Seeds of Change

I have to admit that I’ve been feeling low this last week. With all of the wildfires out west and the haze in Boise, I feel sullen and tired. This year has brought so much pain to so many, and sometimes I get stuck in a cycle of disappointment, frustration and anger at what we’ve collectively lost. As the summer smokes to a close, I venture into the garden below a deep red sun to check on the seeds I planted a few weeks ago. I search for the new season, sprouting from the dark earth, another change in a time when nothing remains constant. I search for hope.

This Friday, a new year begins on the Jewish calendar. While I always look forward to the Jewish high holiday season, this year I feel a need for it more than ever. 2020 has been a difficult year on the planet, and while 2021 won’t be here for a few more months, 5780 on the Jewish calendar ends Friday at sundown. That ending gives me so much hope for all that’s to come.

In my culture, Rosh Hashanah (translated as the “Head of the Year”) marks the beginning of the high holiday season. The intention of the season is to celebrate the year to come and acknowledge how we fell short in the year that’s gone. It’s a time to reflect on what we can do better, and a time to plan how to do so.

For me, I feel a pull inward when the morning temperatures are brisk and the daylight wanes. I do my best to acknowledge that pull and explore it in my writing. The changing season feels like such a natural place to stop and reflect, and to chart a new course, to plant new seeds.

Throughout the high holidays, we sing a song called Avinu Malkeinu (click here to listen to a beautiful rendition by Barbara Streisand). It has a chanting quality that always makes me feel sad in the beginning. Each line of the song makes a request of God for the year that’s to come. By the end of the song, though, the congregation acknowledges the impossibility of the requests. Instead of closing with hopelessness, though, the song ends with a final, whispered prayer for charity and kindness.

This week’s blog has a simple purpose. I know most of you don’t celebrate the high holidays, but I hope that all of you view the changing season as a harbinger of hope. I hope that each day you spend tending to your garden or your community, you feel more energy than the day before. If the one constant thing in this world is change, I hope that you will rise to meet it when you’re able, and that when you find yourself feeling low, you’ll take the time to rest and reflect.

Above all, I hope you keep charity and kindness as your intention. Our intentions are one thing we can still control, and they have more power than we know.