Changing Season © 2012 Bo Mackison

Some of my friends are honoring this day in their special ways. Today is Yom Kippur. It began yesterday at sundown and continues until sundown today. Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement. It is the day the Great Book is opened and one’s name either is or isn’t written in its pages for another year. I’m told some people spend their day in temple praying and listening to sermons.

Others practice in their own way, spending their time in recollection and reflection, using the day to consider the lives they have lived, to consider the life they hope to live in the coming year, the coming years, however many that may be.

It is certainly a day that urges the consideration of one’s mortality.

There is no specific day in my year set aside for atonement, or to recall the last year and assess how I did in this practice of mine called living. There is no day set aside specially for the purpose of considering how I hope to live my life in the coming year, or even the coming years.

New Year’s Day, January 1st, doesn’t do it. Happy New Year doesn’t give much serious time for assessment and goal setting, for apology and hope setting. I find it hard to think deeply when the party horns are going off next door, though I do like a few rounds of Auld Lang Syne. For some reason, the melody of that song seems to lead me into a deep thought space. (I’m mixing holidays!)

I do hope my Jewish friends do not mind if I borrow from their solemn High Holy Day, and spend some time today walking in the frost-nipped garden, taking account of how I lived this past year, and setting intentions, filled with hope, for the coming year. Doubtless, I have the theology all wrong, but I do believe my intention is worthy, and an evaluation of the practice of living is valuable practice for each of us, not just those who call this day Yom Kippur.

In this season of change – trees in my neighborhood have turned yellow and red in the past few days remind me that colder days are not on their way any longer, they have arrived – in this season of change, I ponder what it is that I need to change in my life. Of course I could brush off that question with “I need to change just about everything” and decide that even the thinking part is too hard, so I won’t try to change anything. Or I could pick one thing and at least reflect on how it shows up in my life each day. A few minutes, at the end of my meditation walk, seems to be a good time for a minute summary.

So with that in mind, I will reflect how fear shows up in my life, and how I react to and interact with fear. It seems a good first step. I need to have awareness before I can decide on specific steps for change. Fear and I are old companions. It is time, I’m quite sure, that I need to spend less time with him.

I looked up some of the traditional greetings for this day. One of them is “G’mar Hatimah Tovah” or “May You Be Sealed for a Good Year (in the Book of Life).

It is greeting that carries an awareness, a reflection. A soul-searching question in a greeting.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She also finds nuggets of inspiration in many of the worlds’ cultures, religions, and practices.