How long did it take to write Catch a Dream?

How long did it take you to finish writing Catch a Dream? someone in the audience asked.

I began to write it as memoir as soon as I returned to the United States after three years of living in Israel. It was my way of holding onto the country I had come to love. I wanted to get everything down while it was fresh in my mind. I felt an urgency to articulate what it had like to be on this journey of self-discovery in a country embroiled in conflict. I never felt afraid but the tension was palpable and the shock of coming to the sacred Temple Mount and encountering a ring of soldiers was one I will never forget. There are many specific moments when the reader realizes this is a place where a bomb can go off at any moment, where tear gas permeates the streets, where rocks are thrown and piles of tires are burnt and helicopters fly overhead. And yet, those are not the images that stick in my mind. I remember the moonlight silvering the Mediterranean Sea and the smiles of the vendors in the shuk and the way the stones of Jerusalem turn golden in sunlight and the sounds of the shofar blown on Yom Kippur following me through the streets from many small shuls as I walked home. Mostly I remember the kindness of the Israelis I met, from the friends who took me in, without a thought as to why I was penniless, but with many questions as to what I was doing in ha'eretz, why was I single, and how could I pay for health insurance? to the elderly neighbor downstairs who spent hours at the propane company insisting they deliver propane right away so I could cook dinner.

People are invariably kind when you are hitch-hiking, but Israelis were incredibly helpful and generous through some tough moments. This is what I want to hold onto, as the news tells us that the situation in Gaza is dire and inhumane. How can a nation of people who are kind, intelligent, and sensitive become a nation of people who allow the conditions that are in Gaza to continue? It makes me think that there is more to the story than I know.

But to answer the question: that was 30 years ago. I didn't go back and although I pitched the book several times, it mostly sat in a drawer while I moved on to other projects.

I attended the Independent Author's Conference in Philadelphia last fall and left knowing I was going to publish something. My spiritual home of Unity Minneapolis is planning a trip to Israel this fall. Suddenly I thought, What if I changed it into a novel? The names of Lily Ambrosia and Rainbow Dove popped into my head and everything fell into place. I could visualize these women and it was no longer my personal story but a story about Lily. This felt just right and so freeing because I was grappling with the overly complicated back story. From there, it took me three months to revise what I had, have beta readers give me feedback, revise some more (and more and more) and have the manuscript ready for Bookbaby.

How long did it take to write Catch a Dream? Thirty years. My whole life. Because I wasn't ready until now to really be able to have it out in the world. Now I know why it is important to me to share this story, not only Lily's journey of self-discovery, but the reminder that in troubled times, ordinary people can be judged harshly for what their government is doing. Not only Lily's love affairs but the love that is possible if we stop protecting and defending ourselves and open my hearts to the reality of others who are within our borders.

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A Jerusalem memory and a question: is forgiveness possible?

An icy wind blew as we struggled out of the warmth of the café into the warren of streets that meandered through the Arabic section of Jerusalem. I looked over at my traveling companions and realized that Sara was shivering inside her short jean jacket. “We have to buy her a scarf,” I mumbled to Carol, my mouth tucked inside the brilliantly striped Mexican rebozo around my neck. We huddled closer together to retain the warmth, Sara in-between like a protected nestling. Because she was a teen-ager, she normally would resent the inhibiting closeness but with this biting cold, did not protest.

  

Fortunately it was one of the days that the shops were open. The intifada had succeeded in shutting the city down for three days before the cold hit. We were sight-seeing, taking in the garden tomb, the Church of the Sepulcher, the pools of Bethesda, and Solomon’s stables. We only had a little money to duck into the warmth of a café for scalding hot, sweetened mint tea. It felt like pure luxury.

   

When we found a vendor who sold scarves, we let Sara choose, carefully pooling our shekels together from our pockets, leaving us with twenty argarot and one shekel, about sixty cents USD. But it was worth it to see the look of gratitude on her face, chapped pink by cold. Just as we exited the shop, drifts of snowflakes started to fall. Snow in Jerusalem! Where would we spend the night? I hadn’t told Carol that when I had gotten up to use the restroom, a man had approached our table and offered to buy me for an afternoon. Or was it Sara he wanted? This chubby, shy, tag-a-long was terrified of this strange adventure and fortunately she hadn’t been paying attention to the man’s broken English or hand gestures.  

  

 Although my feet were numb and hands shoved deep into jean pockets were icy, I was thrilled to be in the holy city of Jerusalem. I remembered that on their way into the city, a man we met on the bus had given me his card. A Christian Arab, Ali repeatedly invited us to stop at his home and meet his family. Impressed that we traveled in the name of Jesus, penniless, adhering to the original Gospel lifestyle, he was respectful. He shook our hands warmly when we parted.

 

 “Let’s call Ali,” I suggested over the top of Sara’s blond curls.

 “Tomorrow I think we should go north, to the Galilee. We’re not dressed for this weather.”  

“Yeah, you’re right.” I was disappointed to be leaving Jerusalem after waiting years to be here. But I would come back. To add my prayer to the Wall. To wander the streets in a mystical trance. To find my soul crying out for a way to find home.

To be in Jerusalem, to be in Israel, is to be in a place that yearns for peace, but weeps from war after war, on the border and within her borders. Frozen teardrops on this day. How is peace possible without forgiveness? is the question I asked myself.

In 1989, I attended synagogue on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. I was invited by an American family to babysit, to take their child home when she became too restless to stay. They belonged to one of the only conservative synagogues in Israel. As we walked to the synagogue, the profound silence was cathartic to me. The cessation of traffic was highlighted by the serious, yet joyful mood.  The women dressed in white fluttered in the women’s balcony like doves, the children were free to wander among the men praying downstairs, the sounds of plaintive Kol Nidrei wafted up like smoke from a celestial fire drenching us in holiness. Although I couldn’t understand all of the Hebrew, I could follow along in the prayer book as we enumerated our sins and asked to be covered by God’s merciful forgiveness.

The High Holy Days are a time of repentance in the sense of self-reflection, to consider harm you may have done to others and ask their forgiveness before God opens to your page in the book of life. I loved the fact that we asked for forgiveness as a congregation, that we were part of a ritual cleansing as well as personal evaluation. The community supported us as we declared those sins, those choices and decisions where we missed the mark, aloud.

Recently I taught a writing workshop at Stillwater prison for the purpose of holding a reading during Victim Awareness week. They wanted to hold a reading to express their remorse and I would do whatever I could to help them make that possible. I told them, “You can’t just write a letter of apology and expect to be forgiven. Your victim may never be able to forgive—but if I were a victim, I would want to know how you have changed. How you are different now and would never commit that crime again. I want to know about the work you have done on yourself.” The word I used is metanoia, literally with-mind, to find mindfulness which is translated in the RSV New Testament as repentance. To me, the concept of metanoia goes beyond repentance, it means that you have changed.

As a victim, it can be a long hard road to healing. It can take years. It can take forever. I was lucky to have a therapist who was able to guide me through the trauma and tell a new story of survival. After years of silence about my rape, I was finally able to speak about it, write about it, read my writings aloud.  And yet, my impulse was to forgive the man who perpetrated the rape immediately after it happened because during the four hours he held me captive, I listened to his story. I knew he was a victim as well and that the violation on my body were the results of his own abuse, humiliation and anger. It is not an excuse. I don’t believe forgiveness needs to include forgetting. 

A few years ago I attended a Radical Forgiveness workshop led by Rev. Sher McNeal. We formed a circle and she read questions such as “Have you ever been hurt, ever been unkind to someone?”  “Have you ever been bullied,  have you ever bullied someone?” The acts of unkindness, abuse, violence mentioned became more and more specific. We were instructed that if we were either victim or perpetrator, to step into the middle of the circle. Then she asked us to look each other in the eyes and say, “I am sorry that happened to you.” No one knew who was victim or perpetrator. Rather we witnessed that with each question, some of us stood in the middle of that circle together. Sorrow and forgiveness included all of us. Remorse included all of us. Forgiveness included all of us. Kinda like Yom Kippur. A covering over us of Divine Mercy.

If my perpetrator had entered the Radical Forgiveness circle with me, would I have been able to look him in the eyes and say I am sorry that happened to you? Would we be able to weep together over his life wasted in prison and my years of PDST and distancing myself from relationships? Would we be covered by the mercy of God? I like to think it could be so.