Warning: If You're Here for the Love & Light, This One's Gonna Be a Dark One

I read through the parsha today. (Yesterday by the time this is published.) 

And I’ll be downright honest with you.

It was morbid.

I mean, sure there are some beautiful blessings and the maturation of a nation having absorbed Torah through the wilderness for 40 years.

But there are 98 curses. Ninety-eight! 

And they’re depressing. And I’m not in a mood to find meaning. Even though, sure – I always believe there’s light in the dark. And there’s light coming through this, I know it. We’ll get to that. 

But right now this density wants to be felt. And needs to come through. Just because it is. 

This density exists everywhere now. Maybe you’ve felt it, too.

Welcome to Elul. Welcome to the subtle descent from summer to fall.

This is the void before creation begins anew.

In the readings of the parsha.

In the seasons of the year.

Perhaps in your own cycle.

(Oh, and the lunar eclipse. How can we forget?)

In the space where the year 5786 prepares to bleed into 5787.

That heaviness coming through as I read the parsha hit me hard. I felt it through my bones, in an ache that washed over me. I wasn’t expecting this because I know the next few parshas have some incredible insights I’ve already shared last year. This is my first time writing on – and truly experiencing – Ki Savo.

There was also a specific verse that struck me:

בַּבֹּ֤קֶר תֹּאמַר֙ מִֽי־יִתֵּ֣ן עֶ֔רֶב וּבָעֶ֥רֶב תֹּאמַ֖ר מִֽי־יִתֵּ֣ן בֹּ֑קֶר 

In the morning, you will say, "If only it were evening! " and in the evening, you will say, "If only it were morning!" 

(Devarim 29:67)

Night and day are the dark side and bright side of the 24 hour daily cycle.

Like menstruation and ovulation in the monthly cycle.

Like winter and summer in the seasonal cycle.

We so often want to be somewhere else rather than experience the tenderness of where we are. The night will come. The morning will dawn. The new year will begin. The cycle will be renewed.

Whether or not we’re present with these pangs of transition as our old selves shed and we prepare to be reborn again.

We do have a choice. Bypassing is real. And so valid at times. It might even feel like the logical, easier choice. Not to feel the weight. To distract, numb, ignore. I do wonder if the renewal is as potently felt this way.

Or – we can feel it.

Transmute it through our cells. Receive the gift (I can't tell you what it will be for you because every time it offers me something different) that even pain, darkness, and curses can hold.

In my experience, this gives way to a powerful rebirth. Like menstruation, shedding the layers makes way for life anew.

I promise next week’s parsha will be more lighthearted. It already holds the taste of hope, renewal, and return. We’re in the last few weeks before coming back to creation itself.

And it’s no mistake, I believe, that the root word of this parsha - תבא - begins with the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet (ת) and goes straight back into the first two letters (בא).

We’re winding down – and there’s morbidity to that. (So many women fight this as we wind down in our own cycles every month, but there are parts of us literally shedding and dying. We’re allowed to feel that.)

Feeling this density, letting it move through your body, honoring what’s leaving (Ki Seitzei) and creating space through the void for everything that’s about to come (Ki Savo.)

Breathe.

Have a beautiful, restful Shabbos.

See you on the other side!

Speaking of creation (a power that lives and breathes through the cycles of womanhood) and what's coming through the void, Embodied will be available next week at a discounted rate for waitlist members only.

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*Btw you wanted the light? The word l’chaim has a gematria of 98, corresponding to the 98 curses of this parsha. The antidote is woven right inside of it. Life inherent in the darkest places. (Told you it's always there!)

(Quoting this piece from Rabbi Avraham Aryeh Trugman.)