What a Time

It’s dark – this is the longest Shabbat of the year - and then there’s Covid, wreaking havoc and spreading fear. We’ve taken the decision to move all services to streamed-only for the coming three weeks. It’s not an easy decision. There aren’t a lot of easy decisions around.

 

My mind has wandered to the magnificent opening verses of Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

 

There is a time to be born,  and a time to die;  a time to plant,  and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away.

(I love that idea of a time to throw away)

 

The great message of Ecclesiastes is that the world doesn’t work out the way we think it should – this is the problem that prompts Ecclesiastes to consider existence Hevel – usually translated as “vanity.” A better translation would be “absurd.” We expect life to unfold in an ordered and gentle way, and it refuses to. That is the absurdity of it all – Havel HaHavelim HaKol Havel – the absurdity of absurdities. What is a person to do? Tread gently, Ecclesiastes counsels. “Know that you cannot know the way of the wind, or how bones grow in the womb and how much the more so you cannot know the work of God who doeth all things.” Don’t yield to despair, get out into the world, “Sow thy seed in the morning and in the evening withhold not thy hand for you not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they shall both be alike for good.” And take the pleasures of beauty where you can find them, “The light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. For if one lives many years, take pleasure in them.” Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that the world is a benign and ordered place.

 

But there is something else in, perhaps, the most famous verses in the book, that opening to Chapter 3 which remind us that there is “a time to hug, and a time to refrain from hugging,” (really – this book is the most remarkable guide to how to endure Covid). Ecclesiastes reminds us that is that there is nothing so wonderful that it will not become lost. And nothing so lost that it will not reveal the wonderful. Olga Tokarczuk’s stunning, newly translated, The Books of Jacob contains a remarkable play on the relationship between two almost identically spelt Hebrew words “blindness” – Eilem – and “world” – Olam. The impenetrability of the world is its very nature. Light, she reveals, is only visible next to shade. Beauty only means anything when we appreciate its fragility. Life, strength and courage are only revealed when it is dark.

 

I’m saddened not to be able to celebrate this dark Shabbat in person in this wonderful community. That time will come again soon. But in the meantime, please do consider joining us to greet the Shabbat at 6:30pm tonight, or celebrate it, at 10am on our stream www.newlondon.org.uk/digital. May our prayers herald an ever deeper and more powerful understanding of the light,