Elul is a bridge crossed in the fullness of summer,
a path we begin to clear toward our imagined future.
Is there time to overlay more seeds on this year’s dying vegetation?
Or must we scrape it all away and how shall it be sorted?
Like an eddy of whirling water at the seashore,
Elul is a full circle that foams
at its boundaries and longs for release into a new beginning.
Zevulun, sixth son of Leah, was an unexpected gift to her.
His ships travel far from the seashore creating riches.
He fathers a tribe of traders who carry diamonds,
compacted water and earth that hold Light.
He uses his wealth to provide for his brother Gad, the scholar,
and from Zevulun we learn one meaning of support.
Animals are still being born in Elul. They drink water
unlike that of any other planet.
At the perfect distance from the sun, they dig and burrow into earth.
They bury treasures to nourish them in the nights ahead.
They howl and cry to one another.
Are they calling out the unavailability of prey?
Or bringing their young to the pack for ceremony?
To our ears, the rightness of their sounds is a mystery,
like the first blasts of the shofar,
a collective overture to the ingathering ahead.
This is a time for repair, an interior season when we hear
the first calls for Teshuvah, ourselves a miracle of circles and tubes
that fill and empty.
Teshuvah, a word layered with meanings: return, turning,
the relief of leaving behind what we grasped but did not need.
This is a time to visit the graves of those who helped to clear our path.
This is a time to direct our gaze
toward what we have the resources to achieve,
toward what remains beyond our reach
unless we attune to the illumination of fire, of cloud, that lights our steps.
If we choose to mend, it is best that we start in the hidden places
that are only this month becoming known to us.
As we open our hands, we remember to proceed slowly,
to take a few steps in the new direction
and not to grasp our future before we understand the path.
