The Road Ahead

After our work days ended Steve and I took the Indian Ridge hike from the house. Beautiful. The landscape and colors are changing almost hourly and the angle of the sun seems to be lengthening as quickly and the days are shortening. It was a perfect outing at the end of an almost perfect couple of days weatherwise.

As we walked along the winding path and boardwalks, I remembered that today is Rosh Hashanna, the Jewish new year and I loved that we were making our way into the woods as the year begins in the Jewish calendar. The road twists and turns and you can't see what's ahead. Only a little distance, but once you've traveled it? What then? Between now and Yom Kippur, the book of heaven is opened and you have a chance to put things to rest. Make ammends if ammends can and should be made, pay your debts, make your apologies and say your goodbyes. And on the day of Yom Kippur itself - in a day of fasting and prayer - one last catharsis and then you're done. The page is turned and you begin again with a blank one. A new page for the new year. I'll take that. I grew up in a faith tradition which had a sacrament of confession, and one would think that I would have felt scrubbed clean after a whispered confession, absolution from the priest and my penance of reciting the rosary. It never quite felt done though. No matter how vigorously I prayed, the books were being kept somewhere and there were plenty of black marks against me, along with a very clear message that G*D knew what I was up to. G*d and Santa actually. I kept getting the two confused. And I didn't get my moral compass from church. I learned right from wrong by trial and error and I don't think G*D could do nearly as much damage to me as I did to my self. I'm not sure about much when it comes to the mystery of creation and the mystery of an ineffable unknowable creator - but I can't believe that something that shaped the majesty of the cosmos gives a shit about my pettiness. It never had to live with my sins. I did. So turn the page. Do what you can to make those amends. And then let the past be the past. Start new. There a road ahead. A page to be written upon. A whole year to be lived.


So turn that page. Live that year.