Image: A hand traces a route on a map. (Milada Vigerova / Pixabay )
My health problems have made me less regular at services than I’d like. Last week I was falling into a dreadful funk: I was cranky, I was fed up with the world, I had made a couple of stupid mistakes that were really bothering me, and generally, I was an unhappy camper. I decided I had to get to services, despite the aches.
Some people wonder why anyone goes to services. We make the trip to shul, we sit in the pews, we see friends, we sing songs, and we say the same prayers every time. What is there that heals my soul?
Truth is, I never know what I’m looking for: I just know that I will find it in the service. There might be a line in a prayer that I haven’t noticed in a while that speaks directly to my troubles of the moment. We say a lot of prayers on Friday night, and I’ve said all of them thousands of times, but if I come with an open heart, there will be something that fits my need.
This past week it was a line in the prayer that caught my eye while we were reading something else:
Days pass, and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles.
I realized why I’d been feeling so cranky: my world of late has constricted terribly. I’m busy with tech problems at work, problems that have to be solved but don’t really interest me. I’m frustrated with chronic pain. I’m frustrated by the news: I don’t like much of what I see on the TV or hear on the radio. I realized that I had allowed myself to “walk sightless among miracles.”
I can fix that, I thought.
On Sunday, I did my work, but I took time to go out in the yard and just look around me. I saw the hummingbirds doing their work. I saw my dog examine a bug. I saw a hawk flying high above the hillside. I felt a lot better.
Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. I spent the time I might have spent catching up on news catching up on the hummingbirds. I had to return to the tech problems, and the physical problems, and all the other stuff, but I did it with a lighter heart.
That’s what services do for me. They remind me how to return to myself.
Oh, Rabbi. That single beautiful line. “Returning to self.” That is is it exactly. And sometimes we get there with a gentle push from a Rabbi who cares for all. Thank you.