Rosh Hashana

My heart is beating fast.  

Everything is perfect actually.

Monday is the first day of Rosh Hashana.  The time leading up to the holiday, which is called Elul, is the time of repentance in preparation of the holiest time of the year.  Elul is seen as a time to search one’s heart and draw close to God in preparation for the Day of Judgment and the Day of Atonement.  It is a time to begin a process of granting and asking for forgiveness.  A time to work out problems, let go of grudges, a time to put energy toward working out issues you have with others.  It’s a ripe time of preparation and intention.

Monday is the first day of Rosh Hashana and I will be having a cervical spinal fusion.  Two discs which are at the point of crumbling will be removed.  The gap will be filled with pre-made sizer bones and secured with titanium.  

Monday is Rosh Hashana.

I will be opened up on the same day that Torah is opened.  

I bow to all that has come before this day.  Every relationship I have cherished.  Every relationship I have lost.  Every heart that I have hurt.  Everything that has been broken.  Everything I have pieced back together.

I regret every part I played in creating a misunderstanding.  In creating mistrust.  In creating fear.  I regret everything that was tossed away and hardened or broken or changed irrevocably.  

I hold and cherish every heart I have loved and awakened and inspired and helped catapult forward.  I cherish every life I have ushered forth into another life.  

As all who gather together on Rosh Hashana, I bless them.  I bless their hearts.  Their frailties.  Their limitations.  Their hurts.  Their joys.  Their endowments.  The losses and challenges they’ve endured.  I hold their hearts in mine.  That they may each find their way.  I pour love into the places that need it most.  I keep pouring love.  

I thank everyone, near or far, here and gone, who has ever poured love in my direction, if even for an instant.  It has changed the fabric of who I am.  I have been thrown into the sea many times but came swimming back to shore every time with something new to say, to question, and to offer. 

As a young child I was daring and free and went at things with a ferocity that may have looked overly risky to an outsider.  I had a few serious accidents as a result.  One very significant one when I was six which rendered me unconscious for several days.  

Thirty-eight years later, within the span of 2.5 years, I will have had 4 major orthopedic surgeries.  Who knows why.  A lot has happened in the span of those thirty-eight years.  Is it congenital?  (The hips supposedly were.)  Is it emotional?  Is it psychological?  Is it karmic?  Who knows.  But here I am.  And this is what there is to tend to now.  

I am not broken.  I am changing.  I am listening.  Something else has been called for here.  

I have learned many things.

If you are not listening to your body, then what are you doing?

If you are not listening to your heart, then who’s life are you living?

Love the people you love well.  

If you really want to love a person, be sure to learn how they want and need to be loved.

Things are not always what they seem.  

When someone looks well, that may not be the whole story.  

Ask a person how their heart is. 

If you don’t know how your mind works, you have no defenses against it.

Always tend to your inner landscape no matter what.

Monday is Rosh Hashana.

It reminds me to take nothing for granted.  We never know what lies before us.  

May we each be able to identify the blessings we actually possess.  

Whether you are of my tribe or not, whether you will be ushering in the new year or not, alone or with others, may you bear in mind that every day is a day worth truly and entirely “waking up” to.  

“There’s Only Now

There’s Only Here

Give Into Love

Or Live in Fear

No Other Path

No Other Way

No Day But Today.”

(from “Rent” lyric by Jonathan Larson)

L’Shana Tova.  
I wish you all a healthy new year.  

9.15.12

Jill Bacharach