Living Torah

Some Words of Torah
By: Ariel Vegosen
Sheva Fellow 2007 and BCI Alum 2000

You might not know it, but we are in the days of friendship. We have already passed through the days of drama into love into awe and now into friendship. This might not be on your Jewish calendar and you might not have known by following the moon, but here in our Sheva world it is clear, we are in the days of friendship.

So what does that mean? It means that here at the Brandeis Bardin Institute we are opening our hearts and welcoming in guests from all across the country. We are also digging deep in the soil, reaching into ourselves and experiencing what life is like in a community connected to nature. And best of all everything we are doing is experiential. So sometimes we understand and do and sometimes we do before we understand. Every day we challenge ourselves to grow stronger in our community connections, our understanding of self, and our oneness with this beautiful desert.

This isn’t always easy. Creating and nurturing friendships and community is like growing a garden. It is not merely enough to water the newly planted trees. I believe we also have to sit with them and watch how they change and love them through the frost, through the bugs and into their blossoming. As we have to love each other through our frustrations and our disagreements into a new opening, like the lotus flower.

I think people have many layers like the agave plant. I truly believe that whatever we see in the other and are disturbed by, a little bit of that is in us too. For example on Purim we are encouraged to get so drunk that we no longer recognize the difference between Haman and Mordechai. Thinking outside of the box, we can look at this as instead of being drunk off of wine and alcohol, we can imagine ourselves drunk off of love. What if we got so drunk off of love that we couldn’t tell the difference between George Bush and Emma’s Revolution? What if we got so drunk off of love that we couldn’t tell the difference between our so called enemy and ourselves? What if we loved what we considered the other, instead of reacting with anger and frustration? What would the world look like then?

What if we believed that there is enough love in this world for all of us. That out beyond ideas of right and wrong there is a field and we can all meet each other there. What if we challenged ourselves to push past jealousy, aggression, rage, disappointment, judgment into a new form of love and light. A love that is expansive.

We can choose how we want to live in this world. The energy felt here at BBI is real and it is expansive. This is not just an isolated place. We can take what we learned from being here and spread our wings and love out onto the world. We have the infinite power to put our beautiful dreams into reality and to manifest this world into a better more peaceful loving place.

I have learned in this week of friendship, that my love is expansive, that my heart is open and that the more that I give the more of me there is.

The best way to express what the week of friendship is all about is through this simple joyous story:

My best friend and holy goddess soul sister Rae and I got engaged (numerous times and we will have numerous weddings because our celebration, our love, our ritual is infinite). I gave her a ring on New Years. She called me up before coming to visit me here at Sheva. She said, “I don’t want you to be upset, but I gave the engagement ring to our friend who is in need of some love and support.” And I thought, what could be better. I want our love to shine out to everyone and to multiple like the stars above and to spread out like the waves of the ocean.

I think we all have the ability to love big and be loved big. That to me is what the week of friendship is all about. It doesn’t mean we won’t face challenges or conflicts or hard times, it means that through it all we are committed to loving. I invite you to join me in this commitment of love:

To love ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, our neighbors, the strangers around us, those that we call the other. To bring light into the deepest darkness. To come from a place of love and joy and to push ourselves to come from that place even when we are angry. To shine ourselves out there to the world, leaving behind fear and opening our hearts to hope.

So instead of shouting out curses, may our mouths be turned like Billam’s and may we bless those around us and be blessed ourselves. May we see the oneness of Mordechai and Haman, the oneness of ourselves and those we think we can’t get along with, the oneness of the hawk and the crow, the serpent and the human, the plants and the potato bug, the owl and the mouse…

In love, light, happiness, and shinning out joy…Ariel Vegosen.

With inspirational thanks to the 13th Century Sufi poet of love Rumi, rainbow songs, all those that have come out to visit me, the Sheva Fellows, the friends and mentors near and far supporting me, readers like you, and of course the Torah.

Sheva Community Much Love

Recycling, Conflict Resolution, and Being Initiated as a Chumash Nation Care Taker...

Wow! Tuesday and Thursday, my blog days
and both days blew me away...


So let’s start with Tuesday...


Wake up 5am! Yeah you heard me right; I said 5am....alarm...alarm...alarm...Alright Eazy E and Lisa lets go go go, its time to get in the car by 6am to drive to LA. Why on earth are we leaving our house in Simi Valley this early when we need to be in Santa Monica at 9:30am? Because of the glorious traffic that makes me want to vomit when someone says "Hey Ariel, want to come to LA." That's right we got in our car at 6am for a 36 mile drive, knowing that in any other part of the world it would take half an hour (unless of course you live in the part of the world where there are checkpoints and roadblocks) but here its gonna take 3. All this, knowing we will only be in LA for an hour and a half. So, the trip is longer than the destination, but it’s always about the journey not the destination. Besides we got great food and laughs at Swingers diner and I made an enormous amount of catch up phone calls, all in all the start of THE most productive day!

And when it comes to recycling, it’s always about the money and not about our environment.That's what I learned at the recycling center in Santa Monica. We joined You Think (a phenomenal group of inner city LA teenagers), for a tour of the recycling center. Imagine a giant concrete lot filled with old newspapers, bottles, plastic bags, machines, workers, and folks coming in to make money off their old cans. Oh and the city of Santa Monica dumping trucks coming in and out with an enormous amount of recyclables. So every time you put anything into the blue or green bin by your house if you live in SM, this is where it comes to. But don't even think about bringing your Styrofoam here. Not because it’s impossible to recycle, but because no one can make money recycling it. So no ones going to do it. You might have thought recycling is about saving the earth, but it’s actually about getting rich.

So the recycling plant sorts and stacks and ships our used goods to China, Japan, and some cities in America. And these places buy for big bucks our used goods, so they can then take them and remake them. Styrofoam, however, has no market value. So yeah, it can be crushed down and remade, but it’s not worth anyone's time, since no one will make money on it. So instead it will just sit forever in a landfill. Yeah, it takes thousands of years to decompose. It’s crazy to think there was a time when humans did not create any waste. Can you imagine that everything we used was once reused. There was no concept of dumps or recycling centers or leaving things because it doesn't pay to make them into something else. Now we generate an enormous amount of waste and perhaps the only reason we are recycling is cause we can make a buck doing it. What a crazy world! (Yeah, I can be cynical at times, I am sure that there are good folks out there who are reducing, reusing, and recycling just because they love this planet we live on and it so happens that I know and live with and have lived with folks just like that, so it ain't a lost cause).

After the recycling center it was back to BBI where Eazy E and Lisa continued their day with You Think and I met up with 20 teenagers from Haifa, part of an amazing group called Project Triumph. 10 of these teenagers are Jewish Israeli and 5 are Christian Palestinian and 5 are Muslim Palestinian. All of them live in Haifa. All of them are here for 2 weeks to explore living and working together. With great excitement I facilitated their day on the low ropes course or as I like to say Group Challenge. The Project Triumph teenagers are absolutely amazing, compassionate, dedicated, and funny. I facilitated them through many challenges and watched them grow as a team. I also dealt with my own challenges of reporters, camera people, and the coordinators of the program coming in and out and being all around the teenagers while I lead them through activities. At one point a reporter approached a blind-folded ropes course participant to ask her name and age! To me ropes course work is sacred; it’s about giving a group an opportunity to explore dialogue through physical challenges. It is ideally a time where the group is given the unique opportunity to have safe space to confront issues, share feelings, and explore whatever it is they need to explore. The group decides what happens. As a facilitator my role is just to hold the space and ensure emotional and physical safety. I have no desired answers or motives or outcomes. My goal is to let the group create whatever they want and need. I find it difficult to hold my role and create that space, when there are lots of outsiders milling about, watching, and being distracting. So I found the cameras and reporters to be a huge challenge. I also find it hard to deal with reporters approaching these teenagers, because to me they are not fish in a tank to be stared at and poked at, they are people who deserve the opportunity to explore being here and with each other without others observing how they do that. I would imagine that the goal of them being here is to explore coexistence and learning from each other, not to be a spectacle or front page news. I think it is hard to maintain that goal if everyday reporters are in their space asking them for a perfect quote on how they handle the conflict, what they really think, and do they have "American Idol?" It’s like come on people! One reporter asked what would Yassar Araft and Ariel Sharon think of this program? What? Yassar Araft's not even alive anymore and Ariel Sharon is incapacitated. So what does it matter what they think? How about what these amazing teenagers from Haifa think. So I admit, if I was in charge of this program I'd be running things differently. Who knows maybe one day I'll get funding and use it to put together a dynamite program, no reporters allowed. If the participants wanted the news to report on them, we could make that happen Freedom Writers style.

So we closed our ropes course experience out by creating a web of life, to remember that we are all connected. And I very quickly remembered how deeply I am connected to my Sheva family. As soon as I ended with Project Triumph, Gabe came up to me and said we need you at You Think to do some team building exercises! I'm on it!

So I met up with Eazy E and Lisa who were teaching the You Think participants cordage (aka: bracelet making out of raffia, ah yeah!). I joined in and noticed the bus driver sitting watching. I decided to check in with him and see if he wanted to learn also. I realize that these two groups You Think and Project Triumph are our first two groups that are not an all Jewish group. Since we are here at BBI almost all of the groups we work with are Jewish day schools. I appreciate the opportunity to learn about other peoples cultures. So the bus driver is Thomas from South Central LA. He is married to his best friend that he has known since he was 13 and they have four kids together. He is 37. He made the cordage bracelet for his daughter and we ended up having an amazing conversation. He asked me about where I grew up. I said, Long Island, NY. I told him about my suburban neighborhood and he opened up to me and shared about South Central LA. He grew up in an undeclared war. He grew up with gangs all around him and still managed to stay clean from drugs and he refused to participate in violence. Even so, at age 15 violence found him. He was walking home from school with his brothers when they heard gun shots a few blocks from their house. They kept walking and soon a helicopter was over their head shinning a light on them, so they froze. Having nothing to hide, no drugs and no weapons he figured why run from the LA Police. A cop car came zooming at him and his brothers, to avoid getting hit they had to jump over a fence. As soon as the two cops got out of the car they said, "Nigger get down on the ground, hands behind your back" and soon Thomas found himself face down on the ground with a gun pointed at his head, his hands behind his back. I can't imagine. As a white girl growing up in suburbia there were no gangs and the cops would never target me. Here this innocent black 15 year old boy was faced with a gun to his head by the ones who are supposed to protect him, the police. Thomas said in LA there are 3 gangs, the Blacks, the Latinos, and the Police. Hearing him speak made me realize what the You Think teenagers are faced with daily. It reminded me that this country has a long way to go before we truly overcome oppression.

After raffia bracelets all the You Think participants and the Sheva Fellows shared our commitment to the environment. I said that I was committed to changing the use of Styrofoam plates in our dinning hall (an ongoing project that I am working on here at BBI). Thinking about it now, like Gabe always says, the environment is people, so now I realize my commitment is way bigger than Styrofoam plates being taken out of the dinning hall, my commitment is to creating peace in this world. To creating understanding amongst people. My commitment is to doing social justice work, to weeding not just the garden here but weeding out racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism. My commitment is to work on myself, to open my mind even wider, to embrace what is before me and learn from others.

Then it was my turn to lead team building activities, I split the participants up into three teams and had them create skits using objects as something other than what they are. The challenge of the skit was to show what they learned today and the coolest thing they saw. Wow! Soon the participants were up there talking about birch trees, cow poop on fire, and conserving water. After the skits we did a beautiful closing circle and I was so impressed with how dedicated, passionate, calm, and listening the You Think students are! What a great group!

We all ate dinner together and then went to the most AMAZING camp fire yet.So Gabe set up the fire and then looked around at everyone and said, well my lighter won't work for this fire, Ezra how about it, do you think you could help me make fire? And for the first time one of the Sheva Fellows got to show off the bow drill skills. I was so proud and excited. I have seen Gabe so many times with great skill and showmanship and beauty light the fire using the bow drill and now for the first time one of the Sheva Fellows was stepping into that role. I was so in awe and really unbelievably proud of Ezra. Now you have to keep in mind Ezra and I have been through a lot. Sometimes we don't get along, sometimes we have difficulty understanding each other and sometimes I think we could use a ropes course. But in this moment I looked at him like my family and I was so proud of him. I totally believed in him, as I totally believed in him when he helped me through literally being stuck between a rock and a hard place over the weekend. As he started to move the bow back and forth I knelt and thought I fully believe in you, in the spark inside of you, and I fully know from the smallest spark comes the largest fire. From that passion within you will come something amazing. I have heard Ezra say that he is not proud of anything he has worked on. I don't understand that because I have seen him do so many amazing things here at Sheva, including creating this blog. And for all our issues in this moment watching him bow back and forth I realize we are family and I am proud of him and I hope he is proud of himself.

He kept going back and forth talking about how fire changes wood, how commitment changes people, how once you commit to something you can't go back, once the flame is there the wood turns to ash, it can't go back and forth and back and....it didn't work, the spark didn't catch, the tinder didn't light. And he said sometimes you have to try again and ask for help. So Gabe came and reshaped the spindle and reminded Ezra that we are not taking the fire, there is no force involved, we are simply being thankful for the gift that is fire, we are asking for the blessing. I think that's the point of life, that's what nature can teach us. We don't need force, this is not a struggle. If we just let ourselves be open, accepting, embracing what we need will happen. We will receive, we don't have to force it or demand it, we have to acknowledge that it already exists and that we are blessed. And sometimes when it seems hard our community will help us. So Ezra in exhaustion looks up and says if something doesn't work the first time do you stop trying? And all the You Think participants said no, you keep trying and it was more than that, they believed in Ezra, in the fire, in the idea that hidden in this cedar is the spark that we can unlock, hidden in all of us is a spark that we can choose to let out and we can create a fire with our dreams and passion. We can spread our ideas out and create a new way of living, we can change what was given to us. We can also preserve what was given to us. Meaning we can change what society handed down to us and we can preserve what Great Spirit gave to us.

And sometimes you need a little help from your friends. Round two back and forth and back and he looks up and says Ariel will you come over and help me light this fire. Me. Me, of all people. Amazing. To call upon someone you once struggled with to now help you, absolutely beautiful - conflict resolution at its finest. I like Sheva because I am not just asking participants to step out of their comfort zone, I too am getting asked to step out of my comfort zone. I place my hand on one end of the bow and together move back and forth back...and this little spark goes into this ball of tinder and from this little spark comes a fire so large our hearts are filled with joy as we share what the day meant to us. So large that tomorrow when we go to start another fire, we will actually be reigniting this same fire.

As Ezra was moving the ball of fire in his hand slowly winding up, the participants in awe and thanks for the gift of fire, Pam comes by and at this point there are tears in my eyes and I have made eye contact with Lisa. I realize this is my family, my Sheva community. We have come a long way from not getting along, to debates about how to garden, to throwing rocks into trucks, to planting our seedlings, to watering, to learning new skills, to realizing every day is a spark, a beginning and we are a unit now, able to lead groups together, able to light fires together, able to laugh and work and function and help each other as a real community, as a loving community. I realize now the difference: I want everyone to succeed. I want Ezra to light the fire and I don't just want, I believe he has the capability. I believe in him, as I believe in Lisa and Gabe, we are a community and it’s so special to realize this. My level of trust has increased tremendously since I first arrived here and it’s nice to look back and see how far we have come as a group. Its like at the end of a day to see how far You Think has come, to see Project Triumph creating a web of life and to know that we at Sheva are also creating a web, that same web, weaving and moving and making - expanding out.

As we go around the fire I share my joy and love and tell everyone that I feel like they are my extended family. The energy is so high and unique. Gabe performs a special ceremony to initiate us as care takers of the earth. It’s a tremendous honor. No other group I have worked with has received this honor or participated in this ceremony. We all raised our hands palm to palm and spread our love to each other as Gabe welcomed us as care takers. We are committed, we are one.

I am thankful for my experience. We all hug goodbye and Thomas and I exchange contact info. I do hope we keep in touch. As the participants board the bus, Gabe, Ezra, Lisa, and I (North, South, East, West) embrace. I debrief the day with Lisa by the fire. I almost wrote I closed the evening by the fire with Lisa, except I didn't close the evening.

I came back to our house, lovely cottage 12, and prepared some things for San Francisco. What!Could it be that crazy? Actually Rae Rae swung by my house ere midnight and we hung out for a bit, crashed for a bit, woke up early, did Yoga, met new friends, ate french toast for breakfast, and took a mystical magical revealing holy goddess soul sister journey, oh and packed the car with some of my things but not me for her road trip to SF.

And I headed to the garden to plant our seedlings. The days flow together and Tuesday was non-stop productivity straight on into Wed. and now Thursday...and it keeps moving and we keep growing and the water is flowing, nurturing our seedlings, nurturing our souls.

The rain is coming down gently here at BBI and I see a spark slowly coming out emerging from our Sheva souls to ignite a Shevalution. Anything is possible, if you believe and I believe.

The Pond - part 2!

Yes, that is correct, part two. Part one started a long time ago with other people, but part two. Ah, yes; yesterday evening we put in the pond liner. The pond liner wieghs about 200 lbs and until it is unrolled(thank God for that), is not particularly unwieldy. Here you can see the four of us (I am taking the picture) midway through the laying down process. The second picture is with the liner laid out.
However, before we could lay out the liner, we had to remove all the weeds that might have punctured the liner as well as all the big rocks and pieces of soil that would have kept it from laying flat. The next step is going to consist of forming the liner to the hole in the ground and then covering it with rocks and gravel.
Now you might be wondering how we are going to form this perfectly flat sheet to a rounded impression in the ground. Very simply by laying out. You read me, we are just going to lay down for awhile and let our body heat and weight strech the liner until it is perfect! But you are just going to have to wait until part three of the Pond Saga to find out more...

Ah yes, here at Sheva, the getting diesel program is really paying off! Check out Ariel "The Challenger" after climbing to the top of the big red drum (aka: the old water tower).

I love Sheva!

Hi Everyone,

My name is Ariel "The Challenger" Vegosen and I am a proud Sheva Fellow. We have been up to lots of great stuff from watering our seedlings to creating a bike trail to hiking in new places to learning to be a community. So far its been an amazing adventure with lots more to come. Check my posts every Tues and Thurs. ahhhh yeah!

Much love....

Hi, I'm Lisa

I just wanted to introduce myself as a new blogger for the Sheva site. I am a Sheva participant along with my two lovely fellows...Eazy E and The Challenger.

I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences here with you for the next few weeks! Adios!