SUSAN'S BLOG: HOLINESS OF CLOUDS
It's a Wednesday morning 6:45 a.m. A cold fall day in Chicago, the sky is pitch black. I sit in my usual seat in the chapel, last row in front of the windows, next to my friend Shelley. We've been praying next to each other
since—maybe 2010. So only 7 years? It seems longer.
It's a sunrise service this time of year, we get to experience the dawning of the new day in holiness. It's darkness for the first three prayers. Then, just when we sing Halleluyah! I look up and see a faint but definite outline of clouds.
Head bowed. Eyes on my prayer book, deep into my individual devotions. I get distracted. I pick up my head to check on the clouds. They are more clear by now. Great
big bunches of clouds. Still colored gray, but absolutely gorgeous.
Time for the Kaddish, the memorial prayer. It's been almost a year since my Dad died, I say the prayer in his memory to lift his spirit closer to God. Today is the last day I say Kaddish until the anniversary of his death on December 4. It's the custom in our community to say who we are remembering, and sometimes to share a word or two about them.
I take a short paragraph. I say; in
the eleven months since my Dad's passing, a new baby born in our family, and there is a wedding next week, in Jerusalem, no less!
So many blessings. Life goes on.
As I exit the chapel, I take one last look out the windows. Bright blue sky. Clean white clouds. God is in this place.
