We Don't Know Where We'll Be...
...but we can return to where we are
Funny that we don’t know where you’ll be a year from now. I’m about to drop my son off in Maine to begin his last year of high school.
A year ago, we didn’t know this is where I’d be going now, he says.
We don’t know where we will be in a year or a month, in a week or even tomorrow or in an hour. We think we know, but we don’t. We plan and envision and imagine and plan and think we are moving towards some fixed target, as if sailing towards a horizon that never arrives.
But then comes the blast, the call rings out echoing across the vast open desert spaces that live in my chest, and I am hollowed of my preconceived notions and expectations, fears and projections, ideas and daydreams and worries and ruminations and best-case and worst-case scenarios.
The sound obliterates everything but this very moment. It rushes into the now-empty space, filling it like breath fills lungs.
Who will live and who will die?
We cannot know this, either.
Where does this leave us?
Standing before you with fear and trembling.
Standing here stripped of certainty.
We are your flock, you, our shepherd,
our fragile lives in your hands.
For the past few weeks, I've been writing my way toward the Days of Awe...
What are the Days of Awe?
For 10 days between Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it is said that the Book of Life lies open.
Many folks, myself included, relate to this as a powerful metaphor.
During this time, Jews around the world, religious, secular, and everywhere along the infinite spectrum between, do "teshuvah."
This word means "return" and it offers us an extraordinary opportunity to look over the past year and consider where we missed the mark, whom we want to reach out to with an apology, and how we will make amends.
In a word, we get to begin again.
On Sunday, September 12 at noon EST, I'll be leading a Zoom workshop for anyone who would like to carve out a bit of intentional & contemplative space for some writing practice with these themes.
The cost is $99.
Anyone can sign up!
You don't have to be:
a) Jewish
b) a "practicing" Jew (though that's fine, too!)
or
c) a poet
Just bring your heart and a pen.
