This is a time of new beginnings. For many of us, some of our strongest memories from childhood is the return to school after the summer holidays. Even as adults who are not involved in education, the start of the academic year feels like a new beginning. The summer is fading away, people are back from holidays, new programs are starting up for most of our activities.
In fact, this this rhythm of new beginning at the beginning of Autumn has strong roots in the faith practice of both Jews and Christians. Jewish New Year begins around this time, as it also does for Christians of my own tradition and for Methodists. It strongly reflects the pattern of the world of nature (in the Northern hemisphere). The harvest is over, the time for the work of ploughing and sowing has come, before hunkering down for winter.
New beginnings are exciting – as well as daunting sometimes. Although the seasons of the year bring us some important new beginnings, very many spiritual teachers exhort us to make a beginning every day. I like this one from Rabbi Eliezer, who lived in the first or second century:
“Repent (and make yourself a better person) one day before your death. His students asked him: But does a person know the day he will die? He said to them: All the more so this is a good piece of advice, and one should do it today.”
And here is an ancient Jewish prayer to be recited on the Sabbath before the new moon (therefore new month according to the Jewish calendar). I think this lovely prayer could be adapted and used by any of us as we face a new day, a new year or a new challenge:
Eternal One, our God and God of our ancestors, may the new month be for us a time of renewal. Grant to each one of us a long life of peace, welfare and blessing; a life of prosperity and health; a life guided by conscience, unmarred by self-reproach or shame; a life exalted by love of your Word and reverence for the divine; a life in which the longings of our hearts may be fulfilled for good.[1]
Mother Sarah
[1] Thanks to Rabbis Alexandra Wright and Igor Zinkov of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue for these quotations.
Respond