Getting Ready for Rosh HaShanah
After hearing Rachel Goldberg Polin say that she rereads This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, by Rabbi Alan Lew, annually before the High Holidays, I decided to try adopting her tradition. Since I read it for the first time last year and my copy was visible in my book case, I got started right away. I highly recommend at least one read.
The following passage stood out to me while reading yesterday. I even dog-eared the page.
“Anger, boredom, fear, guilt, impatience, grief, disappointment, dejection, anxiety, despair—are the great markers of our Teshuvah” [process of active transformation according to Lew].
“These feelings are so familiar to us we usually believe them to be part of our intrinsic being. They are not, and in this sacred time of transformation, while the gates of heaven are open and we are finally awake, we can see that they are not…. They are not us. They only become us by our own choice, by our choosing to see them that way, by our choosing to cling to them so tenaciously. We can make another choice if we wish to. We can choose to allow these feelings to rise up and then let them fall away again like a hot breeze.”
I am not my feelings, moods, impulses, and attitudes. They are not me. Let them go.
What or who, then, am I?
Am I my roles? Grandmother, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, writer. Am I what I give, what I need?
What is the core, essence, soul—being—of a person?
The word “being” made me connect to Shabbat, where a way to think about it is that the week is for doing and Shabbat is for being. This then led me to connect with a passage I read recently for a class I’m taking, The Shabbat Effect, at the Mussar Institute, which is based on Alan Morinis’ book of the same name.
This middah [character trait] [enoughness / histapkut / הְסַתְּפּקוּת] has a prominent role to play in Shabbat practice because creating the sacred vessel of Shabbat requires that we give up our habitual activities of acquiring and building. Why is that? Because the relentless pursuit of more is incompatible with the deep rest and satisfaction we are invited to experience on Shabbat.
In a world that urges us to chase, to accumulate, and to envy, histapkut enoughness is a reminder to take good account of what is already present in our lives.”
I am not my activities, my things, my work. (Even as a retired person there are always things that fit in a broad understanding of work: going through emails, paying bills, washing the dishes, or watching my grandson—though this is the best work!)
If I am not the busyness of life, nor am I the things that I let “represent” me, nor am I the emotions that accompany and often direct me, what am I? What is beneath the reactions, activities, stuff? Is there anything beneath that?
This question made me think of my almost 15-month grandson with his innate personality, so playful, curious, and joyful. It occurs to me that he is the definition of being. In each moment, his eyes, ears, mind, and heart direct his attention.
Perception. Reception. Immersion. Openness.
Which now made my thoughts leap to Impressionism; an art form characterized by capturing a moment as it is; staying true to and honoring the movements of life, the unembellished moments we live and experience.
This connection helps me perceive the core self as the me that creates my life by the things I am drawn to, the interests that direct me, the connections I make. I am always being. And we are each unique in what pulls us, how we direct/are directed through our lives.
Whether or not I can stop the doing on Shabbat and the surrounding angst, I am, yes, I am always the me that is as an individual lightening rod. The next question is whether I draw helpful or harmful energy?
One more thought to rest upon: the being that I am is the energy that enables me to direct myself, where this force itself is within the infinite field of energy that is the Divine Presence.
This image/sense brings a feeling of enoughness, at least within this moment.
