When Giving Thanks Is Not So Easy
Dear Friends,
Here we are again heading into the holiday season with Thanksgiving leading into Chanukah and the festivals of winter. Holidays, at the best of times, bring an array of emotions, expectations and experiences, and how much more so with the challenges and uncertainties of this past year.
It is so important to be gentle with ourselves and each other as we enter into this time, knowing that many of us are carrying joys and sadness, heartaches and delights.
For some of us giving thanks will come easily and we will raise our cups and light our candles in appreciation and delight. For others of us, feeling ourselves filled with sadness and pain, gratitude might be difficult to reach. And many of us will also find ourselves swaying between many different emotions.
Something that might be helpful to remember is that in Hebrew, the word for giving thanks, Hoda’ah, also means acknowledgment.
The practice of gratitude is not only about offering thanks.
It is also a practice of presence.
Hoda’ah is a practice that says, I acknowledge this moment.
I am present to this moment, whatever the moment contains.
I find this teaching releases some of the burden of giving thanks when gratitude is difficult to find and allows us to be present to all that is true, without judgment.
When we are having trouble giving thanks, what we need most is the compassion and understanding that presence can offer.
I also find inspiration in this teaching from poet David Whyte:
Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us.
May gratitude spread its wings with grace and when pain and sadness make gratitude difficult to find, may compassion and love rise in comfort.
Go to downloadable PDFs with prayers and practices for the 2021/5782 Thanksgiving holiday.
Go to our Chanukah page to find intentions for candle lighting for each night of Chanukah and teachings and meditations to sit with during the Chanukah days.
Wherever we find ourselves this Thanksgiving and Chanukah season, may we receive strength and sustenance from being present hamakom hazeh, to this place, this moment.
With love,
Rabbi Yael
Go to teachings on the A Way In website
This Week's Audio Teachings
For our meditation this week, we sit with the teachings Ya’acov bestows through his wrestling all night by the river. Listen to the recording of today's Meditation Sit with Rabbi Yael Levy on Soundcloud or on the A Way In website. Listen to the recording of this week's Torah Studyon theA Way In website or on Soundcloud.
Lifting up the Lights Together: Candle Lighting Together via ZoomWe will come together to kindle the lights on the 3rd and 5th nights of Chanukah. Rabbi Yael will offer a short teaching and we will share songs and reflections as we sit in the light Chanukah reveals.
3rd night of Chanukah: Tuesday, Nov. 30 at 8PM Eastern
5th night of Chanukah: Thursday, Dec. 2 at 6PM Eastern
(Please note the different times for each night in deference to our East, West and Midwest friends)
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 830 9721 6054
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