Today’s Omer theme is balanced foundation in eternal victory and endurance. (See below for more on the Omer)

Before and after meditating today, I read chapter 54 from the The Lao Tzu (See below for full text)

In order to build something lasting we need to start with solid first principles - both the Omer and the Tao direct us today to work progressively, in concentric circles, starting with the most basic and personal and moving outward through expanding relationships to the universal.

The tricky part of this is that unlike the idealized version of things in the Tao, we don’t get to finish working on one area before we need to devote ourselves to the next.

At the heart of both the Tao and the Jewish Mystical teachings underlying the Omer practice is the notion that holding onto one particular idea as central is also a challenge. That we need to work from foundational principles and also not hold onto them in a way that prevents us from growth elsewhere.

Finding that balance between building what we planned and insuring that we are not dragged down by our own determination isn’t easy. And we also know that jumping around from project to project seldom gets them done either.

Figuring out when to build and when to rethink may be the foundation of something lasting.

[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), page 165, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]

54.
One who is well established (in Tao) cannot be pulled away.
One who has a firm grasp (of Tao) cannot be separated from it.
Thus from generation to generation their ancestral sacrifice will never be suspended.
When one cultivates virtue in their person, it becomes genuine virtue.
When one cultivates virtue in their family, it becomes overflowing virtue.
When one cultivates virtue in their community, it becomes lasting virtue.
When one cultivates virtue in their country, it becomes abundant virtue.
When one cultivates virtue in their world, it becomes universal.
Therefore the person should be viewed as a person.
The family should be viewed as a family.
The community should be viewed as a community.
The country should be viewed as a country.
And the world should be viewed as the world.
How do I know this to be the case in the world?
Through this (from the cultivation of virtue in the person to that in the world).

About the Counting of the Omer in the Jewish holiday cycle:

Today is twenty-seven days, which is three weeks and six days of the Counting of the Omer - a time when many Jews note each day between the Second Day of Passover, the celebration of freedom, and the next major holiday, Shavuot, or “weeks”, when Jews celebrate the covenant given at Mount Sinai. Each of the seven weeks and each of the seven days in these weeks correspond to a particular “sefirah” or “sphere”, or perhaps better, “a divine emanation/human aspiration”. These themes allow us to reflect on the days as we move from liberation to revelation in the Jewish calendar.

Today’s Omer theme is balanced foundation (“yesod”) in the week of eternal victory and endurance (“netzach”).