This is Safat – a mystical city in Israel — with the sun setting on a summer evening. Tonight is Yom Kippur and so I offer this lovely photo along with wishes for a happy and healthy year whether you are Jewish or not.
Last year I wrote about the holiday – I’m repeating it here because it says most of what I feel and believe about this day.
Here goes:
September 26, 2006
If you’re Jewish this is a particularly important time of year. We just
celebrated Rosh Hashanah – the New Year – and now are in the ten days
between the New Year and the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur – the
holiest day — the day of repentance. It’s interesting to have an
opportunity once a year to examine one’s life and seek improvement.
Where I grew up most people were Catholic and so I know a bit about
Confession in those terms, but what we do is a bit different. We must
seek forgiveness from those we have harmed – and take responsibility
for our sins. It is our duty to give extra charity and to fast and to
seek a better self beyond the confession of past transgressions. If
you take it seriously it’s a valuable exercise.
I have been fascinated in my now three year adventure with a more
religious lifestyle – to notice the similarities between Judaism and 12
Step programs. I’m involved with Al-Anon – for people affected by the
alcoholism of others – but here are some of the 12 Steps from AA – they are remarkably similar to redemption within faith:
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
I guess it makes sense – there’s a reason AA works and it’s probably got
a lot to do with the same phenomena that enable us to find true penance
on Yom Kippur or the other rituals of penance in other faiths.
Anyhow, it’s a beautiful fall day, I’m working on my penance and the privilege
of a new year – and wish you all the pleasure of the autumn sunshine
and a peaceful heart.