I’m noticing winter beginning to settle in. Maybe you’ve noticed the heavier gravity of a winter evening pulling down the night. Along with it, lights come on in all the shopping districts, blinking Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or “Light Up Night” here in Pittsburgh. Marketing messages are showing up in our emails, texts and social media —effectively workshopped to create the feeling of urgency. Buy this and you will look great, feel great, and you will be loved —but hurry before it’s gone! They grab our wholesome desire for love, community, and well being and offer more stuff or more money as the solution. It seems so easy. I feel the pull.

Since Sukkot, our Tiferet Project meditation groups have been drawing on the ancient wisdom text Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) – sitting with a verse or two each week. At a quick glance (or in a rote read through from the bimah) it can seem pretty depressing. Nothing lasts and nothing is new under the sun—done. But a closer look reveals an orientation towards a good life, even in the midst of the pressures and challenges of modern life. It speaks directly to that urgent feeling and pull towards having more (more of everything) to fulfill our human needs of love, community, and well being. Kohelet 5:9 “He who loves money will not be sated with money…”

Used for meditation, Kohelet doesn’t simply preach “want less and you’ll be solved”. Instead, it offers me a way to investigate what’s pulling at my own mind and heart. It’s not good or bad in itself. It’s part of the tides of life. But it invites me to consider how my response to that pull is working for me. How much energy am I using in chasing after and holding on? What could I be doing instead? Are the things I am holding on to (tightly or lightly) adding to happiness and well being for me, my loved ones, the world? Or is it just ure’ut ruach – a useless panting on the hamster wheel of chasing after and holding on to things, ideas, and opinions that by nature are always changing?

Havel havalim, Kohelet opens: “Emptying upon emptying – said the Assembler – Emptying upon emptying! Everything is emptying.” At first blush, it doesn’t sound great. All that ‘emptiness’ can an initial sense of loss, and the reaction to grab on and hold what is pleasurable or push away what is not. But trying to hold on to this moment is like trying to hold your breath. It quickly becomes uncomfortable, and finally is unsustainable. Then the next breath comes. It’s good to know that this moment is emptying into the next moment all by itself – whether or not I’m panting to hold on. Instead, I can choose to enjoy it fully. Here “emptying” doesn’t mean empty. Instead, it’s a way of seeing that this life is a dynamic process, never static, always moving. “All the rivers go to the sea and the sea never fills up.” There is freedom in understanding that this moment is getting out of the way for the next moment to show up.

When I sit with Kohelet as a meditation text, I can watch my own feelings of urgency rise up, and over time, evaporate. I come to recognize the feeling and how often it shows up, how often it’s been active in the background. And I begin to see how much energy it takes. By taking a break to sit quietly and watch my own thoughts come and go, I get the valuable opportunity to ask: How is that working for me? And to sense where my energies might be directed instead.

This month, as the darkness deepens and Hanukkah approaches, there’s another invitation to practice this kind of watching. We light the candles and are commanded not to use them for anything practical – just to look at them, to enjoy them. To stop and rest our attention on them for a while. The candles become a meditation anchor, a reminder that we can witness light in darkness without grasping at either one, without trying to make it last longer or finish sooner than it does. We can watch the flames flicker and dance and eventually go out. One moment emptying into the next. And in choosing where to direct energy and attention, there’s freedom.

Julie