“On My Way to a Wedding,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

July 25, 2025 | 29 Tammuz 5785

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can listen to it as a podcast here.

This week, I offer this poem by Mary Oliver as I make my way toward my daughter’s wedding on Saturday night with great excitement and my strong desire to be mindful.

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

— Mary Oliver
(“Why I Wake Early”)

Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום

I welcome your reflections and responses, Connect with me with comments and reflections here.

Rabbi Elaine Zecher