A report I heard recently on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” told of a cancer cluster in Fallon, Nevada where 15 children have contracted leukemia and how the town has rallied around the families. Last week, my friend Carol wrote to tell me of a “cancer cluster” at her own beloved Vassar Temple: three women with breast cancer, two men with colon cancer, one with lung cancer, and the most recent, a child with leukemia. Carol, who struggled through her husband, Sandor’s untimely death from cancer, (see also 162 - Sitting Shiva and 179 - Unveiling) asked for a psalm to help heal her community.

Sharon Weissman, who directs the Jewish Healing Center in St. Louis, gave me an assignment last week. With a rabbi and the director of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, she is going to a clinic that performs abortions to help the staff “cope with the vitriolic words they have to listen to daily from the anti-choice protesters.” Could I write her a special psalm?

My neighbor, Sandy, called a couple of weeks ago to see if my husband could recommend a doctor at his hospital for a second opinion. She wanted someone to look at a breast ultrasound; she had been told to “repeat the scan in six months.” She wanted someone to take another look. She called to report that she was still waiting to hear, but felt that her faith gave her the strength to deal with any contingency.

I got to thinking last week that I had fallen out of touch with many women whose friendship I value. These are women who had shared classes or Internet correspondences or ideas and confidences. It’s easy to let those relationships slip away. I forget to call or to write or to email and time passes along; then it seems odd to try to reach out after such an interval. But these are the vital ties that nourish me and in them I find God’s reflection.

Although Pesach is three months away, the Torah reading for this week is Parashat Bo, which includes the description of the last three plagues visited upon the Egyptians. The penultimate plague, the plague of darkness, was said to have immobilized the Egyptians for three days. Sometimes a darkness we create in ourselves can have that same effect. We need then to open ourselves to God’s light and illuminating force.

Winter can be a difficult time for me. It’s not that I leave the house that much more in the warmer months. And this year, my part of the country has somehow been spared the snow and experienced sunny, temperate days. I think it is the rut I can fall into this time of year. Time to break out again.

I dropped in on a Havdallah on-line chat last week. There was the usual “where are you?” queries, a lengthy conversation on where to buy men¹s hats, and, as it happened, an interesting discussion on petition and prayer. There was also something that I¹ve become accustomed to: someone who came into the chat to ask for prayers for the recovery of a family member. This time it was someone who had suffered a head injury and was in a coma. Even in cyberspace, there is community.

The sudden and accidental deaths of relatives of two acquaintances last week and the death after a long illness of another women I had met and admired left shadows over these days just past. How do people find the strength to continue after such blows? Even in my distance from these sorrows, I find myself searching for answers.

The violence in Israel surges every few days it seems. In the United States, we are infants when it comes to the experience of terror. In Israel, it is the way it has always been. I saw an extraordinary documentary called Promises last week on public television. Created by Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg, and Carlos Bolado, it introduces seven Israeli and Palestinian youngsters, living within minutes of each other yet separated by centuries of distrust. What affected me as I watched is that it was difficult to tell them apart.

I have been thinking a lot about my dad lately. He’s been gone over 24 years: I’ve lived more of my life without than with him. I long for him to know E.G.’s husband, Mario, who is a musician like he was. It is a gentler longing than the bitter grief I felt at E.G.’s birth just three months after his death. Somehow I hope he has always been aware of what has happened to me since his passing, that he knows the force he still plays in my life.