The Day of Atonement: This One is for You, Dad

Tonight begins the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. It is the most important holiday of the year and really should be identified as a holy-day. The focus of this period is entirely on your relationship with God, the Divinity, the Spirit, and on asking forgiveness for the ways in which you let Him/Her down, and yourself. It is a time of inner contemplation. And whether you believe in a Higher Power, or in the need to ask forgiveness, it's pretty powerful to have one day to devote to thinking about who you are in connection to the Bigness that surrounds us all.

My father is in the hospital, in the ICU. He's 85. He might pull through this as he has the past five incidents that required hospitalization. But he might be at he point where the fabric is so frayed that every insertion of the needle to repair it just causes more damage.

I'll be thinking of him tonight. And of my relationship with him over the past 50 plus years. His basic goodness was the DNA for my model of the universe. I hope the universe returns him to his family. And I pray the universe carries him gently, always.

I love you, Dad