In the Beginning: It Won't Be Perfect

I resisted the urge to blog for years partly because I know these posts can live forever and I wasn't sure such a lifetime was good for my thoughts. Never one to scratch my name on trees or bathroom walls or put my hand in newly poured cement to be sure someone knows I was here it just seemed ridiculous that what I had to say or what most people had to say needed to take up space.

Plus, I have never been great at spelling or grammar and so there it would be, all my errors hanging out waiting for someone to point out what was wrong. Yuck. Then I remembered getting a tour of the White House once when I was little. I can't tell you how old I was or what time of the year it was however I do remember that when the guard turned his head I took my hands and placed them on the wall. My fingerprints would be in the White House for all time was what I was thinking as I looked at where my hands had been. The guard hadn't been as distracted as I thought for he leaned down and whispered "you should know that we clean the walls." I wasn't heartbroken but annoyed that I wasn't as clever as I thought and sad that my attempt had failed. I guess I did want to leave my mark, my fingerprints somewhere. Interesting.

So what really changed my mind about blogging? The last couple of years of traveling to interesting places like Peru and Eastern Europe that friends enjoyed hearing about, my involvement with Rabbi Shefa Gold's Kol Zimra Jewish chanting program, my mom getting older and finally acceptance into Aleph's DLTI program. I actually had a couple of friends who requested that I blog about my experience of this last item and I as I started the required readings I found I had things to say. So there. I decided I did need a place to post some of my thoughts and I would just have to allow that it won't be perfect.

What to call the darn thing was my next problem. I eliminated anything too cute or too weird immediately. This space would be for me, Menuhah, to grow, to learn, to develop and to report on how the whole thing was going. Developing. I let the word roll about in my mind and then I even looked up the definition in my computer dictionary and found the following:

develop |diˈveləp|verb ( -veloped , -veloping )1 grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate .ORIGIN mid 17th cent.(in the sense [unfold, unfurl] ): from Frenchdévelopper, based on Latin dis- ‘un-’ + a second element of unknown origin

Perfect. Developing menuhah is a work in progress because mine, like most, is a life in progress and definitely not perfect. So be it.