Friday, September 22, 2006

Shana Tova

Tonight is Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year.


Shana Tova to you all!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

On behalf of Protestantism, Happy New Year!

janinsanfran said...

Hello Stephen -- sorry to have disappeared from your blog. I got absurdly busy. And I'd come to the end of what I wanted to contribute to our previous discussion since I wasn't going to go out and actualize anything, so it was a lttle silly for me to keep talking big.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind if I share here something I've been hanging on to to give myself hope for the last dismal week:

The day has come
To take an accounting of my life.

Have I dreamed of late
Of the person I want to be,
Of the changes I would make
In my daily habits,
In the way I am with others,
In the friendship I show companions,
Woman friends, man friends, my partner,
In the regard I show my father and mother,
Who brought me out of childhood?

I have remained enchained too often to less than what I am.
But the day has come to take an accounting of my life.

Have I renewed of late
My vision of the world I want to live in,
Of the changes I would make
In the way my friends are with each other
The way we find out whom we love
The way we grow to educate people
The way in which the many kinds of needy people
Grope their way to justice?

(from The Wings of Awe, A Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, Washington, D.C.)

In time of distress at the injustice around me, I must try to allow renewed vision to come to the surface.