A Concord Pastor Comments: NIGHT PRAYER: Wednesday 10/1

Yom Kippur is not a day that Gentiles observe, but the prayerful review of one's life is something that all of us might well do on a daily basis, asking forgiveness for our sins and praying for the grace to grow in God's love and truth. (See today's Pause for Prayer)

Beginning at sundown today (and ending at sundown tomorrow) our Jewish neighbors and friends are celebrating Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Today's NIGHT PRAYER comes in three parts: 1) Rabbi Alvin Fine's reflection, Life Is A Journey, inspired by Kol Nidre, the opening service of Yom Kippur; 2) A prayer of repentance by my friend, Alden Solovy; and 3) two musical renditions of the Kol Nidrei: Cantor Azi Schwartz's eloquwent vocal interpretation and a soul-stirring piano-cello version of Max Bruch's Kol Nidre, played by Michael Butterman and Zuill Bailey.

Life Is A Journey

Birth is a beginning

And death a destination.

And life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity

And youth to age;

From innocence to awareness

And ignorance to knowing;

From foolishness to discretion

And then, perhaps, to wisdom;

From weakness to strength

Or strength to weakness –

And, often, back again;

From health to sickness

And back, we pray, to health again;

From offense to forgiveness,

From loneliness to love,

From joy to gratitude,

From pain to compassion,

And grief to understanding –

From fear to faith;

From defeat to defeat to defeat –

Until, looking backward or ahead,

We see that victory lies

Not at some high place along the way,

But in having made the journey, stage by stage,

A sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning

And death a destination.

And life is a journey,

A sacred pilgrimage –

To life everlasting.

-Rabbi Alvin Fine in Gates of Repentance

Repentance Inside

This I confess to myself:

I have taken my transgressions with me,

Carrying them year-by-year into my hours and days,

My lapses of conscience
And indiscretion with words,
My petty judgments
And my vanity,
Clinging to grief and fear, anger and shame,
Clinging to excuses and to old habits.
I’ve felt the light of heaven,
Signs and wonders in my own life,
And still will not surrender to holiness and light.

God of redemption,
With Your loving and guiding hand
Repentance in prayer is easy.
Repentance inside,
Leaving my faults and offenses behind,
Is a struggle.
In Your wisdom You have given me this choice:
To live today as I lived yesterday,
Or to set my life free to love You,
To love Your people,
And to love myself.

God of Forgiveness,

Help me to leave my transgressions behind,

To hear Your voice,
To accept Your guidance,
And to see the miracles in each new day.

Blessed are You,
God of Justice and Mercy,
You set Your people on the road to t’shuva.*

- Alden Solovy: www.tobendlight.com

* returning to God

Our music for this evening includes two settings of the Kol Nidrei which opens the observance of Yom Kippur. Kol Nidrei is not really a prayer but rather an annulment of vows:

So, we begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidrei, by which we declare that we want absolution from all the private commitments we made this past year, which we intended with all sincerity, but that we may have failed to fulfill. Bad enough that we have failed to improve; we do not want the additional guilt of spoiling last year’s commitments.
And we declare that, going into Yom Kippur, we do not want to be held accountable for the commitments we are about to make. We make these commitments because we hope to succeed, but if we fail, we do not want the additional guilt for spoiling our promises.