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The other day I opened the red door of my little study and felt subtle but unmistakable cool notes of fall already in the air, different from the even-chillier notes of mid-summer fog. And sure enough, the moon is already waning towards the new crescent of Elul, which we will see for the first time on Saturday night, August 30. The new year 5769 is already starting to blow our direction.
At our women's retreat this past weekend, I read the Talmudic passage (Baba Bathra 121a) which quotes R. Shimon ben Gamliel saying, "Israel had no other festive days like the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur…" I heard a lot of chuckles at the ridiculous idea of Yom Kippur as a festive day. A festive day of not eating, praying all day, beating your breast over and over about all your sins of the past year? Yes, Margaret, very festive… But many of you know that I'm right with R. Shimon in looking forward to Yom Kippur all year long -- it is indeed the happiest day of my year. Because on Yom Kippur we are light and clear like angels. We ascend to the Holy of Holies, part the curtain and enter the Divine Presence. You know all this…
It all begins with the delicious and terrible month of Elul (which this year coincides almost exactly with the month of September.) Elul is our month for life-repair. Elul invites us to look over our life, to notice its pleasures and rewards, to notice its ruptures, its thin spots, its places of unrealized potential.
Some years ago now I ran into the ancient system (re-popularized in our day) of personality analysis called the enneagram, and I made a huge discovery. I'm by no means any expert at all -- but here's what I learned: not all people are the same! The enneagram describes nine basic kinds of personalities, then many variants. I was reading about the very first typology -- the kind of person who is constantly asking, "What do I have to do in this situation to be right? What do I have to change, what do I have to fix, so that no one will think I'm wrong???" And I thought, "Well, doesn't everybody think this way?"
Enough about me -- I don't want to be egotistical, of course! That wouldn't be right. The Elul process, at least as I've always approached it, is just made for people who want to be right all the time. For many years I've written about my slightly-obsessive practice of making a timeline of my past year, marking it with a highlighter -- coloring in events, experiences and relationships that I feel bad about. Then I set about trying to figure out how I might begin to repair the various places where I was wrong and did wrong.
I can hardly wait to do my timeline practice again this year. I love this exercise, even though -- or probably because -- it puts me face-to-face with my multitudes of rough edges, failings, and unattractive traits. Maybe just because I so want to be impeccable, I always long to clean up the bumpy places once and for all. In fact, maybe I shouldn't be so obsessive, anxious and self-involved. Maybe that itself is a personality flaw to add to the list. Maybe I should work on that one a bit…
What would it be like, I wonder, to approach the work of heshbon ha-nefesh, 'taking account of the soul,' in a spirit of kindness? Would I be able to get into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur if I scrubbed a little more gently during Elul? Are there some questions I could ask, as I examine my life, besides 'Where did you fail?' A couple of years ago I started using two highlighter pens on my timeline. I started marking the events I feel good about, the moments I am proud of. But I always feel a little sheepish even as I do so. And I never quite know what to do with that information. So what if I was, for a moment, friendly, generous or helpful? The real issue is all those times I didn't show up, that I was tight or mean or despondent, that I didn't bring my best self to what was happening, the times I got irritated, gave up, shirked…
It makes me shudder to even think this: but what if I let go of the hard moral categories altogether for at least as long as it takes me to make my little timeline? What if, for example, I were to look at myself as a fish in the water, a plant in the forest, a strand in the web -- simply a being, a soul, a heart, a body, breathing in and out, giving and taking. What if I took account of my life by looking at the universe in which I am honored to live for a moment? What if I were to look at myself with at least as much mercy as I look at the moth flapping on the other side of the window here right now as I write, struggling towards the light bulb, impeded by glass it can't even see?
What if I were to ask myself as part of my accounting: who and what do I love the most in this beautiful world? Where and how am I learning these days? What are my newest little green shoots of growth? What are my oldest, deepest sources of sustenance? What wants to be created through me? What is ready to be laid down?
These questions sound interesting to me (and I do love interesting questions) -- but of course the old bronco is bucking inside me even as I write: what about all those people you've failed this past year? What about the ones you've insulted and hurt? You should be busy apologizing for it all, mending your ways. How can you waste time thinking about fishes and shoots and webs when you should really be accounting for yourself?
I don't know the answer. But it's not even Elul yet. I just looked up from my computer screen, out towards the window in front of me and the night sky outside. Now I see six moths fluttering busily where before there was just one -- it looks to me like they are anxious, even desperate, flapping against the glass. I don't even know which one I was looking at before. Now one of them is still. Perhaps it has died in the last minute or two. Now one has flown away. Now the remaining moths cross each other's paths, cluster together, fan out. One walks more slowly for a moment. One methodically makes its way upward, stopping and starting, never leaving the surface of the glass. I am transfixed by the drama in front of me. How could one possibly take account of such amazing and intricate activity? Who am I to judge any of it? Happy, festive Elul, my dear community.
- Rabbi Margaret Holub
© 2008 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 08/27/2008 (rge)