The Open House in RamleFollowing is an excerpt from a sermon I gave on Rosh Hashanah. You can read it in its entirety at my blog:

I will confess I that there are times when I fall victim to this cynicism as well. Like everyone, I’ve often been overwhelmed by the knowledge that the systemic roots of these problems are just so enormous, so pervasive in our world.

Still, I cannot surrender the conviction that individual actions do indeed make a difference in our world, and that such actions such as these are occurring around the world, every day, every moment, every second, in ways we often cannot quantify or understand.

I simply cannot shake the image of Dahila as a young woman standing at the threshold of her house, deciding in that one split-second to open the door to Bashir – and how that decision changed not only their lives, but the lives of many others who they could not possibly know.

In its way, I think this image of the open door might be a powerful one spiritual metaphor for own disempowered age. That regardless of the rise and fall of the events of the world outside – and if history is any guide, they will continue to rise and fall – we can still choose to open the door to the possibility of connection, of healing, of peace in our world.

Read the whole sermon.