The Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot is celebrated by building a little temporary structure outside, and hanging out over the course of a week in this three-sided hut which, by definition, has a roof that you can see the stars through.
When you are home, how do you find ways to connect with nature?
Your closest friends are probably the people you can tell everything to, the ones who hold you up in hard times, the ones you can count on to understand the deepest reaches of your heart. But there’s a lot to be said for friends who are just plain fun to be around, who let you be goofy and young at heart.
What do you with your friends just for fun?
We’ve all been warned not to judge a person until we’ve walked a mile in their shoes. It’s a good reminder to have empathy for others who may be managing hardships we’ve never imagined. It’s also possible that their shoes are utterly fabulous, of a shape and color that we never would have thought to try.
What have you learned to delight in by trying it someone else’s way?
The first step of building community is opening a space where people can connect, whether that be in a book group at the library, in a work meeting or in an online chat or Facebook group.
What sorts of spaces make it easy for you to connect?
It might not be your idea of comfort to sleep with someone lying on your head, and some of us are downright phobic of being crammed together in tight quarters. But there is something enormously sweet as well as terrifying about such intimacy, about letting go of boundaries and defenses so that it is hard to tell where one being leaves off and the other begins.
With what group do you feel the greatest intimacy?
