G-d covers His sukkah with.....what?
The rabbis say that everything that exists on earth has a spiritual counterpart in heaven. For example, in the tefillin that a Jewish man wears on his head and his hand there are passages from the Torah that tell how close G-d is to the Jewish people. And the rabbis say that G-d, too, has tefillin and that in His tefillin are passages which say how close to Him the Jewish people are.
I thought of this during Succos and wondered: perhaps in a spiritual sense G-d also has a sukkah. And if He does, I asked myself, what does He use for s'chach, for a roof over the top? Our s'chach is actually refuse that gets used for accomplishing the mitzvah of building a thatched hut during the holiday. I can use vines cut from the vineyard after the harvest or corn stalks, palm branches, or clippings from the forest. Perhaps G-d's s'chach is also refuse, but refuse from our growth.
During the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we confess our sins, blunders and blindness before G-d. We aim to repair these mistakes and refine ourselves. The rabbis say that in the effort to transform ourselves into better people by turning from sin and doing t'shuvah, each sin can become a stepping stone and be counted for the good. Through t'shuvah each sin is raised up from the lowly place of its origin to a position of honor, for, albeit in a roundabout and unintentional way, it too has brought us closer to G-d.
Perhaps the husks and refuse used for s'chach on top of G-d's sukkah are the sins we have discarded. As we collect old vines from the vineyard, G-d collects those sins that, during Yom Kippur, we were able to cut from their vital root by confession and true regret. Perhaps G-d raises up all this refuse and places it on His sukkah as a sign that the Jewish people have fulfilled the covenant of the Torah, not only through mitzvahs, which are, so to speak, G-d's harvest, but even by using their sins to transform the world and themselves for good. The uglier and lowlier the sin that was transformed to good during Yom Kippur, the more simcha it adds to G-d's sukkah.
We sing and drink our wine in the shade of the discarded vines and G-d sits beneath the refuse of His vineyard joyously making l'chaims with us. And as He does, delighting in His harvest, He looks up through the cuttings of the previous year and sees in them blessings.