Sukkot, uncertainty, and what remains when the walls fall away
Last month, Jews all over the world celebrated Sukkot. Sukkot is a seven-day festival that celebrates the harvest, and commemorates the story of divine provision during 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. It’s customary to build a sukkah for this time, a small-ish temporary structure outside of your home in which to gather, share meals and spend time.
I’ve always loved the sweetness of this observance, which has looked different in my family from year to year, but has always included being squished into our rickety little sukkah, cozy and bundled as mid-west temperatures drop, sharing a warm meal with family and friends-like-family by candlelight.
The sukkah, often built of wood and not necessarily by people who know their way around a hammer and nails, is not supposed to be too sturdy. Often, it’s built with exposure to the air and to the sky, such that, on a clear night, you can see the stars through the "roof". These customs are meant to remind us both of those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and of the fragility of life - that whatever comforts, health and stability we might enjoy, can all be so easily stripped away. Sukkot asks us to remember and even to feel in the cold wind and exposure to the elements, how vulnerable we really are as little humans in these mortal bodies. Who are we and what is left when the material supports we lean on shift, change, disappear?
At sukkot, religious Jews return to a sense of our need for G-d - a divine presence, belonging and spiritual provision that’s unchanged by our external circumstances. But however we might relate to the idea of G-d or the divine, I think this ritual offers meaningful questions for all of us about what remains after a storm.
This era in our country’s history continues to remind those of us who had retained the illusion of American immunity to chaos and collapse, that there’s so little we can take for granted about the structures that prop up our lives. As I feel tossed around by the circus of the daily news, I find myself challenged and stretched to reach for something deeper than external stability or (imagined) certainty to hold onto, to root into, when I’m feeling unmoored.
Part of why a deepening relationship with my body (where I sometimes notice it, pay attention to it, relate + talk to it, listen to it and try to honor its voice) has been so meaningful, is that it starts to transform lovely ideas or beliefs that I’ve held into real, felt experiences. Like, I happen to be someone who has believed for most of my life that when everything else falls away, there is some source of belonging and embrace that remains. But it’s rare that I live a whole day living from the beautiful security of that belief - more often it's just a nice idea. To really live it, I have to keep (re)turning towards, reaching for, opening to, inviting it to root more deeply in my body.
As Resmaa Menakem says, “the body is where we live. It’s where we fear, hope, and react.” And I would add that it’s where we feel alone, or connected to something bigger. It’s where we feel immobilized by fear or where we feel some access, still, to our agency. It’s where we grasp for control, or lean back, sometimes, into a sense of being held. And probably, it’s where we feel a wild mix of all of those things.
As I write this, I pause for a moment of grief at the way our relationships with our bodies and with the web of life have been so systematically severed, and a moment of gratitude to the teachers that have continued to invite me back home. May we continue to find pathways back to deeper connection and deeper roots.
