At the Birkat Hachamah celebration this morning, we stood at the edge of a pond, in a public park, in a suburb of Chicago. It was a little below freezing. Ducks and geese honked and paddled above their undulating reflections; the Sun bubbled up over a clear horizon in a wash of red.
I asked that people shut their eyes and feel the filament of Being that attached them to the Sun. I invited them to feel the sunlight through their eyes. And then we were quiet, contemplating the words of Psalm 19:
Day to day utters speech, and night to night speaks knowledge;
There need be no speech; nor words; their voice is heard without it.
And I thought, but did not say:
The sunlight beginning to glow through your eyelids is you, coming into being.
Light pouring through a film of flesh and blood: this is the essence of your very being.
Day by day, you speak, act, are in the world;
But the cycle that goes from darkness to darkness is the sum total of your life.
You are reborn, through the miracle of the circulation of light and energy.
You come to be; you pass away.
Each day, and each life, is reborn in small moments like this one.
The Sun is the seal of this agreement,
The guarantor of your great good fortune to be alive right now.
--T.A.
