For anyone walking through a season of loss or renewal
may these words bring a small light….
This reflection grew out of the Blessing for the Congregation that I was honored to give at Yom Kippur.
It continues that same conversation — the one between loss and renewal, between what we can’t control and what we can still bless.
I wanted to find language wide enough to hold all that this season brings:
the pain that returns each autumn here in Sonoma County,
the fire season that still lives in our bones,
the grief that October 7 reopened for our people,
and the tender invitation of Sukkot and Shabbat
to dwell, even briefly, in holiness.
This time of year carries its own weight for me.
I lost my grandmother, Lynn, to Parkinson’s.
And my beloved aunt Regina to colon cancer.
And my stepdad, Skeeter to alcoholism. And my heart is always heavy when I think about Matthew Shepherd, and what happened to him because of how he loved.
Years later came the fires — and with them, the loss of a client of many years who lives vividly in my memory,
and my friend Marnie from Shomrei Torah.
And even before all of that, my brother, Shane, was killed in an automobile accident.
And alongside them, I hold the loss of my canine counterpart, Allison,
whose love and presence carried me through so many seasons with love and devotion.
We went and saw Les Misérables this weekend,
and my favorite line landed like a crack and an opening in my own vessel —
a line I’ve known for years, but this time it felt like recognition:
“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
That line stayed with me.
It became the thread that pulled this piece through —
the reminder that love, when tempered by loss, doesn’t just survive.
It deepens.
It becomes something sacred.
Something that helps us begin again.
This one’s called:
A Tempered, Radiant Love
In Sonoma County, we know what follows the scent of smoke —
contraction, destruction, death, names,
and the memory of homes, lives, and relationships that once stood whole.
The Tubbs Fire of 2017 changed us.
It burned through neighborhoods and through certainty
through our sense of what could and could not happen here.
Every autumn since,
we listen more carefully.
We smell the wind.
We see the dry grass and remember
that loss is never only personal
it moves through a community like weather.
Among us are those who lost loved ones to the flames,
to illness,
to sudden and senseless accidents,
to violence that should never have happened.
Every table holds absences we still feel
mothers, brothers, grandparents, friends,
clients, neighbors, strangers
each one part of the human experience
that fire, disease, and despair could not fully erase.
And now another October arrives October 7,
a date that burned through the heart of our people,
reminding us how fragile peace is,
how holy every ordinary morning can be,
and how our hearts will not rest until every hostage is safely home.
And yet, into all this, Sukkot returns.
It asks us to step outside our walls
and sit beneath a roof of branches
thin enough for rain and starlight to pass through.
It reminds us that safety isn’t the same as sanctuary.
Safety keeps danger out.
Sanctuary lets love in.
One is built from walls.
The other is built from presence.
And holiness can dwell in something as temporary as that
a roof of branches,
a moment of longing and belonging beneath the open sky.
The sukkah teaches:
Yes, the world is temporary.
Yes, life is unpredictable.
And still — we bless, we sing, we invite one another in.
Because what endures is not the structure,
but the gathering.
Not the certainty,
but the care.
Not the permanence,
but the courage to keep rebuilding
in body,
in soul,
in community.
And then comes Shabbat
the still point in the turning week
inviting us to transform what feels like curse into blessing.
To take what is painful and kindle light from it.
To pause.
To breathe.
To remember who we are beneath the chaos.
To love another person is to see the face of God.
And in that seeing, to know that love itself
is the holiest act of repair we are given.
No matter what is happening in the world,
we can always light candles,
always find our way back to center,
always return to the quiet knowing
that what lasts
is a tempered, radiant love.