What do you mean it's already August?!

Sorry for the delay; knee-deep in sermon writing (and that's going real swell, thanks for asking!). I'm hoping to post some Q&A I've been doing for CBE's online newsletter, the Beth Emeth News (BEN), but in the meantime, I wanted to put another question out there for you to generate some feedback and discussion:

I'm on the poetry committee for the new Reform Movement Mahzor (High Holiday prayerbook). How did I get on this? Well, at a meeting at the CCAR conference in San Francisco, I heard about some of the editorial ideas, and, frankly, didn't like what I heard. And then I started complaining with some colleagues. And then I realized that I was sounding like 'those people' (as in, "I don't want to be like 'those people', rabbi, but..."). I wasn't offering to help, I wasn't trying to be a part of the solution, I was just being a kvetch.

So I volunteered. I wrote my thesis on piyyutim and have tried my hand at liturgical poetry (among other genres) so why not? And to my surprise, they let me in (I keep waiting for the editors to realize their mistake, that they meant to grab Oren Hayon or something).

So now I'm going through the Birnbaum prayerbook and my old notes, as well as books like Weinberg's Jewish Hymnography. It's great fun and wonderful to be studying again. But it does lead me to ask a question, before I go too far down the piyyut rabbit hole:

What is it that you want in a High Holiday worship experience? What does your ideal Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur look like? Where does it take place? What is sung? What is read? How else do you want to experience it? What does God 'look' like on those days; how do you talk to God, and how does God speak back? I know what my answers are, but they're 'tainted', in that I'm so influenced by the tradition and my experiences as a service leader it's sometimes hard for me to remember what it's like to sit in the pews. So hearing your answers will be helpful (and for you as well I hope!).

Now back to sermon writing etc. Will be posting those as well, but not until we get a lot closer. It's not even Elul yet, after all!