Living Now
Erev Rosh Hashanah, 22^nd September 2006 – 1^st Tishri 5767

The second Tuesday of every month I travel up to London to attend the meeting of the Rabbinic Conference of Liberal Judaism, which is held at the Montagu Centre. When I was on my way home from the July meeting, I bought an Evening Standard to catch the day’s news, and the newsvendor handed me an A5 magazine. It was called, Great Days Out, and was sub-titled, ‘How to keep your family entertained all summer.’ The magazine seemed innocuous enough at first glance, and with the summer holidays looming, I could see that since it offered – and I quote: ‘discount vouchers to top shows and attractions’ – ‘in association with Nectar’ – it might be just the ticket for people with families. And yet, even after I put it to one side, it disturbed me – annoyed me, even. The word ‘entertained’ grated, and the very notion of readers being enticed by the prospect of keeping their ‘families entertained all summer’, made me squirm.

At this point you may be thinking that my reaction was a little bit extreme – at least, bizarre – and that it’s easy for me to respond like this: After all, I don’t have children, so am not confronted with the challenge of keeping them occupied during the long school holidays. Perhaps, you even feel that I’m being rather trivial – what a topic for an Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah sermon!

But that’s just the issue I want to raise: The contemporary preoccupation with being ‘entertained’ is triviality gone mad. Young people going to school each day, week in, week out, live a regimented existence. Holiday times should be about exploring, creating, celebrating – about engaging actively in the world and interacting with others, not simply about passively ‘being entertained’ – amused, diverted, stimulated. I recall an older relative saying, in response to hearing about children sitting for hours in front of the television, ‘when I was young, we used to make our own entertainment.’ How many times have you heard someone over the age of seventy say that?

There’s a world of difference between ‘being entertained’ and ‘making our own entertainment.’ The difference is imagination, ingenuity, creativity, adventure. But ‘being entertained’ is not just an issue for young people – and it’s not just a matter of ‘entertainment’ – either of the passive or active variety. There is a deeper malaise infecting contemporary life – and the preoccupation with ‘entertainment’ is simply one of the most prevalent symptoms.

Here we are, in the midst of the Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah service. Why are we here? What are the main triggers that have brought us to the synagogue this evening? Habit? Guilt? Nostalgia? Fear? Regret? Hope? Perhaps it’s the longing for companionship and connection. Each person’s reasons will be different. One thing is clear: We haven’t come here to be ‘entertained’; we’re not even ‘making our own entertainment’; coming to synagogue on Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah can hardly be classed as ‘recreation’, after all. So, again, why are we here?

The standard response to this question is that we are ‘welcoming in the New Year’. But this simple answer belies the more profound dimension of this moment. Here we are – Hineinu: Here – in this moment between the old year that has now become the past, and the new year that lies ahead of us. Most of the time the present moment passes us by unnoticed – but on Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah, even while time moves on, inexorably, still the moment between the old year and the new year; marked by this service, is long enough for us, not only to reflect on the past and look to the future, but also to experience the present.

Most of the time, most of us are so preoccupied with what has happened and what might happen that we forget to live now. But actually, I think the problem is worse, even, than this. Most of the time, most of us don’t just forget to live now; we avoid being in the present moment. In place of living now, ‘being entertained’ offers us the option of ‘passing the time’, of ‘filling’ the space between the past and the future, in which we could be living, with entertainment. Of course, there are moments – when we are ill, for example – when, perhaps, we need something diverting to fill the space and help the time to pass. Being entertained has its place – but it cannot be a substitute for living.

So, why do we find it so hard to live now? Being Jewish doesn’t help. We spend so much time looking back, and reciting our familiar litanies about what happened to our ancestors, and what previous generations experienced, there is little time left to focus on the present. Living in a complex, frightening world, beset by violence and conflict, and threatened by ecological disaster doesn’t help, either. Feeling so overwhelmed and helpless in the face of the enormity of the problems, which seem to multiply daily, it’s not surprising that we retreat, not only into the past, which is known and contained, but into the comforting realms of diversionary entertainment.

There are, indeed, good reasons why we avoid the present. But actually, we all know that when we do manage to live in the present moment for a while, we don’t only feel better, more joyful – for a moment – but also, more able to engage in life on an on-going basis. And we don’t have to be doing anything particularly important or special. I remember weeding the front garden and path one afternoon in late August. It was such an absorbing task – but also, so satisfying; even with the aching back; not just the satisfaction of tackling and completing a simple task; but the awareness of doing it; the crouching, and the pulling, and the moment by moment involvement of my whole being. Of course, working in a garden is an obvious – and rather easy example – but, believe it or not, I’m aware of that being in the moment feeling when I’m writing a sermon, too; struggling to find the words to express what I want to say, trying things out, taping the keys, pausing to think.

In my experience, everything we do – even washing up or cleaning the bathroom – can be a moment lived or a moment lost. Martin Buber spoke about the encounter between people, either being about an ‘I’ meeting a ‘Thou’, or an ‘I’ meeting an ‘It’ – depending upon the insight and awareness we bring, and the extent to which we genuinely reach out to the other. Just as each meeting between two people has the potential to either be a real encounter between two subjects, or not; so each moment of our lives has the potential to be lived or to be lost.

Alternative practitioners and healers often talk about mindfulness. Being in a state of mindfulness, which involves approaching everything we do with intention and thoughtfulness, helps to ensure that we don’t hurt ourselves – quite literally – have accidents, and make mistakes. Being in a state of mindfulness is also the perfect antidote to the mindlessness that is induced by entertainment. But even when we are not being entertained, we are often in a state of mindlessness – so preoccupied with what we have just done, or are about to do – or both – that we forget to be in the moment.

We could blame Judaism for keeping us focussed on the past, but, Judaism also provides us with wonderful lessons in mindfulness. One of the main benefits, for example, of pausing to recite a blessing before we eat or experience something with our senses, or perform a mitzvah, is so that we are able to fully inhabit the moment and acknowledge it completely.

The Medieval Jewish scholar, Bachya, Joseph Ibn Pakuda, who lived in Muslim Spain from 1050-1120, wrote, in his magnum opus, Duties of the Heart, ‘Days are scrolls; write on them what you wish to be remembered’. In true Jewish fashion, Bachya seems to be thinking both forwards to the future time beyond our lives, and backwards, to the time when the present will become the past. But his words also convey something else: Life is the sum total of the days we live; each and every day we are called to act; to live; to write the on-going story of our lives. I was very struck, when I picked up a copy of My Life by the artist Marc Chagall, a few weeks ago, and realised that he wrote his autobiography at the age of thirty-five! He had lived so much life by then – and he was still very much alive – and chose to write in the midst of life – not to wait until he could feel the end approaching.

As I thought about this, my mind turned to another artist, Vincent Van Gough, who died at the age of thirty-six, and remembered the Van Gough Museum in the Netherlands crammed full of just some of the paintings that Van Gough painted in the very few years that he was an artist. Van Gough has left us the legacy of his amazing work – but the point is that despite dying so young – despite ending his own life – he lived life every day, as a celebrated film talks of love – ‘truly, madly, deeply’ – with all his being.

We are called to live life, if not madly, then truly and deeply, each and every day. Today – this evening – as we gather together to welcome in the New Year, and pause between the old year that ended as the sun set, and the new year that is about to dawn, we have the opportunity, not only to reflect on the past and look forward to the future, but also to be in the present. Time never stands still, but paradoxically, when we focus on the present, we discover that time is also eternal. Being wholly in the present liberates us from the incessant pulse of time as it beats our lives away, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, and transforms each moment into eternity. We haven’t come here this evening to be entertained. This is not what we do for recreation – but it may be an opportunity for re-creation. It is up to us. May this Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah service inspire each one of us, as we enter the New Year, to live truly and deeply, with all our being, in every moment. And let us say: Amen.