As the season's first blasts of the shofar sound on the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, we can no longer pretend to ignore the fact that Rosh Hashanah is fast approaching.

For those involved (whether as professionals or volunteers) in the running of synagogues, the approach of the High Holidays signals that many tasks need to be done in the coming weeks: there are sermons to write, Torah readings to learn, seats to be assigned, honors to be given out. For those who customarily invite many guests to holiday meals, there are menus to plan, phone calls to make, shopping and cooking to do.

But somewhere in the middle of the pre-holiday flurry of activity -- which is all the more frantic since the High Holiday season also coincides with the start of the new school year -- we need to avoid losing sight of another kind of preparation. Each year this season provides us with an opportunity to take stock of ourselves and the lives we lead, to look at where we have fallen short of our spiritual aspirations, and what we can do to improve ourselves. Each year during the month of Elul, we are called upon to begin the process of self-examination that we call teshuva.

If truth be told -- and what better time of year to tell it? -- most of us don't take advantage of the opportunity for renewal that this season provides. We may pay lip service to the process of teshuva, but we don't really take it as seriously as we know we should. Most of us are satisfied with the lives we lead. We may not be happy with what life has done with us, but we are mostly content with what we have done with life. If we engage in self-examination at all, it tends to be superficial, leading inexorably to the conclusion that we should continue living the way we have lived, only (maybe) a little more so.

It is just that kind of spiritual complacency that the month of Elul is designed to prevent. The shofar blasts that sound each weekday morning during this month are not mandated by the Torah -- only on Rosh Hashanah is blowing the shofar a mitzvah. The optional shofar blasts of Elul, rather, are a kind of spiritual alarm clock, trying desperately to wake us up to the opportunity this season provides. But most of us are difficult to arouse.

If we were to take seriously the season's invitation to teshuva, if we were to realize how far short we have fallen, we might quickly become overwhelmed. After all, the gap between who we are and who we ought to be is so vast that we can hardly avoid despairing of ever closing it. But here too the message of Elul can help.

One of the reasons for devoting a full month before Rosh Hashana to the process of teshuva is to enable us to take the process one step at a time. If we were to approach Rosh Hashana without advance preparation, the process of self-examination that day requires would be too much for us to handle. By beginning the process a month before, we have the opportunity to proceed slowly, so that we will view teshuva as a challenge rather than as an impossibility.

To be successful, teshuva must be, in a sense, a partnership between us and God.  We must push ourselves to improve, but we also must realize our inherent limitations as fallible human beings. We can recognize the immense spiritual challenge before us while still understanding that the only way we can even begin to meet that challenge is one step at a time.

Our part in this process requires strength and courage, but only with God's help can we succeed. Perhaps that is the message of the last verse in Psalm 27, which we recite twice a day during this season: "Look to the Lord, be strong and of good courage; look to  the Lord" (Psalms 27:14, JPS translation).

Chodesh tov, and a meaningful and successful Elul to all.