Canada Goose : Wake Up!

This is a Canada Goose. This was the first one I’d seen, and it was compelling. When it calls, it is loud. Really loud. Like so loud that no matter what else you’re looking for or thinking about, this is the bird that consumes your attention. It’s a jarring sensation, eclipsing all the other gentle noises that harmonize into the typical soundtrack at the park. That honk borders on the just overwhelming. This goose is a large beast, and watching it come in for a landing, transitioning from the air to the water, I was just mesmerized. I will confess that some early-morning hikes can be a little somnolent - but not this one!

We blow the shofar each secular day during the month of Elul. Elul is a preparatory time, when we ready ourselves for the High Holydays. The shofar is both a literal and a spiritual wake up call preparing us as we move forward to Tishrei and the Days of Awe. The shofar’s sound is unlike anything else in the modern era. Shofar is raw and unmediated and primal, and it calls to us as it has for thousands of years, echoing in our souls as it did in our ancestors’. Wake up! Shofar is a “cry,” and a “blast,” and a “plea.” The shofar awakens us to remember our history and to guide us to where we are headed.

The Sages teach that waking each morning is the inflection point between life and 1/60th of death. No less, the shofar calls us to shake off the slumber of the rest of the year so that we focus intentionally and intently on our lives’ next stage. We are being readied not for the military battles that used to be announced by blowing the shofar, but for an often more difficult fight against ingrained habits and unconscious meanderings through life. The shofar is a syringe delivering the cure of Torah. Wake up! Choose your focus. Direct your attention. The rousing honk of the Canada Goose can demand attention physically, but the blast of the shofar makes its claim upon our innermost souls.