Hayom achad asar yom shehem shavua echad v’arbaah yamim la-omer.
Today is eleven days, which is one week and four days of the Omer.
I want to share some thoughts on counting and how we experience time.
I’ve been reading that there are two different ways in which we experience time: linear and cyclical.
The Omer is both. It marks the time moving forward from Pesach to Shavuot, from the exodus from Egypt to the giving of the Torah. But it also marks the changing of the seasons and the period in the year between the start of spring and the first fruits.
The Jewish year is about moving forward, but in repeated cycles, and rituals to mark these moments and the transitions between them.
From Shabbat and Havdalah, to the 8 candles of Chanukah, to Simchat Torah, when we literally wind the scroll back to the beginning and start again, we are marking the time; experiencing the moment of where we are in the cycle, and knowing we’ll be doing it again when we are a week or a year older.
There is no more beautiful and poetic expression of this than the words of Kohelet:
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises . . .
All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again . . .
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
And it’s counting that brings structure and meaning to time and marks our movement through it.
During the Omer we limit activities that bring joy, but we know that the count will end. We’ll reach Shavuot and move forward again with celebrations and the cycle of the year.
But what happens when time gets stuck and we don’t experience it in the same way?
The well-known philosopher Dr Seuss wrote about this in a book I read to my kids: Oh, the places you’ll go.
You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or the waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Many of us know that place.
This is how I remember the period in my life when Jason and I experienced infertility and miscarriage.
Time was moving on but I felt stuck and not able to move forward emotionally. Another month with a negative test, another seder without a new baby, another due date of a lost pregnancy.
Milestones came and went, and friends moved on with their lives, whilst I was isolated in the waiting place.
Time passed differently too in my mum’s final weeks. It was as if we were sealed in a bubble. The world went on around us, but our days were centred on her, not knowing how much longer she had.
I did a deep dive into poetry about waiting and came across a powerful metaphor for this experience in a project that commissioned a collection of poems for NHS waiting rooms.
In Routine Check Roy Fisher describes waiting to be called for an appointment. The end says:
My watch says Greenwich, the wall-clock says Hospital Time.
They look the same times, but they’re not.
In here we’re all disconnected.
From one another; from the car-park;
All sitting here empty, full-sized, but turned right down to our pilot lights, keeping our real selves’ places in the queue.
Compare this to the opening of an article published in the Forward four months ago.
The first thing Rachel Goldberg-Polin does when she wakes up each morning is go out on the deck of her top-floor apartment and change the numbers.
They’re big black numbers on white plastic… They hang off the railing next to a “Bring Hersh Home” banner, indicating the number of days since her 23-year-old son was abducted by Hamas terrorists.
Back inside, she makes herself a cup of tea and sticks a piece of tape with the number onto her pajamas.
…Rachel has not seen most of our mutual friends since this nightmare began. She has not been to the gym, or to shul, or on a walk through the neighborhood. The friend who drove me to her house for our interview texted to ask if he could come up to give her a quick hug. No, she wrote back, “hugs hurt me.”
The number on her clothes today is 210. She is turned down to her pilot light, disconnected from others, stuck in the waiting place not knowing when her counting will end.
Dr Seuss’s waiting place is relatively benign, just a bit boring. But in the adult world, instead of waiting for the phone to ring, or the snow to snow, we might be waiting for a test result, for a scan, for a war to end, for a child to come home.
As we count the Omer, let’s use it as an opportunity to be aware of those who are in the waiting place and wish them the resilience to bear the wait, and a time when they will be able to turn their pilot lights back up to flames and move forward again.
Useful links:
Chana: Fertility support for the Jewish Community
The Miscarriage Association: Pregnancy loss support
Marie Curie and Kathryn Mannix: Support and resources about end of life care
From Oh, the Places You’ll Go
Dr Seuss
…You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.
With banner flip-flapping,
once more you’ll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!
Routine Check
Roy Fisher
Once again, I’ve persuaded a piece of myself
to keep me a place in the queue.
Empty head, almost. Nothing needs thinking about.
That’s done already. Not much at stake today.
So: count the leaves on the spider plant.
How many offsets? How many stripes?
My watch says Greenwich, the wall-clock says
Hospital Time. They look the same times, but they’re not.
In here we’re all disconnected. From one another;
from the car-park; even from the offstage phone
That keeps trying to play the theme from Captain Pugwash
every few minutes. All sitting here empty,
full-sized, but turned right down to our pilot lights,
keeping our real selves’ places in the queue.
But the second my names comes up
it’ll still be a shock –
my real name suddenly breaking in
to my pilot-light existence.