If you ever feel alone with an inner voice, please know: we don't need to love or even understand every aspect of ourselves to belong fully in this world as we are.
Dear friend,
In these short and shrinking days, what do you find in your heart?
Lately I've been struck by the gap many of us feel between what's on the inside and what we present to the world. This divide is often seen as an obstacle, like a chasm in need of a bridge. For those of us lucky enough to live in pockets of culture that value authenticity and connection, why choose to keep parts of ourselves to ourselves?
This new moon, which kicks off the Hebrew month of Kislev, offers glimmers of meaning for the most sensitive, even secret features of our inner worlds.
In this darkest time of year, we receive the colorful story of Joseph, his siblings, and the dreams and schemes, negotiations and transformations, that set the stage for both national enslavement and national redemption. It's a story brimming with despair and hope alike. A story of vast interpretive possibilities, whose real-life, practical meaning is what we draw from between the lines and infuse into our our own worlds. It is, in other words, a story of extraordinary creative potential.
This year, I'm struck anew that we encounter the Joseph saga against a backdrop of night sky.
In this month of Kislev — whose name means "Heart Pocket" (thank you Julie Leavitt, RUACH's wise Authentic Movement teacher, for pointing this out to me last week!) — may the blanket of long nights embrace whatever is stirring inside us that might not be ready just yet to see the light of day. May this month grant us the grace of quiet, the spaciousness to dwell with the confusing and even contradictory parts of ourselves and the world with an encompassing sense of wholeness and peace.
And if that kind of peace feels out of reach — which it certainly does not infrequently for me! — I hope this month brings a sense of stability in the confusion. If you ever feel alone with an inner voice, please know: we don't need to love or even understand every aspect of ourselves to belong fully in this world as we are. Every night, our whole selves dream their dreams, and to our entire being the stars whisper their secrets. When we wake, perhaps with a fragment of a dream in hand, we know we have ventured somewhere beyond our conscious minds. There is so much in these places of mystery, the dark expanses of sky and self, that we might wish to keep nestled warmly in our pockets this winter, in the days before spring arrives.
Hodesh tov — wishing you and yours a good, reflective month,
Yaakov
Yaakov Ginsberg-Schreck
RUACH Executive Director
Comments