(During the Jewish High Holidays)

Life is too serious at times to ponder what I should atone for.
So I’ll think of “at-one-ment.”

To be at one with “all that is” is akin to seeing the full moon glittering from the knowledge that humans and animals and earth are at one with each other. And if you don’t believe me, look closely at the moon – it sometimes smiles.

Even oranges are at-one – at one with the sun. Bright, circular, the same color of course. The rays of the sun are like the spritz from an orange when you cut and peel it the wrong way. So, oranges and atonement do go together, but which one I want to write about, I’m not sure.

An orange makes me squint when I bite into it. My eyes squint at the sun. The earth circles the sun and moon in cooperation with something greater than all three, with each other’s movement blending in and out of our lives so smoothly that we take them for granted. They have nothing to atone for; they know they are at-one.

Problem is us humans – we forget our at-one-ness. We often detach from each other and ourselves – the scientific mind telling us that mind and body are not one. My mind is better than yours. Us and them.

It seems only crisis wakes us up to what is real. People who have near death experiences return with the knowledge that love is all that matters. Mind and body hold our essence – an essence that continues beyond the body – learning, growing, discovering at-one-ness, just somewhere else. Free to fly and dance and play and laugh, while the body returns to its roots in the earth.

All to happen again sometime and somewhere. No memory lost; just changing in colors and experience and flowing with the moon and oranges in trust of the next step

© Roberta S. Kuriloff