It’s been such an interesting season of counting the Omer. This is the first year that I’ve counted the Omer with someone else, my fiancé. While counting the Omer has always been an aspiration for me, there is something about counting with her that has made it a reality.
Posting here, on the other hand, has NOT been a reality. When I started counting this year, I realized I had a lot of letters to write to people. I’ve written letters to exes, family members, dear friends, and some to those who have already died. I haven’t written one for every day, like I originally intended, but it’s been a great opportunity for me to remember how much better I feel when I take the time to write out my thoughts rather than just saying them or suppressing them internally. It’s been big work.
My fiancé and I have developed a bit of a bedtime ritual for our counting. We begin by reciting the prayer. Then we read Rabbi Simon Jacobson’s The Counting of the Omer, then we read the page in her Rae Shagalov coloring book Sefirat HaOmer – Count Within Yourself, then we read the Post from Neshama Network, then Rabbi Yale Levy’s Journey Through the Wilderness, then finally ending on the non sequitur offered by the Shari Berkowitz and Steve Silber Color the Omer.
The absolute overkill that is that process is not lost on me. It is very “us” for my partner and I to want to turn it and turn it again.
While I most consistently connect with the Rabbi Levy text, it has been a joy looking at the same traits through different authors lenses.
I had the chance to connect on the phone with my dear friend who is a Rabbi out in Seattle today. It’s so funny, because I’m realizing that we talked around all of the attributes of the Omer today but never really discussed our counting.
It’s interesting that an overall theme of my Omer counting these first 10 days has been around connection. I am connecting ideas, connecting with friends, and deepening my connection with my partner. I am looking for connections between the various takes offered by my many many resources.
As I continue to move through the next weeks of the Omer, I am stuck on a particular reading from last night in the Levy text:
Reflect on something you believe to be true.
Feel the rightness,
the truth of this idea, this thought.
Then say to yourself: I could be wrong.
Sit with the sensations that arise.
That is the work of the entire counting of the Omer for me, to challenge the things that I believe. To challenge myself to pause and rethink.
Happy counting.
And You Shall Love 