I’m always wary of magic thinking. I mean, who doesn’t want to think they’re special, and they’re somehow getting messages? Does it get more special than that?
Maybe. Maybe messages are there all the time. We don’t need to be special, as much as we need to learn to listen for them.
This story takes place at the beginning of the 2020 lockdown, which came on suddenly. We went from hearing about a Covid outbreak somewhere across the country, to shopping for a lockdown no one knew how to shop for, to everything closing in a couple of days. I had to scramble to figure out what to do about the writers group I run. We went from happily planning to meet at Panera, to 12 people giving me their email addresses so I could set up an online meeting. I’d never zoomed or anything else. I’m a pastry chef. We meet for real. But I set up the meeting and a way for us to share writing online, though that’s not the story.
It begins the following day. I left for work as usual, and pulled out of our narrow winding road onto the main road like a hot knife through butter. Seriously. Pulling out during rush hour takes guts and good timing, but I could have pulled out without looking, because there was nobody but me. I didn’t see another car for nearly three miles, when a man pulled up to a stop sign on a side road. He was wearing a mask.
Most of us had no masks yet. Two weeks later, I cut a pattern out of the NYT opinion page, and began making masks for friends. I had a lot of elastic I had inherited with my grandmother’s sewing goods, and I made masks and gave them away until I ran out, at which point elastic was no longer available, because pandemic.
Back to that ride. I rode down a four lane limited access highway alone. ALONE! I finally caught up to two cars at a red light where the highway ended. Not the long line there always is. One car ahead of me, and one in the other lane. The letters on the license plate ahead of me were VLY.
Verily, I thought, mentally playing the game my father and I used to play when I was in sixth grade, and we drove to school on the West Side Highway on days we didn’t take the subway. This had to do with his schedule. The cars spilling from the George Washington Bridge were from New Jersey, and had three letters on their yellow and black plates. We came up with words from those letters, keeping them in order. Most of mine were simple in those days, although I still recall being proud of LVW spawning “liverwurst.” Not that I ever ate it. It sounds awful. I’m not a lunch meat fan.
So VLY elicited Verily, and I realized I would never have come up with that it I weren’t Jewish. It’s part of the Yom Kippur service, where we say “Who shall say we have not sinned? Verily, we have sinned.” Or something close to that.
I had a Pandora mix streaming, and one of the stations was Leonard Cohen. The light changed, I was crossing over a nearly empty I-40, and I realized I was listening to the Yom Kippur service. I had never heard “Who by Fire,” before, but there I was, driving down a post apocalyptic version of White Bridge Road, listening to the Yom Kippur service sung by Leonard Cohen. And I saw us in the Days of Awe.
The Jewish New Year is a time of renewal. It opens with Rosh Hashanah. It’s an uplifting time of casting away sins, rethinking your life. It’s the beginning of ten days where God is watching and you are considering how to be the best you can be. You finish with a fast, a signal that you are serious about change. We have sinned, we are repenting, even though we aren’t all repenting for the same things. But as we go through the alphabet of woes, we are owning all the sins.
Who shall say we have not sinned? Verily, we have sinned.
In a sense, the pandemic was the great reprieve. Even for people like me who were somehow essential (because what pandemic doesn’t need a pastry chef? When I told people later that I had been an essential worker, they thanked me. Then I explained what I do and we laughed.) It was still a break. There was no travel, no live entertainment, no obligations. I came home to a husband who cooked and played music while getting a decent unemployment check. I took walks. I already had chickens and a dog and a sourdough starter, the things everyone suddenly wanted. My garden was growing. We had a small pool and pool deck, perfect for two people. We lit bonfires in our yard. I had an art studio in my house.
I loved the simplicity of my life. The roads were quiet, the skies clear. People pitched in and worked together, at least at first.
(Disclaimer. Not everyone had a wonderful hideaway. A vicious tornado came through a few weeks before the shutdown. People were uprooted. Others couldn’t get unemployment checks for months because the system was so backed up. People living on the margins had a rough time. I saw you. Not writing you off. But most of us were okay, if we weren’t sick or working in hospitals.)
Were these the Days of Awe? Was God watching to see how we handled this sudden upheaval? Was God seeing hotels giving rooms to health care workers so they wouldn’t expose their families to Covid? How about the skies over major cities clearing, and people finding joy in reading and slowing down?
After a few weeks, I was driving to work and the weirdness had begun to seem normal. I decided I had engaged in magic thinking, and these weren’t the Days of Awe. Once again, Who by Fire played. I should add that I had about ten stations shuffling. I took it as a sign.
The voices of discord grew to a clamor. The buffoon of a president stoked anger and division so he could soak up the admiration of his minions. Someone shot and killed a Dollar General clerk who tried to enforce a mask rule. People hoarded toilet paper and hand sanitizer so they could rip off other people. Those who couldn’t accept peace and cooperation demanded the world go back to how it had been, calling the deadly virus fake even as people died.
God watches us during the Days of Awe. Those are the days when we are at our best, and God records us in the Book of Life. I think. I’ve never been entirely clear on this. All I know is that you want to be recorded for life when it closes at the end of Yom Kippur.
When I see the crazy weather, the floods, the tornados, the drought, the hail, the fires, I see it as ending the Days of Awe in a fail. We had a chance and we blew it. Not all of us doing all the sins. Nobody does the whole alphabet of woes, but we repent for all of it anyway.
T’shuva, t’filla, t’zedakah. Prayer, repentance and charity can temper judgment’s severe decree.
Hang on to your hats. It’s going to be a rough ride. Most of all, help your fellow earthlings and your earth to make it through. Shalom.
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