{"id":1762,"date":"2006-09-26T11:27:08","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T11:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/26\/repentance_the_\/"},"modified":"2006-09-26T11:27:08","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T11:27:08","slug":"repentance_the_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/26\/repentance_the_\/","title":{"rendered":"Repentance, the New Year and Friends of Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.  <\/span><\/p>\n

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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 other – but here are some of the 12 Steps from AA<\/a> – they are remarkably similar to redemption within faith:<\/span><\/p>\n

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4.   Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

5.   Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. <\/span><\/p>\n

6.   Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

7.   Humbly <\/span><\/a>asked Him to remove our shortcomings. <\/span><\/p>\n

8.   Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. <\/span><\/p>\n

9.   Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. <\/span><\/p>\n

10.  Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. <\/span><\/p>\n

11.  Sought through prayer and meditation <\/span><\/a> to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him<\/em>, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. <\/span><\/p>\n

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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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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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 … Continue reading Repentance, the New Year and Friends of Bill<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,722,98],"tags":[2105,2104,222,219,114,2103,221,2106,1185],"class_list":["post-1762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-food-and-drink","category-religion","tag-aa","tag-confession","tag-faith","tag-judaism","tag-new-year","tag-penance","tag-religion-2","tag-twelve-steps","tag-yom-kippur"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-sq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}