What Can I Say

Time has passed since I last posted anything…not that there wasn’t anything to post… with a double Shabbat beginning and ending Sukkot there is a lot to say. With a hundred and fifty or so people pitching Sukkahs’s there is quite a bit to say…with ten full days of festivities and four of them Sabbaths words can’t say enough. And don’t forget that leading into all this celebration was the double Shabbat at Yom Teruah and the double Shabbat at Yom Kippurim….(our Congregation follows the agricultural calendar as in the days of old and in Scripture…watching for the moon over Yerushalaylim).. the day will come, yes the day will come…Yom Shekulo Shabbat…the day when it’s all Shabbat. Then what do we do?

That simple question, "Then what do we do?" is answered best by the passage that says to be prepared…it does not say, get prepared! Be Prepared! Make sure you participate in all the rehearsals. Woe to those who don’t even bother to rehearse the weekly Shabbat …the first feast day to be commanded! Be alert to what is happening about you. No need to focus on the world out there; focus on your life in Torah! Yeah! I feel like shouting! What an awesome time we all had…and for some it didn’t end until after the eleventh day!.... How come we can visit with some people and after two hours everything has been said and it is time to go home. But get with the Mishp’kha and a week goes by and we still have lots to share…. Oh the tears of joy !

 

This season we focused on getting back to basics…. getting back to the days when we were first called by the Father to return to Him…when we learned that we were beyond the warm milk of the faith stream we were in and were ready to bite down on some meat! That is when we learned that we knew very little, and still know very little. But we were called, and thus He gave us an ability to put aside the differences and look for the similarities. To not walk as “they” walked, but walk as “He” walked. To reach out to one another not to take, but to give. To be happy to proclaim the Name of YHVH! To cease being afraid of what others might say, but to begin having a healthy fear and respect for our Creator, and realize it is what He says that matters.

This Week of Tabernacles (Sukkot) was so filled with the Spirit and Awe of the Father. I observed young children reading Torah to one another. I watched as the tiniest of the wee-uns to the oldest of the young adults, pitched in, saw things to be attended to and attended to them. They did not have to ask permission or to be told. They were doing what they read in the Word…love your neighbor as yourself. I witnessed so many acts of kindness….and all this with desert like conditions…first we had scorching heat, followed by monsoon like rains and the cold hit upon us. No one turned back. We were in this march to the end. Some talked about the eighth day when He asks those faithful to stay just one more night…and then realized our Gracious and Most Divine Father already factored in two extra days! You just can’t make things like this happen…He can though.

But then came the tears…there was talk about most pulling out early on the Sunday morning….well, a couple pulled out, but “most” didn’t exit our Eastern Gate until after we all had breakfast and lunch together. Each one helping the other to pack. They came from all over the country. They had long drives to make to get back and rejoin that which they had managed to leave outside the camp. I thanked my Father for putting my homestead ‘just around the corner’. 

 

This could go on forever, but I think you may be getting the message….for those who have never kept the Feasts of YHVH, you really have no idea what you are missing. It is like trying to describe going to 'Eretz Yisrael' for the first time…. man’s words are insufficient…we have a lot to learn. So we must rehearse, practice, study and Sh’ma! Shalom…

It would be remiss of me not to mention the manna! If Moshe ate manna like we ate manna, he would have made a couple extra trips around the mountain…Halleluyah! did we eat good! Todah Rabah, Yocheved and your Kitchen Angels… Shalom shalom….

Love you all,

Pinchas a/k/a Frankly Speaking all the time.