Day 10
Hear my voice when I call to you,
Psalm 27:7
give me grace and answer me
To Be Heard
The lines of Psalm 27 above are directed toward God, but they are also very much in the general spirit of Elul.
We work hard this month to examine ourselves and then use what we’ve found to call out to the ones we have hurt or been hurt by (including ourselves).
That outreach is vulnerable work. We must pull down our walls brick by brick in order for our message to get through, and in doing so, we lose our defenses; we expose ourselves to pain. To tear down the walls and open ourselves up only to be rebuffed or worse, ignored, feels like cruel punishment.
In this moment of open vulnerability, we need grace. We need the consideration we failed to give others (which is why we need to seek forgiveness), and we need those who have hurt us to make their teshuvah complete by hearing us out, when they’ve ignored us in the past.
And, perhaps, some of us need God. We need to feel heard and be recognized by something more than ourselves, more than a few of the people with whom we are in relationship. Sometimes we cry out to the entire Universe with our pain and our sorrow, and we want the Universe to respond to us with comfort and grace. We want to see a beautiful sunrise, or a twinkling star. We want to hear a baby cry and hold a warm puppy body to ours.
We need to be reminded that we are beloved, and we belong.
Who do you need to be heard by?
What is your petition, your prayer to them?
What is the answer you’re desperate to hear?
Magic Cards
One of the things I profess to believe about Tarot is that “they are not magic cards.” I don’t tell the future with my cards, ever. I don’t think they are being chosen by some force outside myself when I draw them, nor that my own choices are being manipulated, nor even that some deep part of my spirit knows which cards are where in the deck and somehow chooses the very ones with the messages I need to hear.
Instead, I tend to think of Tarot cards like ink blots, archetypes that teach us about ourselves because of how we interpret them. They’re a mirror to our unconscious mind, and a tool to help us focus our attention and intentions.
Most often, what we learn in a Tarot reading is what we didn’t know that we already knew.
And yet, more often than I care to count, I will come to my deck with a question or concern, and I will pull a card that reflects not the answer to my question, but the question itself. For instance, I might ask, “I’m lonely, how can I get better at making friends?” and then pull the three of cups, which says “hey, go party with your friends!” Like… duh. Thanks, Tarot, really helpful. ;)
This second experience is pretty much what's happened today as I sought our wake-up call for day 10.
Wake up and do the thing - Truly!
The Prince of Air is charging boldly into his past, with a brave sense of spiritual purpose and the knowledge that there is so much work to do, we might as well start fast!
Yes, Tarot, that is what we’re doing this month. We already knew that. Do you have anything else for us here?
Actually there is more for us here.
The Prince of Air is a truth-teller, often without any tact whatsoever. Sometimes he's speaking truth to power, but often he's just shouting down whoever happens to be nearby.
He frequently speaks from his own narrow and binary perspective without considering that it may not be for everyone, that people with different experiences may even have different truths just as valid, and maybe even more so.
If he’s honest, he’s more concerned much of the time with being correct than he is with doing right by the people he's correcting.
Have you embodied this Prince at all in the past year?
Have you found it more important to be right than kind and compassionate?
Have you been closed off to the idea of multiple truths?
Have you been unwilling to hear the truth of another?
Are you ready to pull down your walls, to call out to them and ask to be heard?