Perhaps the most solemn of holidays in Judaism is Yom Kippur, which has been translated roughly as the “day of atonement.”  Over the years rabbis I have known have pointed out that the English word “atonement” can also be read as “at-one-ment,” which is a slightly less than clever way of suggesting that atoning for one’s sins can also be seen as a way of being “at one” with God.

Being at one with another person can be viewed as the height of intimacy (or idiocy), and being at one with an activity can be described with that lovely term from the humanistic psychology movement as a “peak experience.”   The gestaltists described those experiences as transcendent moments of joy and elation– moments that float above and beyond everyday life.  Finding unity with God is perhaps the ultimate religious transcendent experience, at least during one’s corporeal lifetime.

Atoning, i.e., asking for forgiveness, is not automatic for humans; we must learn to forgive, because while erring is human, forgiving is not.  It is, as the saying goes, divine.  But on Yom Kippur, the task is not to forgive others but instead to ask for God’s forgiveness of our own sins.   It is repentance.

Now, the sins we are asking forgiveness for are the ones we have done against both God and humans.   God may choose to forgive us for those sins, but the people who we sinned against may not.   That’s up to them.   God’s forgiveness can only save our lives, but it cannot move others to forgive us.

So how does it work that being forgiven for our sins makes us “at one” with God?  I always assumed the word “sin” shared the same presumably Latin root as the Spanish word “sin,” which means “without,” as in “without God.”   But that is, as are many of my suppositions, completely off the mark.  The word translated to “sin” that is used in the Bible is the Hebrew word for what an archer did when he or she missed the gold at the center of the target (“het”).   Hence, at least one biblical view of sinning was to simply fall short of what you were aiming for, or missing the mark.

I tried archery in college, thinking it would be an easy “A,” but it was embarrassingly difficult.   I never got close to the target, let alone the bulls-eye.   So the metaphor isn’t a bad one.   Hitting the bulls-eye might just be one of those transcendent moments, those moments of being at one with God, like swishing a 3-pointer from 25 feet out.

What atonement does, according to tradition, is wipe the slate clean (assuming, of course, that you have done the necessary penitence.)  It puts more arrows in your quiver so that you can go out, take aim, and continue to miss the mark.   That is what it means to be human.

But that is no small thing.   Running out of arrows, missing the mark too often leaves us shy of arrows, whether from guilt or sheer exhaustion.  And shy of arrows, we are in it deep when the inevitable bull’s eyes of fortune come charging toward us.  I don’t like Bob Dylan, and I don’t like quoting him, but he had it right when he said “you gotta serve somebody.”   Getting right with Whom or Whatever You Serve can be transcendent.