15 Elul
"It's been a very full year, but good," I've heard myself saying several times recently. What I mean is that I am grateful for my good fortune. But then the deeper question goes through my mind, "Have I, for my part, lived the year well?" That isn't an easy question to answer. How can I know? How do we assess the years of our life?
Jonathan Wittenberg, The Eternal Journey
13 Elul
Reconcile with the truth of your life, with the big, the bad, and the ugly. With beauty and blessing. With the tenacity of your spirit. With weakness. With betrayal. With regret. With the years that have passed. With your destiny. With the love that is trying to get in. If you reconcile with all that, you reconcile with the truth of your life.
The goal is to make peace. To make peace on earth. To make peace among the people in your world. To make peace between you and yours. To make peace with the past. To make peace in the very core of your being.
To make peace with your destiny.
Anything that stands in the way of any of that must be dealt with.
Let it go.
Let it go and it no longer has a hold on you.
Letting it go denies its power over you.
Forgiveness is learning to come to terms with the story of your life and releasing the pain of the past.
Excerpt from The Bridge to Forgiveness by Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar
12 Elul
As you choose the life of thanking and blessing, love is not an obligation to be assumed, but instead and accurate name for your desire to live as the image of God. Love becomes the guiding principle in your responses to all people, both in word and in deed. Ad the people on your most immediate circles are touched by this love, their attitudes and activities toward you will transform, in this new ambience created by the intersection of Divine light and your own light, your life's encounters will become a series of thankful and blessed exchanges -not perfect, but never bereft...Such blessing begets love, which lays the foundation for a differently ordered world.
From Thanking & Blessing by Jay Marshall
11 Elul
Our greatest problem is not how to continue but how to return. "How can I repay unto the Lord all his bountiful dealings with me?" (Psalms 116:12) When life is an answer, death is a home-coming.