Ten minutes before I begin leading High Holy Days services, a large dog leaps up and takes a softball-sized bite from the bottom of the two-foot-long challah on the table.
I pause, oddly grateful that this is the first year such a thing has happened.
My services are decidedly outside the box: bring-your-own-chair, under a metal canopy, in a 400-acre Portland park.
Oh, right—and the location sits just north of an off-leash dog park.

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My “outside-the-box” approach means that although I’ve prepared “pieces” around forgiveness and atonement, I never quite know how the service will unfold.
I come stocked with options: shofar blowing, memorial candle lighting, an acrostic of wrongs (from anger to zeal), a modern retelling of Jonah, and more.
It’s improvisational, not fixed liturgy.

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I remind myself to keep the dog-and-challah episode handy should we discuss forgiveness.
After all, the dog wasn’t trying to cause harm, and so we forgive it. Maybe I can use it to show how we might offer the same compassion to people who should know better—but don’t.

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I officially begin by holding up a card printed with three bold words: “Tekiah. Shevarim. Teruah.”
I invite the small community to chant these ancient Hebrew words. With the shofar—a ram’s horn—I sound them: one long, steady note; three short, sighing blasts; and a flurry of nine or more quick bursts.

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I tell a story:

A student carrying a cup of coffee and a rabbi are walking.
Someone bumps into them and keeps going.
Rabbi: “Why did you spill your coffee?”
Student: “You saw—that person bumped into us!”
Rabbi: “That explains why you spilled, not why you spilled coffee.”
Student: “I don’t get it.”
Rabbi: “If you’d been carrying cocoa, you’d have spilled cocoa. What spills depends on what’s inside.”
Student: “And…?”
Rabbi: “If anger comes out, it’s because anger was in you. What spills changes with what we carry—so mind what you carry.”

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We go around and share our names and what we’re carrying these days.

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Rebecca arrives, pushing a stroller.
I greet them, “Hi, Rebecca. Hi, Norah. I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome.”
Rebecca unfolds her camping chair and settles in.
Norah—two years and a few weeks old—sleeps.

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I love that the more I prepare—and the less I cling to how it “should” go—the more likely magic moments happen.

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Norah wakes, climbs out of her stroller, then reaches back in and retrieves a board book—Rain, Rain, Go Away.
She toddles over to Chris—who she doesn’t know—points to the book, then to Chris, and through her pacifier issues a single-word command: “Read.”
The community, charmed by her innocence, watches as I continue my modern retelling of Jonah—the reluctant prophet turned fish-voyager.
Norah, content with Chris’s reading, wanders past a few people, and stops at Patrick—also a stranger.
Again, she points to the book,then to Patrick, and and through her pacifier issues a single-word command: “Read.”

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I tell the community I feel like Jonah—that I have a calling, but some days I’d rather not. Some days I just don’t feel it.
Nods and murmurs let me know they understand.
(You, beloved reader, probably don’t always feel up to doing what you’re “supposed” to do, either. Right?)

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Having finished listening to Patrick’s reading, Norah walks away. We all watch.
This time she stops at me. She points to the book, then to me, and through her pacifier issues a single-word command: “Read.”

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My talk on Jonah ends abruptly as I transition to a most untraditional reading of Rain, Rain, Go Away.A