Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
My Days of Awe, 5776

My Days of Awe, 5776

Last updated on: September 28, 2015 at 1:00 am by Richard Chess

My Days of Awe, 5776 2015-09-25T18:48:36-07:00 Richard Chess

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Impatience. Anger. Wastefulness. Restlessness. Desire. Haughtiness. Greed. Judgement. Pride.

I’ve been paying attention, especially the last few days. Now it’s getting serious. It’s the morning of the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Yesterday, just after I walked into the house after ten-and-a-half hours at the university, before I dropped my heavy book bag on the floor, I spotted a bowl of chips and an open container of my favorite salsa. But before I was able to crack the first of forty chips in my mouth, my wife said, it arrived crushed.

She was on hold, forty-five minutes waiting for a customer service rep. The post office. How to file a claim. A box of wedding gifts.

Two weeks earlier: a daughter’s beautiful, complex, joyous, seemingly endless wedding. The festivities traveled from Asheville to New Orleans and drew guests from California, Texas, New York, South Africa, India, Nepal. The first two of three boxes of gifts that had been sent to our house were delivered by the USPS without a problem to my stepdaughter and her husband in New York. A few days later, the third box arrived. Crushed.

I knew you should have used UPS*, not the USPS!*

Yesterday was the eighth day of 5776, the new Jewish year. The ten days of awe were building toward the day of fierce devotion, the day of emptying out to see if you can see clearly the raw inclinations of heart and mind. The day when the promises of the previous year may be seen for what they always were, empty; the day when the evidence presented in your defense and pleas for mercy, forgiveness, will be seen, even by you, as unconvincing. If you are lucky, on Yom Kippur you’ll stand before God with nothing to offer but your trembling.

How I wanted to prove myself right—yet again! I told you so. How hard it was for me not to say it. What good would it do? The contents of the package were already destroyed. Our daughter the bride was unhappy. The mother of the bride, my wife, had to have been unhappy, too. Would my arrogance put the broken pieces back together? Would it, finally, get a customer rep on the line? Would she listen compassionately to my wife, say how sorry she was for this unfortunate incident, and promptly do whatever was possible to rectify it?

The smashed gifts: irreparable but not irreplaceable. The damage that would be done by my proclaiming I told you so? Not easy to repair, but Judaism teaches that it is possible, every moment of every day, and especially during these auspicious days, to be forgiven.

Dinner was served. Burgers. Baked beans. Potato salad. Some nights we sit side by side watching the news on television while we eat. Some nights we watch, for the umpteenth time, reruns of “Seinfeld.” Last night, I turned off the TV, rearranged our place settings so we would face each other. Like many nights, I could have devoured the food, paying no attention to the flavors and textures of what we were eating, a meal that, once again, my wife had lovingly prepared. That’s right, lovingly, even if for her it is a tedious chore, this cooking and cooking and cooking, night after night after night. Her cooking for us is love in action. Love isn’t only expressed with dreamy eyes and a kiss.

My day had had its ups and downs—one decent, one disappointing class. A few words of appreciation from colleagues for a poem I had written and read instead of a benediction as part of our new chancellor’s installation two days before. No acknowledgment, from a colleague, a friend whose opinion I most value, of my contribution to a threshold moment of the ceremony.

Now this: I told you so, I told you so—the effort of resisting the urge to just say it that kept coming and coming and coming. (Olam Ha’Ba: the world to come, in Hebrew. It can also be translated, as my teacher Danny Maseng says, “the world that keeps coming”—the world of justice, compassion, lovingkindness, peace—but we keep missing it!)

Halfway through my burger: next time you should use UPS. There, I said it. Without lifting my head to look at her, to soften with eyes my saying it. She didn’t respond. We continued our meal.

The days continue, until they don’t.

(Who by thirst, who by hunger, who will be born, who flourish, who wither. So we pray, so we wonder, so we plead for forgiveness, so we vow.)

Now it’s time for Kol Nidre, the prayer by which all vows we made from last year to this and all vows we will make this very day to change our life between this Yom Kippur and next are cancelled.

As the Yom Kippur fast begins, I have eaten a lovely dinner, but I am hungry. I have seen clearly, especially during tashlikh, the ceremony of casting sins symbolically in the form of pieces of bread into a living body of water, habits of my mind and heart that trouble me: impatience, anger, restlessness, desire, greed, judgement, pride.

I don’t have to look hard to see them. They keep coming and coming and coming, even here, in the sanctuary, on the holiest day of the year!

Now the twenty-six hour day is coming to a close, and I’ve been mostly agitated, disappointed, unable to open to the prayers, to open my heart.

The ark containing the Torah opens for the final time. The rabbi says, God has already forgiven you. Now, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself.

Ah, here it is, the heart. The final confession, the final plea for forgiveness? Tears. At the end of the days of awe, that’s all I have to offer my wife, my congregation, my rabbi, my God. The outcome of my investigations into myself this year: tears, human tears.

Richard Chess is the author of three books of poetry,Tekiah, Chair in the Desert, and Third Temple. Poems of his have appeared in Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry, Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of IMAGE, and Best Spiritual Writing 2005. He is the Roy Carroll Professor of Honors Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He is also the director of UNC Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies.

Previous Post

September 25, 2015

The Harboring Silence, Part 2

Next Post

September 29, 2015 Save the Economy: Read the Classics

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the first person to see Jesus after His resurrection?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Peter Mary Magdalene Thomas John