I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E.B. White
In Jewish tradition, these are the Days of Awe - the span of ten days between Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the creation of the world, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It's a time to examine one's life and ways before your fate is sealed. Sharon Astyk writes just beautifully on this tradition in the context of our environmental crisis in a recent post where she describes how and where she finds hope.
Reading it, I was reminded of another Jewish woman who inspired me a couple years ago with her description of these high holy days. Sharon Brous, a rabbi, was interviewed by Krista Tippett on how she brings this ancient tradition to bear meaning to her young congregation:
This is a moment when we celebrate the possibility of transformation, the possibility that every single one of us can be re-created . . . [a time] in which we identify that we have a real purpose and meaning in the world and that we can redirect our lives so that we're actually responsively going after those priorities. . . We actually have the capacity to radically transform the way we understand our lives and the world. So really this is a moment of celebration.
She goes on to describe a way to celebrate, not in spite of life’s hard truths, but because of them:
Part of the challenge of high holy days is . . . to bring people to a momentary understanding of the fragility of life, to the recognition that they might not be here next year at this time, that the people they love most in the world might not be here. [The goal of our celebration] is to push people to confront that excruciating reality for just one moment, to recognize the tragedies that have struck us as individuals and as communities, as a nation, as a world, to be very present to the reality of loss and grief and death and then, holding that pain, to be able to dance - to be able to affirm the possibility of love, and renewed life, and renewed purpose. To really live with a sense of commitment and a sense of purpose. That's something to dance about, I think, to be able to fully live in both those places at once.
For those of us with "a tendency to G-d bother" as Astyk puts it, the ritual days of reflection and self-examination offered by most religious traditions lead us both more deeply into our own actions and motives while binding us to one another. What am I doing? Why do I do it? How am I contributing to the beauty and goodness of the world - and to its pain? How can we go forward from here, both loving and mending this beautiful place where we have found ourselves together for a while? Now is the time.
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