After Yom Kippur: Away from the Field and Onto the Road

So already, this past weekend, my husband Scott and I were back at our cabin located just west of Williamstown over the New York state border. Our task was to winterize it, but we had plenty of time for sitting and looking at the field in front of it. Sitting there, I realized how much I love looking at the vegetation in and around the field through the lower leaf-bare branches of the wild apple trees sprinkled at intervals along the path around it.

I didn't always feel this way. I used to ask Scott periodically why those trees didn't slough off those branches that had apparently been rendered fruitless, leafless, and "dead" by the sunlight's inability to penetrate the canopies of leafy, spreading branches above them. But now, I've grown attached to looking through the lacy scrims formed by their bare, tangled branches. Especially in the fall, to see orange, yellow, and red vegetation through their low-slung dark branches is like having a "burning bush" experience.

But the truth is that the Berkshire-Taconic region abounds in burning bushes in autumn--in splashes of intense color announcing themselves on muted hillsides, along trampled footpaths, among branches hung with dry, brown leaves waiting to fall at the wind's next shudder. And this matters because this is a blog post about seeing or hearing--or not--what's there, especially what's probably been there all along--which almost always is more about the person than about the thing they* are perceiving or not perceiving.

Today, two days after the last of the Jewish High Holy Days, I write to say that I had a good Yom Kippur. Historically, Yom Kippur has washed me up baffled on the shore. This year, though,  something clicked. This year, as the holiday concluded, I felt a combination of lightness, seriousness, and renewal that was new to me. I attribute this to four things: written words, read at the field, that finally penetrated my heart and mind, four requests to pray, a COVID-19 silver lining, and a solo trio.

Written Words, Read at the Field, That Finally Penetrated. As those of you who've read my blog before know by now, I've read Rabbi Alan Lew's This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation ** each year for the last few years as I've tried to prepare for the holidays. So why was this the first year the following sentences penetrated my consciousness?

•  "It is still the case that in order for Yom Kippur to effect atonement for us, we have to find a way from unconsciousness to consciousness; we have to become aware of our moral and spiritual condition; we have to become aware that we are not operating in a spiritual vacuum--that there is, in fact, a transcendent consciousness out there watching us with unbearabe compassion as we blunder through the world" (12).
  
• "What our tradition is affirming is that when we reach the point of awareness, everything in time--everything in the  year, everything in our life--conspires to help us. Everything  becomes the instrument of our redemption" (29).
• "The day of Yom Kippur itself atones. The journey through time which surrounds it heals. If you open yourself to them, these Holy Days carry you home" (34).

I think the field is what helped me open myself to the idea of a gentler, warmer God. As my blog post of September 23 explains, as I walked the path around the field seeing the cabin and field anew, recognizing that the path and the field really were one since Scott had carved the path from the field, I began to understand that doing teshuva could just as easily be like walking a gentle, undulating path as struggling to climb a steep, unforgiving trail. To paraphrase the words of the traditional Irish blessing, I could feel the road rising up to meet me as I walked the perimeter of that field again and again.

Over the last seven years, I've been serious about preparing for the Days of Awe, earnest about doing teshuva--often defined as turning toward God, returning to God, or trying to get closer to the divine within and/or beyond oneself. I've read; reflected; identified what aspects of myself I needed to change, what fences I needed to mend, what steps I needed to take to overcome my "old" ways.

I now see that in those years, I was too "good" at holding that mirror up to myself--and too apt to see my reflection through the lens of my own assumptions. From my point of view, for whatever reason, judgment and compassion did not, could not walk hand-in-hand; judgment was, to my mind, at best unfeeling and at worst joyfully punitive. So the notion of a compassionate God wanting me to be my best self but also longing for my return--so much so that if I didn't try to return until the waning hours of Yom Kippur, I would still be joyfully welcomed and forgiven--was something my reading alone couldn't make real for me. 

 

Equally importantly, my tendency to "go it alone spiritually" teamed up with my critical gaze into the mirror to predispose me not to see the people around me who were also doing teshuva. 

 

This year, suddenly--or maybe not so suddenly--the world, even the world of atonement, became a kinder, gentler place. And not just a place inhabited solely by harshly self-scrutinizing me. 

Four Requests to Pray. I've never been much good at praying.*** But even so, four people (who probably didn't know that!) recently asked me to pray for them. One asked for prayers for a child, one for prayers for a sibling, and one for prayers for herself. Another, as you may know from reading my last blog, asked me to offer at the field a prayer that she had composed--and in which she spoke directly to God on behalf of all of us. 

 

Feeling honored and tasked, I knew I had to step up my praying game: if I had anything to do with it, all those asking me to pray for them were going to be inscribed for a good new year, whatever that might mean. I was fortunate that all four asked: they pulled me away from my mirror and set me to walking arm-in-arm with others feeling dread and hope. I worry wordlessly about certain people all the time, but these four people got me to step up and speak to God. I needed to do that.

A COVID-19 Silver Lining. For years, I've gone to synagogue on Yom Kippur, standing amidst the crowded assembly saying multiple times the prayers and confessions specific to the holiday, and sometimes speaking in my own words during the times of private meditation. But this year, the experience was different because, courtesy of the coronavirus, most of my synagogue's congregation was attending services on Zoom while a core group in the synagogue carried out those parts of the service that involved the Torah and the Ark in which its kept. 

In other years, I had understood all of us as atoning separately while we stood together; but this year--perhaps because we were more a prayer diaspora than a physical congregation and because I'd recently read an article about how individuals are held up and supported by the group as they each stand in awe of the power of the day--I was struck by how much we were striving to worship as a group because we could not gather together. 

Yes, there were the funny moments--like when those of us at home stood before the open ark, our webcams reducing us to midriffs and open prayer books. But mostly the experience was tender and earnest. Never before had I been so aware of the drama of the liturgy--the way it's written to pull all of those present into the intense immediacy of the moment--the irony being that so many of us were physically absent this year. As the My Jewish Learning web site explains about the prayer "Hineni"--the word means "Here I am--

"Rather, when the chazzan [either a cantor or another prayer leader, who may not be the rabbi] states 'Hineni,' it is in fact everyone present who are all saying the same thing, despite the prayer’s singular phrasing. We are here. It is we who are impoverished in spirit and deed, and we all share in the fear that our bad choices over the last year might be weighed against us. Nevertheless, we stand humble and ready for the difficult work of teshuvah (repentance) that lies ahead."****

When the prayer leader said, "Here I am," I laughed momentarily and thought, "Yes, there you are." But then I was all in.

 

Other Yom Kippur prayers also bring God and the congregation "before" each other and center on formalized highly dramatic dialogue--and again I felt keenly aware that we were not standing together. In Kol Nidrei, the leader speaks Moses' words that ask God for forgiveness for the gathered and errant Israelites of all generations, and the leader and congregation together speak the words of God: "ADONAI replied, 'I have forgiven, as you have asked (205).'"*****

 

The irony for me: during this good-as-we-could-do virtual collective prayer experience, I felt more part of an atoning congregation than I had during other Yom Kippurs when I had physically stood among other congregants in various synagogues. And at the same time, I suspect all of us Zoom attendees were already pining for next year's holiday when we might again gather together physically in the synagogue. Were it not for COVID-19, I suspect I would not have felt this same sense of urgency and connection--as well as this hopeful anticipation of Yom Kippur 2021. 

 

A Solo Trio. But in truth, redemption, forgiveness, community, compassion, solace, healing, and the power of groups haven't been on my mind only for the last few months. They've  been much on my mind all year because of the intense positive experience I and my fellow singers had last winter and spring of preparing to sing Craig Hella Johnson's Considering Matthew Shepard. Of course, all of us were heartbroken when the coronavirus forced the combined Unicorn Singers and the Broad Cove Chorale to postpone our performances indefinitely. But I also felt that our shared experience of preparing for the performance had fortified and unified us, making it both sadder and easier for us to deal with the disappointment of not being able to perform it. The ideas at the center of that piece stayed with me as the pandemic extended across the months, challenging all of us to stay separate and stand together.

 

It's our nature to move on from life's peaks and valleys until we're reminded of them again--as I was in early September when I became aware of a virtual performance of "All of Us," the next-to-last movement of CMH, sung by members of 45 choirs whose spring CMH performances had also not happened.

 

A solo female trio sings above the chorus in this piece, and I was one of the trio in my choral group's non-performance of this piece. Of course I watched and listened to this massive virtual performance, all the time remembering those words I'd internalized months ago about the power and poignancy of "all of us" asking together how to begin, to forgive, to be forgiven; about the "Love that dwells" and "burns In every human heart." Such words can't sung again and again and again without their becoming part of their singers' hearts. 

 

So how does this "all of us" idea relate to my Yom Kippur? The answer is simple--and big: this was the first Yom Kippur that I didn't ask for my forgiveness and my inscription in the Book of Life--rather, I asked for all of us to be forgiven and inscribed. When I realized I had done that, I felt like I might float!

 

Though Yom Kippur was two weeks ago, it's still much on my mind. In fact, as I'm setting out on the post-high holiday road, I am keeping in mind two pieces of Yom Kippur advice from my rabbi that have given me a way to envision the road ahead and begin to walk down it:

• Talking about the importance of the "discipline of love," Rabbi Daniel Klein asked each of us to hold in our minds for a full minute the image of one person whom we struggled to love; afterwards, he asked us to commit to taking a loving stance toward this person during the upcoming year, during which they would likely continue to aggravate and anger us.
• Talking about the need for each of us to identify some area of our lives that we needed to change, Rabbi Klein advised against our keeping that flaw front and center in our consciousness. Yes, we needed to keep it where we could see it, but we also needed to avoid defining ourselves by it: to focus exclusively on it could lead to self-loathing, which seldom motivates change.
  

On my birthday three days later, at the Governor Oliver Ames Estate in Easton, I spent some time looking at a bridge leading from the estate to an adjacent private property. Edging the road atop it were low brick and granite-capped walls through which the water flowing below could be seen. For me, those parallel walls represented the problem person and  problem area that the rabbi had advised keeping in sight without letting them block my view of the road down which I needed to be heading.

If you look closely, you'll notice there's a house barely visible through the branches of the trees to the right of the bridge. It's a grand house, and there's not a leafless lower branch to be seen on any of trees near it--a very different place than our spot over the New York border. 

 

However and wherever a burning bush burns gold, I'll always love viewing it through some wild apple tree's lattice of lower bare branches. Meanwhile, it may be many months before I see the field again. But the road ahead will lead back there--that I know for sure.

* I am using the pronoun "their" deliberately, in order to be gender-inclusive. So, no, this is not a pronoun number-agreement error on my part.

** Lew, A. (2018). This is real and you are completely unprepared: The Days of Awe as a journey of transformation. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company.

*** I'm coming to a better understanding of why, thanks to a Hebrew College adult education course I'm taking about prayer. Perhaps in a future blog post, I'll explain. 

**** Axelrod, C. M. Hineni: A Prayer for the Ability to Pray. My Jewish Learning. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/hineni-a-prayer-for-the-ability-to-pray/. 

***** Milstein, Irma, and Paul Milstein. Maḥzor Lev Shalem: for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rabbinical Assembly, 2010.

From the Field: When A Toe In Is All In

So already, earlier this summer, my husband Scott finally did what he'd been thinking about doing for years: extended the path that ran along one side of the field directly in front of our cabin so that it now rings the entire field. 

I was used to looking at the field from the vantage point of our cabin, and from that original stretch of path that gave us easy access to the brook that flows through our property to the Little Hoosick River. But this lengthened, circling path immediately offered "new" ways of seeing the the cabin and the field and understanding both their relationship to each other, and our relationship to the two of them. 

Confronted with these new perspectives on the beloved familiar, I felt like something important--a provocation rather than a confirmation--was being presented to me. So borrowing my poem and title form from Wallace Stevens--and keeping in mind something I'd once heard Jorie Graham say about writing poems to arrive at answers to persistent questions or to address nagging problems of understanding--I wrote a poem called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Field" and posted it on this blog.

Frankly, I've been "in dialogue" with this field since I got into the habit a few years ago of preparing for the Jewish High Holy Days. Before that, I simply loved it as a field, enjoyed looking at it, especially in the month of August when the goldenrod blazed in it and the late afternoon shadows at its perimeter were dark almost to the point of blackness. 

But a popular Jewish metaphor for God's nearness and accessibility during the month prior to the Days of Awe made, and continues to make, the field more than just a beautiful, peaceful, natural place for me. According to tradition, during the preparatory month of Elul, God is like a king who, anxious to greet his subjects, has descended from his palace into the adjacent field in order to meet them, to hear how they are, what they need, and what they want. Therefore, Jews are encouraged to go into the field, and to take advantage of His even more-than-usual receptivity to their wishes, needs, and news.

On some level, I probably should have rejected this particular metaphor straight out: it always feels too patriarchal, too monarchic for a 21st-century American woman such as me. But I've hesitated to reject it because that field in front of our cabin really does feel like a repository of spirit and holiness to me. And so the poem I wrote included not just the field and the cabin--referred to as "the house" so it could stand for any place one might dwell in or near nature and spirit--but also the King.

Since I shared my poem, first with the No Name Poets, my poetry writing group, and then in revised form on my blog, I've received a number of heartfelt responses that have challenged me both spiritually and artistically. Hence this blog now, and probably a further revision of this poem in the future.

When one generous respondent said she wished the poem's speaker would walk into the field and ask for something, perhaps even a hug, I explained that she had identified my spiritual problem: annually, I have a really hard time walking into that field, despite the possibility of a fulfilling encounter with God. Recently, I had hoped that by circling the field time and again on the path carved out of it, by sitting on chairs set along the new parts of the path, by taking photographs of the field from new vantage points, even by writing a poem about all the changes and my associated observations, I might get myself into the field. 

 

But I already knew that wasn't happening, even though my relationship to the field was changing.

And then I had a request that, I think, pushed me into the field, though I didn't know it at the time. Scott and I had been planning all along to visit our cabin the second weekend of September--which turned out to be just after I'd published my poem online, and just after Pat Adams, one of the No-Name Poets, had asked me if she could share my poem with her husband and sister. I said yes immediately, pleased that she wanted to share it with them.

Very soon thereafter, Pat contacted me with a further request: she'd written a poem-prayer that she wanted me to read at the field in order to up the chances of God's hearing it. With her permission, I share "Note to the King as He walks the field during Elul":

God
 
we can't hear You
All that we get is static
The chaos is way to loud
 
Would You please, please
raise Your Arm, flag us down?
those of us who crave You
we can link together
 
our hands, our arms
be wire Your voice can travel through
be rope You can rein us in
with Your strength
 
we can be love
all embracing in You
becoming the one perfect body
You meant us to be
 
Is that still true, do You?
What... I can't hear You
 
God?

The first night we were at the cabin, I read the poem and Scott listened; the second night, Scott read it and I listened. I loved reading and hearing the poem while sitting in front of the house. Having always had trouble speaking to God directly in my own voice, I was particularly grateful that I could read Pat's love-, hope-, doubt-suffused poem-letter that not only addressed God directly, but asked Him to speak up and make Himself heard at the end. Pat really wanted a response, for everyone's sake, and she was doing whatever she could to get one. I felt both Pat's courage and her concern about the present moment enter me.

Pat wrote to me a few days later, wanting to know if I'd had any sense of the prayer's having elicited a response--had I felt a "nudge," she wanted to know. She also shared that for her--Pat's observantly Catholic--"just knowing that Elul exists as an opportunity to communicate so closely with God gave me an indescribable sensation...peace? joy? awe? expectation? hope? wonder?  Maybe wonder, maybe more.  I am not sure." Funny Pat should mention wonder: Abraham Joshua Heschel, in describing the spiritual problem of "civilization," the prevalent distance between humans and the divine, said, "'What we lack is not a will to believe, but a will to wonder'" (This, 163).**

I couldn't report that I'd felt a nudge. But I could report some selfish good news: I now felt like I had at least stuck my toe into the field. I was speaking to God in the field, though I was using Pat's words, her gift to me, to do so--and though I allegedly was doing Pat the favor of reading them.

Then she said something that made me feel so much less alone: "I am soooo glad . . . that it helped you as well on the path. I feel sometimes if I am too honest it will be offensive to God, but God knows what God knows, like the path knows, the house . . .." Like Pat, I've often feared God wouldn't appreciate doubting, negative candor.  

I've often expected God to turn away from me disapprovingly. After all, Jews are held to certain standards, bidden to carry out mitzvot, expected to be our best selves. Hence the preponderance of articles we've been reading this week about the importance of remembering Ruth Bader Ginsberg as an exemplar of Jewish righteousness--and of following her example in terms of working toward a just, peaceful world.

Then there's the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. While the "Une Tane Tokef" prayer heartens and consoles us by reminding us that "'Teshuvah and Prayer and Righteous Acts transform the severity . . . of [God's] decree,'" it still lays out graphically the harsh destinies and decrees that God might assign to us for the following year (This, 114). Given the severity of those decrees, the pain and sorrow they potentially promise, it's not easy to believe in our own power to mitigate them.

But that's why, at least for me, Rabbi Alan Lew's This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, is so important: it makes teshuvah possible--challenging, yes, but also comforting, inspiring, rewarding. Though teshuvah is defined variously as repentance, as atonement, as turning, or as returning to God, Lew's book presents it as an ongoing process of transformation that brings us closer to--leads us home to--both God and our true selves (This, 154). Our three-fold challenge is, first, to see ourselves as clearly as we can; then, to forgive ourselves for our shortcomings and harmful behaviors; and then, to transform those aspects of ourselves that most need changing.

For me, there's one additional personal challenge, since according to Lew, we need God to help us forgive ourselves: to get myself to enter the field to approach the King:

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

"Self-forgiveness is the essential act of the High Holiday season. . . . That's why we need God. We can forgive others on our own. But we turn to God, . . ., because we cannot forgive ourselves.  . . [It] is difficult largely because we hold ourselves to such high standards, . . .." (This, 126-7).

 

 

Lew goes on to clarify the nature of authentic self-forgiveness, which involves recognizing the positive, transformational power of our flaws--in part because they have something of God in them: "Even the behavior we took to be wrongful, we now realize, has a holy spark at its center waiting to be released. This is the essence of self-forgiveness" (This, 126-7).

I have three reactions to Lew's words. First, self-forgiveness is hard: I know this personally. Second, this holy spark idea could easily be abused outside of this spiritual context. Third, experiencing a divine spark within, trusting in its existence, can be as hard or harder than forgiving oneself, at least in my experience.

Still, I see important, liberating truth here, too, and I'm grateful to both Alan Lew and Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest who wrote Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, for their discussions of our shadow selves, those parts of ourselves we're not at all proud of--but that feel so natural and authentic.

According to Rohr, "One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with with their own struggles and failings" (Falling, 136).*** Lew explains the same necessary phenomenon, and even takes it a step further, by talking about Jacob's transformation from Jacob to Israel in Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life:

"Apparition (#2)" by Scott Ketcham*****

"The angel of God tells Jacob that the very thing he can't stand about himself . . . is in fact his divine name. Yisrael [often translated as 'who struggles with God']--he continually struggles with God and with man, rails against his lot in life, tries to take that which is not his. Yet here we learn that he is this way because this is how God made him. This is his uniqueness, the source of his power in the world, . . ..

"This, . . ., is the most significant moment of personal transformation we ever reach in our lives--the moment when we realize . . . that the thing about ourselves we have been avoiding, the thing we hate to see, is the very thing that . . . gives us our unique power as human beings" (Be Still, 30-31).****

In both Lew's and Rohr's books, our shadow selves are assets--potentially important natural aspects of our best selves--though they can burden and confuse us at times. We don't need to tame or eliminate them before walking into the field to meet the King.

Unbelievable, I thought when I first contemplated that idea. Lew was saying those non-conforming parts of myself needed no apology, no explanation, no eradication. Also that I didn't need to do anything to improve myself and my chances--I, who was so used to hearing what else I could be doing to be "better." In fact, Lew said I really should do nothing and see what happens. I liked Lew's general advice to stop trying to fix things, to stop striving, rushing, doing anything because "we get back to heaven by doing nothing" (This, 121).

What a relief! So I began the next stage of teshuvah--it was now the week before Rosh Hashanah--by "doing nothing." I cooked a lot in preparation for the Friday night holiday, visited my parents, took a friend to an inconveniently located doctor's appointment, walked but only when I felt like it, recorded my parts for two virtual choir videos for my singing groups' mid-October online musical soiree--but I didn't try to improve myself. When I felt tired, I sat down on my sofa and either read or watched reruns. I didn't think, deliberately.

It felt great. I felt energetic. I felt peaceful. I felt ready for the holiday. And when I heard about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, I felt very sad and worried, but not desperate. Feeling that I needed this holiday, that we all needed to step back and breathe, I deliberately adopted a "wait and see" attitude for the next few days and reminded myself that the sky wasn't falling though the days ahead would be difficult. 

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

Meanwhile, the apples and honey on my dining room table brought to mind the wild apple trees at the end of our field. Given my peacefulness, I guessed I was fully in the field, at least for this one moment, though I could have sworn I'd placed only a toe in it.

The next morning, I went to virtual synagogue on Zoom. And so I end this post with a poem by Denise Levertov published in the margin of my prayer book. I'm sure I read it in other years, but this year it really spoke to me, probably because its "net of threads" image brought to mind the tangle of apple tree branches through which I'm often seeing the field anew from the circling path.

The Thread

Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven't tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.******

I'm going to share this poem with the No Name Poets on Friday morning. I especially hope it speaks to Pat. One good poem deserves another, and hers--the poem itself and the experience of it at the field--so helped my teshuvah journey this year.

* Some previous blog posts about the field: "The King is in the Color Field"and "Field Notes for the Month of Elul."

** Lew, A. (2018). This is real and you are completely unprepared: The Days of Awe as a journey of transformation. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company.

***  Rohr, R. (2011). Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. John Wiley & Sons.

**** Lew, A. (2005). Be still and get going: A Jewish meditation practice for real life. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

***** Apparition (#2) by Scott Ketcham: https://www.scottketcham.com/image/124185289327 

******Levertov, D. (n.d.). The Thread. Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://allpoetry.com/The-Thread

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Field

1.

The field is goldenrod in bloom,

And is every August.

 

 

2.

A path that deer and people walk

Now rings the field,

And always could have.

 

3.

The house commands a view

That stretches to the neighbor’s field,

And claims itself the place

The path departs from and returns.

 

4. 

The path begins with the house,

But the house began with the field.

 

5.

Two chairs on the path,

In shade when the house is in sun,

In sun when the house is in shade,

Within earshot of the rushing brook.

 

6.

One chair on the path

Closer to the mountain

And the wild apple trees,

Hidden except when filled

By someone in a bright-colored shirt.

7.

The chairs offer new views

Of the house and field.

 

8.

The King is in the field.

 

9.

Midfield hum and buzz:

Yellow jackets rush to and from

Their sun-warmed nest

Beneath the goldenrod.

 

10. 

Beyond the field

After moonless midnight,

The neighbor’s dog barks,

And barks again;

The barred owl replies.

 

11.

In the morning,

Deer only in the mind’s eye:

Late June’s giddy fawns

Romping on the just-cleared path,

Mother close behind.

 

12.

Two questions persist:

When is humming silence?

Is silence felt more than heard?

 

13. 

The path knows

What the house knows sometimes:

Everything is the field.