“Why can’t you come to my basketball games?” My daughter’s tears were convincing, and more so at nine years of age.
As a physician, I am painfully aware of my limited time with my children. I run the math. Ariel will be a preteen for twelve years. Subtract the first couple of nonspeaking years, extract sleep time, remove school time, take away times that either one of us is “too busy” for the other- best case scenario, I will have a few months with her before she is abducted by aliens.
It’s not just me. I hear it from all walks of life, those damning words “I just don’t have time for…”
Most couples, a few years into marriage, and after children, realize that they need “date nights” to refresh, reconnect, recharge, lest they drift apart.
We need to create pockets of time, into which we step, out of the world, off the self-imposed treadmills. To be sure, these are holy spaces we create, to receive love, to share love, to allow God to walk between our souls.
Shabbat is a pocket of time when we step out of the temporary and experience a taste of eternity.
Sukkot is a pocket of time and space where we build permanence out of the ephemeral. As in the story of Noah, coming out of a sea of communal sins and having been pardoned by The Master of The Universe, we build a temporary arch, and decorate its pierced top with a rainbow made of fruits. The promise remains the same: Miracles are with us every day, if we make the time to sense them.
With our children, with our loved ones, even with strangers invited into the tent in the tradition of Abraham, we step into the tabernacles to share the joy of life. In that pocket of time and space, under the stars, we experience “date night” with God.
The most elaborate castle is built on sand and will be washed away with waves; everything is temporary- except for our connections with one another and with God.
Though our flesh and blood is born with an expiration date, true love has no shelf life. Permanence is built out of the ephemeral.
Wishing you a time of joy.
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