DAY 1: It's Time to Count!!

Happy Passover!!  Now that our Seders have finished, it is time to start counting the omer!

Tonight is the first day of the omer.

One down, 48 to go.  However, the point is not to count down, but rather to count up (soon enough, I'll post my sermon from last Friday night, that explains a bit more of this concept to frame this experience of counting the omer).

Now, as a way of not just counting these days, but of making these days count, I'm exploring some of the kabbalistic significance of these days to see what I can learn.  I'll be following the spiritual guide to the omer, which you can find a bit more about here. 

Each week is assigned to a different virtue: this week being the virtue of chesed, loving-kindness.

Meanwhile, each day of the week is assigned to a virtue, as well: this day, Tuesday night/Wednesday, is also assigned to the virtue of chesed, loving-kindness. 
This exercise involves trying to understand what we can find in the intersections of these virtues. 

So, today is the day of loving love, not a bad place to start.  It is often easy in our lives to do things we do in order to gain something else, but how often do we do something purely out of love?  For example, I might give another person flowers with the hopes that at some point that other person will do something kind for me.  The act of giving the flowers in the first place is a loving, kind act.  But it is not done purely out of love, it is done to "gain points."  Even in loving relationships, we might give gestures of loving-kindness, but do so grudgingly (I know that my attempts to do dishes at night can sometimes be such an act) because we know it will make our loved one happy. 

But the challenge of today's omer count is to reflect on the love we give with nothing to gain: That which we do for others purely because it is a genuine expression of how we feel.  Usually such acts are gratuitous - not addressing things that are urgent in our lives, but rather displaying just how much we love others.  We often get too busy and too caught up in our calendars and all that needs to be done to continually remind our loved ones just how loved they are.  And sometimes, we even get too busy to remind ourselves of how loved they are, as well.  The challenge of today is to take some time to do an act of pure loving-kindness.  Not to win points; not to get something in return; something that is wholly focused on someone else, helping them to know just how much we love them.

Again, Happy Passover!
See you tomorrow, when we'll explore the intersection of love and discipline for the second omer count. . .