"Did you drop something?" is usually the reaction I get almost every Shabbat from at least one congregant at the end of Shabbat morning prayers upon exiting the sanctuary. This is because of the practice that I was taught in my youth and still adhere to. It actually appears in the small print at the end of some prayer books. Upon exiting, we are asked to turn our faces back towards the inside of the sanctuary, to bow and recite the verse: "God lead me in Your just ways...." Similar to the way the Talmud in Brachot tells us how to enter a place of prayer: "One should always enter both entrances [and then begin to pray]," we are taught how to exit holy space. We return our face towards God and walk out face to face with a prayer on our lips.
It is with these two teachings that I ask myself how to exit Yom Kippur, knowing that I am walking towards Sukkot. Correlated to the two entrances I ask, what indeed are my two exits / steps out of Yom Kippur? My first step out of Yom Kippur happens when I recite the Shma of Arvit (the evening service). For twenty five hours I'm allowed to say the verse: "Baruch shem kvod mal'chuto l'olam va'ed" (Blessed is the Name of His glorious kingdom for all eternity) out loud. At the conclusion of Ne'ila I get to scream it / proclaim it on the top of my lungs three times. And no, the screaming isn't because God is hard-of-hearing, it is because I am... One minute I feel like the angels, belting out all I have inside of me, and then next moment, the Shma of Arvit, I'm told to return to my human whisper. "Baruch shem kvod mal'chuto l'olam va'ed" in a whisper. It is the closest I come to a silent scream.
In a blessed way the second step away is also the first step toward - I step into the sukkah. Reb Meir of Parmishlan (1703-1773) says that there are three mitzvot (commandments) that we walk into with our totality - the land of Israel, the Shabbat and the sukkah. I hear you say, "but we also walk into the mikvah" and to this I want to reply - these three mitzvot are ones that we show up to as we are. We enter with our cloths, with our shoes, with all the 'baggage' that we carry around. Even on Yom Kippur, when we are asked to be honest about who we are, and to face God in our true face, we dress up in white, and behave like total spiritual beings (no eating and drinking).
It is in walking into the sukkah that I truly manifest. I believe that the surrounding light and containment of the sukkahis actually what enables us to finally show up. Not Yom Kippur, not even the Ne'ila prayers, but the sukkah.
We are taught that one of the explanations for the seventy offerings brought on Sukkot is in correlation to the seventy nations. It is in this spirit that I ask you to join with me in three teachings of Father Henry Nouwen (1932-1996). These teachings as they appear in his book The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life (Wendy Wilson Greer, ed.) are my guides for entering the Sukkah this year:
"Prayer means entering into communion with the One who loved us before we could love... The more deeply we enter into the house of God, the house whose language is prayer, the less dependent we are on the blame or praise of those who surround us, and the freer we are to let our whole being be filled with that first love. As long as we are still wondering what other people say or think about us and trying to act in ways that will elicit a positive response, we are still victimized and imprisoned by the dark world in which we live. In that stark world we have to let our surroundings tell us what we are worth... As long as we are in the clutches of that world, we live in darkness, since we do not know our true self. We cling to our false self in the hope that maybe more success, more praise, more satisfaction will give us the experience of being loved, which we crave. That is the fertile ground of bitterness, greed, violence and war.
In prayer, however, again and again we discover that the love we are looking for has already been given to us and that we can come to the experience of that love. Prayer is entering into communion with the One who molded our being in our mother's womb with love and only love. There, in the first love, lies our true self, a self not made up of the rejections and acceptances of those with whom we live, but solidly rooted in the One who called us into existence. In the house of God we were created. To that house we are called to return." (p.72-73)
Further in the chapter Nouwen will become personal in his observations:
"To return to God means to return to God with all that I am and all that I have... I suddenly felt a certain resistance to being embraced so full and totally. I experience not only a desire to be embraced, but also a fear of losing my independence. I realized that God's love is a jealous love. God wants not just a part of me, but all of me... Only when I surrender myself completely... can I expect to be free from endless distractions, ready to hear the voice of love, and able to recognize my own unique call.
"It is going to be a very long road. Every time I pray, I feel the struggle. It is the struggle of letting God be the God of my whole being. It is the struggle to trust that true freedom lies hidden in total surrender to God's love."
And I echo the last observation, titled, "The Still Small Voice":
"Why is it so difficult to be still and quiet and let God speak to me about the meaning of my life? Is it because I don't trust God? Is it because I don't know God? Is it because I wonder if God really is there for me? Is it because I am afraid of God? Is it because everything else is more real for me than God? Is it because deep down, I do not believe that God cares what happens at the corner of Yonge and Bloor?" (p.84)
Exiting Yom Kippur is first done by acknowledging our humanness and owning our physical needs as basic as water and food. It is the second step that seems even harder to me - the step that leads us into our sukkah. The sukkah that Father Henri Nouwen describes for us: the place of true love; the place of God's embrace; the place where we are able and willing to surrender the totality of who we are into the hold of the One and Only.
If on Yom Kippur we enter a synagogue and God listen's to our prayers, it is on Sukkot that God walks into our sukkahand we listen to God pray.
I pray that we allow ourselves to sit still long enough to hear that Divine prayer; I pray that we are blessed to share with each other the vision that God has shared with each and every one of us during this holiday in the years to come.
Shabbat shalom and chag sameach!