Last weekend we
celebrated Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Mike and I spent
some time outdoors in the chapel of nature and many more hours watching an
inspirational service streamed live online from Central Synagogue in New York City. Last
night I participated in an equally inspirational discussion of Active
Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy. The two have
several threads in common.
Yom Kippur is a fast day. People sometimes
mistakenly think that the act of fasting is, itself, a type of penance, the way
we purge our souls of accumulated sin. Not true. A one day fast is a short-hand
way to experience suffering, which reminds us people are always suffering, even
when we are not. Active Hope asks us to “honor our pain
for the world,” rather than turning away from the mess we’re in because it is
too painful or we don’t know how or feel powerless to make a difference.
The Yom Kippur service
calls on us to recount and ask forgiveness for the ways we personally caused
suffering in the past year—through our decisions, thoughts, words, actions, and
omissions—rather than thinking we can hide these sins from ourselves, others,
and, most importantly, from G-d. The authors of Active Hope likewise ask us to “acknowledge that our times
confront us with realities that are painful to face, difficult to take in, and
confusing to live with.” In both cases, we begin our quest for something better,
something more life sustaining, by being honest about the error of our ways.
We gain individual
strength to make things right by participating as a
community in the Yom Kippur service, which emphasizes that the spiritual purpose of life according to
Judaism is tikkun olam, meaning “to
repair (or heal) the world.” This suggests all people have a
shared responsibility to heal, repair, and transform the world—beginning
with ourselves, but not all by ourselves.
Similarly,
Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone encourage us to “draw on a sense of fellowship,
belonging, and connection…as if we are remembering our root system. This is a
power-with (rather than a power over)…that we can draw on, that acts through
us.” Both sources tell me now is a time to realize the importance of our
connection with the Earth and all life on it and to feel gratitude as well for
the unknowable forces that propel life. Now is the time to be willing “to find
and play our part,” to ask ourselves, “Does the way I live my life support the
changes I want to bring about?” And to build our relationships with like-minded people.
Finally, Yom
Kippur is an opportunity for redemption, to begin anew inside the Gates of
Heaven. Having humbly purified ourselves, we have drawn closer to the essence
of Spirit, we have made at–one-ment with a merciful G-d and set our intention
to faithfully practice tikkun olam in the days to come. Macy and Johnstone put it this way, “In the
model of co-intelligence, we’re never alone in (our) endeavors. A larger story
is taking place, and we’ve just chosen, or been chosen, to play a particular
role in it.”
Hope
Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope-not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of self-righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (our people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of "Everything is gonna be all right," but a very different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.
Excerpt from an article written by Victoria Safford which appeared in the September 20, 2004 edition of The Nation. Adapted from The Impossible Will Take A Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books)
