Elul Day 28

Dear Elul Writers,

It is not just that Rosh Hashanah is sometimes called Yom HaZikaron, a Day of Remembrance, that gives us an indication of the connection between the new year and our relationship to memory. How could we mark a passing year without engaging in some amount of looking back? To consider the passage of time is to reflect on where we are and to recall where we’ve been, sometimes with gratitude for having crossed some challenging pass, other times with a sense of longing for the wholeness we once felt.

You don’t need me to tell you about the potential danger of having too deep a yearning for the way things used to be– the ways that we, as individuals, used to be. A desire to return to some glorified past is at best misguided, at worst it can prove catastrophic. We know this, and still we feel the pull of nostalgia. 

The poet, Diane Seuss, in her poem Weeds offers something of a warning about longing too desperately for the past. 

The danger of memory is going

to it for respite. Respite risks

entrapment. Don’t debauch

yourself by living

in some former version of yourself

that was more or less naked. Maybe

it felt better then, but you were

not better. You were smaller, as the rain

gauge must fill to the brim

with its full portion of suffering.

What can memory be in these terrible times?

Only instruction. Not a dwelling.

Or if you must dwell:

The sweet smell of weeds then.

The sweet smell of weeds now.

An endurance. A standoff. A rest.

Prompt

I love how assuredly Seuss asserts that we were not better in the past, that experience has made us fuller. We would be wise to heed the poet’s advice to see the past as an instruction, and not as a dwelling. Today, on this penultimate day of Elul, I encourage you to consider what instruction you would like to take from your past. Without getting entrapped, without dwelling there, how have your life experiences prepared you for this moment?

Take care,

Jordan