My Coffee Date with God

I used to struggle to believe that a spiritual energy vivifies the world. The concrete felt most real to me.

Emotions, spirituality, they seemed like gauzy abstractions I couldn’t quite grasp.

Then my fourth child, Mira--who, unbelievably, is getting married next week--turned one.

Or rather, she had two “first birthdays”: her Hebrew birthday and her English one, a month apart. I had this ridiculous expectation, based on her three older siblings, that all my kids would walk by twelve months.

When Mira’s Hebrew birthday came around on 12 Tevet, almost 4 weeks before her January 5th English birthday, I thought to myself: Well, she’s not really a year old yet. January is January.

But lo and behold--she started walking on her Hebrew birthday. That was all I needed. From that moment, I never really questioned again whether the spiritual underpinnings of life are real. Or if I do, I return to that memory.

Jewish time and Hebrew dates are not arbitrary. January, February, March? Those are arbitrary.

Yesterday was Rosh Chodesh Elul. Tradition tells us this is when the winds of change, teshuva, return, begin to stir.

Did you step outside?

Yesterday, at 6:30 a.m., I walked onto my porch, and I felt it--the air had shifted. I even wrote a haiku:

Elul’s breath blows in,

weather shifts without delay,

time bends to the soul.

A reminder that spiritual shifts manifest in something tangible. My daughter started walking on the day she was spiritually, organically, one year old.

The mystics teach that Elul is the time to be casual with our Creator. “The King is in the field,” they say: it's an ancient metaphor for the month of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah.

For me, here in 2025, it means this is the time to sit down for a coffee date with God.

And so I imagine myself across the table, a steaming cup between us.

Me: “What’s the plan? Your world is spinning again, agitating, boiling over. And the Jews, always in the bull’s-eye of every pointed finger. Even blaming each other, one faction against the next. Where does this leave us?”

God: “What I want is simple. I want people and God to feel at home together in this world. But for that to happen, there has to be free choice. Which means struggle. Which means pain. Every time you, Dena, choose the deeper way, you move the world closer. Don’t get distracted.”

Me: “But the pain...even for the innocent?”

God: “It's not just people. Look at the butterflies covering your city. They go through agony to transform into what they’re meant to be.”

Me: “And what about all the things that make no sense? The darkness too heavy to carry?”

God: “Some things you won’t understand. Ever. But some things are clear as day; the weather shifts, the wind blows, and what happens physically is always tied to something spiritual. Learn My blueprint. Don’t just stick with the concrete. Tune in to the deeper layer.”

Then He leans in, soft but certain:

“Remember: the child you thought wasn’t ‘really’ one yet was, in fact, right on time. Everything is right on time. I have the plan. Just keep listening.”