Shana Tova.

I took an adventure walk with our goldendoodle Oz on July 29, which happened to be Tu B’Av — the day of love and hope. The day in the Jewish calendar when we begin to ascend out of our spiritual pit and toward renewal.

I had found a spot by the Hudson where I had never been — Washington Irving’s cottage, Sunnyside, in Irvington. It turned into quite an adventure, Oz and me. We walked across streams, up and down hills, bushwhacked through eight-foot-tall grasses. At one point I looked out beyond a stone bridge to a stream leading out to the Hudson and thought: this is what it is to look out into the great unknown.

What supports us when we stand and look out to the unknown?

At one point I stumbled on an unstable rock and caught my balance as I fell forward onto a stable rock in front of it. I realized I had made a choice. I could have fallen back on the stable rock I was coming from. Instead I fell forward.

When things are uncertain, which way do you fall?

We can fall forward or back. It’s a choice. What does it mean to fall forward?

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Raise your hopeful voice

Among the many greats we lost this year is Glen Hansard, the Irish musician who wrote “Falling Slowly” with Markéta Irglová.

“Well, you have suffered enough / And warred with yourself / It’s time that you won.”

“Falling Slowly,” Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová · listen and read the full lyric

It is a song about what it means to be human when we don’t know exactly where we are going. About falling forward, longing, being wounded, moving toward the uncertain, toward one another while neither one has everything figured out.

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We fall to the level of our practice

We all fall. We fall personally. We fall as families. We fall as communities, and countries, as a Jewish people, and as humanity. Our marriages fall, our careers, our health. And when we fall, we discover something important:

We rise and fall to our level of practice. We don’t suddenly become the person we wish we were in a crisis. We become the person, the people, the nations, the humanity that we have practiced becoming.

Rosh Hashanah asks us to imagine who we might become. But perhaps the more important question is:

Have we practiced being who we are?

Listening? Wondering? Looking out toward the beyond? Have we practiced falling forward?

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Five years ago today

Five years ago today, my father was killed by a driver who drove up onto the sidewalk of a beach road in Cape Cod.

Who my mother had practiced being prepared her to keep connecting, growing, working in public policy for the cause that would have prevented her husband’s death — and mostly, to keep living. My mother had a choice on September 12, the day after.

I am in awe of my mother. Her strong core. She would say her uncannily compassionate dog Milo, named after Michael, has gotten her through. I say it is the way she has chosen to live a connected life that has allowed her to choose life again and again after the sudden death by vehicular homicide of her beloved husband. With God’s help, she is OK. God’s help shows up in the hearts and hands of the community.

Fear, trauma, tragedy can make the world very small. It can make us tend to see only ourselves. It can make another person become a threat instead of a human being. It can make us isolated, understandably. Who wants to show our faces when we are suffering?

The Torah teaches, it is not good to be alone — lo tov adam lihiyot levado.

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In a place where there are no humans

Who will we become when fear inevitably narrows our vision? When pain inevitably hardens our hearts? When vulnerabilities are laid bare? When threats are real?

Have we practiced listening to the kol demama daka, to our quiet inner voice? Have we practiced living our core values? Are we practiced in the power of participating in true community that knows and sees us in our shtick and our shine? Have we practiced being our core selves?

The sages teach: repent a day before your death. Who we are on that day is who we practiced becoming the days before.