Many of us are aware that yesterday marked the conclusion of the High Holidays in the Jewish tradition. Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Days of Awe, is the beginning of the Ten Days of Repentance.
The term ‘Rosh Hashanah’ literally means “Head of the Year” with the actions of people on that day setting the tone for the rest of the year. One’s deeds since last year’s holiday are remembered, with an honest accounting of transgressions since then.
During this holy period he Jewish faithful pray earnestly for the strength and wisdom to do better in the new year.
The Ten Days of Remembrance and Repentance then culminates with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which was yesterday.
Each year these holidays arrive and are celebrated, just as Christmas, and twelve days later the Epiphany, are celebrated in the Christian tradition.
Except this year these days are hardly ‘business as usual’ in Israel, in Gaza, for the Jewish people there and around the world.
As we all know, last year on Oct. 7th, a horrific attack was made on Israel, and the brutal conflict between them and their adversaries has only intensified in the ensuing 372 days.
Today we gather not to make a political commentary, not to take sides.
Today we gather to grieve the monumental loss of life, of grace that has befallen people on all sides.
We receive with gratitude the focus on atonement that our Jewish brethren offer, as we know that growth is fostered through accountability, and genuine transparency with self, with God.
And yet, as is most often the case in wartime, as we’ve looked on all these months, a spirit of atonement is sometimes difficult to find.
During this sacred time of gathering, we don’t come with the imperative of judgement. Again, political, and even religious, alliance isn’t our aim.
Our hearts this morning come to grieve, to feel the devastating loss and ensuing sorrow that has plagued not only those people and their loved ones, but all of us, as children of the Universe.
We grieve the abandonment of peace that has been so overt on the world stage for over a year. And simultaneously, we grieve our own personal abandonments that have rendered us less peaceful on the intimate stage known as our souls.
As people of faith, we uphold the idea of atonement because of its redemptive power.
Like those of Jewish faith, our focus on atonement isn’t so much about another individual’s sacrifice atoning for our sins.
Instead it is for us to take stock of our lives, our hearts, our souls, to assess where we’ve strayed from that which we are called… that which we know to be the ways of love.
Some might say, “I come to church to be uplifted.”
Sometimes church is a place to bring our brokenness, to acknowledge the brokenness … of our world, of our hearts.
Sometimes it’s a place to bring our grief, knowing that healing will eventually come, but for now sitting with the heartache, joining in solemn solidarity.
We will pause to hear a poem that speaks of hope despite grief and brokenness.
It’s entitled Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski.
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships,
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world and the gray feathers a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
The poem speaks to us about the importance of gratitude as a way to cope with intense suffering. It encourages us to name moments of joy, even in the midst of challenging times, to stay present and never overlook the building of community.
Building community seems like a bewilderment these days when we think about what’s happening in Gaza and the Middle East.
While the terrors of warfare would lead one to surmise differently, that fact is we, them, we all are so fragile. Every single one of us.
Part of this fragility is that all can change for anyone in a moment… just around the corner of any particular day. Just ask the folks in North Carolina and Florida.
Today we stretch in order to recognize the delicate nature of the human condition.
This underlies the importance of Yom Kippur, a time of atonement. You’ll notice in the bulletin that the service today was entitled Remembrance and At-one-ment.
It is no frivolous play on words to call it a time of at-one-ment. In this season of turning – a time of autumn’s changing colors as well our desire for a changing of hearts –
a spiritual response is to turn toward our understanding of commonality, a time for a profound understanding of our shared fragility, instead of division -often deadly – due to our political or religious differences.
Any safety felt in power (military or monetary) is fleeting.
While the seemingly harsh reality is that no one is exempt, there is silver lining. There is beauty in that, Jew or Muslim, Hindu or Christian, we are all inherently worthy with great potential toward the good.
These universal aspects of our humanity bring us to that play on words… at-one-ment and unity, the antithesis of fear and war and violence.
Despite the seemingly unending realities of adversity, we are called to understand what oneness means in this mutilated world.
At-one-ment, fashioned and fostered by atonement, begins with humility.
This mutilated, beleaguered world is asking us, begging us, to, with humble eyes, see the entirety of the world with the eyes of compassionate wisdom.
I need not tell you that this is not an easy path. Especially when it appears that daily there is more ammunition of adversity.
Nonetheless, humility holds itself before us, because it knows of our beautiful human fragility.
In this time of turning, in the beauty of autumn, in this time of potential at-one-ment, may we have the courage and wisdom to work toward world unity.
May we step toward that by remembering.
May we work toward unity by remembering those lost to violence.
May we work by remembering our own contributions to dis-unity.
Please now join me in a prayer by Alison Pepper:
Lord of my darkest place:
Let in your light.
Lord of my greatest fear:
Let in your peace.
Lord of my most bitter shame:
Let in your word of grace.
Lord of my oldest grudge:
Let in your forgiveness.
Lord of my deepest anger:
Let it out.
Lord of my loneliest moment:
Let in your presence.
Lord of my truest self — my all:
Let in your wholeness.
God’s wholeness – which is our wholeness, our at-one-ment with God and ourselves and each other -comes with healing.
You recall being given a pencil and a slip of paper when you arrived.
I invite you now to take out the paper and to write down your own atonement, what you wish to “turn” in your own life, to let go of.
Perhaps someone comes to your mind and you feel anger. Write their name on the paper so you can let go of the anger you hold against him or her. Or perhaps you realize you must forgive someone.
Maybe you have deceived someone and you could make a confession to release this burden. Perhaps it’s a habit that you’d like to be free of.
Whatever your atonement, in order to foster at-one-ment, write it down.
Whenever you’re done you may bring your slip to the bowl on the center table.
While you’re up at the table, you are also invited to light a candle to remember the deceased and the suffering.
At our Women’s Retreat yesterday we spoke of the importance of stillness and deep listening.
In that spirit, while we take time to consider and write our turning points, and then as we individually come up to the table as we are ready,
it will be a time of stillness and reflection, and remembering.
I share with you now the untitled words of poet Gregory Orr:
Not the loss alone, but what comes after.
If it ended completely at loss, the rest wouldn’t matter.
But you go on.. and the world also.
And words, words in a poem or song:
Aren’t they a stream on which your feelings float?
Aren’t they also the banks of that stream
And you yourself the flowing?
May we go on, acknowledging the loss, knowing too that we, they, the world will go on, all flowing in the currents of life.
The rivers with our currents are here, with our own murky waters.
Their rivers are there, with their troubled waters.
And yet, we all – the flowing – will go on.
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