Numen Lumen: Senior Baccalaureate Reflection

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higiyanu laz’man hazeh.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.

Blessed are we, somewhere unnameable, fully present to our reality.

Tracking it, with all its subtle gradations and colors and contrasts, the sweetness and the struggle, the stuck and not-quite-fitting.

Authentic to it, mapping the full strangeness of the new emergent landscape.

Blessed are we… not calling it too soon.

Not settling for the neat and buttoned-up, the too-tied-up, the not-quite-true.

Bless all of it, the way we might widen our gaze to encompass it and embrace it.

And bless you, moving into the unknown, waiting, daring to hope.

Lord make me an instrument of Your peace

Where there is hatred let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness joy.

O Divine master grant that I may

Not so much seek to be consoled as to console

To be understood, as to understand.

To be loved. as to love

For it is in giving that we receive

And it is in pardoning that we are pardoned

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

May I never love who I could be (in theory) more than who I actually am

May I never sink teeth into a future so perfect, I exclude myself from the plan

May I never attempt to abandon my strengths in the name of taking up a little less space

May I never put on a face that’s so brave I am actually proving how very afraid I am of disappointing the people around me, of saying no, of admitting I’m drowning, of taking a break, of walking away, of appearing weak,

Instead, may I breathe slowly, and take my time, and listen to my body, my heart, and my mind,

May I show up for myself- broken, fractured, or bruised-

And may I love others like this- with grace, patience, and truth

Now, each person must say: “The entire world was created only for my sake” (Sanhedrin 37a). Consequently, because the world was created for my sake, I must constantly look into and consider ways of making the world better; to provide what is missing in the world and pray on its behalf.

God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass-like a glittering star, fueled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it- light upon light- God guides whoever He will to his Light; God draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.