Mincha

Yes yes, I've been writing quite a lot, but there's this buzz in the air with Yom Kippur coming and I'm excited and want to record it all.

Mind you, by the way, I don't feel this spiritual every year. But this year, I prepared emotionally as much as I could and, while that's still incomplete, it's paying off.

The day is going by much too fast. What I've done well is made lots of important phone calls. What I haven't done well is caught up on school work, done writing besides the blog etc. But it's gloriously beautiful outside and I needed to get out into nature. U. and I had planned to go somewhere together, but then it was raining so we went out for a HUGE lunch instead. Now, as I said, it's sunny and I wanted to go to the woods.

I felt like there wasn't time, and I realized I needed to daven mincha (the afternoon daily prayer) and that today has a special mincha because it's almost Yom Kippur. There's a cemetary near here and I know some people have the custom to go to cemetaries right before Yom Kippur as a reminder of their own mortality. So I took my machzor (the prayer book for the holiday) and I walked over.

Once inside I sort of felt that creepy knowledge come to me that I was in the midst of death and a beautiful well-kept sort of park simultaneously. Then I noticed a bridge that I'd never seen there before. Instantly I thought of the Rabbi Nachman quote that "All the world is a narrow bridge, and the essential thing is not to be afraid." Just yesterday I read in This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared a beautiful explanation of how this means that our lives take place in such a brief span of time between one spread of nothingness and another.

So I walked down to the middle of the bridge, listened to the rush of water from the very noisy stream below and suddenly just felt wonderful. It's such a strange and unhindered sort of joy at this time of year. On one hand I felt so much gratitude for all the good in my life, and on the other hand was able to taste the willingness of being able to give that all up some day because I am not eternal. Only G-d is.

And I prayed.