I guess it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to hold the immensity of this pandemic and its sufferings and its injustices and its anxieties. And it wasn't enough to be doing that during the most disturbing political era of my life and maybe many of our lives. And it wasn't enough to hold all of that in a time of erupting anger over centuries of relentless racism.
I guess it wasn't enough. So why not 11,000 lightning strikes? Setting off 367 fires? Why wait until what we have come to call Fire Season, as if challenges happen in some orderly fashion, one at a time, like a chart in a history textbook?
Why not? We can take it: this week's new and all-too-familiar flavor of suffering, like ash on the tongue.
I have nothing to say about it. No way to beautify this extreme weather story. No silver lining to offer. Our species long ago stripped the planet of silver linings, using them as shiny decorations on the edifice of unsustainable living.
I can say that we have become adept at caring for each other. A few years ago we pulled together physically to care for each other during what we still, illogically, call The Fire. This year it's different yet again; we can't quite do for each other in the same way, with the epidemic peering over our shoulders. So I feel our hesitancy, our uncertainty about what to do next, other than pack go-bags, look around at our homes, and wonder what it would be like to live without this thing or that thing. Some of us in this room know what it would be like. Most of us do not know.
Still, here we are. Despite smoke and ash and isolation, we have come together in this Zoom Room. We are here finding real refuge and comfort in community, despite being spread out across many miles. Who would have thought we could find so much joy seeing each other on our little screens? We come together here, looking at familiar faces, or what have become familiar faces. Some of us have never even met in the physical world and we already feel like friends. Here we are, gathered to welcome Shabbat – some of us every single week. Every single week welcoming Shabbat! Imagine how your younger self would have laughed at that thought.
Everyone in this room is suffering. Besides the local fear, some folks here have lost people to this epidemic or during this epidemic. All of us have lost some freedom. All of us have lost some of our supply of hope.
And yet here we are, showing up. Receiving each other's light and warmth. Singing together, dancing at home. And praying.
Because it seems that praying is a significant part of what we are doing here. Anyone surprised by that? I mean, I know it's a prayer service. Praying is in fact exactly what we claim to be doing. But I tend to down-play that; prayer sounds so old-fashioned and, well, religious. I like to create ritual that is prayer-informed, or prayer-adjacent. Something that is inward-looking and upward-looking but maybe not so tied to all the words.
But however I conceive it, prayer is a lot of what we are actually doing here. We come together to pray; to storm the gates of heaven and knock down the barricades of our own hearts. To shake loose rain or blessing or protection or health or to draw forth the simple strength to carry on.
There's no better time for a prayer practice than now. And I don't just mean fire season or in the months leading up to the election, although – yes. There's no better time for a prayer practice – for any kind of practice – than in the month of Elul, which began today.
Elul is the month that leads up to Rosh Hashanah, 4 weeks from tonight. Elul is the time for personal reckoning, for seeing ourselves for what and who we are. Looking past our disguises and our habitual stories; seeing ourselves the way God perhaps sees us. Elul is the time for an honest look, a cheshbon hanefesh, a time to account for ourselves.
You might think that that is the work that we are meant to do on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and that is true. But technically, this month, this whole month, is the right time for it. Rosh Hashanah isn't the starting gate; it's the finish line. And the ten days until Yom Kippur? That's your grace period.
Now is the time for taking that honest look.
We are also in a moment of great public reckoning, and we see how painful it can be. But this personal reckoning doesn't need to be. Elul is also known in our tradition as an et ratzon – a time of tenderness; a time of God's openness and desire.
In Elul the Divine leans in toward us. Psalm 27 is our companion for this whole month, an intimate psalm of invitation, in which we say lach amar libi bakshu fanay – "Your voice is in my heart, saying, 'Seek my Presence!'"
In the Jewish imagination, this time of teshuvah, of cheshbon hanefesh, of reckoning, is a gentle and loving time. One could imagine otherwise; that this would be a time of harshness. Because when we take stock of ourselves honestly, we are often drawn to be harsh, to be our worst critics, to reject the parts that pain us or shame us. We declare them unworthy and try to excise them from ourselves as if we were surgeons of the spirit.
But that never quite works. That excising bit.
Instead, in this loving time of et ratzon, this month of God leaning in toward us with desire and invitation, the goal is not excision but transformation. To take that honest look, see what you see, notice what is no longer of use, and transform it. Our biases and grudges and habits come from a very real place, from our deep human needs and desires and insecurities; they are understandable and they are part of us.
The Vitebsker Rebbe teaches that if we come from a Divine Source, then so do these parts of us that get in our way. They come from the same Divine Source as the many qualities that we are prouder of. By seeing the holy root even in those places where we judge ourselves harshly, we begin to transform those parts of ourselves. We don't excise them and dump them. We allow them to become fuel for our holy acts in the world. We let some air, some sunshine, some Divine light in, and we become freer; those things don't control us quite as much anymore. Instead we understand ourselves better, our complexity and our possibility. We become more transparent: clearer vessels of holiness and more finely tuned vehicles of joy and justice.
This is the task of this month, this season of the year, just as it is the task of our world to do a reckoning in this season of our civilization. We are to look at our systems and our selves with greater clarity and honesty. Calling out injustice where we see it – that is the easy part. But also engaging in the difficult and creative and liberatory work of transforming it. Using our imaginations to see a different way that things could be, or many different ways. Transforming the hard stuff of this time into fuel to help us to create a world of greater beauty and justice than we have now.
This is the work of Elul – these 28 days – and the greater Elul that the world is finding itself in. Touching what is in us, and what is around us, and with our touch transforming it to holiness.
Even in times of such pressure as we are in, and maybe especially in times of such pressure – these days of smoke and ash, of pandemic and politics – our touch is invited and powerful. This is a time for prayer and for reckoning, and with those acts, a time to step with joy into the river of transformation.