Through the Gates: A Practice for Counting the Omer (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781484081709)

This is the black and white edition, with cover photograph by Matthew van der Giessen. The first edition, published as an ebook, is available, with eight more of the photographer's images, in full color the Kindle Store. A second, full color print edition is also available now.

Through the Gates is a series of evocative letters and poems leading the reader through the practice of "counting the Omer." Poet Susan Windle writes to a group of spiritual companions who share the same contemporary Jewish mystic for a teacher, Rabbi Shefa Gold, and who are engaged together in the spiritual discipline of the Omer, an ancient practice marking the forty-nine days between the spring festival of Pesach (Passover) and the early summer festival of Shavuot, (the Festival of Weeks.) In the course of counting the days, Susan tells the story of her "convergence" with Judaism. Methodist by heritage, with a long connection to Unitarian Universalism, she became Jewish by choice in 2008. A bridge builder in many ways, Susan Windle has been described as a multi-faith community within herself. In these intricate writings-poems within letters, letters within larger letters- offering both spiritual memoir and guidance for daily practice, the poet explores the rhythms and textures of daily life, inviting the reader into intimate engagement with the mystery of life itself. Susan's story, as it unfolds through the seven weeks of the Omer, is celebratory, sweetly challenging, and deeply satisfying.

From the author's Introduction:

How to Use this Book

These writings offer company and encouragement as you move through the practice of counting the Omer. The daily reflections and poems I've included are an invitation to attend to the quieter voices and subtler energies of your life, voices easy to miss in the rush-rush, flash-flash of contemporary daily life. The book is meant to be read day by day, each passage on its numbered day. For those new to the practice of counting the Omer, I include instructions on how to count the traditional way-beginning the second night of Passover, standing, after sundown, on the eve of each changing day.....I recommend saying the prayers in the traditional way at the traditional time-sometime during the dark of the evening, perhaps just before bed-and counting in the formal way. Doing so, we set our intentions for the following day, and we affirm our connection with generations who have counted before us. Having said that, let it be known the first year I counted I did none of this. I jumped in feet first-I wasn't even officially Jewish yet. Knowing very little about the Omer except the chart of daily attributes, I experienced the days as I found them. You, too, will find your way. ...The important thing here is to do something with the Omer, not just think, but do. As I've said, counting the Omer by the Tree of Life is more than a mental exercise or a topic of discussion. The days] are portals, actual gateways to a deepening and expanding awareness of an extraordinary beauty: the heaven that hovers within and all around our so-called ordinary lives. The gates open to us when we open to them.

between the doors

all things are possible
i don't mean my house or yours
i don't mean inside or out
that space between
is where i'll meet you

let's stop this back and forth
let's stay right here
in the doorway
where all wars cease

it may seem like a narrow place
where nothing much
could happen
but we can not know the size
of openings we do not see
nor feel the breadth of
that which waits for us
the other side of what seems

impossible

Through the gates we go then-let's see what awaits us.

Susan Windle