{"id":2553,"date":"2021-09-05T19:32:52","date_gmt":"2021-09-05T19:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=2553"},"modified":"2021-09-05T19:32:52","modified_gmt":"2021-09-05T19:32:52","slug":"the-closing-rituals-of-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=2553","title":{"rendered":"The Closing Rituals of Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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We did it, we celebrated summer, in spite of it all.\u00a0 We fulfilled the ritual, as we had to; the body needs its sense of itself, to immerse in water and shifting light and in joy.\u00a0 It needs to entertain its thought experiments \u2014 what if we don\u2019t worry? – by digging toes into wet sand and by scaling mountain peaks. \u00a0It needs to create stage sets where it can play, live and come to deeply believe in the \u201chere and now,\u201d not as decoration but in all its vibrant seriousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summer, that defiant romp against despair, is closing with the opening of a book.\u00a0 I\u2019m not thinking about September teaching or classes, though that\u2019s happening around me, but about Rosh Hashanah.\u00a0 As a bookish kid, I was always delighted that the Jewish Holidays included God cracking open his BRook \u2014 it was the book that mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that Book of Life names are written, then sealed. The concept carries serious weight, but this year I\u2019m giving it a different spin.  The turning that we do, teshuvah, turning over a new leaf, returning to true and better selves is like turning or stitching of material that poets indulge in.  We thread one thing against and into another. Bursts of strong emotion or image might end a line to be met with contradiction on the next.  All paradox, all voices welcome!  I can understand our contemporary turbulence as voices breaking in on each other.  Beauty is stitched with grief, and against the tragic bursts the intimate.  Dark absurdity is patched with innocence. And personal failings open onto something bigger, a collective standing together.  That stitching, that turning to the whole is the next ritual I\u2019m falling into. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We did it, we celebrated summer, in spite of it all.\u00a0 We fulfilled the ritual, as we had to; the body needs its sense of itself, to immerse in water and shifting light and in joy.\u00a0 It needs to entertain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1147],"class_list":["post-2553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rosh-hashanah-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-Fb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2557,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions\/2557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}