Standing at the threshold of 5781, feels similar to standing at the threshold of my patients rooms- feeling the anxiety and fear in my chest, along with a deep yearning to connect, to be with, and to experience the sacred.
This year has been one for the books- life as we've known it has been flipped upside down. The fear and anxiety has taken grip of us all, as we peer into the unknown, as we desperately try to hold onto something; anything, that will ground us and connect us. It has been a year of disconnect-- from our friends, our communities, our loved ones. We've been tossed and turned and broken into so many pieces. I can still see the body bags, the un-claimed souls who were gently placed into trucks to be brought elsewhere; souls in transit.
The trauma we've been through is palpable; tangible; permeating our very beings.
There has been anger; pouring into the streets, stemming from centuries of systemic racism and hatred, reaching its boiling point in a society steeped in disconnect--
Where the world has become one big pot of binary thinking- its left or right; you're Democrat or republican, you're for settlements or against, you're religious or you're not-- with not too much room for the nuance and the color in all of.it.
A year where the rage has turned into literal fire. That is now sweeping thru the west.
And all we do is sit and point fingers. And wonder why everyone else isn't behaving..
But 5781 is at the doorstep. We are about to cross over. And in this time of darkness and hiddenness; where essentially we put our masks on for the holiday of purim and never took them off---we ache to really see each other and not just each others eyes--
We remember the threshold. And that in the pain and fear of the unknown, there is also a desire for connection and a potential for healing. Realizing that we're all in this together-and that we need each other for picking up all the broken pieces, to become whole again.
Wishing us all a shana tovah- a year that is blessed with health, with love, deep compassion, a year in which we find ways of connecting deeply with the "other", a year that we find peace in ourselves and in the world at large, a year that knows an end to our suffering and a year in which we can begin to see the glimmers of light thru the brokenness...in our way to becoming whole once again..
שנה טובה ומתוקה-כתיבה וחתימה טובה !
