Kesher Talk

10 Days of Tshuvah countdown - Day 7. Rosh Hashanah has ended. Yom Kippur is only a week away. This is real. And you are completely unprepared.

The time of transformation is upon you. The world is once again cracking through the shell of its egg to be born. The gate between heaven and earth creaks open. The Book of Life and the Book of Death are opened once again, and your name is written in one of them.

But you don't know which one.

The ten days that follow are fraught with meaning and dread. They are days when it is perfectly clear every second that you live in the midst of a chain of ineluctable consequence, that everything you do, every prayer you utter, every intention you form, every act of compassion you perform, ripples out from the center of your being to the end of time. Anger and its terrible cost lie naked before you. Grievance gives way to forgiveness. At the same time, you become aware that you also stand at the end of a long chain of consequences. Many things are beyond your control. They are part of a process that was set in motion long ago. You find the idea of this unbearable.

Read the rest of the excerpt from Rabbi Alan Lew's new book This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared.

posted by Judith @ 9/29/2003 01:27:25 PM