31 Days of Omer 5780, Beautiful Splendor, Tiferet Hod
Today is thirty-one days, which is four weeks and three days of the Omer in the year 5780. תפארת שבהוד. Tiferet ShebeHod, Beauty of Splendor.
Harmony in Exile
Today was the beginning of our ninth week of exile, sheltering in place, avoiding the outside world. I have not taken up any new hobbies, learned any new languages, or started playing any new instruments. I’m not even a particularly good companion to the people I share 1,400 square feet with.
Yet there are moment when I feel the hum of harmony. The perfect splendor of my tradition reveals itself daily in my studies.
We Jews are a people first and foremost. Before Christians invented the idea of “religion” (a cleaner, less ethnically driven way to convert pagans), we gathered around HaShem and the revelation of Her word. Many people think they know our early history, as it is taught to Christians and Muslims alike. Even the stories in the Hebrew Bible don’t tell the whole story. My people believed in a female god alongside a warrior god; perhaps more so given the number of female figurines found through archaeological excavation.
The men of the one unified understanding of HaShem learned to write, became the scribes of kings, and ultimately changed the course of Jewish history. Our Divine Mother peaks through in unexpected ways.
Entering the Day of Mothers
This is a hard day. Not just for those of us who had to oversee the creation of gifts to ourselves. It is a day of reconciliation: of recognizing how much we do not have, or perhaps did not have, in our relationships. Everyone deserves a deep and loving relationship with their mother. Everyone deserves to feel that their mother was the first person who loved them. Though the “mother archetype” may not even be female in your life, we each deserve that person.
If your relationship with your mother is not ideal, I see you.
Those mourning mothers who have passed from this world to the next, I see you.
Sisters wishing for just one day away from their blessed children, I see you.
The harmony of splendor embraces us all
Regardless of whether you have harmonious or disintegrated relationships with the humans in your life, the harmony of splendor embraces you. There is a mishkan, a place, within you calling you gently back to the deepest part of yourself. Your soul is there with you, aligned with the timelessness beyond time, the space beyond worlds. May your day bring you a moment of alignment with this truth.
Harmonious Splendor Before 2020
5779 / 2019: The beautiful splendor of the yoke of the Divine.