Note to self: I choose growth over fear.
When I was in Bisbee, AZ late last year, an oracle said that she saw me on the back of an eagle, and I was able to look down and around with my super power, which was the ability to pivot as needed. Once again, I have found that pivoting is getting to be a muscle I’m having to use more often than I had hoped.
Today is the eve of Rosh Hashanah, it’s the year 5786 on the Jewish calendar and what a year for Jewish people. For North Americans. For so many people, we are stunned by the regression of our leaders and the blood thirst of our governments. I’m sure there will be hindsight, we should have seen our fall from grace approaching, but seriously, as a Jewish American woman, I wake every day shaking my head in disbelief.
My pivot has been to organize around this fear to bring folks together because I believe our leaders want to divide us. Hence, One Mississippi, an event the 100 Men Hall will host to get neighbors to play together, to be together, in community, having fun, as a reminder that we are more alike than we are different, even while, the Hall celebrates and elevates difference.
Five years ago, as Tin was approaching the bar mitzvah he would have in 2022, I was at the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah. I read the prayer book along with the congregation, but my mind was wandering and wondering until I came across a comment from Elie Wiesel, a Jewish author, activist and Holocaust survivor. He said, “God’s gift to Adam in the garden was not how to begin, but how to begin again.”
And I took this to heart, as I have risen from the ashes more than once and had to recreate a life.
I’ve spent the last few days in different environments, with friends and people I don’t see regularly, and in a climate that is refreshing and energizing compared to the low 90s that we are experiencing at home on the Gulf Coast. I’ve had my fortune read. I’ve had good news and difficult news. I’ve had to pivot when I expected to be resting into the situation I had last begun.
What has been clear is to begin again with a new way of thinking – trust that it is all working in my favor. That the universe is rigged for me. That I also create my universe. The feeling of waking up powerless with powerful men running the countries into the ground, wreaking havoc, killing and destroying, could use a reframe – we are powerful, they are not.
Today, on erev Rosh Hashanah, the 29th of Elul, I will begin again, knowing that each of us contains the power to create peace and love. I will remind myself how powerful is my ability to pivot as needed. And I will gladly usher in this year of abundance that augurs joy and clarity for us all.
