8:47pm I’ve never been very good with numbers, with counting, with arithmetic. Geometry was the only mathematical thing that I excelled at and I’m sure it’s because it was about pictures. What calls this to mind? Well, for the past several days I’ve had the awful feeling that I’d counted wrong and Yom Kippur, the putative 40th day of my kitchari fast was going to turn out to either be day 39 or day 41. I didn’t have the heart to double check until today. And wouldn’t you know it, I started my fast a day early. Yom Kippur is indeed the 41st day. If it weren’t such a classic Riva move, I’d be really upset with myself. I’m trying to find the deeper meaning to it than that I simply messed up. What comes to mind is one of the first talmudic laws I learned from my brand new father-in-law, back in 1969. The law was “eyn marbim simkhe b’simkhe” which means: don’t mix one holiday with another. So, if you get together for someone’s birthday, and another person at the gathering happens to have a birthday the very next day, you can’t celebrate both at the same gathering. Similarly, if you happen to be at the cemetery for a funeral, it’s wrong to go visit the graves of others. I always found this an interesting interpretation of “simkhe” (holiday), but Jewish humor is always on the darker side. Anyway, perhaps my messing up has to do with it being wrong to celebrate the end of my fast on the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar. Or maybe it’s just that I’m not so good at counting. Doing a practice that connected Ramadan and Yom Kippur… I’m unwilling to let that go. I will rest in the righteousness of my intention and notice how through the millenia, getting Ishmael and Isaac to sit at the same table has been something of a challenge. Oh how I wish I’d begun on August 10th!! Perhaps the deeper meaning will emerge as whatever transformation(s) emerge after the 40 days are over. Perhaps something occurs to you who are reading this.

I’d love to stop here for today, but something else happened that I want to record. Today, I made a conscious decision to wait until tonight to cook up the next batch of kitchari. This meant that I’d be without a “stash” for several hours. I had to be out for a while today. During that time, I got to a place of extreme hunger about which I could do nothing until I got home. I had just about a thimbleful of kitchari left at home. I deliberately took care of all the things on my to do list, drinking lots of water to try to manage the stomach hunger, grateful that “taking the edge off” with some snacky thing was not an option, successfully staying present to the hunger, and standing in solidarity with the millions (billions?) of people so hungry for so long they don’t even have hunger pangs. I finally got home, had the thimbleful, did some work, and then made the new batch — slowly, carefully. It’s now in it’s final 20 minutes or so of cooking. May I remember this time when I’m out and about and notice myself getting hungry. As I noted early on in these posts — I have been much afraid of hunger. How could this NOT be ancestral?

Ok. NOW I’m done for today. Blessings on you, my dear friends. May we all know sufficiency!