. After the collision I frantically looked for a place to turn...
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Just show up – Part 3

  This week I couldn’t help but continue to ponder the abandoned stereo cabinet in the woods. I showed my sister and Sid who so often walk that path with me. They, too, were amazed none of us had noticed it before given its location and the countless times we’d passed that...
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Just show up – Part 2

  Last week I shared with you Sid’s and my most recent adventures in the Mitzvah Mobile and I ended with some simple examples of ways we all can serve others – by sharing a meal, checking in with a phone call, offering to drive. How I didn’t know at the time the deeper...
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Just show up!

  I guess we’re fully embracing the concept of our Winnebago, initially named the Pugabego since bought at the time we had three pugs, now becoming the Mitzvah Mobile. Just as it’s taken almost 15 years for our vehicle to grow into its intended name, so too, Sid and I are...
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Count your blessings – Retake

  Well, it’s not Christmas in July but I’ve been running behind most of this year so August is close enough.   Just as we did last December as referenced in the message below, Sid and I are making a one day trip up to Maine today and coming back tomorrow. We haven’t been to...
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Shine bright the Mitzvah Mobile

  Earlier this summer I shared with you our journey home from Florida in our 2008 Winnebago, affectionately called the “Pugabego” in honor of our three pug fur babies we had at the time of its purchase fourteen years ago. In that writing I mused how we had talked  of our RV...
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Shine bright

Sid and I were blessed last week to attend the UMJC summer conference which is the first time it has been held since 2019 due to Covid. It was an amazing experience not only to finally be able to get together after so much time had passed, but the long time coming brought with it...
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A bicycle built for two – you and Him

  This Shabbat encouragement is dedicated to Jerry Holbert, a blessed memory, who left our earthly home this week, a man of great love of others who knew how to bring fun, joy, humor, and love to us all, much like Lee Urban, the man who also inspired this message....
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Breaking bad habits

  There are many ways to experience these times that make up our lives today. There is the approach of the monk figuratively sitting on the mountaintop meditating (tempting at times), or shielding ourselves from bad influences, especially necessary to a large extent for our...
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Camp kvelling

  Camp has ended but it is only the beginning of the impact it has had on those whose lives it touched. This coming Shabbat some camp leaders will be sharing this year’s highlights with our Ruach community, so I don’t want to give too much away in this writing. I’ll try to...
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I hear You

  Week 2 of Camp Or L’Dor. Words can’t describe the blessings, challenges, new experiences, complex interactions, hurdles, victories, above all, the presence of HaShem. These two weeks in a way represent a microcosm of life’s joys and sorrows, yet with Yeshua at the center,...
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Made in His Image

  Given the state of our day-to-day lives, especially within such a divided American society, we often can feel that this is the worst time ever of mankind’s history. Despite the tragedies we read about in history, we find it difficult to believe that any peoples or...
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His circle of love

    It seems that each week we just can’t escape more news that drives our society apart. We go from war to gun violence to legislation and opinions to hearings and more opinions that divide us rather than bring us together. We surely are living in chaotic times.  ...
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I see you

  Rabbi Nathan’s sermon last week shared the wisdom of how God sees us. His point was that we often don’t know who we are because we don’t know whose we are. There so often is a disconnect between our life experiences and what our Abba sees for He sees our true selves, and...
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Fear

  So often those who doubt the truth of Yeshua and often even the existence of God will dismiss such beliefs as emotional outworkings not based on facts, but rather, on our own fears of immortality, or overactive imaginations. Karl Marx summed up this view with these word...
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The best is yet to come

  Our home in Maine is near Bath. On June 4th a very historic celebration was held there – the christening and launch of the Virginia, a reconstruction of the first English-made oceangoing ship built in the Americas, originally built in 1607. Bath even today is one of the...
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Yet again – Part 3 . . .

  Last week we tried to process the horror of mass shootings, not from the perspective of opinions on gun control, but rather, from the perspective of becoming the created beings HaShem intended us to be. Mass shootings are still with us and will be until major changes...
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Yet again . . . – Part 2

  I surely never thought as I shared about the Buffalo supermarket shooting last week that there would yet again be another episode in our lives of such trauma, let alone at an elementary school involving our most vulnerable population – children. This is not a conversation...
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Yet again. . .

  It’s been hard not to think about the shootings at the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo. Ten innocent lives lost, more injured, countless lives, including ours, forever changed. Our collective memories recall names like Oklahoma City, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Tel Aviv, drops...
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Can’t make this stuff up!

  As some of you may know, Sid and I have spent the last four months in Florida. Although our time there has truly been blessed and fruitful, we are so happy to be back to New England. We’ve landed in Westford for a week at sister Wendy’s home and plan to make it all the way...
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Tsuris, tsuris, tsuris . . .

  Oy, my bobbe/grandma would talk about the tsuris/trouble in the world. And she certainly had a life of tsuris, watching her cousins killed by the Cossacks during the pogroms in Russia, losing everything, living in poverty, fleeing to America as a child, later to start her...
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We need each other – Part 2

  Last week we explored the necessity for relationships in order for each of us, and mankind, to grow closer to whom we were created to be. We actually considered that the more adverse the relationship, the more we need each other for the opportunity to grow. The harder it...
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We need each other

  As I listened on my jog this morning to the MIM class video describing this week’s readings, I was struck with an insight that brought so many diverse topics together. Rabbi Nathan first referenced certain portions of Rabbi Dr. Mark Kinzer’s book Post-Missionary Messianic...
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