Rabbi Mira Rivera | Is being shattered the only way to return to one's soul? " According to Jewish wisdom, a potter does not test a weak vessel because if she hits it just once, it will break. Master Potter, I am your clay vessel. Be gentle! #awakenVOICE

Judith Helfand | The pool is freezing. But I want my daughter to see me jump in, the way I pray I jump into elul. I drown in stress. Can I turn the yelling into a shofar that pushes me to listen? How’s the teshuvah mom? It’s compassionate. #awakenVOICE

Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses | Sometimes I walk ​in darkness, ​utterly ​alone, feeling abandoned and rejected by God. Maybe teshuvah begins here, in connection, trusting that even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death I'm tethered, held in Divine Embrace. #awakenVOICE

Anonymous | Round and round. We feel we've made no progress. Search for those small muscles built each time we do the work. Progress is there. Sometimes its hard to see. Forgive others, but don't forget to forgive yourself. #awakenVOICE

Elul moon. I am lost. Will it work this time? Then I remember to trust the way. With blindness, I choose light and life. I sense, then I see. As this path of return and renewal Expands in me. – Hali Weiss #awakenVOICE

Marc Suvall | Teshuvah is a state of mind, a very personal process leading to reflection, authenticity and elevated holiness. Teshuvah places me in the present. It clears my mind, refreshes me and allows me to breathe fully. #awakenVOICE

Yonatan Arnon | We all live in our body. How do we awaken & sanctify it? Teshuvah invites us to return to the child within, who wonders by non-verbal communication and movement. Uplift yourself & be at one with your movement and with the divine. #awakenVOICE

Note on note/ To myself/ To others/ To my other self/Why? Did this happen? Who is to blame? How did I stray so far? I go beneath the notes/ I go within my selves/ I climb into the others/ I allow a newness never noted – Anonymous #awakenVOICE

Rev. Eleanor Harrison Bregman | As the High Holidays approach, I find myself asking: What places in my life or my communities need repair, healing, or perhaps, simply, tender attention? How can I give VOICE to those places, listen deeply, and turn towards them? #awakenVOICE

Larry Schwartz | Teshuvah can mean "return." Can we set an intention that we keep on returning to this month or Elul and beyond? For me it is to keep trying to awaken to my life, my family, my community and the world. What is it for you? #awakenVOICE

Shelly R. Fredman | Teshuvah is falling to your knees, head on the carpet next to someone’s ankles in an aisle at Romemu. Rising. Gathering tatters of life, holding them in grace. Surrendering, and naming that as bounty, source, mystery. #awakenVOICE

Micah Levy-Lyons (Age 9) | I think teshuvah is nice because it’s like I get to start my whole life over. Because if I was unkind last year, I can change this year. #awakenVOICE

Caren Ellis Fried | Teshuvah is my spiritual awakening that begins with a yearning to come close to the Divine, to my inner spirit. It's a turning inward in small shifts. It is You that I seek, says my heart. Ayeka? Where are you? Hineni! Here I am! #awakenVOICE

Ben Perlstein | The word teshuvah - repentance - can also mean response. This year I am hearing that the ability to respond is about responsibility - to practice what is best in us, so that we may be prepared to answer life’s highest calls to us. #awakenVOICE

Ana Levy-Lyons | Childhood, a recurring feeling of emerging from the mouth of a cave I hadn’t known I was in until that moment. Adulthood, a cycle of return to a self I never knew I had left. Combined, it’s the taste of teshuvah to me. #awakenVOICE

This year Repentance and regret Lie intertwined like quarreled lovers Apart yet breathing the same breath This year I have learned That knowledge is a poor substitute For presence – Beverly Pincus #awakenVOICE

Come hear a shofar blast calling you to return home to who you really are to an easy feeling inside. Teshuvah is a spiral - a slinky - each time you return it’s an opportunity because things are familiar but not exactly the same. – Jory-Bard Zimmerman #awakenVOICE

Alexandra Paddock | I look for poems that breathe. It is in those ruach letters that the wind whispers, ‘Here I am.’ That I might whisper back, ‘Come in.’ #awakenVOICE

Carol Anshien | Forgive me for Forgetting: who I was, who I am; who you may have intended me to be; Renew me for accepting all that I was, am and still hope to be. We are all uniquely mix 'n matched, made in the image of G!d. Hear my voice, now. #awakenVOICE

Jamie Askin | The cycle of a year, of the waxing and waning, of what was and what is, of being here and there and not here. We begin again, renewed and wiser... Savor all of it. #awakenVOICE