When I was in rabbinical school, my dad had valve replacement surgery. While we were waiting for him to come out of surgery, I saw that there was a walking labyrinth in the hospital. I started to walk it, thinking about my dad and my fears and thoughts about life, death, all of those big issues that were weighing on me. I was almost to the center when a hospital employee approached me and let me know that I had to leave. They were closing the labyrinth for the day.

I could not help but laugh and thought, “Sorry, the labyrinth is closed. Come back tomorrow for inner peace.” On Sukkot, we read Kohelet – To everything there is a season. Except at the Cleveland Clinic, where the season of self-exploration ends at 4:30 PM.

To everything there is a season. But when does anything follow its proper schedule? During Sukkot, we read Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes. Among the wisdom there is this: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven (Ecc. 3:1) There is a time for everything, even if there is not a date. In Reno, there at one time or another it has snowed every month of the year. Our expectations of things like weather do not always align with the reality in the air. While we usually expect snow in the winter months, some things do not have a designated time: illness, deaths, joys of all kinds. There is no designated day or week or month, or season for such things.

We schedule things, but that is about all the control we have over time. Sukkot comes every year at the same time, sometimes it rains all week, other times we are incredibly thankful for even the spotted shade the sukkah gives us. Sukkot is a marker in time. During Sukkot, we also switch liturgically from summer to winter. In the Amidah, we go from praying for Mashiv HaRuach U’Morid HaGeshem,” “the One Who makes the wind blow, and makes the rain descend” to “morid hatal,” “the one Who causes the dew to come down.”

It is also a reminder of our time on earth. We just finished Yom Kippur. As visceral and stark a warning as we get on Yom Kippur, much of that fades from our thoughts by the time we finish break fast. But we are not supposed to let it go so easily. We afflicted our souls for a whole day for a reason. As Rabbi Hesch Sommer explains, “The frail, impermanent booth that provides some shade but hardly offers any protection from the elements is, ironically, our symbol of faith. It serves as the counterbalance to our self-righteousness, our post-High Holy Days smugness.”

In another way, we defy time during Sukkot. One of our practices is to welcome Ushpizin, guests, into our sukkah. These guests are traditionally figures from Jewish history, whose virtues and company we would like in our sukkah. Inviting guests long gone takes us and our experience out of time.

This last practice may be the most helpful, as we too are often out of time. Not out of time in the sense that our time is up, although again, there are reminders of that all around us in this temporary, unsteady shelter, out in the elements. We are out of time in that we take things in their time. Not too long back in Deuteronomy we read, וְנָֽתַתִּ֧י מְטַר־אַרְצְכֶ֛ם בְּעִתּ֖וֹ “I will give the rain of your land at its time, the early rain and the latter rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil.” (Deut. 11:14) No dates are given, despite this being a message from God. We know generally when it might happen, but it happens, b’ito, in its time.

So many things do not happen when we want. So many things come at the worst possible time. When someone dies, we say it was their time – even if it was not a convenient, comforting, or easy time. But those things do come. It all comes, eventually.

As Rabbi Edward Feinstein wrote in his meditation on Untaneh Tokef that we read on Yom Kippur, “I will live and and I will die, at the right time and before my time. Time comes for us at its appointed time, not ours.

Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch suggested that while the sukkah was a metaphor for the flimsiness of life, the unpredictability, the timing so out of our control, it also reminds us of what grounds us. For him, it was the law, mitzvot, Torah. That can be our stability too. As can our community. We are all gathered here, are we not? When the time comes, we can be ready. When the time comes, we can be together. When the time comes, we can be ready, together.