prayer and promise

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Ha Shannah, has concluded. I was lucky this year as I celebrated this day of new beginnings with my partner Joe, my son Adam, and two friends Scott and Benjie.

Growing up in a not too religious family I had to figure out why this major Jewish holiday was considered so important and referred to as a High Holy Holiday. I had little religious upbringing, and more cultural and community input into the how's and why's of being Jewish.

Through my own pursuit my own experiences, my own interpretations based on my life and how my life interacted through those around me did I try to figure out the why's the how's and all the meanings.

The Jewish New Year for me, became and IS a crucial moment in a year where I can gather my will, sum up my failures and successes, question God, and travel deep inside places I somehow never want to wander. It is a day when I stop and consider the consequences both good and bad of the decisions and directions made by me and how those choices might become my future.

I was told that Rosh Ha Shannah is when God opens the book of life once again. Where at-one-ment, where reflection and repose are key to saying I am sorry, I regret, I will try to be different. It is a time to ask, a time to hope, a time to consider and be considered.

I have found that as I age, my life is no longer a solitude existence. That I am a greater part of other lives and in turn they are a GREATER part of mine. So what I do is not just about me, but about the first through 100 degrees of separation of individuals of those in my universe.

So until the High Holy Holiday of Yom Kippur, when I am told God closes the Book of Life, I have the opportunity, the privilege, the responsibility to ask for forgiveness for understanding and the chance to give unto others as I would have them give to me.

The older I get the more I worry. Perhaps it is because I have reached some magic age when the time behind me seems greater than the time in front me. The older I get the more I realize my responsibility in this world is to make a difference. The older I get the more I must work from my conscience and not my selfishness.

I want the Book of Life to hold wonder and amazement for the next year. I want the Book of Life to hold promise and hope for my children and their contemporaries. I want the Book of Life to help me find a world that does care, that does coalesces, that does consider and does communicate.

I am so confused as to the direction we are headed. So much hate for difference, so much desperate discourse about finding consensus. So little love and such heart felt hate. Where do we go from here.

It is the Eve after the New Year and I am hoping for so much more as God writes my life in HIS book about me. I am hoping God writes some happy ever after's for this world in which I live; so I can live to see another Rosh Ha Shannah happier and whole.

It is a prayer and I am told a prayer can bring promise.