A covenant of birth as we enter 2019

Dear Readers,

I have failed utterly in my attempt to shape some cohesive, meaningful narrative out of the alchemical heat of 2018. A wild mix of chaos, deaths small and large; courageous and inspiring traveling companions; insights, fulfillments, shatterings into greater wholeness, lingering terrors, and refurbishing of the heart.

So all I can do, as the year 2019 is birthed,  is to share with you words I need both to voice and to hear, the contract I am ready to make with Reality, not hide-bound but heart-bound, not only in weeping but also in joy.

May we ask and live into good questions, cheer one another on, and help one another materially as we can in 2019 and beyond.

With love,

Sara

 

A covenant of birth

by Sara Eisenberg

 

Unwinding, 

living threads

lengthen,

straighten, 

send 

life-preserving 

taproots deep into 

disturbed soil,

draw buried 

nutrients to me,

redeem 

an arid moonscape

that 

 

glows now 

with 

succulent

night-bloomers

whose eloquent fragrance 

 

frees bound 

soil, mind, heart,

 

refashions

built worlds, 

 

refreshes

imagination.

 

No choice but to know, intimately,

my yearnings, aversions, despairs:

instructive, dignifying, and precious,

a true north stretched out over empty space,

an earth suspended over Nothing,

 

the very features of

God’s world

and my way home.

Consequences: how our actions build character

The consequences of some actions are clear.

I drop a glass on the tile floor, and the glass shatters.

I turn away from someone who is talking to me, and something in the relationship shatters – in a small or a big way.

Over the span of a year, a decade, a lifetime – cause and effect tend to be less clear to us. How have our actions and their consequences added up over time? How have we built our character? Out of what have we built our character?

All of which makes me deeply grateful for the Jewish cycle of Holy Days, which are heading toward their annual high point.

It is said that on the Jewish New Year, our names are inscribed in the Book of Judgment. Who will live and who will die. Who will live in peace and who in anxiety.

It is said that ten days later – on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement – that Book, and our destiny for the year, are sealed.

During the in between days we are both cautioned and encouraged to engage in three sorts of actions that can assure us of being inscribed and sealed for a good year. (Interestingly enough, the seeking and granting of forgiveness with our fellow humans, a main focus of the whole period of time, is not among the three actions that can “avert the decree” of misery or death.)

Turning, or returning (in Hebrew, teshuvah), which involves heartful remorse, actions to repair or provide restitution for harm done, and resolve to refrain from repeating the behavior.

Prayer (in Hebrew, tefilah), an introspective and simultaneously connecting effort. The Hebrew root connotes both a discerning evaluation of oneself and a strengthening of ourattachment to God. This attachment exists as a matter of the nature of Reality, regardless of whether we feel “close” to God or not.)

Material acts of justice (in Hebrew, tzedakah), commonly understood to be an obligation to give charity, but which can be understood more broadly as acts that redress wrongs to individuals or to social groups.

There is a growing urgency as we near the end of our 26+ hour fast on Yom Kippur, our destiny all but sealed, yet even then our tears are said to be a gateway that remains open.

And the turning and re-turning, the discerning and attachment, the material acts of justice? On we go with these companions, day by day until the year turns once more, as we pause again to face the Character in the mirror.