Erev Rosh Hashanah 5763 Sermon

by Ilana Schatz

OPENING
A story from our Talmud tradition: When the people of Israel crossed through the Red Sea, they witnessed a great miracle. Some say it was the greatest miracle that ever happened. On that day they saw a sight more awesome than all the visions of the prophets combined. The sea split and the waters stood like great walls, while Israel escaped to freedom on the distant shore. Awesome. But not for everyone.

Two people, Reuven and Shimon, hurried along among the crowd crossing through the sea. They never once looked up. They only noticed that the ground under their feet was still a little muddy - like a beach at low tide.

"Yucch!" said Reuven, "there’s mud all over this place!"
"Bleech!" said Shimon, "I've got muck all over my feet!"
"This is terrible," answered Reuven, "When we were slaves in Egypt, we had to make our bricks out of mud just like this!"
"Yeah," said Shimon. "There’s no difference between being a slave in Egypt and being free here."

And so it went, Reuven and Shimon whining and complaining all the way to freedom. For them, there was no miracle. Their eyes were closed - they might as well have been asleep.

Judaism is a culture of storytelling. We tell our history thru stories in the Bible and celebrate our holidays thru stories, such as Pesach seder. We also alter our historical perspective and create new ways of looking at the past/revealing hidden facets, thru the process of midrash - diving in and bringing forward hidden meanings, re-telling our stories from a different perspective.

So, this year’s theme of re-narrating our lives, the possibility of changing how we see the world around us, and creating new versions, is a very traditional one. Through what emotional, spiritual and intellectual lenses are we examining our lives and how do these lenses influence the stories we create? The collection of stories that we believe and tell about ourselves and the world become the foundation for how we live our lives each day, how we define our world, construct and make sense out of our lives, and what possibilities, opportunities we imagine are available to us. What we pay attention to becomes our experience.

Indeed, as the philosopher Sam Keen points out, "to remain vibrant throughout a lifetime we must always be inventing ourselves, weaving new themes into our life-narratives, remembering our past, revisioning our future, reauthorizing the myth by which we live." When I was asked to speak on this topic from the personal perspective, I began to ponder the narratives I’ve used throughout my life - to explore the impact of the stories I’ve told about myself - to engage in cheshbon hanefesh - an accounting of my soul - a good Rosh Hashanah tradition!

And, to be truly honest, I know that for much of my life, I have viewed and experienced the world thru the lens of life happening to me, and have often felt victimized by it. As I look back on my 20’s and 30’s, there were wonderful blessings that came my way - people, job opportunities, travel - but at the time, I was so mired in the muck, that I couldn't see them and didn’t allow myself to breathe these blessings into my soul, and therefore denied myself the nourishment they could have provided. I was living my life like Reuven and Shimon. A life without blessings, without noticing them - is difficult to sustain - we become bored and depressed.

After a period of reflection, I began a conscious effort to change my internal stories. It was on this journey to wholeness, that I discovered the practice of gratitude - noticing the blessings, however small, and appreciating their presence - sort of a mindfulness practice. Sometimes it would take me an hour to find three small things to give thanks for. External circumstances didn’t necessarily change - but I expanded my view to take in a fuller picture, and as a result, saw previously hidden gifts. I noticed that the story I told about myself began to change.

In preparing for this sermon, I asked Rabbi Burt what the Hebrew word was for gratitude - (I realized that I never learned that word from my years of living in Israel) . It turns out that there is no one word or phrase, but the one that resonated most deeply for me is hakarat tovah - an awareness, a knowing, a consciousness of goodness - a conscious and rational choice to focus on life's blessings rather than on its shortcomings.

This perspective of gratitude is deeply imbedded in our tradition. We say the Modim Anachnu Lach prayer, which expresses gratitude, three times a day.

...We thank You and offer praise
for our lives, given over to Your hand,
for our souls, which are in Your care,
for the miracles that are with us every day
and for the wonders and favors at every hour --
evening, morning and afternoon

DOES NOT DENY PAIN
Living with the perspective of gratefulness doesn't ignore suffering and adversity. Rather, as Brother David Steindl-Rast notes, "gratefulness makes us focus on the opportunity that adversity offers, the opportunity of authentic spiritual growth. This turns suffering into growing pains." We can change our narration, and experience pain and loss and grief, and as well, acknowledge other blessings in our lives - to find moments of appreciation.

I grapple with this issue quite a lot in my life. I carry a lot of sadness and disappointment that I haven’t been blessed to be able to parent a child. Sometimes I dwell on the choices I made earlier in my life that may have contributed to this dilemma, which usually exacerbates the initial sadness. Sometimes I get stuck in the "life’s not fair" argument, and you all know where that goes. When I am able to hold both the pain of being childless with the gratitude I receive from been blessed with being a godmommy to two special young people and being adopted as an auntie by two wonderful young women, I make room in my life for the joy these children bring me. It sucks that I’m childless, but Life as a whole doesn’t suck.

It is impossible to ignore the issue of gratitude and the events of last year. Probably none of us has escaped struggling with emotions of fear, despair, and apprehension since last September - it’s been a challenging year spiritually. And my guess is, that most of us have made subtle and not so subtle changes in our lives. We’ve spent more time with and focused more attention on the people we love in our lives; while it has served the purpose of helping us feel more safe and secure, creating a sane haven in what seems to be a crazy world, it is also a reflection and statement of the gratitude we feel for their presence in our lives. I’ve noticed in my life that I’m both seeking and deriving much more pleasure from the small everyday occurrences - listening more deeply to and receiving pleasure from music, noticing the variety of cloud formations in the sky, smelling more flowers (barely a flower has escaped my nose in the last several months!) - life seems more precious in the shadow of current events.

A few weeks ago while I was driving in my car and thinking about this sermon, I heard the song, "What a Wonderful World" on the radio, and I was immediately struck how this song conveys a deep sense of gratitude for the everyday occurrences in our lives - daily events or experiences which are also daily miracles. When I suggested it as the song following the sermon, several people remarked that it was sort of "simplistic and sappy" - and Gd knows, that’s not how I want to be seen or who I hope that I am! Howard reminded me that Louis Armstrong once introduced the song before a performance in the late ‘60’s by remarking that even with all the pain in the world, the discrimination, the war, we are still blessed with rainbows, blooming flowers, beautiful blue skies and white fluffy clouds, and new life is being born every day. The challenge is to be able to hold both the pain and the beauty in our hearts simultaneously. (I added a note about how Felicia heard it as the first song in her new car, which convinced her that this was supposed to be the song we sang!).

IMPEDIMENTS/OBSTACLES TO GRATITUDE
SO, if living a life based on gratitude feels so much richer and more satisfying, why do we find ourselves challenged to see the world this way? What are the mitzrayims - the narrow places - in our lives that constrict this flow of gratitude?

One is the quality of entitlement which is so pervasive in our American culture - as a country, we set and enact policies with little regard for their impact on other nations, on our shared environment, even our own residents! This perspective seeps down to the individual level, where there is an accepted sense that we're entitled to special rights and privileges, whether earned or not. By regarding everything as ours by right, we set no limits to our desires, and then experience frustration and dissatisfaction when these aren't met. If we're entitled to everything, then there is no need, no recognition, no experience of being thankful.

A second mitzrayim grows out of the internalized and unconscious responses to our long history of oppression and discrimination as Jews. Certainly, the real increase in anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions this past year has reminded us that hatred and prejudice are still unfortunately quite alive. Yet, we must equally strive to see beyond automatic suspicion and fear which spiritually blinds us to true gifts in our lives, potential uplifting opportunities.

In thinking about this topic, I realized that we’ve internalized this challenge, even in the way that most of us were taught to approach these High Holydays. Mostly we focus on all the ways we have strayed from the more perfect people we would like to be. While this is an essential part of the process, do we allow ourselves to also acknowledge and give thanks for the blessings and gifts that we have received this past year, as well as the way that we have been blessings and gifts to others?

In Deuteronomy we read "I set before you life and death - choose life so that you and your children may live." I see this choice reflected in how we let ourselves be nurtured by that which gives life back to us or that which saps life out of us.

CULTIVATING A GRATITUDE PRACTICE
So, how do we practically live our lives and tell the story of our lives through the lens of gratitude? Learning how to experience gratitude involves being grateful as an attitude, not as a reaction to good occurrences. Imagine if at every moment, regardless of what was happening, we embraced the world as the gift it is - seeing an apple as a gift, each of the colors of the rainbow as a gift, a smile from a passing stranger on the street as a gift. Hidden in every experience is a gift - even when it may take years to identify. Offering gratitude is a way of acknowledging our connection with the whole of life - creating a connection that contradicts the sense of isolation that many of us feel in this wide world.

The Talmud teaches us that we should say 100 blessings a day. Rabbi Marcia Prager calls a blessing a kind of "gratitude yoga," and it can be used not only day to day but moment to moment. What if we actually lived each day seeking out opportunities to give thanks, to be grateful, to look for blessings?

A friend of mine (Rabbi Miriam Senturia) told me about two blessings that she has created for everyday tasks - things we usually do without a second thought.

- Before a hot shower each morning, she says: "Brucha At Yah, Ein ha khayim, mekor mayim chayim (blessed are you, yah, wellspring of life, source of the living waters), and
- Before taking her vitamins, or any medicine she says: "Bruchah at ya, Eyn HaKhayim, rofeit kol basar u'mafliaah la'asot (blessed are you, yah, wondrous healer of all)

* Our tradition has developed an entire category of blessings for wonderous occasions (Birkot Nehenin - blessings of enjoyment), like smelling fragrant trees and shrubs, seeing wonders of nature (lightning, shooting stars, sunrise); hearing thunder. Emerson, the poet, pondered how much more we would appreciate sunsets if we saw one only once a year! * One of my mentors in community organizing taught me something crucial about sustaining energy and vision. We often forget to pause and acknowledge the small victories on the path to the "big" goal. I realized that our tradition provides us with the perfect blessing for this. We sing Dayenu at every Pesach seder - it would have been enough if we had just crossed the Red Sea and not received the 10 commandments, if we had received the 10 commandments and made it to the Promised.

I remembered this several years ago when an interfaith group I was involved with had been working diligently to save the Presidio housing for low-income people. We were celebrating the passage of a local ballot proposition, hanging out, exhausted, and watching the vote, indicating a victory for our side. Two of the lead organizers said, "Great - what’s our next step now?" And I told them about the Dayenu song - and all of a sudden, two nuns and a priest broke out singing "dai dai dayenu!" It was a great moment, and we held off the next steps conversation until the following week’s meeting, and savored that sweet moment.

* what if every time we wore a new piece of clothing or used a new instrument/tool, we would say the Shehechiyanu prayer (Blessed are you, source of all creation, who has kept us alive, and sustained us and brought us to this very moment)? We could separate out time before we consume, use or enjoy something of the world in order to create a space where something other than thoughtless appropriation can unfold. (Giving thanks for the ability to buy what we need, or to have friends and family who show their caring for us by gifting us these things?) We could transform a consumerist action into a spiritual one.

CLOSING - Psalm
The initial idea for speaking about gratitude as a lens thru which we can narrate our lives came to me on Shavuot when I heard Norm Fischer, a traditionally raised Jew and now a Zen priest, read from his book "Opening to You - Zen-inspired translations of the Psalms." I’ll end with a few portions of his rendering of Psalm 145.

This year may we all blessed to live our lives more fully "drenched in gratefulness."

L’shanah tovah