Welcome to Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day with me, Josh Feigelson.
I’m grateful you’re here, and I hope you benefit from our time together.
I was on a long airplane flight a couple weeks ago and decided to watch the recent science fiction film, “Project Hail Mary.” The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a middle school science teacher turned reluctant astronaut on a mission to save planet Earth from a bacteria-like species that feeds off the sun’s energy. Long space flight, hibernation, crew dying, encounter with alien, death-defying rescue… the usual. It’s a fun film. Two thumbs up, great for a family movie night.
One of the things that struck me about the movie was that it’s all about home—just like basically every other science fiction movie. The dramatic tension rests on two main questions: 1) Can Ryan Reynolds save planet Earth, i.e. home, and 2) Can he, and his new alien friend Rocky, get back home, or will one or both of them die a lonely, cold death in space?
Like a lot of these saving-planet-earth kinds of movies, “Project Hail Mary” is trying to help us feel like the Earth itself is our home. In the film, all the countries of the world–amazingly!–come together, peacefully and non-competitively, to share resources and figure out a solution to an existential problem. (Seriously, anything is possible in Hollywood.) In the face of a common threat, China or Russia or the USA aren’t our homes—the whole planet is.
But what if we didn’t need to wait for a giant meteor hurtling toward Earth or for Thanos and his army to be attacking from outer space to feel like the planet is our home? What if that was part of our regular experience? That’s the question we’re going to take up on this episode in our miniseries on home.
The great Buddhist teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh loved to teach that the whole earth is our home. “When we are mindful,” he taught, “fully living each moment of our daily lives, we may realize that everyone and everything around us is our home.” (End quote.) The air we breathe, the blue sky, the rivers, the mountains, the people around us, the trees, the animals—all of it is home. Even when we’re feeling lonely or cut off from everything, Thich Nhat Hanh taught, if we pause and allow ourselves to be present to our own experience, we wind up recognizing that we all have a home. “This is our practice,” he said, “the practice of going home.”
This episode is airing in the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah. We’re in the season of teshuva, a word often translated as repentance but that more literally means “returning.” Returning to what, though?
In his book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew teaches that we’re returning home—to ourselves. “Every moment of our lives our suffering, our clinging to our lives, drives us out of our lives—away from home,” he says. “And every moment, our awareness brings us back—returns us to ourselves, because we need to return, we need to come back.”
And that home isn’t the walls of our house or the borders of our homeland. No, Alan Lew says, “Our home is a river, a fluid place, a place where there is no stopping point—a place where we can stop clinging, and stop being driven out of life. A place of teshuvah, a place that will return us to ourselves, where we can feel our lives flowing, healing, toward home.”
I think what both Thich Nhat Hanh and Alan Lew are telling us is that a deep part of being at home and at peace with ourselves and one another is also being at home and at peace as members of creation. That’s part of what we remember on Rosh Hashanah, theour most universal of the Jewish holidays, the holiday that commemorates the creation of the whole world. Our home is a river, our home is the clouds that carry the rain that ultimately forms the river, our home is the lakes and the oceans that the river ultimately runs to, and in the water from the river that we drink to stay alive. When we can feel that, we can come to a deep experience of home.
Here’s a practice to try. You can do this right where you are—whether you’re walking outside, sitting in a chair, or driving your car.
Start by taking a slow, conscious breath in… and let it out.
Notice the air entering your lungs. That air didn’t originate inside you; it was exhaled by the trees, swept across oceans by the wind, and offered freely to you in this very moment.
With every breath in, you are literally pulling the earth inside your body. You are drinking in your home. With every breath out, you are giving that air back to the plants who are also part of this home of ours.
Now, I would invite you to bring your attention to the weight of your body. Feel the pressure of your feet against the ground, or your body against the seat.
That isn’t just physics; that is the planet pulling you close. Gravity is the earth’s way of saying: I’ve got you. You don’t have to hold yourself up alone. Let your shoulders drop half an inch. Let the earth carry your weight for a moment. Let yourself be at home.
Finally, consider if there’s some stress, worry, or alienation you’re carrying today. A fear of not belonging, an anxiety about the future.
Rabbi Alan Lew reminds us that our home is a river—a fluid place. Imagine taking that tight, clinging thought—and gently setting it into the current of your breath. Watch it float downstream.
If home is a place we can feel safe, we might be tempted to build a wall around ourselves—literally and metaphorically.
But we can also recognize that the whole earth is our home. Our whole life is our home. And so rather than build a wall, we might just have to let our lives flow back into the vast ecosystem of creation.
As Rosh Hashanah approaches, as the world is born anew, it might help to remind yourself: You don’t necessarily need a spaceship to find your place in the universe. You are already on the deck of an amazing vessel. You are already home.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
ENDING
Thank you for joining us for Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day, a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan and Kori Kalafer and the Somerset Patriots: The Bridgewater, NJ-based AA Affiliate of the New York Yankees. If you like this show, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Check out our website, unpacked.media for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts, and check out the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Most importantly, be in touch–about what you heard today, what you’d like to hear more about, or to dedicate an episode. Write to me at josh@unpacked.media.
This episode was hosted by me, Rabbi Josh Feigelson. Audio was edited by Rob Pera and we’re produced by Rivky Stern. Thanks for joining us.