This week brings the new moon of Elul, the month of Teshuvah, return. From its first day until Shemini Atzeret we recite Psalm 27 every evening and morning. I know one shouldn’t have favourites, but I love this Psalm. It’s filled with the longing to find God, to feel God’s presence in the world and the gift of God’s breath in our hearts.

The Psalms begins: ‘God is my light.’ The rabbis differentiated between the outer light of the sun which brings dawn and dusk, and the inner light of the sacred, hidden within all creation, which only the eye of the spirit can see. The Psalm invites us to look at the world through such eyes.

Sometimes this is gifted to us in moments of wonder. Nicky and I were standing on the slate-rock shores of the Isle of Seil at twilight when we saw an otter climb out of the sea onto the deck of a small fishing boat, walk slowly along it, pausing twice to look cautiously in our direction, before sliding back into the water. With it slipped away the last orange band of sunlight behind the black outline of Mull. For a few gracious minutes we saw into the world’s secret life.

At other times, we have to earn deeper vision by looking with eyes of compassion. I’m at the supermarket cash desk, someone annoyingly slow is in front of me and the cashier’s taking too much time. I look again and see differently: here’s a man who’s grown frail, struggling to manage with just one functioning hand. The woman at the till, knowing she’ll get complaints from the queue, gets up from her seat, speaks cheerfully, helps the man pack and place his card on the reader.

The incident may be trivial. But if we looked more often with compassionate eyes, we might be less impatient, less frustrated, and notice more often the sacred dignity in lives we might otherwise have ignored or even despised.

The Psalm continues: ‘God is my light and my salvation.’ Sometimes this is an urgent prayer. Bishop Nowakowski texted me yesterday:

I’m in Ukraine for several days… last night was especially challenging with the bombs of death and destruction… With prayerful best wishes, Kenneth.

It’s a supplication Israelis, and Palestinians, know only too well.
But, hopefully more often, God is our salvation in a different sense. Seeing into the inner life of the world, becoming more aware of people’s dignity and struggles, and the fragile beauty of non-human life around us, we appreciate more deeply that we’re here to care for all being, because God’s presence resides in it all. We are saved from hopelessness, aimlessness and depression, and find new strength and purpose.

‘For you my heart speaks,’ says the Psalm, meaning that God is present in our hearts and speak to us there. If, amidst our fears and distractions, we can nevertheless listen with our heart, with attentiveness and humility, we will perceive life with deeper wonder and compassion and find our purpose in caring for it in whatever ways we can. That is a great secret of the path of Teshuvah, return.

In these harsh times, may God be our light and our salvation on this road.