I Am Not a Rabbi, But . . .

I am not a rabbi.  I have not devoted years of my life to the study of the Torah, like my friends Bob and Jim and Myra and Steve.  I am not even a Jew, though the one I follow was a Jew.  I celebrate Christmas and Easter and All Saints Day.  Not Passover and Hanukkah.  So maybe it is rather presumptuous of me to comment on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, arguably, so I understand, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.  But allow me to indulge in some cross-faith observations.

It seems to me that we as Americans--Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist, atheists, pagans, the whole lot of us--would do well to mark Yom Kippur this year.  The practices surrounding the day include fasting.  There are a number of ways to understand this practice, and certainly other faith traditions engage in periodic fasting, including my own.  But one way of understanding this ancient spiritual practice is to see it as a symbolic cleansing.  

Over time many toxic elements find their way into our bodies, and fasting is a way to flush them out.  So too many toxic elements find their way into our hearts and minds, our very souls.  As Americans we have been exposed to an enormous amount of toxins this past year.  Hatred has rarely had such free reign.  All too often, regardless of our political or social views, we have labeled those with whom we disagree as something less than human, and in doing so we diminish our own humanity as well.  We would do well to be cleansed of such,

To atone for our own participation in such thinking, such speaking, such acting, might not be such a bad idea for all of us.  Owning up to our--here's an old-fashioned, out of favor word--sins, and then vowing to move in a new direction, seems to me to be an exercise from which would benefit most of us. And it would benefit the nation as well.