49 days, seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot
17 Nisan 5773 | March 28, 2013
2nd Day of the Omer
"Thanks" is a huge mind-shift: from thinking that God wants our happy chatter and public demonstration and is deeply interested in our opinions of the people we hate to feeling gratitude, humbly and amazingly, without shame at having been so blessed.
You breathe in gratitude and you breathe it out, too. Once you learn how to do that, then you can bear someone who is unbearable. My general-purpose, go-to mystic Rumi said, "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground," and bearing the barely bearable is one of the best.
When we go from rashy and clenched to grateful, we sometimes get to note the experience of grace, in knowing that we could not have gotten ourselves from where we were stuck, in hate or self-righteousness or self-loathing (which are the same thing), to freedom. The movement of grace in our lives toward freedom is the mystery. So we simply say "Thanks." Something had to open, something had to give, and I don't have a clue how to get things to do that. But they did, or grace did.
Thank you.
Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
Baruch Ata Adonai Elo-hei-nu me-lech ha-olam a-sher ke-d-sha-nu b- mitz-vo-tav, v-tzi-va-nu al s-fi-rat ha-omer.
Praised be you Adonai our God who rules the Universe instilling within us the holiness of mitzvot by commanding us to count the Omer.
Today is the second day of the Omer.