Walking in the Field

Teshuvah accesses an aspect of the razton Hashem that is even deeper than the do’s and don’ts of the Torah; it touches an incomprehensibly all-encompassing expression of Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s infinite reality wherein even that which is against His will is at the same time part of His will.

The distance was never Hashem closing a door; it was us walking away from a door that remained open the whole time.

Sometime today, say to Hashem, quietly and in your own words, one honest sentence that begins with "I got it wrong when..." and one that begins with "I want to come back to..." Notice that nothing else is required before you say them.

Taking on a small, precise kabbalah is really an acknowledgment that lasting change happens step by step, not all at once, and that we need Hashem's help along the way rather than relying purely on our own willpower and good intentions. That itself is a turn away from ego and back towards a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

Yesterday's failure doesn't get a vote on what's possible today.

There's a famous teaching - the kind that is too common and too old to really be attributed to any specific source - that compares dwelling on old sins to blowing on hot coals. Coals that have been sitting around can look cold and dead. Yet, when you blow on them, they flare right back up. Constantly replaying and re-examining old aveiros, turning them over in your mind again and again can do the same thing to a yetzer that had mostly gone quiet. ... The goal isn't to keep the memory of our mistakes burning. The goal is to let those memories and our attachment to our past errors and missteps finally go out.

What differentiates rachamim from din and chessed is that chessed and din both focus exclusively on external actions. The nature of rachamim, however, is to look deeper at the roots and intentions behind a person’s behavior. Rachamim takes into consideration what a person was really trying or hoping to do, even if their external actions ended up falling short.

We are told that during Elul, “the King is in the field,” that Hashem is close. Of course, Hashem doesn’t change. He is always exactly where He is. The Gemarah even teaches that Hashem is right there with us after we make mistakes or sin just as He was before. From this perspective, Elul is really just reminding us of something that is always true.

The shofar suggests that underneath all the words you could ever find, there's a simpler, more basic way of communicating - of connecting - that doesn't need language to be heard. In fact, it reminds us how sometimes, language can be what gets in the way.