On Yom Kippur, we spend the day with Matthew’s family. Fasting. Solemn self-reflection. That evening, I tell Matthew, “I don’t want to go to Kol Nidre.” I don’t know why. Something about atonement. Something about feeling stuck inside my own skin.
“Okay,” he nods, pulling on his coat.
As he’s pulling open the door, I call out. “Wait. I do want to go.”
On the highway, halfway there, something comes loose in me. I start picking at him. “I don’t like your hat,” I say. “Okay,” he says. He puts his hand over mine. We don’t say much. We arrive late.
—
About fifty people are seated on folding chairs, set in rows echoing outward from the piano, where my friend Lisa sits at the keyboard, her halo of white hair glowing. Her miraculous voice fills the room with the opening prayer as Matthew and I take our places by the door.
Then, Judith Rose, the celebrant, begins speaking. “On Kol Nidre the prayer is: Forgive us for all the lies we have told, the ways we have hurt others, the things we have stolen, for doing less than our best at work, in relationships. For being less than you, God, would have us be.”
“This remarkable concept — that this heart, which beats all of our lives, constantly, beginning in utero just weeks from the moment of conception — is the seat of pure, unstruck love,” she says. “The word, anahata, the Sanskrit name for the heart chakra, means unstruck.”
Tears fill my eyes.
“At the New Year, Jewish people thump their heart, asking forgiveness of their sins. It’s the only time we strike the unstruck heart.” Judith suggests we strike the chest gently, in gratitude for this gift that sustains us all of our lives.
How can I forgive myself for what I’ve done? Tears tracking down my cheeks as I strike my own heart. But what? What do I imagine I have done? What do I imagine I have not done? I can’t understand why I’m crying. Exhaustion? Regret?
I remember a story Caroline Myss told during my CMED training — about a woman whose entire family had died in a terrible accident, who walked through the funeral process dry, not one tear. And then one day her eyes began to stream. She still felt nothing but her eyes could no longer hold back the flow of salt water. It was the beginning of release, a melting of her defenses. Grief must flow out.
Judith’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “The Jewish concept of Atonement,” she says, “is interpreted tonight as At-One-Ment. Becoming so close to the resonance of God’s pure love, pure light, that you are transformed.”
It’s grief, I realize. So much is changing. So much that was is no more. I strike my heart again. But gently. So gently. I strike my heart with tenderness, repeating my own version of a prayer: I have done enough. I am good enough.
—
This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago. The previous chapter, Go Fish, is here. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here. Want to support the work? Leave a comment. Share a chapter with a friend. To receive the chapters by email, subscribe here. To support the writer (me) and the project, become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers also get SOSI: The School of (Words and) Images.
You got to work with Carolyn Myss?!?
We drag ourselves into these places just to find a reason to bleed. You picked a fight in the car because the grief was already boiling over and needed to break something. The old dogma always wants you to beat your own chest to prove you are paying the toll. But realizing you do not owe another drop of blood is the trick.