A Talk with My Mom on Kol Nidre 5780

Yom Kippur 2019/5780

A Talk with My Mom

Mom, it’s now been over four years since you died. And I can’t quite believe how that much time has passed. Your grandchildren have grown. Laurie’s kids are doing great. And mine are, too, but of course you know that. You’ve been with them – and with me.

You’ve probably seen that we have traveled a great distance. I’m in California now. I know, I can’t quite believe it either. But they do have trees that change color. Some of them anyway. It’s no New England fall, no, but I’m told I will love a Bay area winter in comparison.

But not yet. For today, tonight is Yom Kippur. It’s Kol Nidre.

This day on which we sit in the reality that we are both powerless and powerful. This day that reminds us that we may plan for the future, but we have to let go at a certain point because it is not fully up to us.

And of course, we – you and me – we know that. Because if we were fully in control, you’d still be here.

But that is not how this world works – and we know that, too. People get sick. People die. And those that are left must sit in our pain.

Unetaneh tokef kedushat hayom[1] - and now we proclaim the power, the holiness of this day. Such BIG words… how best to make sense of them…

Mom, you loved the written word. I don’t know if you ever came across any of Marcia Falk’s poetry, but here is a line of hers that I have been playing with these last few weeks.

Slow spin of earth against sky-

Imperceptible, yet making the days.[2]

It’s these more simple words that have been speaking to me lately. It’s utterly fascinating to me that while our feet are planted here on the ground, we have no real, felt sense that we are hurtling through space right now. To us, we are settled; we don’t feel like we are moving. And yet we move. We are changing all of the time.

Only when we take the time to notice, when we measure, when we look back do we realize with radical awe that we have moved millions of miles across the sky.

And maybe that is how I feel in relation to my mourning of you, Mom.

It was difficult to mark time in tangible ways. Shiva, shloshim, one year marking the first yartzheit helped. But the day-to-day changes were imperceptible to my human heart. Only in looking back over these years do I realize that the whole world, me included, has shifted.

Unetaneh tokef kedushat hayom – and now we proclaim the power, the holiness of this day.

These words in comparison are not about looking back in slow, unfettered reflection. No, they are jarring, and they are now. They say: Today is the day. If we haven’t looked back before this moment, this text is here to remind us that someone has been keeping track, someone enthroned has been marking our days so we best get up to speed.

Tonight, Kol Nidre, we explore with awe and trepidation the possibility that all things can transform, including us. And that is frightening. We don’t like living in the place of not knowing what will happen next. I know I don’t.

Those twelve days you were in the hospital teetering between life and death – I hated not knowing how this would all end. Not being in control.

And then this holy day comes around, puts a hand on our shoulder and reminds us that there are things beyond our control. And in the moment, then and now, we can’t tell whether this is supposed to be reassuring or supposed to ratchet up our anxiety. This day rolls around to remind us that we live in an eternal tension between our power and our powerlessness. Who lives, who dies? Who knows.

This day is a reminder of all that because sometimes we forget.

It’s like the old story of the two messages in our two pockets. I was first taught this story as a teenager, that precious time when we think we can control everything.

In one pocket is a piece of paper with the message, V’anokhi afar v’efer, We are but dust and ashes. In the other pocket is another piece of paper with the message, Bishvili nivra ha’olam, For me, the world was created.[3]

Some of us lean too deep all the time into dust and ashes, into feeling small and overwhelmed and alone. Some of us lean too heavily too often in the other direction believing that the world was created only for us.

On the days when we feel like a small speck of dust, we are to pull out the message, For me, the world was created. And on the days in which our heads have grown too big and our hearts too small, we are to turn to that other truth, We are but dust and ashes.

It is the in-between that matters, the re-calibration for which we must be humanly responsible.

Unetaneh tokef kedushat hayom – and now we proclaim the power, the holiness of this day.

Sometimes this moment is like a great shofar, blasting in to wake us up. Uv’shofar gadol yitaka!

And sometimes it is like a still, small voice reverberating around inside our heads and our hearts. V’kol d’mama daka yishama.

All of it calling to us – the great shofar, the still small voice - calling us to emet, to truth. To the truth that our lives are simultaneously in our hands and out of our hands. The truth that we are both dust and ashes and we are for whom this world was created.

And that is what Yom Kippur is all about, isn’t it? Getting comfortable in the uncomfortable and uncomfortable in the comfortable.

How do we handle this emet, this truth? How do we handle the mismatch that happens far too often between how we live our lives and how we die? How do we handle not knowing whether there will be more pain this year or more joy? How do we lean into the every day knowing that this day, this very day might be our last?

B’Rosh HaShanah yikateivun uv’Yom Tzom Kippur yeichateimun. On Rosh HaShanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

For generations, our people have handled these eternal questions by leaning into the construct that there is time, these precious ten days in between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur when we can change our fate and change our story.

And the drama builds… and then… and then I remember it’s all a drama. It’s all a metaphor. This Book of Life that God has laid out before us with the writing and the sealing – it’s a poem written to help us live into that tension.

But it’s only that. A poem. We who encounter this text and bring it close are not meant to be literalists – no, not with this piece. What we do today does not determine the dates of our deaths. What he did last year does not explain his death. No, it does not account for hers. Our rational selves know this.

Yes, we sing Unetaneh Tokef in grand song; we recite it on our most holy of days. We sing of a Book of Life. We sing of God’s judgment. We sing, Who shall live and who shall die?

But there is no book, I remind myself, the rabbi who is all caught up in the drama of the moment.

God is not petty enough to be poised over a book.

Mom, you loved the written word. And this is a good story. And like all good stories, good poetry, it tells the truth in its own way. It tells us a spiritual truth, an emotional truth, an eternal truth.

The truth… the truth is that we are scared. We are scared of what lies beyond. We are scared that we may live a life of goodness only to die before our time. We are scared we will lose our loved ones. We are scared we will be left alone.

It may only be a poem, but it reflects our deepest fears as well as our deepest hopes. Despite our relative powerlessness over disease and accidents and that which is far beyond our control, Unetaneh Tokef sings: Please God, tell me there is something I can do.

We are not meant to take this text literally, but to act as if we do, as if every move we make has deep moral significance. And isn’t that in itself the truth? That we should live as if every move we make matters?

We may get one more day, we may get ten more days, we may get years, but we just don’t know. All we do know is that there will be a last day so the poet urgently reminds us to get our spiritual life in order now.

These are the days of awe. But every day could be a day we treat with awe.

I had no idea that the day you entered into a coma, Mom was going to be the last day we would talk. I had no idea.

Sometimes, we just don’t know what is around the bend.

So what do we know?

Our poet leads us to this place: the poet cries, don’t despair. Uteshuva utfillah utzedakah maavirin et roa hag’zera. You do have power. You have teshuvah and you have tefillah and you have tzedakah. Turning, prayer, and giving are the ways in which we can make change in our small corner of the universe.

When we feel powerless, we act on teshuvah, often translated as repentance, but best interpreted as turning or change, as opening one’s self up to the power of transformation. Teshuvah is the command to look back in order to re-set our direction for our future.

When we feel powerless, we act on tefillah, often translated as prayer, but best interpreted as recognizing our connectedness to something beyond ourselves, to God, and to other human beings. It’s knowing and accepting the painful vulnerability that comes along with loving others but knowing we wouldn’t have it any other way. Our power lies in how we love, how we forgive, how open we are to awe.

When we feel powerless, we act on tzedakah, on giving. We do, we act, we open our hands to those in need. At its core, tzedakah is tzedek, justice. We can’t control everything, but we can control how we move through this world, whether we are open to others’ pain, whether we will act on our capacity for compassion.

Through teshuvah, turning our soul, tefillah, opening our hearts and tzedakah, opening our hands, we lean into our part for responsibility over this universe.

A great shofar is sounded, the still small voice is heard, the angels will tremble, and we will feel the holiness of every day. 

This is the work of the soul. And it can be difficult at times. Letting go while at the same time, holding on with everything we are.

And so, we, like the text of Unetaneh Tokef waver in between power and powerlessness. When we feel small, the poet’s words resonate: we are like a broken shard, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing wind, flying dust, a fleeting dream.[4]

Yes. Yes, we are. We are but mere mortals in the grandness of the universe. But my God, we are IN the universe – and isn’t that a miracle?

When we reach the end of Unetaneh Tokef, the words declare: God links our names with God’s name. It may be a poem, but this line, I know, to be true. We are connected. We are not alone. We are a sacred part of a puzzle, incomplete without our piece.

From your vantage point, Mom, do you see the puzzle in ways I cannot possibly understand? Have you been watching the slow spin of earth against sky in ways I cannot possibly comprehend? Have you been living in our metaphors for life and death, for joy and sorrow in that Big Book of Life on God’s desk in the cosmos?

Like the morning star whose light bursts forth…

So Israel’s redemption will come:

Bit by bit at first,

Bigger and bigger as it makes its way.[5]

Those rabbis in the Talmud understood Marcia Falk’s words before she ever penned them. Slow spin of earth against sky, imperceptible yet making the days.

And it’s like that with redemption, too. With the great understandings and realizations of life. Bit by bit at first, bigger and bigger as it makes its way.

Too often we think redemption, miracles must be big and smack us straight in the face with their realness. They must be a-ha moments of sacred clarity and comprehension. They must change my life right now. After all, we have been regaled for generations with stories that miracles look like the parting of the sea and the sun standing still.

But the truth is that they need not be so big out there to be big in our hearts. I understand that now.

Ruth Brin wrote:

No one ever told me the coming of the Messiah could be an inward thing; No one ever told me a change of heart might be as quiet as new-fallen snow…. No one ever told me salvation might be like a fresh spring wind…[6]

Sometimes, I am playing with the kids and I see your face in my daughter’s face. The way she sometimes turns her head and laughs. And instead of driving me to tears like in the beginning of this journey of mourning and memory, now it brings a smile to my lips. The world has moved and me with it.

It doesn’t mean I miss you any less. No. Instead, I’ve learned to live with you in my every day.

You’re there in her face and you’re in conversations I have with my kids. They may not really remember you, but they know you because we talk about you all the time. Gramma would have laughed at that joke, I might say. And when they do just about anything, I say, Gramma would be so proud.

And maybe… maybe that’s redemption. Maybe that’s how we go on. Maybe that’s how we live in the tension between what is and what isn’t, between our power and our powerlessness, between Rosh HaShanah when the book is poetically written and Yom Kippur when the book is poetically sealed.

Albert Einstein once said, There are two ways to live this life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.[7]

We have a choice. Maybe that is what Unetaneh Tokef is pointing us towards in the end. We have a choice. We can choose only our powerlessness, our anger, our sadness, our despair. We can choose to live as if this world is without miracles.

Or we can choose to link our name with that which is bigger than any of one of us. To accept that we cannot control everything. To accept that yes, we are dust and we are ash. But we also accept that this world was created for me and for you and while we are here, we will lean deep into making miracles whenever and wherever we can.

We will lean deep into teshuvah, tefillah, tzedakah, into turning, praying, giving. We will lean deep into living. Into loving. Into remembering and reflecting. Into realizing with radical awe how much we have changed. Into recognizing the miracles in our midst both big and small.

We will lean deep into making every day a day of awe.

I lean into letting you live and making you present in my every day for my name is linked with yours, Mom as much as it is with God’s.

No one ever told me the coming of the Messiah
Could be an inward thing;
No one ever told me a change of heart
Might be as quiet as new-fallen snow.

No one ever told me that redemption
Was as simple as springtime and as wonderful
As birds returning after a long winter,
Rose-breasted grosbeaks singing in the swaying branches
Of a newly budded tree.

No one ever told me that salvation
Might be like a fresh spring wind
Blowing away the dried withered leaves of another year,
Carrying the scent of flowers, the promise of fruition.

What I found for myself I try to tell you:
Redemption and salvation are very near,
And the taste of them is in the world
That God created and laid before us.

I don’t know what will happen next, Mom; none of us do. But what I know for sure… what I know for sure is that I will continue to look for you and I will find you, I will find redemption in the miracles in this world created and laid out before us.

Indeed, in the new year to come, may this be true for all of us, may we find miracles waiting for us in our midst.

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[1] Various sections of Unetaneh Tokef will be referenced throughout this sermon both in Hebrew and in English translation. Unetaneh Tokef is a liturgical poem shared on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.

[2] From “Turning of the Heart” in The Days Between (Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart), Marcia Falk.

[3] Teaching of Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Peschischa.

[4] Also from Unetaneh Tokef.

[5] Jerusalem Talmud, Brachot 1:5. This Talmudic piece is used to start Marcia Falk’s poem, “Turning of the Heart.”

[6] “Discovery” by Ruth Brin.

[7] Adapted from Albert Einstein. “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”