Words to inscribe the kavannahLit. Intention Refers both to one’s intention when performing a mitzvah or when focusing for prayer. Kavanah also refers to specific readings to help focus one's attention prior to performing an act. of welcoming tekufat Tevet; winter and the winter solstice that marks its turning. Taking care to cast off the waters of seasonal turning, we can instead bathe in a mikvehThe ritual bath. The waters of the mikveh symbolically purify – they are seen as waters of rebirth. A convert immerses in the mikveh as part of conversion. Many Orthodox married women go to the mikveh following their period and before resuming sexual relations. Couples go to the mikveh before being married. Many, including some men, immerse before Yom Kippur; some go every Friday before Shabbat. of darkness and possibility for the nights and days that will follow, dreaming mysterious and inspiring intentions into reality in a synergy of the conscious and unconscious:
During the longest nights, within obsidian eventides:
Consider the depth of the shadows, velocities of dark;
Expanses vaster than nooks of timespace they soak into,
Expansiveness becoming a pathway, a portal, a deepgate.
Pouring herself into space lightlessly, seemingly of lacunae,
Inklings find totality where rationality only perceives a cavity:
Subside via this pool of dreams, immerse every part of yourself.
Sinking, drawn down moonlike by thick viscoid cosmic gravity,
Cooling the flames within, reaching too deep to see by eye.
When this pulls you to abyssal plains, let go of your fates,
Dance unburdened by expectations to drift silkily thru…
Reconsider what must be, let it drift away as a barque,
Bestirring possibility, no longer aground and ossified.
