So, what do I find in my email after posting this poem? An answer! Spirit works in mysterious ways:


"Coming Down from the Mountain

We've all, I would think, have had the big 'mountain top' experience sometime in our life. Eventually, we have to come off of this spiritual 'high' and come back down to 'real life', so to speak. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Moses? Here he is, on top of the 'Mountain of Adonai', being in complete communion with the Creator of the Universe, only to come back down to a very, very harsh reality. He returns to a mentally and spiritually still-enslaved people and to a world in which G-d is quickly forgotten.

We are coming to a yearly observance called 'The Three Weeks' which this year will be observed beginning Wednesday evening, July 8th up until Tisha b'Av which begins Wednesday evening, July 29th. These Three Weeks are, traditionally, to be a period of restriction and mourning for the destruction and loss of the Temple (in Jerusalem, 70 A.D., followed by the Jewish Diaspora)...

So, what do we do when we come down from the "mountain" of our Passover and Shavuot (when Moses received the Torah from G-D) celebrations? Why is this three week time period important for us in our yearly cycle?... How do we 'hold on' to the spiritual highs that we may have experienced and not to, so quickly afterwards, build 'molten calves' to worship?

My answer today is: the human being requires outward practices to (re-)align the inward self with G-d. Daily outward practices help us to remember and to re-mind us of the spiritual realities that lie covered over or forgotten inside the damaged Temple of our heart...

(T)he spiritual journey...requires daily practice, discipline, and the making of choices that may 'appear' to be limiting or out-dated. All ritualized practice is to be an outward manifestation of an internal reality.

The Three Weeks is to be a time when we remember that we are the ones who have forgotten G-d's abundant love for us, that we have turned away, that we need to be reminded, and that we are the ones who need to mourn for our choices and actions.

May our days of mourning be quickly turned to joy".

--Rabbi Micha'el Akiba