In season of repentance, get right with the world

For Christians, Jews and Muslims — and perhaps other faith traditions as well — there are periods of time, rituals and processes for seeking a right relationship not simply with God alone, but with the creatures of the Earth and Earth itself.

In each of these traditions, the goal is not merely to feel that God has given you a thumbs-up for all your faithfulness and your efforts at selfimprovement, but that throughout the process of self-reflection and communal prayer, the world may be made better.

Imam Johari Abdul-malik, formerly of the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., describes the practice in Islam this way: “There really are five fundamental steps in what is called, in the Arab language, alba. One, to admit that what you’ve done is wrong; two, to detest it in your heart; three, to commit to turn away from it and not to go back; four, to make restitution; and then five, to ask for God’s forgiveness.”

More familiar to many, perhaps, is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. This time of reflection, between Rosh Hashanah and the fast day of Yom Kippur, was a period of not only of reflection or confession, but also of profession, a commitment to repair the world. In other words, the goal of confession is not complacency, but a forward-looking action plan: What needs to be done and what can I, and my community, do for the greater good?

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, a noted scholar of Jewish liturgy, describes going to synagogue on Yom Kippur as a child, holding his father’s hand:

“I’ll always remember how people lined up outside this tiny little synagogue in a tiny little town in Southern Ontario. And before they went in to pray, they emptied their pockets of money and dropped it into little baskets of charity. And I learned then as a little kid that before you pray, you’ve got to take care of the world. My father never explained it to me exactly, but the look on those people’s faces, figuring this is what they really

had to do, has stayed with me to this very day.”

The Christian season of Lent, which began on February 22 this year, is similar in scope. But it has often been privatized, an occasion for individual piety and the infamous “giving up” of things. A former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, cautions against such parochialism. Lent isn’t a time to diet or quit cussing for 40 days. Williams says:

“The self-denial involved in the period of Lent isn’t about just giving up chocolates or beer; it’s about trying to give up a certain set of pictures of God which are burned into our own selfish wants.”

So of three major faith traditions, repentance and a recommitment to structural change in a deeply troubled world are central tenets, too often privatized — at least within Christianity, which is the tradition in which I was raised and serve.

Obviously, you don’t need to be part of a faith tradition to want to work to make the world better. It’s just that we don’t do a very good job of it. This seems particularly true in traditions where little is done to address homo- and transphobia, structural racism, environmental upheaval, xenophobia, child welfare (once born), misogyny and violence, both organized and minimized. It seems to me very awkward to speak of peace and wellbeing in a world at war and in a world of indifference.

Does it make a difference in our collective wills to know that peace and wellbeing are not the domain of the private country clubs in our hearts, but our call to common cause? I would hope — and I would pray — that it would.