Week 4

I hope that this fourth week of writing will be filled with discovery and insight, and that you will be cumulatively enriched by the good hard spiritual work you’ve done this month “showing up for the page.” I encourage you to continue mining these Elul prompts in the weeks ahead during the Yamim Noraim. 

It has been a privilege to lead on your behalf, to support your efforts to create a meaningful spiritual framework as you move into a new year.  If these weekly offerings have provided you with sustenance, please make a donation on this site to Derekh to support my work on this program, on other programs throughout the year, and my ongoing mentorship of rabbis across denominations.

Let me recommend as a parting gift another writing program on this site, Writing in the Paradigm of Prayer.  If you’ve enjoyed this approach as accompaniment through Elul, I think you will find my daily writing prompts worthwhile as well.  Please be in touch with questions, feedback or just to check in and say hello.  May you be blessed in this new year and may you go from strength to strength!

Prompts for Week 4

~ On Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the birth of the world, experiencing God as Creator.  What new world/s can you envision in the coming year? Allow yourself to fantasize, be playful, dream.

follow-up – Consider the ways in which you are a creator – what is your creative life and what do you want it to be? How can you infuse your daily life with freshness, with wonder? What new interest, new passion, will keep your brain alive and supple this year?

~ The shofar blasts evoke multiple meanings – calling us to revelation, heralding redemption; it is the animal cry of “the wounded beast” that cracks our hearts open to teshuvah/repentance, the primal call waking us from our slumber.  Can you identify your spiritual somnolence?  What seems to cause it?How can you tell when you are sleepwalking? Who in your life will help rouse you when they see you fall asleep? 

~ Another central theme of Rosh Hashanah focuses on Zichronot/Remembrances of loss – a beloved who has died; a relationship that ended, badly or well; a hope or dream whose time has irrevocably passed and needs to be honored and mourned.  We experience so many different kinds of losses in any given year, and in these past few years, in extraordinary ways, we may feel flooded by waves of loss with an uncertain future ahead.  Sometimes it is possible to find healing, a sense of peace, sometimes the loss never fully heals.  What has been one very particular, powerful loss you have experienced/are experiencing this year? Tell the story – what was precious? how have you changed? how have you mourned? What does the road ahead look like?

~ Identify one or two people in your life who can serve as teachers/mentors for you – perhaps a rabbi, a spiritual director, a counselor, a friend, a loved one – choose one or two individuals and schedule regular time to meet with them.  When you feel ready, discuss with them your hopes for yourself this year, your fears, your concerns, your goals.  Invite them to listen, to witness, to support your desire to be your truest self in the coming year.

~ How might you craft your holiday experience this year – what do you need to include, to add, in order to provide yourself with connection, pleasure, time for solitary introspection?  What new rituals might you create for yourself, for family, friends, community? 

~ Write a tefillat haderech for yourself - a traveling prayer for the road - for the journey of this new year.

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I’ve enjoyed guiding you through this experience and invite you to use the Contact page to offer feedback on “Elul, a time for turning” - What was especially meaningful and why? How often did you write and in what other ways did you engage with the materials? Did you wind up writing with a partner or a group? What did you struggle with? How might this program be of greater help to you?

I end with gratitude. I am deeply appreciative of our webmaster, (now Rabbi) Lisa Feld, for all she provided to birth this project and for her support on all aspects of Derekh – her competence, patience, counsel, kindness and creativity are unparalleled, all the more so as she is busy now preparing to lead her own congregation through the Yamim Noraim. Mazal tov to her and to B’nai Tikvah in Canton, MA!

Shana tova umetuka. May we be inscribed and sealed for a sweet new year of health and promise! 

Week 3

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Our focus this week is on tikkun olam, an unfamiliar phrase once upon a time, though now most recognize it as the repair of the world, social justice work. It occurred to me in crafting prompts for this week that I’m spanning a wide range of participants on at least two different levels: those who are just starting to experience themselves as activists, and those who’ve devoted their lives to activism; those who are at the height of their strength and energy in life, and those who, like me, are not realistically able to offer what we once did to cherished causes. I hope, whatever your life situation, you will recognize yourself in the prompts this week and cull meaning from the writing they inspire.

A word about this week’s video: it’s not current – it was made before the war in Ukraine. Nonetheless, I believe you will find it valuable as it retraces a journey to activism. 

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Prompts for week 3

(1) - Entering the Conversation

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my mother didn't read the New York Times.  In the evenings [after work] when she finally had an opportunity to sit down and relax a little, she read the afternoon edition of the World Telegram and Sun, a paper that had Ann Landers and a page of comic strips in the back.  From this I learned that the affairs of the world are complicated, dense, beyond the capabilities of women.  From this I learned that women are not political.  For some years into adulthood even, the palpable anxiety I felt when faced with a page of Hebrew letters was the same palpable anxiety I felt when faced with the front page of the news section of the New York Times:  I can't do this, this is for grownups, this is for men.

© Merle Feld A Spiritual Life: Exploring the Heart and Jewish Tradition (SUNY Press revised edition 2007)

~ Tell a story from your childhood or adolescence about someone in your life who, positively or negatively, modeled a way to interface with the problems in the world. What did you learn from them? How do you carry that person with you today?

(2) - Getting Proximate to the Problem

Get proximate to the problem. Get close to the things that matter, get close to the places where there is inequality and suffering, get close to the spaces where people feel oppressed, burdened, and abused… See what it does to your capacity to make a difference, see what it does to you.

Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of Equal Justice Initiative; initiator of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery AL

~ When have you gotten “proximate to the problem”?  What was “the problem”?  What qualities of yours allowed you to get close?  What happened? Were you able to make an impact, to foster change? If not, how do you assess the effort? How did you change, grow?

[or]

~ When have you felt an impulse to get “close to a problem” but wound up feeling unable to do so? What were the obstacles? What did you learn from this experience?  Notice if there’s a punishing or judgmental tone – can you tell the story from the place of compassion? 

(3) - Choosing Your Ground

~ Consider the dizzying range of local, national and global problems. What is one particular issue/need that feels most compelling for you in this moment? Obviously you can’t spread yourself too thin. It’s important to feel called to what you’re doing so you‘ll have staying power.

~ Now consider your particular strengths: calm in a storm? energetic? long-term strategist? focus on the here and now? tech skills? deep listener? creative problem solver? coalition builder? eloquent writer? connections to media? an understanding of the legislative process? fiery speaker? past experience or training in one of the above issues?  

Respond to this prompt by digging deep to begin connecting how you might creatively harness your innate strength to contribute to tikkun olam in one particular area of concern.

(4) - Finding Mentors and Partners

Not yet 75, Ruth

 In November 2008, an interfaith group of forty Americans traveled to Israel and the West Bank to support the work of Rabbis for Human Rights.  We visited Israeli and Palestinian human rights and social justice programs and planted trees at various sites in solidarity with peace initiatives. 

Striding toward the far end of the rocky field,
the olive sapling balanced on her hip—
about the same heft as an eighteen month old—
she surveys the difficult terrain, the raw
November morning, then exercises patience
as she waits her turn for the pick.

She remembers another time, another world,
remembers what it was like to be here then,
working the soil in an infant country,
full of dreams and prayers and innocence.

A full lifetime of striding, balancing life
on her hip, looking for the places to plant life,
life that longs only to be planted and to grow. 
Unbelievable, she thinks, that anyone fights
over this soil impervious to shovels, soil
that resists even a pick and a strong stubborn back.

And now, her turn, she digs.  Rhythmically
the pick rises and falls, slowly persistence
is rewarded, the hole finally deep and wide enough,
she places the olive sapling in the earth.

But all the hard years have taught her
physical straining is just the beginning
of planting a tree.  She stands and waits
for the song and the prayer to rise within her
then tears come too, tears of sorrow
and pain, tears of hope, fierce love.

What more have the hard years taught her?
Be on the lookout for what needs to be done
and for partners—the only hope is shoulder to shoulder;
surrender to the work, persist, especially in rocky soil;

don’t give in, don’t give up, don’t give out
and don’t get sentimental—it’s a waste of time;
always at the end, listen for the prayer, the prayer that rises
within, listen for the prayer of thanksgiving and the prayer
of supplication—thank you God for the strength to do this work,
thank you God for returning me to this beloved place;

please God, nurture this tender sapling,
grant it long life, let it bear much fruit.
And please God, see our suffering, hear our cries,
help us to find each other—isn’t it time yet for peace?

The raw morning is warming.  She turns back toward
the truck, striding to bring the next sapling.

©Merle Feld, Finding Words (Behrman House 2011)

~ I doubt that efforts to address societal problems can meet with much success when undertaken solo. With what admired friend[s] or mentor[s] would you like to stand “shoulder to shoulder” in tikkun olam work? What might you hope to do with them?

~ Now that I’ve reached the age of Ruth in this poem, I feel my respect for and awe of her multiplied manyfold. But as a result of long Covid, I’m simply no longer blessed with vigorous health, able to “strid[e] toward the far end of the rocky field, the olive sapling balanced on [my] hip.” If you feel yourself to be, like me, slowed down by age or by compromised health, explore in writing how you can continue to embody your still fierce commitments to repair the world. A few opening ideas: as ally; as funder and/or fundraiser; as mentor; as consultant; as recruiter; as volunteer office staff; as spokesperson; as protester…

May your courage and openness be strengthened by this Elul work and may it be a hallmark of your day-to-day life and spiritual practice in the coming year!

Week 2

Welcome to the second week of our month-long Elul writing. If you missed last week’s intro, let me suggest that you take a look at the post for Week 1 to help support your writing and to see last week’s prompts.

This week our prompts will center on relationships to family and friends. A primary concern of much of my poetry has been an attempt to understand how my life intertwines with others, perhaps never more so than in my newest book, Longing, poems of a life.

As I look ahead to the next two weeks, I want to remind you of what’s coming down the pike – the third week focuses on tikkun olam; and the fourth and final week explores the High Holiday liturgy.

May your courage and openness be strengthened by this Elul work and may it be a hallmark of your day to day life and spiritual practice in the coming year!

Week 2 prompts [Note: This week includes many prompts - they may take you through to Yom Kippur! But considering that our reflective period of cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of the soul, doesn’t conclude until the gates close after Neilah, that doesn’t seem excessive. Each time you visit these prompts, be attentive to what jumps out at you and start there.]

~ Remember, tell the story of, a special moment this past year, one of deep connection, a moment when you felt especially blessed by the relationship with a loved one: What were the circumstances, the details, of that relational moment?

follow-up – Reflect on that experience – what did you do to help make that happen? How might you be attentive to creating more such moments in the coming year?

~ Some of our relationships may lack or have lost balance - as you care for others in your life, consider what boundaries would bring you some ease. When you are giving so much, how might you sometimes prioritize your own needs and who can support you in realizing and maintaining this resolution?

~ To whom do you feel grateful this year? Who has shown you compassion, kindness – a word, an embrace, a sign of appreciation or support? Remember and describe the goodness of others who have helped you through the year. How might you show your gratitude?

~Recall also your own goodness this past year – what are special kindnesses you have shown to others? How can you cultivate that inner goodness as you go forward? Think back to one of last week’s prompts about self-care and know that kindness to one’s self increases the capacity to be tender with others.

~ Think of your family and closest friends: are you conscious of ways in which you may have harmed any of them, caused them pain this year, fallen short of the mark?  How?  What is the regret or guilt you feel toward this person?  What do you want the relationship to be like?  What can you do to make amends, how do you need to change, turn? 

~ Has someone aggrieved you this year? How did they hurt you?  Do you want to continue this relationship, and if so, what do you want the relationship to be like? What do you need from them to support repair?  Is there something you can do to help bring about that change, healing, justice, reconciliation?

follow-up – Perhaps that won’t be possible, perhaps not even appropriate – if so, how might you find some modicum of acceptance or peace and move on?

Most difficult of all in reviewing a year coming to an end is having lost a loved one. Navigating the mourning process can be like struggling to survive a tempestuous sea without life raft or compass.  As we write from brokenness, pain, rage, grief, we reach toward understanding, reconciliation, acceptance, healing. Here are just two modest prompts:

~ What unfinished conversation might you have with this person, and what might you like to tell them? 

~ What of this person do you want to carry forward with you into the new year?

Blessings on your journey.

Week 1

Preparing for the Days of Awe

I begin with a confession. I haven’t written in a long time. When I imagine writing as I’ve engaged in it for most all of my life, there’s too much to say, I don’t know where to begin, and I don’t have the strength, the stamina, to carry myself along. Long Covid has taken a lot from me - who do I see about that? Surely there’s anger there, but I don’t have the strength for anger that I once did. And even more than anger, sadness, grief, that I can’t tap into the overflow of my creative power and offer it to others as I once did. But I’m up in the middle of the night in order to try. Because I have much to offer, and I know your need is great, so I will try.

I keep saying to myself, as I’ve said to others for decades now, start with something small, one small thing, and patiently listen for the details to emerge. That’s how to write about large things. The mere fact that I am trying, that I’ve been able to write these few words, calls for a shehecheyanu, so I begin with gratitude and a prayer that more true words will flow, that I can help you as I have in the past, to find your own words.

The house is quiet, cooled by the night air. I rejoice in the numerous blessings of my life: the health I do have, this hundred year old house which has sheltered me and those I love. But I am never far from the awareness of the need and longing outside the walls of this house, of the world out there where terrifying battles for freedom are waged at this moment, where temperatures soar, where floods cause destruction, where draught steals livelihood, hope, life itself. What will the coming year hold for us? Do I have the capacity, can I find the opportunities, to be a force for good? How do I lead with wisdom and discernment? How do I sustain my own courage?

Some who may read these words are old friends, many are unknown to me – together, over the course of the next weeks, we’ll be exploring ever-widening circles of our lives. It’s like davening in a minyan – each of us on our own, but each quietly offering companionable energy to the others. You may prefer to undertake this Elul journey solo, but let me suggest that you might want to invite a friend to write with you, to bolster your own resolve, commitment, to engage with this work, to “show up to the page.” Along the way you can discern which share stories and questions and vision you might want to share.

In these weeks there will be time to expand, to reflect, to find words, to remember the year which is coming to an end, the events and people who were most important, to look back on them and puzzle out – What happened? Who was I in that moment? How did I turn that moment for the good? Or not? What needs attention, perhaps healing, in my closest relationships? There will be time to look inward and time to look outward – How am I living in my body?  Who am I in my community/ies, who do I want to be?  Do my day to day actions, occupations, reflect my values, encourage my passion?   How am I engaged in the world?  What do I want to give, how do I want to help and participate in healing?  Prompts aplenty – enough to choose one a day; and don’t fret when you miss a day. As I am grateful for these words I’ve written in the middle of the night, finding my center again and the capacity to connect to it, I hope you will rest in gratitude for whatever words come through you.

A few suggestions –

Though many of you will prefer writing on your laptop or other devices, consider writing by hand. Computers go quickly, quickly; this writing is all about slowly, slowly, and writing by hand may help to slow you down and be more reflective. Both modes have worked for me.

When you are sitting with the prompt, listen carefully.  This writing is all about listening – listening to yourself.

Often the first response that comes to mind is the most fruitful.  Just relax and go with it even if you think it is odd.

Through long experience leading others in writing, I’d say 10 minutes is more or less the most fruitful amount of time to sit with a prompt and write. If you sit for less time, you probably haven’t mined as deeply as you can; try circling the prompt and coming at it again. Or, if you’re on a roll after 10 minutes, follow the rich vein you’ve uncovered.

As you write, capture as clearly and precisely as you can what is true for you – no artifice, no disguises. 

Be specific, concrete; better to tell one story and go deep with it than to generalize or to skim over multiple examples.

Be on the lookout for strong images that come up, meaningful details. Be curious; follow the image and explore it even if you don’t quite understand why it’s important or where it is going.

Write in your first language; that is the best way to make a heart-connection through words. 

Once you are done writing, take a breath, read what you have written.  Do not criticize or judge – these are words from your heart that need to be valued, cherished and respected.

You may want to write down any questions that the writing has sparked for you.  You can return to those questions at another time for reflection and/or for continued writing. 

In some way, acknowledge to yourself the courage and openness you have brought to this work.

Prompts for Week 1

This first week centers on the self – when do I feel most alive? How have I been challenged and grown this year? How do I cultivate my inner life? engage in self-care?

~ Recall a situation, conjure an image of a time this past year when your best, fullest self was being expressed, when you felt good about who you are.  Maybe it was a public moment, an achievement, a story of risk or leadership, or maybe it was something small, subtle, a private moment only you were aware of, something shifting deep inside…  Tell the story, describe the situation, letting the details return to you in all their fullness….

 follow-up – Now reflect on why/how the best part of you came out in that situation.  What did you do to make that happen?  Were there other people or conditions that supported that flowering? How might you call forth that more fully realized, enlivened “you” more often in the coming year?

[Note: It can be fruitful to repeat this prompt, exploring a different moment, a different situation.]

~ What has been one particular challenge this year?  What was hard about it for you?  How have you grown, changed because of it?  What new aspects or potentiality has it called forth from you?

~ How did you live in your body this year? Are there ways in which your body has been a source of delight? disappointment? strength? pain? Tell the story.  What do you need moving forward?

~ How have you cared for yourself this year? What kinds of activities have you been able to savor? Think expansively: it might be a time when you went walking on a nature trail, called together a circle of close friends to create a ritual for some liminal life event, did a good job of saying “no.”  How did you manage it?  How did it feel?  Or, describe how you allowed yourself a special afternoon or day or days to relish some longed-for place or time or experience.

follow-up – Make a list of all the ways you nourish yourself – things you do every day, things you do sometimes, rarely. Read your list over, notice what you’d like to increase.  What is your attitude toward self-care and what kinds of self-care are you hungry for? 

~ Begin a conversation with yourself – “What are some of the questions I need to be asking myself in this season of turning in order to move toward a healthier, holier, happier life?”

[Note - My intention for this program is to offer you a wide menu from which to choose, so if one of these prompts feels like “a full-course meal” all by itself, give yourself permission to spend the week delving into that particular prompt, each time encountering it anew and writing about a different experience. In other words, make yourself at home and use these materials as is best for you!]

My immeasurable gratitude to Rabbi Lisa Feld for her generous technical assistance in helping me offer these materials to you while balancing her own preparation to lead her congregants on the Yamim Noraim.

One final word: If you use these materials and find them valuable, please make an appropriate donation to Derekh - you can find the Donate link at the top of the page.

Blessings to you on your journey! “See you” next Wednesday for Elul week 2.