At a terrifying height, in the midst of breathtaking beauty, the glider hangs calmly suspended, as if the fragile perch could as easily be a porch swing or a desk chair. In moments of true balance, both life’s terror and its beauty are simply facts, like feeling the rush of wind or the warmth of the sun.
How will you find balance in the terror and the beauty of your day?
On Simchat Torah, the celebration of the completion of the yearly cycle of reading from the Torah, Jews march and dance around the synagogue carrying the Torah scroll. And then, as part of the joyful celebration, they start the cycle of reading over again: B’reshit…In the beginning…
What is ending in your life? How might that ending bring a joyful beginning?
In the words of singer/story teller Nancy Schimmel:
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
It was a courageous thing to do,
But someone was already here.
The power and privilege of the Europeans led Columbus and those who came after him to believe that they were “discovering” a land that had been occupied for thousands of years.
In what ways might privilege distort how you view your accomplishments or your place in the world?
“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” Remember when falling down was fun? Of course, literal falling gets more dangerous as our bodies age, but as we get older we also seem to get more cautious about metaphorical kinds of falling. We don’t want to be seen as messing up; we worry that we will be perceived as failures. But some of the world’s great discoveries have come from the creative handling of mistakes—graceful ways of getting up after falling down.
How can you turn a mistake or failure into something that is simply part of the game?
Every now and again you meet a person who just stands out, who just seems to rise above the crowd of the ordinary. Perhaps these people are gifted with a special kind of charisma. Or perhaps they have simply refused to let the world erode away their uniqueness.
How do you cherish, defend and display the things that make you unique?
