It’s almost like amidst all of our chest beating and confessions of fault and wrongdoing, God has a secret joke. And that secret joke is grace.

Yom Kippur offers us, through the 13 attributes, a frame of divine grace. In this meditation, we explore what it feels like to enter that frame, to experience God as still holding us even as we are honest about our shortcomings, and to begin to inhabit those qualities ourselves.

The shofar blasts don’t enter through the mind as something to think about, but through the body as something to sense, a visceral experience of God.

Amidst all the words of prayer on Rosh Hashanah, the wordless shofar jolts us awake out of our cognitive slumber, helping us return to a preverbal place inside us that… Read more: MEDITATION: The Visceral Experience of the Shofar (Rosh Hashanah)

You have discovered the secret of divine presence: You don’t have to travel to it. It’s always wherever you already are. God never leaves. It’s we who do.

It is here, in this moment, as it is, as we are, that we find divine presence and peace, even in the midst of distress. Wherever we are, there God is, so close.