15 Elul 5784

Round: like a Rosh haShanah challah
Teshuvah is an endless returning to Source, a continual remembering of the right path and a pull to get back when we have drifted. The weekday Amidahs (Mishkan T’filah page 84) tell us to do that 18 times each week, if we choose to pray that often: ha chazireinu bitshuvah sh’leimah l’fanecha in complete repentance restore us to Your Presence.

But Teshuvah gets a boost at the start of Elul, as we prepare for the Yamim Nora’im by embarking on the Elul journey with deliberate focus. Kavanah intentionality is a practice of making conscious and bringing to the front of mind that which lurks at the edges or whatever we have supressed from awareness. For whatever reason we have put aside the things that are important or have unconsciously allowed them to be veiled from our notice. Kavanah seeks to make conscious what is just beyond awareness and make it available as a resource for our inner growth.

We can use all kinds of materials to get under the outer protective layer of resistance and into our fragile inner worlds where repentance lives. The lyrics of this unlikely love song[1] allow us to journey to the core of what our hearts know and our minds could allow to consciousness. In the hope of getting to engage with the sometimes-elusive God whom we seek and who is always present, music helps unlock the depths of our souls, which are sometimes distracted from the Presence which is.

“Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s burning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind.”

[1] English language theme from The Thomas Crown Affair, English Lyrics Alan & Marilyn Bergman, Music Michel Legrand, 1968. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKV9bK-CBXo