How to Have a Lovely Day
- Aug 7, 2024
- 2 min read
During the summers of 2021 and 2022, I served as the Dean of Jewish Life at URJ Camp George. Each morning everyone at camp would gather for Mifkad (“flagpole” to start our day as one community) with a rotating “captain” from the senior staff team. Once a week, when it was my turn to be at the helm, I would play one – and only one – song on repeat as campers and staff would slowly gather together: Bill Withers’ Lovely Day. That song would blast loudly as sleepy/excited/hungry folks were just starting to awake to the new day. It was an intentional song: Awake! Today is a new day! Open your eyes! And – and here is the most important part – it is going to be a lovely day.
Our Jewish tradition would give a thumbs up to this invitation. We start our day each and every morning with liturgical prayers of gratitude for the new day: Modeh/Modah Ani is about us giving thanks for the gifts we are given; Asher Yatzar expresses gratitude for our health of body; Elohai Neshamah acknowledges the daily gift of our souls; and Nissim B’chol Yom lists the daily miracles and gifts we experience each and every day (to name just a few). What would it mean for us to express these sentiments upon waking? What awesome power they might hold to help us frame our mornings! How might the fullness of our days be different with this new perspective? How might we treat others with this frame of mind?
The Jewish middah called Hakarat Hatov is about Noticing the Good in life (aka “an attitude of gratitude”). This soul work is an important emotional, mental, and spiritual stance that can help frame our relationship with ourselves, other people, animals, and our planet. It does not come easily to many of us. With so much happening in our world right now, how much more so is this challenging work. AND: how much more so is it vital at this time. It can be tempting to go down the rabbit holes of news and analysis and social media and stay there endlessly; it may not feel good to be there but it might feel productive or like we are doing something at a time when it feels like nothing can be done. But I assure you it is not a healthy place to be indefinitely. Come up for soul-nourishing hugs, conversation, food, walks, art, laughter, books…and music in community.
To that end, I hope you will join me in Withrow Park on Monday August 19 at 7:30 pm for our DJC Tu B’Av Kumzitz where we will gather by the firepit, sing songs, play music, and be together to celebrate love, humanity, and one another. It’s not going to end any wars or be the magic bullet to make everything better. But it may be a sweet salve for your soul in a broken and difficult time. Bring your family, friends, and neighbours and let’s sing our hearts out. Then it will truly be a Lovely Day.