Each year at CBI, one or more congregants offers the sermon on erev Rosh Hashanah. This year’s sermon was given by Steven Green, a member of our Board and chair of our Spiritual Life committee.
You are the Open Door
That beckons me in;
Peeking around the door frame,
I begin to enter into Your glory.
You move me forward, O Eternal,
to step beyond self-made boundaries:
lift my foot over the threshold
that I might abide in You.
In the house of the eternal,
I found my questions:
Waiting to be posed,
They filled me with wonder.
Sit with me, Eternal Teacher,
encourage my seeking:
as I fill my hours with Your mitzvoth,
so shall I be filled.
Send me through Your door
Stretching up to honor Your Name,
Sharing out this wonder,
Enriching myself in the giving.
— Shabbat Siddur
Sometimes these poems/prayers from our siddur are a bit obtuse. You are the open door? And yet we have an opportunity, yet again, to experience the depth of this. But…how? And what is one to expect?
Fair to say that we are here tonight and will be here tomorrow and on YK and spend a veritable ton of time in shul. We are likely to hear a lot about teshuvah, about turning, we will beat our chests confessing sins that, well, I certainly didn’t commit. I think.
Over the next few days in shul the power of the liturgy, the relentless, the poetic, the melodic, the beautiful, the familiar words enable us to actualize one of those phrases from the piyut I just read, “Send me through Your door”. Propel me. Compel me. Enable me to go through that door.
And what might I find on the other side of that door? Why do I want to go there? Again from the piyyut (poem), “I found my questions: Waiting to be posed, They filled me with wonder.” But how? What does it even mean to go through the door? Talk about esoteric. Ya know when I go to your house, I walk the path, see your front door and knock. You answer and open. Tonight you did the same thing as you came to this building. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur — indeed, each service here in this building — has as its primary goal to open us to a deeper sense of our connection to G!D, the imminent presence and the transcendent power. For way too long I sat in the pews of a synagogue without ever really sensing/feeling/seeing, indeed even believing that it was possible to experience…anything. How did that change? I think it starts with an intention. A desire to more deeply understand. An inchoate sense that I want this, I want what the sages were talking about. I want to have deeper, more profound sense of wonder.
People travel to wonder at the heights of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. – Augustine
So, how do you get to this place of wonder? Sometimes it’s just a matter of a change in perspective. I experienced this last week at Mass MoCA. The Turrell exhibit is fascinating. He works in light. He has flat panels that have a light in it…I guess. The instruction is to sit with each panel for a bit. My intention at that point was to figure this out. How is this a significant piece of art? What is he attempting to do and communicate to me. I wanted to know.
From a distance I saw nothing. Walking a bit closer I noticed the light but still was curious as to why this was a big deal. And then. And then standing in front of the panel, walking around it, turning my head I noticed that there was a light, a colored light and the light was actually 3 dimensional, it came out of the flat panel and formed a pyramid in the air. But it didn’t. Yet it did. His whole fascinating exhibit challenges us in so many ways. When I changed my perspective with deliberate intent I could see and understand his art for the first time.
During this season we have the opportunity to change our perspective as to our lives. To approach our life and this season with a sense of…wonder. Plato pointed out that, the unexamined life is not worth living. This is our chance. This is our opportunity, again, this year, again, this holy-day season, again, starting tonight, to begin to see the wonder, to begin to explore the depths of our hearts, the huge waves of the currents of our lives, at the circular motion of our habits, our tendencies that bring us back, always bring us back, to the place where we started. This season allows us to look more closely, to spend a moment and set an intention, to ask the questions that in our busy lives we forget to ask, or fail to ask or are afraid to ask. This is our opportunity, again, being presented to us on that silver plate of our liturgy to explore with intent to change our perspective and to see with new eyes.
Start with an intention.
This is my goal for this season. Join me.
