A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-And-Sixty-Three

Tonight, Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, began.  It is a day of fasting and prayer, of remembrance for those who have died, and, most essentially, of contrition, of accepting and acknowledging ones guilt.  It is quite somber, but I think there is a space within that for a kind of sacred joy that grows from being cleansed, both by asking forgiveness and granting it, of being freed from the wrongs of the past.  I do not know how to achieve that, not fully, but the effort itself, that I choose to try to be better, to be willing to make amends and open to accepting those of others, even just the effort to do this, as imperfect as the results may be should make it a good day.





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