It’s hard to find hope and resilience in difficult days. That’s true, whether times are tough because of personal struggles, because of what’s happening in the world around us, or because of both at the same time. ‘Where’s the hope?’ is not just a question others ask me almost daily, but one I ask myself when inspiration seems as elusive as an alchemist’s search for the magic stone. The prayers put it bluntly: ‘What is our life? Our kindness? Our fairness? Our strength?’ Basically, what’s the point?

I get help from the mystical interpretation of the Counting of the Omer. To explain, the Omer is a dry measure, in this case of barley, and the ‘Counting of the Omer’ is the enumeration, day by day and week by week, of the seven weeks of harvest connecting Pesach with Shavuot. This represents the journey from Egypt to Sinai, from ‘freedom from’ to what that freedom is for. The period includes the grief of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day; the heartache of Yom HaZikaron, the Memorial Day for the dead in Israel’s wars and conflicts; and the hopes, fears, and anguish connected with Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. It’s not a simple stretch of time.

But what engaged the mystics was neither harvest nor history. Rather, they understood the Omer as a journey of the spirit ever deeper into the heart of the sacred. They devoted each of the seven weeks to one of the sacred qualities with which they understood all creation to be imbued. They dedicated the first week to Hesed, lovingkindness, and the second to Gevurah, strength. Within each week, they attributed a special quality to each day. Thus, the second day of week one is Gevurah shebaHesed, strength within love, while the first day of week two is Hesed shebiGevurah, love within strength.

Strength within love, love within strength: these challenging combinations grip me. How does one retain compassion in a brutal world? When power and force dominate, how does one still find space for kindness and love? What’s it worth, in a bombed-up world?

Then I remember: I’m writing at a cafe two doors down from where a man from Beirut, who asked not to be named, prayed with me not just for his own family, but “for everyone, whoever they are, whichever side of the border they are, that we may live together in peace.”

That’s loving kindness, despite power and conflict.

I remember, too, the carer who told me how she keeps going while looking after an elderly woman who constantly tells her exactly what to do, criticises her loudly if she fails to comply to the letter but never saying ‘thank you.’ ‘I go far down into myself. I find the inner pool of love. It’s hard to go deep enough sometimes, but the stream that feeds it never runs completely dry. Even when I can’t feel it, I know it’s flowing into my heart.’ That’s strength within love.

I remember, also, how when I opened my emails there was a video about the power of music: wildlife wardens were singing to orphaned elephants to comfort them after poachers killed their mothers and the ‘little ones’ came and let themselves be stroked.

Then I look out into the garden and recall the blessing we said over fruit trees earlier in this month of Nissan. I think of the Ukrainian family whose orchard was bombed, but who’ve planted a plum and a cherry tree in pots on their London balcony. It’s a small but significant fight back: ‘We may be uprooted, but our faith in life will be replanted.’

I realise that all around are people who find strength within love and the love to remain strong and I’m moved, inspired and restored.