Below is a meditation script on the topic of shofar blowing. You can hear the recording of this meditation here.
Tekiah shevarim-teruah Tekiah. The long steady Tekiah sounds of the shofar always surround the other more broken sounds of the shevarim and the teruah. In this meditation, we are going to consider the shevarim and teruah sounds to represent our brokenness and suffering, and the Tekiahs that stand on either side to represent the divine container that can hold all that brokenness and suffering.
We begin with the Tekiah, with a single long steady note. Hearing it in our mind –a single note held for a number of seconds, and feeling its steadiness, like the ground we walk on. One single steady note. No cracks, no holes. It is solid and secure. Taking some slow deep breaths and feeling this calm steadiness enter us. This is the steadiness of God inside us. Tekiah. Taking that in, breathing in the calm.
Into this space of steady security, we bring the shevarim-teruah. It is not just one kind of difficulty but multiple kinds – shevarim and teruah at once – brokenness, imperfection, failure, pain and difficulty of all sorts piled up inside us, so many different kinds, it is sometimes hard to see them separately, they get all nested together. Just feeling the whole piled up mess of suffering inside, allowing ourselves to touch it without really yet knowing what it all is.
Shevarim-teruah. Hearing the broken notes, staccato like, first slower, then faster, and feeling the frenzy and the overwhelm that builds up, first slowly, then crazily inside. Confusion, overwhelm and shakiness.. Let yourself feel that energy in your body.
Tekiah again. On either side of this shakiness and overwhelm, there stands a guard of steady calm. The shakiness is held inside this envelope, this container, this embrace, two strong arms holding a trembling, crying baby. See if you can feel the shaky energy and at the same time get a sense of its being held, that there is also something calm inside you that can hold the shakiness, no matter how shaky it becomes.
Really paying attention to the sense of a holding container, building your capacity to feel your own strength in this, to sense that It is you that is holding the shakiness, and at the same time that it is God in you, the solid steady presence of God in you. How do you sense that? Maybe it is through the breath, the sense of a cord of constant divine connection, the steady rhythm of your breath that breathes air all around the troubled places in your belly. Or maybe it is some steady place of rest in your heart, where God is always dwelling, the mishkan inside you. Or maybe it is your feet on the ground, feeling that solidness and letting it spread through your body, knowing that there is something that always holds you. Whatever it is, letting your sense of it strengthen. Tekiah. shevarim-teruah. Tekiah. On either side of the wobbliness is something solid. Sensing both the wobbliness and the strength of the container that can always hold it.
We practice. The shofar blows come again and again so that we can practice. After the initial sense of an overall pileup of difficulties inside – shevarim-teruah – we begin to untangle them and parse them out more slowly. Tekiah shevarim tekiah. We begin again with a Tekiah – the long steady slow sense of security. Maybe take a long slow breath, in and out, breathing deeply and letting that sense of calm steadiness return.
Shevarim. And into that calm, this time we invite just shevarim, the first layer of brokenness inside us Not the most severe pain, the place of being totally shattered, but the slight nervousness, the cracks, that lie at the surface for us, maybe some gnawing worry or anxiety, some sense of not having met expectations, of failing in some way, some restlessness, or a feeling of irritation or anger. Shevarim. An initial taste of brokenness, of instability, of nervous energy. Touching all of that, and then Tekiah – bringing the calm back in to surround it, perhaps breathing again deeply to offer a calm container for the brokenness we just touched. It’s ok. Practicing feeling the shevarim, the brokenness, the shakiness, and at the same time feeling the calm divine-human container inside us that can hold it.
And now we move deeper. Tekiah teruah Tekiah. Sensing first again the Tekiah container, the long steady note, the deep breath of calm that sends stillness through our bodies. And into that container, we invite teruah, a rasping, sputtering cry of shatteredness. Only go as deep as feels comfortable to you in this moment, becoming aware of the places inside us that hold the pain of our most shattered selves, of the places that we feel most broken and hurt, despairing and collapsed, the sense of unworthiness and not mattering, of nothingness, like an empty shell, a glass that has shattered into a thousand pieces and has no hope of repair. Just touching that sensation inside us with the heartbreaking sound of the teruah cry.
And holding that sensation of a deep existential shattering of the self, holding that in our Tekiah container so that it can rest in the steady unbroken calm of that secure embrace. Picture the shattered pieces of yourself, the thousand pieces of broken glass, and picture the solid Tekiahs on either side. These Tekiahs retain the memories of wholeness contained in all that shatteredness, they remember and know and believe and have confidence in the ultimate wholeness of all those shattered pieces, and in that knowing, the Tekiahs convey to the broken pieces that sense of wholeness, so that they can feel in themselves how they could be glued together, they can imagine it and see their own healing and repair and wholeness even as they are still shattered. The memory and faith in their wholeness holds them now in their brokenness. Or perhaps imagining the teruah again as a baby inside you crying desperately with flailing limbs and a pitiful broken cry, and seeing the two Tekiahs as your own two large hands of warm embrace that can hold your baby. They are both your hands and at the same time, God’s hands, the energy of God’s love running through you to hold them, the knowledge that comes from God of the calm and wholeness that underlies all the shattered pieces of you and of all creation.
This time as we come to the Tekiah, there is a new stillness and wholeness that comes to us. Tekiah Gedolah. Through our encounter with all this brokenness, we have actually come to some expanded stillness and wholeness. The space is bigger. It can hold more pain. The container is wider and more steady, the sense of wholeness more complete, the calm more secure.
That final Tekiah Gedolah is a call home to all the scattered, shattered, farflung parts of ourselves, wherever they are. אִם־יִהְיֶ֥ה נִֽדַּחֲךָ֖ בִּקְצֵ֣ה הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם מִשָּׁ֗ם יְקַבֶּצְךָ֙ ה’ אֱלֹקיךָ וּמִשָּׁ֖ם יִקָּחֶֽךָ׃ Even if your castouts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. Tekiah Gedolah. Hear the long steady call – come hoooooome. And see them all, limping and stumbling and struggling in all their brokenness, but still coming, a new sense of hope washing over them, drawn inward to a center of calm and peace, to home, to healing, to wholeness. God is calling them home. Tekiah Gedolah. Come hoooome. Feel all the shattered pieces drawn together, like broken shards of glass coming together to re-form themselves into the glass jar they originally were, each one showing its beauty now, sparkling, flying into its place, forming a whole, a kaleidoscope of stunning brokenness and wholeness, all drawn home by the call – Tekiah Gedolah. Come hooome. God is calling you home.
Resting now in the quiet after the Tekiah Gedolah, in the reverberations of wholeness and stillness. Sitting very still and letting yourself rest in this sense of wholeness and stillness.
We do this again and again, go through these rounds, and maybe on each cycle we expand the circle to include more of the brokenness, more of the suffering, more of the scattered shards of ourselves, drawing more into the Tekiah container, making the space ever larger to hold whatever needs to be held. And over time, as we continue to hear the call, maybe we also expand the Tekiah container to include brokenness outside of ourselves as well. We will do one more short Tekiah cycle now. Spending a moment right now, if it feels right, bringing to mind some pieces of brokenness from outside you that you would like to draw into our expanded Tekiah container, perhaps the suffering of someone you care about or the suffering in the larger world right now, a particular issue that is really upsetting you, maybe also the suffering of other people in this room, whatever it is, inviting all that in, bringing in all the world’s brokenness and allowing it to rest in our widened Tekiah container, in spaciousness, allowing it all to rest inside you in some greater knowledge of wholeness and calm, something that does not deny the suffering but is large enough and secure enough to hold it for this moment in faith and steadiness. Breathing deeply and letting all parts of you and all the brokenness you have brought in, letting them all feel the steadiness and wholeness of God running through you. Whatever it is, it can be held here. Tekiah. Breathing deeply. Shevarim teruah – feeling the energy of unsteady shakiness and suffering, the sadness of it all. Tekiah. Breathing deeply again and holding it all in the calm steady divine container of your breath.
Finishing off our shofar practice with a final Tekiah Gedolah. Take an even longer, deeper breath and let the calm of that pervade you. Calling it all home to this resting place inside you. Arriving at some stillness. You are whole. You are at peace. Tekiah gedolah. All the brokenness is held right here, in this divine-human container. Sensing how we built this Tekiah container together, each on our own, but also together, the strength of doing this in a group, right now and in our communities on Rosh Hashanah. Resting for one more moment in your own Tekiah wholeness before letting go of the practice.
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