Elul Teachings

Week 2: Rabbi Laura Rumpf

Orienting Towards Possiblity:

A Creative Practice for Elul

[During the] month of Elul… God [prepares] God’s self to receive our intentions and co-create with us in this New Year… [The] month of Elul is a time in our tradition when we prepare ourselves for the possibility of creating some sort of new Life.-

Rabbi Adina Allen, “The Womb from Which the World Came

Framing for Elul Week 2: Orienting Towards the Possible

Elul is a month potent with possibility-inviting us to mine the wisdom of the year that has been, and discover where we might grow or embrace change as we prepare to roll our scrolls back to the beginning. A blank page, or a new beginning, while liberating, can also be daunting in the face of life’s complexity and busyness. Creativity does not happen in a vacuum, or without the context of what has already happened. The sources and creative prompts offered below are an invitation to use the teshuva (reflection and soul accounting) process to take one small step towards beginning anew, embracing the uncertainty of what lies ahead, using materials already at our disposal.

Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you might not want to take. Start with

the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet,

your own way to begin the conversation.

Start with your own question,

give up on other people’s questions,

don’t let them smother something

Simple.

Start right now,

take a small step you can call your own

don’t follow someone else’s heroics, be humble

and focused,

start close in, don’t mistake

that other for your own.

-Excerpt from “Start Close in” by David Whyte

What steps/conversations/practices feel most immediately relevant for you as we journey through Elul towards a New Year?
What makes a “close in” step hard? How do you meet that resistance and discern what you need to do regardless?

First Step – Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt

It’s not going to be easy.

All of your roadmaps are wrong.

That was another country:

those lakes have dried up

and new groundwater is welling

in places you won’t expect.

You’ll begin the journey in fog

destination unknown, impossible.

Don’t be surprised by tears.

This right here is holy ground.

Take a deep breath and turn away

from cynicism and despair

listen to the voice from on high

and deep within, the one that says

I’m calling you to a place

which I will show you

and take the first small step

into the surprising sun.

For reflection: How do you feel about surprises and uncertain outcomes? What acts for you as an antidote to despair when you encounter the world?

Text into Practice: Find a few simple materials to create with. Allow whatever has surfaced from the texts inspire an intention (see model below) and then set a 5 minute timer for being with whatever comes through with materials. Allow another 1-2 minutes to witness what you’ve made using the template provided, or a stream of conscious Free Write.

Intention

I find… I receive… I explore… I feel… I open to… I discover… I hear…

Art Making Guidelines:

Follow pleasure

Keep going

Notice everything

No comment

Witness

Get quiet.

Describe what you see.

Free write in response to the piece and the process.

Include all thoughts, feelings and associations.

*Guidelines inspired by the Jewish Studio Project.

Week 1

Introduction to Elul

It’s Elul, the last month of the Jewish year leading up to the High Holy Days. We are honored to welcome our new colleagues Rabbi Laura Rumpf and Chava Mirel as they join us during this auspicious time in the Jewish Calendar. To help us reflect on this special month, we will be sharing teachings, music, art, and more with unique insights from Rabbi Laura and Chava so that we may get to connect with them more deeply. We hope you will engage in these materials with others in the community as we approach this season of awe.

Rabbi Alan Lew in his book “This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared” describes the spiritual path of Elul through the end of the High Holy Day season:

On this journey our soul will awaken to itself. We will venture from innocence to sin and back to innocence again. This is a journey from denial to awareness, from self-deception to judgment. We will learn our Divine Name. We will move from self-hatred to self-forgiveness, from anger to healing, from hard-heartedness to broken heartedness. This is the journey the soul takes to transform itself and to evolve, the journey from boredom and staleness—from deadness—to renewal. It is on the course of this journey that we confront our shadow and come to embrace it, that we come to know our deepest desires and catch a glimpse of where they come from, that we express the paradoxical miracle of our own being and the infinite power of simply being present, simply being who we are. It is the journey from little mind to big mind, from confinement in the ego to a sense of ourselves as a part of something larger. It is the journey from isolation to a sense of our intimate connection to all being. This is the journey on which we discover ourselves to be part of an inevitable chain of circumstances, the journey beyond death, the journey home.

As Alan Morinis writes in his book, “Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar:”

AWE IS A human experience of the transcendent piercing apparent reality, a glimpse of the supreme within the mundane. However it may come to us, a moment of awe gives us a small taste of the cosmic mystery, and an intuitive intimation of the divine. Awe does not protest phenomenal reality; rather, it offers direct affirmation of the eternal that lies within the worldly. Awe is an invitation to seek, delivered directly to the heart.

Praiseworthy is the person who is always filled with awe. — PROVERBS 28:14

PHRASE: The beginning of wisdom is awe.

PRACTICE: Put yourself in places that bring out the experience of awe in you.

Reflections

In the past year, where have you been in relationship to your most authentic self, to your closest circle of loved ones, to your community?

What about your relationship to your concept of the4 Divine, or God, or the energy that unites us all?

Do you feel “at home” in these relationships; if not, why not?

When was the last time you experienced awe?

Consider the elements that made up that moment: Where were you? Who else was there? What did it look/sound/smell like?

Why do you think we refer to the days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur as the Days of Awe?

Consider how ‘awe’ can be experienced through multiple emotions such as joy, fear, wonderment, overwhelmed.

How might you seek out ‘awe’ in the coming weeks and year? What places might you put yourself in to bring out the experience of awe?

We call Rosh Hashanah ‘hayom harat olam,’ the day the world is created, as if for the very first time. The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are also known as the Ten Days of Teshuvah/Return.