The Art of Celebration
Rosh Hashanah celebrates the creation of the world and marks the beginning of a cycle of renewal in our lives. It is the season of looking deeply in to our lives and relationships. It is a time of facing that which is most difficult to face in ourselves in order to stand before God in wholeness and truth. It is a return to that which is essential. We enter into a passage which is called the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. Standing at the threshhold, peering through to the awesome challenge that faces each of us: To fully awaken to our true selves, to come into peaceful relationship with our loved ones and with the world, to let go of the burdens that prevent us from moving with grace through our lives. And to to take that necessary leap into the unknown.
And how do we begin? How do we respond to this awesome challenge? Our very first step is to celebrate. We are told by Nehemia, in his description of Rosh Hashanah that we are to “eat rich food and drink sweet wine, and share with whoever has none.”
This is how we begin our journey of purification through the days of Awe. The celebration prepares us for the awesome task ahead. As a newborn people leaving slavery, this is how we began our journey of purification through the wilderness. We began in celebration. “And Miriam took her timbrals out and all the women danced.” The song that we sang at the edge of the sea propelled us through the wilderness.
And again when we stood on the banks of the Jordan, God warns Moses that the path through the promised land will be so dangerous that the people will forget everything they were ever told. “But they will not forget the song.”
In the story of Creation, God stops at every step of the way to celebrate her work, with the words, “It was good. It was very good.” And from this we learn that it is not enough to create; we must celebrate our creativity, glory in our creation, bask in its light. We are given Shabbat as a time to delight in Creation, and it is this essential ingredient of pleasureful rest which gives meaning to all of life’s busy-ness.
This requirement to stop and celebrate sounds easy. Sounds fun. What a great tradition that commands delight. The kind of delight that is required is the kind that cultivates and nurtures a basic Trust. This trust then becomes the springboard for that necessary leap into the unknown.
The process of Tshuvah requires a loosening of the grip of the ego, a dissolving of rigid patterns of personality, a surrendering of the small self into the larger possibilities that are calling. When we begin to do this work of Tshuvah, it can feel as if we’re falling apart, entering the Void, stepping off into the abyss. And that’s when old patterns begin to reassert themselves and we find ourselves back in the same comfortable familiar suffering. And every year we do the same Tshuvah, and then slide back into the personality patterns that have held us together for so long. We can make Tshuvah a truly profound transformation only by entering into the unknown, by letting go of the surface identity, by leaping into the abyss where you don’t yet know who you are becoming. What allows us to take that leap is our faith in the Ultimate goodness of Reality, a faith that doesn’t depend on outer circumstance. This faith, this deep trust is cultivated and affirmed by our celebration of the Birthday of the World.
So what kind of celebration connects us to this deep Trust? Some kinds of celebration, certain ways of pleasure-seeking can actually disconnect us, and keep us in the shallows rather than sending us to our depths.
On Rosh Hashanah we practice the Art of Celebration. As an artist of celebration, I return to Nehemia’s instructions: Eat rich food, drink sweet wine and share with whoever has none.
The rich food we eat:
The extra attention to beauty and kindness, listening deeply to each others stories, tasting each other and the rich complexities of all our relations, celebrating the simple pleasures of each breath, each step, each interaction. To know the richness means to first notice and then savor each pleasure, celebrate it with poetry and thanksgiving. Open up the places inside us that are hungry for connection and let others in. And let all this richness be a reminder of goodness itself which is the constant hum beneath the music of our lives.
The sweet wine we drink:
Allow ourselves to become intoxicated…with love, life, breath. Let go, get wild, be silly, make a fool of yourself. Swoon. Take the time to play. Let laughter be holy. Expand your senses. Celebrate your dreams. Pay attention to the pictures and colors of your imaginings. Drink in your own uniqueness, your eccentricities. And let all this drunkenness (on the nectar of life), bring you closer to the truth of goodness itself.
The sharing with others:
Look for opportunities to share the goodness you perceive. Celebrate your intuition and your glimpse into the vastness by expressing it in kindness, generosity, small acts of compassion. And let each gift you give be a reminder to you that there is enough. And more than enough.
Celebrate
For God’s sake, when you celebrate don’t hold back. If Miriam had held back her song and her dance, we would never have been able to journey into the wilderness.
Let the glow of the celebration shine onto the path of Tshuvah, shine into the dark corners of your heart — the parts of yourself that you haven’t yet forgiven. Whatever joy that we can risk to share today will sustain us through the days of awe. We can send each other to our depths, by trusting that there are treasures buried in each of us… buried just beneath whatever it is we’ve been hiding from ourselves.
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