In the midst of 25 hours without food or water, after a very quiet intense Kol Nidre cry, and a slow walk home with the waxing moon lantern bright, I allowed myself to write 3 things down.
(traditionally you don’t write on Jewish festival rest days because it’s an act of creation)
I have never been so in love with the world on Yom Kippur.
Change is my grounding point.
Forgive me for those places I learned to give myself away as the price of love.
Several months ago, I cut off my grief beard of nearly a year. A month ago, I found out the oddly quiet birds nest I’d been avoiding when watering … Was the grief beard remnants I had thrown to the wind. That same day, the mobile of bay branches and crow feathers I had made in that grief, lost a feather to late night gusts of wind.
I placed both in a favorite bowl and tied a figure eight knot near to remind myself – even when it isn’t consciously there, its all still tied up within me, still knotting my guts and tangling my heart.
This weekend I burned the hair. My ashes for mourning, for some purification of the part I played forming this grief, some sotah ritual against myself.
I wanted a punctuation – grief beard gone, grieving done.
But things linger, even beards you’ve tossed to the birds.
Gmar chatimah. May you be sealed. May it always be for life. May it be what you deeply need.
eish zarah 