We Have What We Need (Shabbat Sukkot)
Several years ago, I went on a backpacking trip with my friend Michelle. We met up in San Francisco and drove to the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains to hike the Pacific Crest Trail for a few days. We hiked eight hours up a mountain with everything we needed on our backs. Michelle, who was an experienced backpacker, moved faster than me, so, most of my day, I hiked alone, increasingly exhausted and weak. Finally, I met her off the trail, at the campsite she set up, and collapsed in the tent.
As I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, I learned how dependent I am on the help of others to find the trail when I lose it, or cook food for me when I can hardly sit up. As we put the bear canister with all our food under some rocks and crawled into our tent at the end of the night I experienced the illusion of security and the release that came with that understanding.
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Over the past several months, starting when we marked our loss of the solid walls of the Jerusalem Temple on Tisha B’av in July, we’ve all gone backpacking in some way or other: As we travelled through the wilderness, often alone, we faced our failures, and grew weary. Finally, we entered the High Holidays, put down the burdens of the last year, so we could renew our commitment to life in the new year.
Remarkably, after all that, the holidays don’t end! This Shabbat leads us into the final leg of our journey, the holiday of Sukkot, during which we are commanded to dwell in booths that serve as our temporary homes for 8 days. Without this holiday, we would quickly return to our ordinary lives, and risk losing everything we discovered on our journey from Tisha B’av to Yom Kippur. So, instead, we build a Sukkah, an in-between-space in which we can integrate what we learned.
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Every year, Sukkot helps us live more aligned with wisdom, aware that our attempts to create permanence are ultimately illusory, that our only real sense of security and happiness comes from what we carry with us. That, in some sense, we already have everything we need to be happy and secure. Over Sukkot, we gaze up through the roof at the stars, feeling the wind, noticing how the Holy One has woven us into web of life with the plants, animals, and minerals all around us.
During the next 8 days, as we sit in Orchard Cove’s Sukkah, in this temporary structure, with no solid walls between us and the world, may we integrate the insights we had and resolutions we made over the High Holidays; so as we begin this new year, we find ourselves a bit more open to the web of life, and living more aligned with our deepest values, and what matters most to us.
Moadim l’simcha; may this Sukkot be a joyous one for you!
Amen.