Elul Day 14

Dear Elul Writers,

Tonight we return to the shofar, to its song and to the teaching of the Shlah Hakadosh. When it comes to human inconsistency and messiness, there is no text that I return to more than Whitman’s Song of Myself. While we don’t need old Walt to tell us that we are a pile of contradictions, there is no denying that he says it quite well.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine

We know about the disparate parts of ourselves. In an essential way we are aware of the tensions that reside within us; our kindness and our apathy, our compassion and our frustration, our intention and our carelessness. 

On Saturday nights, we return to our cycle through the blasts of the shofar. Though we begin with wholeness and end with wholeness, the path of teshuvah / return is meant to reveal our cracks, and ultimately our broken places.

Tekiah-Shevarim-Truah-Tekiah 

Prompt

Focusing on the shofar's three-part call of shevarim, I invite you to spend this fourteenth day of Elul searching out your fault lines and fissures. Where are those places where your personal values rub up against each other? Is there a moment from this last year where these tensions arose? How can recognition of such places of internal friction allow you to continue to grow in a way that feels integrated and supported?

Shavua tov,
Jordan