1. Leviticus: Sh’mini

Keeping kosher.  Eating with intention.  Living with intention.

We had to build a kosher bubble the other day.  I’d been doing so well, and reading Sh’mini was such good re-inspiration for keeping kosher for Passover.  Then we went to lunch and I ordered a fried fish sandwich without even thinking about it.  No intention whatsoever.  When it arrived I looked at it and realized that there was nothing on the plate that I could eat.  So we decided we needed a Passover bubble to get me through this one meal.  Probably not approved by the rabbinate, but 3 children and 2 adults were able to maintain intention even as I screwed up my original intention.

People wonder what the point of kashrut is.  I never have a good answer.  I don’t keep a kosher home, but I do appreciate the ideal of kashrut.  Intention is too often non-existent in our world.  I bought Michael Pollan’s Food Rules recently.  Maybe eating to save the body and the planet is easier for some people to digest than eating kosher for the sake of living with intention. 

My son taught me about living with intention (and made me really proud of myself as a parent).  He has been saving for a DSi for a few months.  He decided yesterday that he is not going to buy a DSi.  He is going to buy a book about sewing.  He thinks it will be more fun.  He’s 11!!!!! 

We talk often about life and creativity and the effect of our actions on us and others.  When he plays computer games for a long period of time he gets grumpy.  So I mention this when I see it.  Most of the time it seems to go in one ear and out the other.  But I gently continue to notice.  And encourage all of the creative activities that he loves.  My intent is to channel his thinking to the creative rather than the passive.  Little by little, intention is rewarded.

He no longer wants to bring video games along when we go somewhere.  When he does play video games they more often involve building or creating, rather than search and destroy.  And yesterday was the crowning glory.  He thinks a DSi is boring compared to sewing.

So my advice….live with intention, raise children with intention, eat with intention, love with intention.  Rewards are often the intention itself, but sometimes the reward is even more tangible.