A poem by 20th Century
American poet William Carlos Williams:
This is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were
in the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Or maybe
it’s just a note left taped to the fridge. In any case, these words present an
interesting ethical and spiritual challenge. The persona who left this note
seems to apologize for depriving someone else of the delicious and sweet and
cold plums, plums expressly saved for that someone’s breakfast. It appears to
be an apology, but the wording leaves room to doubt the plum eater’s sincerity.
Note the
plum thief’s acknowledgement of the now plum-less person’s intent to save the
plums. Note the conspicuous lack of actual apology. Instead of “I’m sorry,”
instead of any actual sense of repentance, the plum purloiner says—not asks;
there is no question mark here to indicate a plea—instead, the plum perpetrator
demands, “Forgive me.” Then the . . .
oh, dear, I seem to have run out of p-words . . . after they demand the
now-hungry victim to forgive, the villain gloats: “they were delicious/ so
sweet/ and so cold.”
Far from a
sincere attempt to right the wrong done to another, this poem instead exalts in
the evil-doer’s insulting theft—then adds the injury of demanding even more:
forgiveness.
Or it’s
just a note someone left taped to the fridge.
The High Holy Days of Judaism, known
as the Days of Awe, begin with Rosh Hashanah (the spiritual new year) and end
with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement with the divine). It is a solemn time of
introspection, repentance and reconciliation—as well as a time of renewal, hope
and joy.
The sounding of
the shofar calls the faithful to Rosh Hashanah observance. Twelfth-century
Rabbi and philosopher Maimonides writes that the sound of the ram’s horn
trumpet calls:
Sleepers, arise
from your slumber, and those who are dozing, awake from your lethargy. Review
your actions, repent your sins, and remember your Creator! Those who forget the
truth with the passing of time and who waste their years pursuing vanity and
folly that is purposeless and cannot save you—look into your souls and improve
your ways and your deeds. Let all abandon the ways of evil and thoughts that
offer no benefit.[i]
That’s a call for some spiritual
heavy lifting—“Look into your soul and improve your ways and deeds. . . .
abandon the ways of evil and thoughts that offer no benefit.” The idea of Rosh Hashanah
is to restore right relations with others and within yourself to start the new
year—and to prepare for atonement with God on Yom Kippur. The poem “This Is
Just To Say” presents a very poor attempt at looking inward, abandoning evil
ways, and establishing right relationships. Our plum-eating poet does not write
in the spirit of the Days of Awe. Not at all.
A
National Public Radio story introduced me to a website called “10Q”—short for “10
Questions.” Anyone can sign up for free. When you do, you are sent one question
a day for each of the ten Days of Awe. The questions encourage the kind of
soul-searching, of spiritual taking stock, that can help you look your failings
in the face and determine to improve your thoughts and deeds in the course of
the coming year. You type your response and post it to the 10Q website, where
it sits unread until next year at the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. Then you will
receive an email that contains your 10 responses from the previous year as a
way to discern how your soul-searching has progressed—or not.
Then
10Q, in the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, invites you to take stock again, to answer
ten questions for the current year.
To
me, that sounded like a way to hold myself accountable—to help me see how
faithfully I have walked my chosen spiritual path over the past year. Here was
a focused, short-term and guided spiritual practice—available free for nothing.
I signed up immediately.
An opportunity presented
itself to do the spiritual work I signed up for when I answered the call to
ministry. Here is the primary insight I have gained so far: I would write a
sermon before I’d sit down to examine my words and deeds of the past year. I
would grade papers by UW-Whitewater English 101 students rather than respond to
those 10 questions. Just one question each day and I didn’t responded even once
this year.
For
that failure, I forgive myself. For letting too many days and weeks and months
pass without letting those I love know that I love them, I forgive myself.
That’s difficult
enough, but the spiritual heavy lifting has only begun. The healing begins with ourselves, our recognition
of how we yearn from the centers of our being to live into our best selves—and
our commitment to keep working on that. In order to begin the new year with a
new heart—with a new commitment to following the spiritual paths we have chosen
to walk—requires that we also repair our relationships with others. As one article
about the Jewish High Holy Days instructs, we:
are encouraged to seek out anyone
[we] may have offended and to sincerely request forgiveness so that the New
Year can begin with a clean slate. If
the first request for forgiveness is rebuffed, one should ask for forgiveness
at least two more times, at which point the person whose forgiveness is being
sought should grant the request. The rabbis thought it was cruel for anyone to
withhold their forgiveness for offenses that had not caused irrevocable damage.
[Learn more about teshuvah.][ii]
Rosh Hashanah
marks the beginning of the new year with a joyful blast of the shofar and a
celebration of the sweetness of life. Following Rosh Hashanah, the Days of Awe
mark the time to reflect on the past year, to consider how we may have fallen
short of our spiritual goals, to forgive ourselves and ask forgiveness from
others. Then comes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement—also known as the Day of
Judgment. We must be in right relationship with each other before we can be in
right relationship with the divine. Jewish tradition provides 10 days to
concentrate on spiritual healing in order to prepare for atonement with the
divine.
To awaken you to your
best selves, I invite you now to close your eyes and imagine the loud blasts of
the ram’s horn. Listen as it calls you to take stock of the past year. Take
this opportunity to begin the spiritual heavy lifting, to discover how you have
hurt others—through your thoughts,
[PAUSE]
through your words,
[PAUSE]
through your actions.
[PAUSE]
Contemplate what you need to do to live into your best self.
[PAUSE]
If you wish to continue this process, you may wish to think
or say aloud each of the acts you just remembered, followed by the words:
“For this, I forgive myself.”[iii]
The 10 Days of Awe encourage Jews to
do the hard work of soul-searching—and the even harder work of asking
forgiveness from those they have wronged. The sincere desire to right wrongs
and do better is the essence of repentance, the path to spiritual health and
well-being. You see how far short the plum thief falls from repentance. The
persona in the plum poem demands forgiveness without any sincere desire to make
things right. There is no evidence of repentance; instead, there is evidence of
gluttonous joy.
Beyond repentance even, Jews who wish
to prepare for Yom Kippur must seek reconciliation. To reconcile is to heal an injured
relationship. The process of teshuvah,
of reaching inward to the parts of ourselves we don’t want to admit even
exist—and then to reach outward to those we have hurt through our inattention
or through our intentional acts—this process of atonement is itself the path
toward a right relationship with the divine.
The act of asking
forgiveness requires humility—that is, it requires the courage to see ourselves
for who we really are in all our brokenness and imperfection and sometimes
downright orneriness. It further requires us to ask others—family, friends,
neighbors and strangers—to see our spiritual failures and to accept us just as
we are. This, to me, is not separate from a reconciliation with the divine. The
act of seeing ourselves and those around as we really are and choosing—to
forgive, to accept, to rekindle broken relationships—this, this sincerest form
of love, IS God.
As a Unitarian
Universalist,
[i]
Rambam [Maimonides] (Hilchot Teshuvah [commentary on repentance] 3). Quoted in:
http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/4392/jewish/Sounding-of-the-Shofar.htm
[ii]
Ariela Pelaia. Judaism at About.com.
“What Is Yom Kippur?: The Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur.” http://judaism.about.com/od/holidays/a/yomkippur.htm
[iii]
Unitarian Universalist Association. Singing
the Living Tradition. “Litany of Atonement.” #637.
[iv]
Unitarian Universalist Association. “Our Unitarian Universalist Principles and
Sources.” http://www.uua.org/beliefs/principles/index.shtml
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