This Too Is a Practice

Every Tuesday morning, my six-month-old grandson and I pray with the dead. We stroll to a nearby cemetery to wander its roads, nodding to other COVID-walkers we occasionally pass, smiling through our masks at our shared secret, this eye of calm amidst storming uncertainty. We walk slowly through the quiet—under murmuring cedars and maples, through throngs of gravestones humble and lavish, beyond the Russian and Greek Orthodox crosses, over the footbridge into a Japanese section, past fields of smooth white arches marking those claimed by war after war—“The Arlington of the West”—pausing only to listen to water bubbling from three staggered granite columns, or the generous spirit calling from the embrace of the curved stone bench serving as its headstone—Come rest with me awhile.

When we arrive at the small Sephardic cemetery, cordoned off by a simple chain strung between posts, we stop. It’s the burial place of Jewish communities that fled Spain for Rhodes and Turkey during the 1492 expulsion, and Rhodes, Turkey, and other countries during the Holocaust. As I push the stroller over the curb onto the grass separating the graves from the road, I smile at Ruben Zev and say, “Let’s visit our people.” He knows our ritual. He knows that when we stop, I lift him into my arms and we begin to roam, swaying and singing, a breeze kissing our cheeks like the breath of the Shekinah, the Divine Presence Dwelling Among Us. The moment I begin chanting the prayer for the dead, El Malei Rachamim, God Full of Mercy, he turns to me with eyes that have yet to declare a color, his face beaming, every cell of his body rising to meet me, then nestles closer, and we travel that way together, around the perimeter, along the intersecting paths, through the names—Sara, Abraham, Boulisa, Nessim, Rica, Marco, Luba, Isaia, Palombha, Israel, Alegre, Ruben, Infant, A Pure Soul. As I chant in Hebrew, my heart sings its own translation, Womb of Mercy, grant rest and wholeness to these souls, carry them on the wings of the Shekinah . . . Please, Breath of the All-Merciful, shelter them under the shadow of your wings, bind them up in the bond of life.

It was not my mind or my will, not tradition or theology, piety or sentiment that guided me here, to this place, this practice; it was my body. Scouting for an off-street walking route one cloudy morning, we stumbled first on the expansive, tree-studded city of souls and then on this neighborhood of tightly packed stones engraved with Hebrew letters, Torah scrolls, menorahs, and stars of David, some adorned with oval medallions harboring the face of the person, some crowned with a sculpted lamb. Answering a call only it could hear, my body turned aside, pushed the stroller into the crowded cemetery, lifted Ruben close, and began walking through the stones, singing the plaintive melody.

Once again my body proved a wise master to me, its disciple. Once again my body showed me the way to being present, to paying attention—the only definition of prayer or meditation that makes sense to me. From that first moment we wandered among the stones together, his vulnerable body against mine, vibrating to the deep tones of the prayer, it was clear that we were here not to pray for the dead but to pray with them. We were here not to save their souls or lessen their punishment or ensure their eternal rest. The dead can do more for the living than the living for the dead. But transactions have no place here. Here there is only presence. Here—amid traffic roaring down Aurora to the west and Meridian to the east, humming along streets to the north and south—Ruben and I enter an oasis of being, an eternal present. They’re here with us, these dead; as we, the living, are with them. All of us bound up in the bond of life. Held close in a weave of holy presence, we commune with one another. “But the living are wrong/to make distinctions that are too absolute,” Rilke says in Duino Elegies. “Angels (they say) often can’t tell whether/they move among the living or the dead.”

Perhaps it’s the hypnotic melody of the prayer, or Ruben’s innocence, that allows me, no stranger to absolute distinctions and no angel, this glimpse of moving through presence that knows no sharp divisions. As we wander, singing, love for these strangers, whoever they were, whatever they did, whoever they are, whatever they may be, floods me, spilling over into a love in which Lover and Beloved are one, and love flows to me and Ruben from them and from us to them and back again, all of us caught up in a peace that passes understanding, alive in wholeness, shalom. When I sing amein, may it be so, I can almost hear their voices answering, amein v’amein. To seal our bond and show my thanks, I find an older grave with no signs of recent visitation and place a rock on it, a sign of constancy in a world that is constantly shifting, and read the name engraved there out loud. When Ruben starts toddling and talking, I will teach him to say amein with me and listen for the answering voices. I will show him how to place a rock on a grave and say the name like a prayer, to say in his heart, with his body, We are here with you. You are not forgotten. Not one of you.

Searching for a person whose name we have not yet spoken, or heading back to the stroller once we’ve completed our ritual, we often pass two body-sized flat stones lying in puzzle pieces, the only trace left of an encampment here two years ago, when this cemetery and its sister across the street, Bikur Holim, became a gathering place for people with nowhere else to live. Some got high, shot up, had sex on the gravestones, sold sex. Sleeping bags, tents, and RVs siphoning water and electricity crowded the dead. Stones were defaced and broken, the grounds fouled with trash, needles, human feces. Local Jewish communities protested, but when the city of Seattle did nothing, they cleaned the site and repaired the damage, then sued for the cost. Where are those sojourners living now? How? Under what names? Who will remember them? What mercy is theirs in this life? What justice? Who will be present with them? Meet them in love? Sing wholeness with them?

If not us, who? If not in this moment, this life, when?

Ruben Zev’s world expands every day: twelve inches to his mother’s face, several feet to his father’s arms, across the room to his white-haired savta, up to waving branches, the sky. I pray his world will open wider and wider until it extends to the end of time and the ends of the earth—and beyond. He may not remember us praying with the dead. But I hope he’ll carry deep within the wisdom of the body, the rhythms and melodies of our people, the touch of love, the joyful taste of presence and the wonder of communing, the fragrance of mercy, the gift of moving through the world without making distinctions that are too absolute, a reverence for the earth and all its inhabitants—the dead, the dying, the living, the camped and the decamped, the lost and the found, all of us strangers sojourning here on earth, this world of endless change and uncertainty, all in need of compassion, all in need of communing, all in need of shelter, we the vulnerable.

Bodily movement has always been fundamental to my prayer and meditation practice. For years I’ve combined two forms of meditation passed down by mystic traditions—Sufi breath practices and dhikr (chanting to remember the One, with traditional movements of the head and torso) and hitbodedut (Hasidic form of vocalized spontaneous prayer, often performed outdoors while walking)—and one by an individual, Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms movement meditation. Lately, though, perhaps influenced by the pandemic, I’ve found the simple actions of daily life turning into practice, my version of chop wood, carry water being breathe, walk through the park, stroll the baby. This essay recounts a practice that developed spontaneously when my grandson was just a few months old. We’re still practicing together now that he’s 18 months old. The day he’s no longer interested in sharing this practice, I will grieve the loss of these moments.

May your strength and joy increase.
Mary

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