--Anne Lamott
One of the most poignant moments in all of Jewish worship is the thrice-repeated disavowal Kol Nidrei, sung at the beginning of the service that bears its name on the eve of the Day of Atonement. It's a truly counterintuitive thing for the congregation to declare: "All our vows...we repudiate them all. They are undone, abandoned, cancelled, null and void, not in force, and not in effect. Our vows are no longer vows, our prohibitions are no longer prohibitions, and our oaths are no longer oaths."
The chant's origins and earliest contexts are in doubt, and the text has changed over time, attesting to the fact that generations have struggled with the oddness of beginning a day of self-examination by disavowing obligations.
But think of the ways you may have boxed your life up tight by seizing on a fixed idea of who you should be, who those around you should be, what you have to do to fulfill a narrow and unhelpful understanding of who you are in the world. Think of the ways whole societies go down disastrous paths by acting as though something they've freely and unwisely chosen is a course from which they can't turn back.
What the Kol Nidrei offers is a return to what Zen practitioners would call "Beginner's Mind"--a state before I made bad decisions about who I am and have to be. A state where I can hear the call of a Voice that says, "Honey, just let that shit go."
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