Dear Lab/Shul Community,
Like gardeners, and flowers, and migrating birds, we are getting ready for the change of the seasons. Soon, incredibly, it will be fall. Again.
As our Jewish ancestors have done for generations, we are getting ready for another year by focusing on the opportunity to transform who we are and how we may want to live as better versions of ourselves, find our way back to center, and begin again.
I definitely feel like I need this gentle time to refocus and recharge.
The new crescent moon that will shine above this Sunday night welcomes Elul, the final month of the Jewish year. It is the month that invites us in for intimate reflections and conversations, for taking stock of the year, for picking up where we left off, a year ago, with grand intentions.
How did we do? What can we recommit to or investigate again with extra energy? It’s been a tough year with plenty of challenges, as well as a year with moments of good news and reasons to be hopeful. Of all that has been our lot this past year, what do we pick and pack with us as we prepare to take a deep breath and open the door to 5782?
Let’s figure it out, together.
I invite you to join me, along with the Lab/Shul team and friends from all over the world, for a month-long process of preparation for the new year. The year that’s ahead is a special one and we are called to take advantage of the opportunity of release and renewal.
SoulSpa is back!
Beginning this Monday, August 9, as the month of Elul begins, we will gather for Elul SoulSpa, weekly on Mondays and Thursdays, on Zoom, for thirty minutes to sing and be silent, share wisdom and support mourners, stretch our bodies and train our vocal cords to be ready for the Days of Awe. What began as our response to COVID-19 remains our powerful place of presence, a virtual soulfuel station, helping us to be more grounded, connect to our core and to each other.
And then, there’s flowers.
Those of you who know me know that I LOVE flowers. (Fresh ones. Never plastic, thank you very much.)
Today, I’m upstate, visiting friends, picking flowers in a meadow. The flowers that I’m picking today have a special role to play in preparing for the coming year.
The new year 5782 is another year in this ancient cycle of sevens, the Shmita, the Sabbatical Year of Release. We’re invited to imagine ways in which we can let go of our usual habits and attachments, our overworked and often overwhelmed ways of living. We are invited to honor the earth – her cycles of blossoming and lying fallow, and ask ourselves what it would look like for us too to lie fallow, to rest. What if we released some of our convictions and concerns to make room for fresh possibilities, new hopes and directions that may salvage our future on this planet?
I invite you to join me, with my talented friend Jacqueline Nicholls, on a month-long Elul journey – Recede: PrePent 2021 – as we ask these questions of ourselves, and reflect on all we shall let go.
Beginning today, we’ll get fresh flowers each Friday of Elul as a way to prepare for Shabbat, and throughout the weeks, we’ll watch them wilt. Whether you begin your own Friday flower gathering, or draw or photograph flowers, we’ll collectively observe their receding, appreciating the duration of their being as much as their ending. Each day we’ll share our images and words, inspired by each other, on social media and on our web pages so you can comment, share, and post your own flower or reflections.
Our goal is to come upon the threshold of the new year with lighter hearts and slower pace, with a renewed joy in the simple cycles and the gifts of the earth, and eager for a year in which we get to honor the ways we blossom and decline, as an eternal interconnected ecosystem.
So join us, day by day, breath by breath, petal by petal to get ready for a year of release.
Comments/suggestions/wishes for the month ahead? Please write me at: amichai@labshul.org
See you on screens and beyond, all Elul long.
 |
|
Shabbat Shalom & Pre Shana Tova, |
Click here for more in for on our High Holy Days 5782 /2021.
