Turn Signals Sun, 8th September, 2013
The turning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is an appropriate time to reflect on the happy prospect of new beginnings. Though it still looks and feels like summer this week in St. Louis, the signs of new beginnings abound.
Yesterday, I enjoyed watching my daughter and her school volleyball team mates play their first game of the season. They played well, exhibiting new confidence and new skills learned from the last season. They worked together and supported each other, and of course enjoyed the celebratory outing to the ice cream shop afterwards perhaps even more.
Likewise it’s the beginning of the new church year with our traditional water communion this morning. All have returned from summer travels and the streams of our lives will once again flow together. We anticipate the new growth and new friends that we will gain as the new year unfolds.
In honor of the high holy days, I leave you with this reflection by Jack Riemer...
On Turning
Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.
For leaves, birds and animals turning comes instinctively. But for us turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong; and this is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all over again; and this is always painful.
It means saying: I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways.
God, help us to turn—from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn us around, O God, and bring us back toward You.
Revive our lives, as at the beginning. And turn us toward each other, God, for in isolation there is no life.
—Jack Riemer
The turning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is an appropriate time to reflect on the happy prospect of new beginnings. Though it still looks and feels like summer this week in St. Louis, the signs of new beginnings abound.
Yesterday, I enjoyed watching my daughter and her school volleyball team mates play their first game of the season. They played well, exhibiting new confidence and new skills learned from the last season. They worked together and supported each other, and of course enjoyed the celebratory outing to the ice cream shop afterwards perhaps even more.
Likewise it’s the beginning of the new church year with our traditional water communion this morning. All have returned from summer travels and the streams of our lives will once again flow together. We anticipate the new growth and new friends that we will gain as the new year unfolds.
In honor of the high holy days, I leave you with this reflection by Jack Riemer...
On Turning
Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.
For leaves, birds and animals turning comes instinctively. But for us turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong; and this is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all over again; and this is always painful.
It means saying: I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways.
God, help us to turn—from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn us around, O God, and bring us back toward You.
Revive our lives, as at the beginning. And turn us toward each other, God, for in isolation there is no life.
—Jack Riemer
