A NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE FROM RABBI LEILA: WHAT WILL WE DO WITH OUR ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE?

The great American poet, Mary Oliver, asks us: “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

As each of us approaches the New Year, this is the crucial question: what will we do with the time we are given in the coming year? Life is so precious, so fragile, so finite —we hope that we will be blessed with length of life, but, in truth, we never know how long we will live. We are given this moment in time, a “wild and precious life” — what will we do with it?

The beginning of the Jewish New Year focuses our attention on the relentless passing of time. I share with you now the words of Rabbi Sidney Greenberg, of blessed memory:

“Is time an ally or an adversary?
    
The poet William Butler Yeats wrote: "I spit in the face of time that has transfigured me." But Benjamin Franklin kept two boxes on his desk. One box was marked, "Problems it will take time to solve." The other, "Problems time has already solved." For Yeats time was an enemy, for Benjamin Franklin, a friend.

Time is neither. It is neutral. It is what we do with time that matters. Time moves steadily ahead. It cannot be hoarded, nor can it be reversed. We cannot rewind our lives the way we do a videotape, and we cannot halt time in its flight. Sometimes we come to a moment so exquisite that we want to keep it forever, to savor it, to relive it -- and we understand the poet's plea: "O moment stay, for thou art fair." But we cannot stop time in its tracks.

A journalist once put this announcement in a newspaper's lost and found column: "Lost somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with 60 diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever." Like money, time has a way of slipping through our fingers, often with nothing to show for it.”


What shall we do with the year that is now being born?  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel left us an important clue when he wrote: "Judaism is a religion of time, aiming at the sanctification of time." Yes, we can sanctify time. Not only is Rosh Ha-Shana a holy day and Yom Kippur and Shabbat, but every day is holy if we choose to sanctify it. Remember the weekday to keep it holy.

How does time become holy? It becomes holy when a part of it is given to others, when we share and care and listen. It becomes holy when we remember things too long forgotten and when we forget things too long remembered; It becomes holy when we reclaim sacred things too casually abandoned and when we abandon shabby things too highly cherished, when we remember that life's most crucial question is -- how are we using time, how are we making the most of the precious moments, hours and days that are ours to live?

We must use time wisely and responsibly and respectfully, not so that we become obsessed with it, not so that we are always rushing, always frenzied -- but so that we give and receive meaning in our lives. Time flies, but we are the navigators. More important than counting time is making time count.

As we enter this New Year, we ask as did the author of the ancient Psalms: Teach us to treasure each day, that we may open our hearts to wisdom."

Shana tova u-metukah – may this coming year be a sweet, healthy, peaceful  happy and meaningful New Year for each of us, for those we love, and for the whole world.

Rabbi Leila