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| Cotton Harvest, by Kimberly Vardeman, via Wikimedia Commons |
[First published in the October edition of the Hebrew Union Congregation Temple Topics (our monthly newsletter): seasonal images, a favorite poem, repairing the world with a little self-love.]
It is so unusual to find ourselves at the beginning of
October and already the whole cycle of fall holidays behind us—not only Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but Sukkot and Simchat Torah as well. It’s all gone by so quickly, I can’t help the feeling
that I’m still processing all the ideas and spiritual work of the season.
Or perhaps this is no different than any year—the High Holy
Days are supposed to inspire us to carry these elevated patterns of thought and
action into all the days and months that follow, as best we can. When “the
gates close” on another Yom Kippur, we remember, in words found elsewhere in
our liturgy: the gates of repentance are never closed. Not only may we continue
the next morning in our quest to know ourselves better, to turn a better aspect
of ourselves toward the world; we must. The next morning, and every morning
after that.
Yet, so often, we fail. We forget. We grow complacent.
That’s why we need Yom Kippur, the great Day of Atonement, though God and the
universe stand open to our efforts at repentance and repair in every moment.
Perhaps after so many years of associating the onset of the
holidays with the cotton harvest, the snowy white softness spilling over the
edges of everything, lining the roads, collecting in corners of buildings, even
insinuating its way indoors, stowing away on the soles of our shoes—we can’t
help now but take note of our own souls, straying already from our Holy Days’
intentions, like so many scraps of cotton fiber caught on the breeze.
Perhaps we should collect a few scraps of cotton this year,
keep them by us as a reminder, like the notes we are supposed to carry always in
our two pockets: “I am but dust and ashes” at one hand, and “The world was
created for my sake” on the other.
The cotton does this for us, like a song from the earth.
I offer you here another song, a poem, to carry you through
the end of this year’s harvest and beyond:
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
by Derek Walcott
*****
The seeds of goodness you were born with are still there. Remove
the hard shell you have allowed life’s hardships to deposit upon you. Search
out what’s beneath. “Take down the love letters,” and read them again.
Keep at it.
Dig deep.
Find that lovely, true self; “peel your own image from the
mirror” of your true soul, and hold it fast. It is you.
Fall in love with yourself again, as Mr. Walcott suggests. Now
allow that love and compassion to overflow the banks of yourself, to embrace
the entire world.
