The Fourth Night of Chanukah

It is now a few minutes after midnight and I felt like writing down a few thoughts and ideas before I retire for the evening. Tonight is the fourth night of Chanukah and after I lit the candles, I sat there for a moment and watched the newly lit candles begin to burn. There is something very special about watching a newly lit candle burn. A flame has the power to destroy if left to burn at its own devices, but a flame that is controlled and guided by a steady wick has the power to heal and to transform. Chanukah is a time of the year in which we increase in holiness with the burning of an additional candle for eight consecutive nights. On a personal level, each candle represents not only another step in holiness, but another level of healing and transformation that I am achieving.

The four candles represent for me the four differnet countries in which I lived so far during my 37 years in this incarnation of me. Each place that I have lived has been both magical and painful in its own unique and special way. I wish there was a way to experience life's magic without also experiencing its pain, but this was not the contract I signed before my soul descended into my current body. Yes, I do believe that we know the path ahead of us while we are being nurtured and are developing in the womb, but we forget the directions on exactly how to navigate this road the moment before we enter into this world. Chanukah is a time to remember at least for a little while the direction we each need to take in our own way to find our way back home, and the candles that burn from the menorah are the lights we use to guide us along the way. Each night the way is illuminated a little bit more to make the going more about seeing than about guessing which way to take.

This way home for me has always been connected to love and finding the right woman to share the way with. Each country in which I have lived has brought its own tales of what this journey of finding my way home through love has been like. I have recently discovered that the map I have been using all of these years has unfortunately been leading me even further away from the spiritual home I so long to find again. This is the part of the journey in which I am really praying for God to allow my own menorah burning in my heart to provide enough light to guide me on my way safely for the rest of my life so that love can flow smoothly and not get caught in a traffic jam that will delay the commute home even longer.

My Chanukah began a few days early this year when my Higher Power allowed me to see how my relationships from the past have greatly affected my attempts at finding true and everlasting love in the present so that my future could shine with the eternal light of the menorah's glow. It was a very powerful and a very sad moment when I saw how my mother's misdirected attempts at guidance and love have created in me a nagging need to be safely held in a woman's arms. I had no way of understanding as a small child that my mother had her own issues to work through and that she fell into a depression filled with rage and resentment when she was unable to make peace with the pain that created a huge vaccum in her scarred heart. I fell victim to her abusive tirades and felt the need to protect myself in anyway that I could.

The Chanukah candles burning brightly in the adjacent room have shown me that for true love to ever come knocking on my door, I must learn to first truly love myself. I have internalized years of emotional abuse and neglect but the day has arrived for me to begin a new chapter in my search for love and that search begins with me first learning to nurture and love myself. I no longer want to hurt the ones that I love because my emotional pain is burning stronger inside my soul than my personal menorah. My prayer for today is that the soft light burning this Chanukah extinguishes the hurt that I have done onto myself and onto others through making my life a living amends of learning how to truly love again.

The Second Night of Chanukah

Tonight is the second night of Chanukah and I just completed my lighting of the Menorah. I never even dreamed that I would be back in Los Angeles, yet here I am lighting a menorah for the first time since I vowed never to return to this city. Yet against all odds, I am back in the place where I was raised from the time I was 12 years old until I left to Israel when I was 20. I have to say that when I went to Israel, I thought all of life's issues would magically disappear and I would be able to begin again a new life there free from the worries and concerns I so desperately wanted to leave behind, and for a time in Israel, I was able to leave the worries and concerns caused by a very stressful home life behind. Then two years into my time in Israel, I was reminded just how closely the problems from home remained even though I was almost half way across the world. By June of 1997, I said goodbye to both of my parents and I also said goodbye to the light that we burn on Chanukah that represents eternal hope even in the darkness of our deepest struggles.

I fought the good fight for another five years, but Israel is an impossible place to live without the light of the menorah burning constantly in your heart. I left my Judaism behind in Israel because I assumed that once the light from the menorah stopped burning in my heart, it was never meant to burn again. I thought that the light was taken from me because somehow I was undeserving and that I had failed in my mission to bring light into this world. These were very difficult and very sad years for me because so many times I looked deep into my soul for the Chanukah light to guide me through the darkness and all I found were tears where once the fire strongly burned.

Chanukah is a holiday that expresses the idea of God doing for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. It is the time of year that we remember that we were very close to giving up what is most precious and most important to us: our Torah and the belief that God can lead us in any battle that we choose to fight. But sometimes, the forces of darkness appear so strong and so oppressive that we are tempted to give in to simply experience a moment when our souls are no longer that battle ground in which the forces of light and darkness choose to stage their war. I know from personal experience that there are times I want to be left alone from the daily grind of this struggle and to simply be allowed to live hibernating in some dark hole far away from it all. I also know that I have the power to choose not to live like this and instead let the light of Chanukah guide my way towards hope and eternal love.

This year, Chanukah is very special to me because I have the opportunity to heal past wounds that have been allowed for too long to take my light away. It is time to forgive the wrong doings of those who wronged me so that I may no longer wrong the ones I love in retaliation for misdeeds that occurred in the past. I have realized that forgiveness is not about forgetting or condoning the actions of other people, rather it is the light that burns in the menorah of my heart.