Fall Hunter Moon
The winds howled from Mt. Evans early this morning, signals of a sudden change in the weather. We’re cooling down. The winds blow finished gold leaves into the air, creating bright spots of light fluttering in the shadows of the lodgepole pines. This is the time of that not-so-gentle stripping of the deciduous tree’s leaves. Up here that means the aspens will soon be leafless and slowing down like the calorie gorging bears. Winter, as they say on HBO, is coming.
The sliver moon that rose last night marked the beginning of ten days of High Holy Days for Jews across the world. Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Shana tova! Happy new year in Hebrew.
Kate, Jon and I went to the service at Beth Evergreen last night. It was a joyful event with lots of singing punctuated by readings from the prayerbook. Occasionally certain men would bow. Others had prayer shawls, many wore yarmulkes, many (including me) did not. It was not fancy dress, though some were dressed up, including me.
The service commemorates the creation of the world and a Jewish belief that God must continuously recreate the world. This opens up the possibility of a truly new world being formed at the new year just as it opens up the possibility of a truly new you. So, this is a moment of celebrating the coming of the new year, 5777, and the opportunity to shed last year’s skin and to redecorate.
In this case I reinterpret God as the creative principle in the world, along the lines of process metaphysics, a notion made popular by Alfred North Whitehead. If we lean into that creative principle, we can reshape ourselves and our environment. The actual execution of such changes are made much easier by life in community, especially a beloved community. That’s the potential power of a congregation.
Having all this come while the sky is bright blue, while the aspens are showing what they’ve done with their one wild and precious life, while the crispness of autumn begins to change the nights, makes the Great Wheel and the cycle of the Jewish calendar sync up.
