The imagery of this video suggests simply turning back time, which is a fantasy ... and which I honestly don't want. But the lyrics suggest a return to what the Zen Buddhists call "beginner's mind," which ... well, which I am not so good at. But I want to be better at it, and I think it is possible for me to be that. And maybe that's what beginner's mind is, anyway.
September 01, 2011
I've been feeling this song a whole lot lately. Mostly I've been hearing it in my head in the a capella nigun form we sang together during Shabbat services at the havurah I belonged to in the Boston area in the 1980s. There seems to be a lot of return going on in my life right now, both profound and prosaic:
After majorly falling off the wagon of my healthy weight loss adventure, regaining all the weight I had taken off and then some, and re-inflicting on myself all the accompanying chronic pain and restricted mobility, I have as of this past June once again returned to a healthy weight loss regimen. Hopefully, this time I will do it with a lot more support, and a lot more humility.
After going on two years of under/unemployment and scary financial times, the kind so many people have been facing these days, I am slowly pulling myself out of the hole via a job I landed in March, and returning to some modest sense of financial security.
After the emotional slough of despond caused by those first two items, I am slowly returning to my more normal cheerful self.
Perhaps because of these changes, perhaps for other reasons yet to become clear to me, I am returning mentally to memories of my childhood and youth, trying yet again to sort out the family-of-origin psychodramas and maybe make some peace with them.
And there are other returnings going on, but these are already plenty to start with, yes?
In any case, when I saw that NaBloPoMo's theme for this month was "Return," I knew I needed to sign up, return to this long-dorman blog of mine, and make the commitment to blog every day and see what came up. Of course not every post I'll make in September is going to be about return--but as they say in so many writing programs, when you simply make the commitment to show up at the page every day, you make it possible for interesting things to wind up on that page.
Oh, and it hasn't escaped my notice that the Jewish High Holy Days, with their major theme of teshuvah (literally, return), fall at the end of September this year. Whether I will literally return to a synogogue or havurah this year, or perhaps make a more personal journey of slichot (reconciliation) on my own, remains to be seen. But there it is, waiting to be explored.
The song, by the way, was written by the famous Singing Rabbi and pioneer of the baal teshuva movement, Reb Shlomo Carlebach, and is performed in this video by his daughter and protege Neschama Carlebach, with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir under the direction of Reverend Roger Hembrick. The lyrics:
Return to what you are, Return to who you are, Return to where you are born and reborn again
Return again, return again, Return to the land of your soul Return again, return again, Return to the land of your soul.
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