17 Elul 5773: Awaken

I don't think I'm always awake for my own life. I'm way too distracted. At times, my focus is totally inwards, so that I miss much of what goes on around me. At others, I'm all external, which means I skip over the me in those experiences-- how I fit, what I feel, what I bring, and what I take away.

It is not a very present life. It is not a very intentional life. It's a life lived later, or next week, or not at all.

A few months ago, I was at OSRUI for Shabbat Shira-- a retreat that combined song and prayer and community and holiness in a profoundly rich and wondrous handful of days. On Friday morning, for shachrit, we participated in a movable feast-- a service that literally moved us from one place to the next, had us praying and eating and singing that bent the light, so to speak. In each place in the service-- physically, spiritually, mentally, we were asked to notice differently, challenged to engage differently, so that every one of our senses was awake and aware.

It was a sacred, holy thing. I think I caught fire-- or at least my head and my heart did. We walked together to the lake, and I could think-- be aware of, awake for-- how the cold hit my body, how the path lay dappled in gentle light, the sweet scent of a distant fire. I heard the crackle of stiff leaves fighting with the song of birds and tasted the first hint of winter.

While we all stood at the lake, water lapping at the shore and the sun filling a cloudless sky, we prayed, we were awakened to the miracle of a new day. I am infinitely grateful that I am awake and alive and part of the wonders that fill every moment and make every moment holy. 

This is what I wrote that day. This is what I took away:

We walked

From one place to another

In quiet wonder at the rising of the morning.

Light filled us

And color.

Under canopies of gold

Shot through with green

And strong branches

Flecked with a suddenness of blue

Stretching halfway to forever.

Geese and crows

Sang their psalms

To the One

Of Creation and

Becoming

A murmurous mix of

The shuffles of leaves

A muffled crunch

Signaling summer's slow end

Soft-voiced under canopies of gold.

Chill air coiled around my fingers

My bare-skinned fingers

And the rough bark of

Bare trees

Suddenly bared

Gently, sweetly bared

Yet rough

Edged in hardness

And sudden sweet chill.

They began

They ended

Distinct and edged

In beginning to end

What I saw

What I heard

What I felt

On that wondrous

That glorious

That holy walk we took

To greet the rising of the day.

That scent of morning

On that shared path

That leaf-edged path--

The morning scents were

Almost

Were not quite

And in-between.

They urged me on

Brought me here to this edge

Quickening me to this light-filled edge

This beginning

this ending

Of earth and sky

With such fullness

A richness of sound and light and still,

With an ever-present

Becoming.

Amen.

(From my blog, titled Modah Ani, posted October 2012)