Cosmic Well

Each year on the Jewish calendar, we are encouraged to spend Elul, the final month before the High Holy Days , in a time of reflection, repentance, and return. Especially important is that last one, return, teshuvah, a word that has it’s root in turning, with the idea being to follow a path to our best selves.

Much like the counting of the omer, there is a daily ritual (or two, or three,) to go along with this. And this year I have really been looking forward to one in particular; the recitation of Psalm 27. I work with a few interpretations of this text, depending on how I’m feeling. I’ll share just the first few lines of two below;

First up, from the second edition of the Jewish Study Bible:

The LORD is my light and my help;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life,
whom should I dread?

And from Nan C. Merrill’s Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness

Love is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

Love is the strength of

my life,

Of whom shall I be afraid?

I’ve also been known to switch words around as I please in prayer, so some days I pray to “Lady” or “Hashem” (the Name) or “Shekhinah” instead of “Lord.” I’ll switch in meaningful or relevant Hebrew in mostly English translations. There’s just a magic for me in the sound and feel in the mouth of “Adonai” (Lord) that nothing else can touch.

Last year during Elul I was up very early, when it was still dark outside and most of my household was asleep, and I would play this beautiful rendition of the psalm very quietly in the kitchen while getting breakfast together. This year, I’m reciting Psalm 27 twice a day. Since the Jewish day starts at night, I began with dancing (and singing, more on my surprise I knew the words later) alongside Aly Halpert’s rendition before bed, and I’m repeating that practice nightly. The other I read aloud as close to when I first wake up as I can manage.

Similarly to my post about counting the omer, I’ll be reflecting on what comes to me during this process, only this time I’ll be sharing those reflections week to week instead of when everything’s over. I’m feeling particularly grateful for this practice this year as I am being hit hard with the strangeness of the transitional not-summer-not-yet-fall feel of recent tempuratures where I live. Having something to mark the time between now and the Autumn Equinox is a blessing, a season withing itself just when I need one. And the autumn equinox does, in fact, fall right on Rosh Hashanah this year.

I am always deeply moved by an idea of repentance that while, yes, requiring the deep, stirring, sometimes painful work of reckoning with the worst in ourselves, still is encouraging us to look to our best selves. I’ve begun dipping my toes into Buddhist practices, and one thing that’s struck me has been a concept I see fitting with return – or perhaps in delicious contrast to it;

We are not the person we were a breath ago. Every inhale a new us is born, and every exhale that us dies.

So perhaps Buddhism might say there is no return. But both teshuvah and the Buddhist recognition that no moment, no person, is the same as the last, do seem to agree that change, turning, is inevitable. I mention briefly at the end of my “intro” piece that one of the conceptions of the Divine I feel most moved by is “becoming” – a promise that what is now is not what will always be. Who I am now is not who I always was or will be. Even in the face of great failures where I fall well below the bar I have set for the person I want to be, I can still be better, reclaim my best self, become someone even better.

After all, the Star Wars movie in which Darth Vader comes back to himself as Anakin Skywalker is called Return of the Jedi. It’s no accident that the first book I read on Dharma was about where these principles show up in Star Wars. (Book review/revelations to come!)

Feel free to share in the comments if you have any rituals (spiritual or otherwise) for this time of year. What might it mean for you to return to your best self? Who is your best self?