The Longing of Tisha B’Av Afternoon
As we move into the afternoon hours of this sad day our strength grows. With space to breathe, we consider the Eternal longing for intimacy and closeness and with that thought we reconnect with our own.
We begin to acknowledge our own loneliness and desire for closeness with God, our spouse, our parents, our children, our siblings, our neighbor.
We ask – “What’s holding me back?”
And the answer is always rooted in the past and the future.
I was once innocent and open but I was hurt and I am scared it will happen again. So protecting ourselves with the walls of loneliness makes sense.
And yet there is a part of us that wants to risk again. That knows that while pain is never pleasant, it’s not the problem. The problem is fear. Our fear of acknowledging the pain and the shame it seems to point at.
So, with the comfort and joy of knowing that we (and I truly mean All of us) are longing for the same thing, we commit to bravely risk, to trust, that despite the resentments of the past and the anxieties of the future we will we turn to, not away.
