Return to Love

We’re past the midpoint of the Hebrew month of Elul which precedes the “high holidays” of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. This month also included an almost full eclipse of the full moon, so it was particularly juicy.

In this month we do the work of return. The Hebrew word for this is teshuva. People often think of this time as a time of atonement (many spiritual types like to say at-one-ment), where we review what we've done over the last year and make amends for things we've done wrong. We sometimes call this review soul accounting or cheshbon hanefesh in Hebrew. We apologize and we forgive. We do that so we can heal ruptures in relationships and improve where we've missed the mark. One Hebrew word for sin is chet, which is an archery term meaning missing the target.

The Hebrew calendar is a solar/lunar calendar. The months are lunar months, but periodically a “leap” month is thrown in to make sure that the holidays remain in the same season. Although their exact dates might move around in the solar calendar, they always occur in the same time of the solar year. For example, the upcoming holidays are always in the fall. This means the holidays are connected to the seasons and time of year in their feel and intentions, and there’s a flow to the holidays. As the days shorten, and we prepare for going inward during winter, this is a ripe time for this inner examination.

During this introspective process it's important to be honest with ourselves and take it seriously, but atonement, in the way that it’s often conceived of or pursued, can be self-judging or self-flagellating. It can take on the air of “Oy! I’ve done so much wrong. I’m a piece of crap.” Sure we want to improve ourselves, but that doesn’t sound appealing.

Teshuva literally means return, return to our higher, best and Divine selves and return to Spirit. In Jewish mysticism, Elul is the time of great closeness to the Divine, the Beloved. Our traditions says that the Hebrew spelling of Elul is an acronym of the line from the Song of Songs: Ani l’dodi v’dodi li (I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine).

So the teshuvah process during this month should be immersed in love. What if, instead of beating ourselves up, we entered into this process as a gift for ourselves? Many people talk about how to do teshuva. Rabbi Alan Lew, of blessed memory, talks about prayer, mediation, mindfulness, and ultimately a broken heart, but to quote Roberta Flack (or the Black Eyed Peas), where is the love? How would it be different to do this review all in love for oursleves and, yes, in joy? Otherwise we beating ourselves up. It’s a toil, a slog.

This time of year is an opportunity to connect that which is best in ourselves, and our tradition teaches that our soul is infused with Divine breath so in its essence is whole. This time of teshuva is an opportunity to connect to that wholeness. That is a great gift of awareness.

What is we entered into our atonement and soul-accounting with love and joy?