A Day of Atonement

Stumbling towards the Light.

“G’mar chatima tova” is the Hebrew greeting on Yom Kippur. It means “May you be sealed in the Book of Life.”

The Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, begins the ten Days of Awe that lead up to Yom Kippur, which is today. Yom Kippur is the Highest of the Holy Days, the Day of Atonement, when we pray for God’s blessing for another year of life.

But it’s significant that we prepare ourselves for that blessing, going deep during the Days of Awe and on Yom Kippur itself, knowing that we must atone for our past mistakes in order to open ourselves to new possibilities in the coming year. A friend of mine once wisely said, “The universe keeps a perfect set of books.” Yom Kippur is when we clean them up.

John Theodor

The idea of atoning for our mistakes is a universal spiritual theme. It’s found in Judaism in the practice in Yom Kippur, in Catholicism in the practice of confession, and in Alcoholics Anonymous in Steps 4 and 5.

It’s fairly daunting to go over in your mind all your transgressions committed over the length of an entire year, especially if you’re fasting. It’s not a fun experience, but Yom Kippur isn’t about having fun. It’s about gaining God’s blessing on another year of life, not in the sense that He’s up there somewhere deciding who’s good and who’s bad, but rather because everything we do is an action that gets a reaction, and any actions we don’t clean up now will cause reactions in the years ahead. Much like the discussion of karma versus dharma, Yom Kippur is a day of cleaning up the former to achieve the blessing of the latter.

Cleaning up our lives isn’t easy - it’s not always comfortable to go deep - which is why as a culture we’re addicted to running around, talking about ultimately meaningless things, and keeping conversations as shallow as possible. Now, as a society, we’re reaping the consequences of that, faced with very sobering challenges that would never have occurred had we been more spiritually and intellectually sober to begin with.

God isn’t angry, but He isn’t kidding either. Humanity has just about hit the limit of how far we can go with irreverent, irresponsible behavior and not have to face catastrophic consequences.

The Age of Information will now give way to an Age of Consciousness, or humanity will not survive. And higher consciousness is simply the path of the heart. If we were, as a nation or as a species, to sincerely atone for our collective transgressions against the heart of humanity, tears would flow down our cheeks and perhaps it would be ages before we could stop. Yet those are tears would cleanse us. Today, we can at least begin.

We can atone for our senseless wars. We can atone for environmental degradation. We can atone for violence and oppression. We can atone for overwhelming greed. We can atone for letting children starve. We can atone for genocide. We can atone for hatred and abuse. We can atone for racial injustice. We can atone for our inhumanity … to each other, to animals, to the earth, and to ourselves.

Today, in addition to atoning for our own mistakes, let those of us who observe this holiday atone for more than just our own transgressions. Let us atone for our nations. Let us atone for our species. Let us pray not just for ourselves - but for our sad and irreverent and weary and irresponsible and deeply wounded world - for God’s forgiveness, and His blessing on another year of life.

Prayer for today:

While I have made mistakes, I remember today that God is infinitely merciful. I am willing to atone for my errors and make appropriate amends, that the mercy of God be shown to me. I pray for forgiveness, that my heart might be free of shame and guilt. I know that I am a perfect child of God, and that my mistakes do not make me less so.

God sees me not as someone whose guilt calls for punishment, but as someone who’s errors call for correction. As I turn to Him and admit my errors, genuinely atoning in my heart for any damage I may have caused to others or to myself, the miraculous power of the Atonement is released on my behalf. I will be given a chance to begin again; as many times as I may have fallen, such is the number of times He lifts me up. For such is the awesome mercy of God.

Dear God,

I atone in my heart for the mistakes I have made: the recklessness and irresponsibility, the laziness and dishonesty, the hurt I have caused myself or others. I pray for those who I may have harmed, and ask that they be healed of any pain I might have caused them. I vow to be a better person now, that I might rise where before I had fallen, and shine where I had dwelled in darkness.

Amen