Dear TNS Friends:

These are the days of harvest blessings in many traditions. A good harvest was often a matter of life or death—of starvation or of plenty for the days and nights of dark and cold in the Northern Hemisphere.

It is also a good time to turn inward ourselves, to harvest what we have garnered since the last harvest, to ask what we have learned that may help us on our path.

As I enter my eightieth year this October, it is also a time of deeper reflection for me—and for many among us who are in or approaching our later years. The great Jewish mystic Rabbi Hillel asked us this same question 2,000 years ago:

If I am not for myself, who will be?
If I am not for others, what am I?
And if not now, when? Continue reading →