Eighteen is the number of life, chai, whose letters add up to 18. This day whispers to us of the deeper aspects of Life itself. Tiferet encourages us to be joyful for the steps we have already traversed in our journey from the limitations of slavery to the responsibilities of freedom. This journey is built on all our journeys of the past. Thus we now have the opportunity of reaching deeper than ever before towards the higher Vision that calls us from within the depths of our heart-space.

Our journey in consciousness must be reflected through our actions in the world. It is fitting that we connect today to the sefirah of Netzach, the outpouring of physical energies. The connection of Light is experienced between the heart and the right hip. The place of our vital energy in the world is brought into Tiferet to be held in the place of Compassion. Netzach brings Tiferet the energy through which its Wholeness and Peace may extend into the physical world.

Our tradition insists that spiritual awareness needs to be translated into the material world. We are the beings who have the responsibility to awaken the world in which forgetting is more popular than remembering.

Bless the energies we are given to express this Heart of Compassion in our daily lives. We celebrate the connection of that which has been to the vision of that which can now be. We are more because of what has endured in the steps we have travelled, what we have learned about paths that enrich and others that impoverish. Our task is to risk the ways of expansion and evolution in our choices now.