But we remain closely bound up together, energetically through these reflections and of course when we’ll gather in our temporary places of gathering. May this exercise enable us to arrive readier and more open to the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur journey. Take what you find helpful and leave what you don’t.
Rebecca
That’s
what you learn in winter: there is a past, a present and a future. There is a
time after the aftermath…”The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t
have one without the other. ’’Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish, and
seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time,
they grow again.
Katherine May
Wintering
Is it true – will there ever be days with forgiveness and mercy?
And you will walk in the field, like a simple wanderer.
our feet on the small leaves will be gently caressed,
Or the stings will be sweet, when you are stung by the rye’s broken stalks,
Or the downpour will catch you as the raindrops pound,
On your shoulders, your breast, your neck, and your mind will be clear.
You will walk the wet field, and the silence fills you –
Like the light that lines a cloud.
And you breathed in the furrows, a breath calm and even,
And you saw the sun in the reflection of the golden puddle,
And the things will be simple and alive, and it is permitted to touch them,
And permitted, and permitted to love.
You will walk in the field by yourself, never scorched by the heat,
Of the fires on the paths paved with horror and blood,
And in your heart you again will humbly surrender,
Like one blade of grass, like one of humanity.
Leah Goldberg
Is It True
‘Most of us, I think, tend to think of the spiritual path in terms of the high points: a birth, a death, that moment of transcendence we felt during a great storm or standing by a waterfall or viewing a sunset on a trip to the mountains. But the truth is, neither thunderbolts nor visions of pink clouds are the primary engine of the spiritual quest; suffering is.’
Alan Lew
Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life (p. 47)
‘Certainty is a dead space, in which there’s no more room to grow. Wavering is painful. I’m glad to be travelling between the two. I’ve come to love this part.’
Katherine May
Wintering (p. 94)
‘Don’t believe your every thought.’ Few things have helped me more in life. Unfortunately, that superpower, which we all possess, is often overlooked. But the fact is that approaching our own thoughts with a measure of scepticism and humour makes it infinitely easier to be you and me. So what do you gain from not unquestioningly believing every thought that flashes through your mind?…Albert Einstein once said: ‘The rational mind is a servant. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.’
Björn Natthiko Lindeblad
I May Be Wrong (pp. 33-34)
STATISTICALLY, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places. Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organised structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond…. Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member of our own species unique. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You’d think we’d never stop dancing.”
Lewis Thomas
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher 1913-1993
‘I failed to acknowledge big, difficult feelings such as anger and grief, preferring instead to mask them with easier, more pliable emotions like sadness. I failed by caring too much about the unimportant… Self-acceptance is, I believe, a quietly revolutionary act but for years I failed even at that.’
Elizabeth Day
How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
To find our way back to hope and joy . . . is perhaps the hardest task each of us can face. Whatever our hardships have been, so many of us find ourselves merely surviving, just going through the motions. Many of us have long since given up the struggle. Perhaps we have lived through hell. . . . Each of us possesses the power to overcome the unthinkable and be reborn, to live life not as survivors but as partakers, rejoicers, participants.
Naomi Levy, To Begin Again
“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding, the third”
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers
It is God who enables us to return to life after tragedy – not by eradicating all suffering but by giving us the strength and the courage to heal what we can heal.
Naomi Levy
WHY! Who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles. Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love— or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of an August forenoon, Or animals feeding in the felds, Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-moon in May…. These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles…. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every inch of space is a miracle…. Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. STATISTICALLY.
Lewis Thomas (1913–1993)
Resolve.
Collect yourself.
Anger. Hurt. Guilt.
You have given so much away.
Gather what you can, for you have scattered
the only power that you have.
This is the great resolve a reclamation of power.
We must not be ruled by fear, or revenge, or insult, or pain.
There is loveliness upon your heart, let that be your guide.
Rabbi Karyn Cedar
“Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.”
The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme
Marge Piercy
“The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.”
Louise Glück
Pray
Sometimes I manage
formal conversation,
a love letter evening
and morning and afternoon but most of the time
I rely on the chat window
open between us all day.
I want to tell you everything.
This month you are near.
Walk with me in the fields.
I want to take your hand
and not let go.
Rachel Barenblat
Every year as we enter Yom Kippur, we take a step out of our death-denying culture and peer, for one day, into the deep. Every year we talk about how the rituals and liturgy of this day create for us a deathscape: we fast, we wear white, we say Yizkor, immersing in the memories of loved ones who have died. We sit with the terrible realization that we are—all of us—standing at the edge of the abyss. That some of us will be here next year and some will not.
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Kol Nidrei 5780
I’ve found regret to be one of the most powerful emotional reminders that change and growth are necessary. In fact, I’ve come to believe that regret is a kind of package deal: A function of empathy, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom.
Like all emotions, regret can be used constructively or destructively, but the wholesale dismissal of regret is wrongheaded and dangerous. “No regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life. I’m not suggesting that we have to live with regret, but I do think it’s important to allow ourselves to experience and feel it.
Brene Brown (USA, 1965- )
Year after year, we stand in shul on Yom Kippur and regret the same actions, say the same words, and resolve to improve the same deficiencies. Even if we do manage to make changes, we know that it’s likely that we will relapse. A cynic could make the reasonable observation that our resolutions are weaker than our temptations, and the prediction that, no matter how sincerely we confess and try to do better, it is very likely that next year we will be confessing the same sins and making the same attempts to change.
David Bar Shain
Holding onto a grudge is like drinking poison and thinking it’s going to kill the other person.
Origin unknown
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Suttas (Buddhist scriptures)
The task of a person, to suggest a parable, is like that of a person who is building an elaborate house on a foundation of rubble. If he doesn’t want to invest money and effort to dig deep and solid foundations, the building will not have a strong base and therefore cracks will keep appearing in the walls. Each time the person will have to spend a lot of money all over again in order to strengthen the building, and yet nevertheless this will have no real utility, because more fissures will appear, and the house will always be in danger of collapse.
There is only one path before her, and that is to have the courage to destroy the whole structure of the house and to dig deep and strong foundations. On top of those foundations, she can build and establish a strong building. The same applies is the realm of teshuvah. Each year a person introduces repairs and improvements in her spiritual home, but nevertheless since the whole thing isn’t built on strong foundations, new cracks and fissures appear year after year, and her spiritual structure always threatens to collapse. Only when she arrives at a state in which she has courage and understands that all of these minor repairs will not solve the problem of her life until she digs deep foundations.
This is the thought process with which a Jew must approach teshuvah, to the point that the One who knows all secrets can testify on her behalf that this year she really wants to dig strong foundations for her spiritual home, foundations able to withstand life’s trials — and the foundation will not be rickety, and the building will not collapse.
Rabbi Shalom Noach Berzovsky, Netivot Shalom, Teshuvah,
#9 (transl. R. Shai Held, adapted)
Loving life
and its mysterious source
with all our heart
and all our spirit,
all our senses and strength,
we take upon ourselves these promises:
to care for the earth and those who live upon it,
to pursue justice and peace,
to love kindness and compassion.
We will teach this to our children
throughout the passage of the day–
as we dwell in our homes and as we go on our journeys,
from the time we rise until the time we fall asleep.
And may our actions be faithful to our words
that our children’s children may live to know:
Truth and kindness have embraced,
peace and justice have kissed and are one.
Marcia Falk
Jewish Prayers for Daily Life
“Pain is the price we pay for being alive. Dead cells—our hair, our fingernails—can’t feel pain; they cannot feel anything. When we understand that, our question will change from, “Why do we have to feel pain?” to “What do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and not just pointless empty suffering?” …“Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?…The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.”
Harold Kushner
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
“Transformation goes on all the time. We are transforming beings. Transformation is a divine imperative. It’s always introduced that way in the Torah — not as something we undergo as a kind of leisure activity, which I think is how many in this country regard spiritual activity, you know, something we do on weekends, but really essential to our meaning as human beings.”
Rabbi Alan Lew
This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared
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