Living with birth and death in the balance

This summer did not turn out like I imagined it would.  I know that life rarely does. 

I imagined that my summer would be filled with preparations for the baby that my wife Rook and I are expecting in November.  And, it was.  We created a baby’s room in our home, took birth classes, … I attempted prenatal yoga (and no, please just never ask me to demonstrate downward facing dog).  But, what these past months also brought, what I never could have expected, was the death of my 64 year old, vivacious, daring, loving, hero of a mother.  After a four and a half year battle with cancer, her final days came shockingly and breathtakingly quickly.

This was not the Yom Kippur sermon I was planning to write.  My mom and I discussed the topic of that sermon together in mid June, after she and my dad had returned from a cruise in Eastern Europe.  The topic of that sermon was “Embracing the Unexpected.”

And yet, as I waded through days and weeks of the unexpected, as the unexpected became my constant companion, as I stumbled along a surreal path that led from June to August, which ended in my mother’s death, a nuanced message developed beyond embracing the unexpected:  Living with birth and death in the balance.

My mom died on the very day I began my third trimester of pregnancy, and there was something in this intersection that ignited a changed awareness in me. 

I will begin by sharing a bit of this personal journey with you and continue by asking three guiding questions meant to move our work of teshuvah out of the theoretical and into the reality of our lives.  The work of answering these questions will be yours to do.

First, from the personal:

As I sat by my mom’s bedside in her final days, I found myself drawn to the book A Year to Live, written by Stephen Levine. In the book he writes, “It’s never too late to complete our birth.”[1]  These words struck a deep chord in me.  It’s never too late to complete our birth.

In the final weeks, as my mom’s physical health declined, my family and I shared many intimate moments with her.  As heartbreaking as these encounters were, they also held many blessings.  It was a privilege to care for and honor my mother, who had given so very much to me.  At one point, as I fed her soup, perched next to her by her bed, she said to me, “I feel a little bit like I am a baby again.”  I was not present at my mother’s birth.  But, I held her hand as she died.  In my mom’s final weeks, as my family and I shared memories with her, and kissed her and stroked her face, as we thanked her and told her that we loved her, I had a sense that we were with her as she completed her birth: She spoke all the words she wanted to say, she was surrounded by the family and community she had created, she was honored, and she was at peace.  In the days following, an equally strong feeling bubbled up in me:  I have a sense that, in those moments, she too was with me as I took a step in completing my birth:  Yes, I also spoke all the words I wanted to say.  From my core, I worked to honor my parents and my family.  I was heartbroken, but I was at peace.

Rabbi David Seidenberg teaches that the words we recite on Rosh Hashanah, “Hayom harat olam,” which are typically translated as, “Today the world is born,” can be read as, “Today is pregnant with eternity.” [2]   Indeed, ten days ago, as we started 5775 anew, we entered into a spiritual space that was ripe with infinite possibilities.  As Yom Kippur now begins to draw to a close, I invite us to call to mind Levine’s teaching:  It is never too late to complete our birth.  And I will emphasize, we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to do so. 

My first guiding question is: What land are you going to?

In his Spiritual Guide to the High Holidays, Simon Jacobson reminds us that when God tells Abraham “Lech L’cha,” he says to him, “Go forth from your land, the land of your birth, and from the home of your father to a land that I will show you.”  Notice, Torah uses three different terms to refer to the place that Abraham is coming from and only one vague reference to the land he is going to.  Jacobson explains that according to Chasidic thought, this verse holds a sacred message for each of us.  God is saying, “Go on a journey of self-discovery.  Leave behind anything that might hold you back.  And then I will show you the landscape of your Divine soul – the true you.”[3]

Since becoming pregnant, I have found a new fascination with birth narratives.  I’m told this is not so strange.  It may be a little strange.  From the birth accounts of the midwife Ina May Gaskin to the helpful tips laid out in countless birthing books, I find myself needing to set limits on my own consumption of the material.  I am intrigued by all the details of pre-labor, labor, delivery, and postpartum care, not to mention the theories and values that are at play in each person’s decision making.  Every life emerges from somewhere.

I realize that my fascination with birth is deeply connected to Torah’s message to us:  We have to name and honor where we came from before we can imagine where we are going.  Ten days ago, when we declared, “Hayom harat olam,” “Today is pregnant with eternity,” Rabbi Seidenberg explains that what we really meant was, “What greater potential in this moment, than for it to be ‘pregnant with insights, with hopes, that are as great as eternity’?”  If Rosh Hashanah invited us to name and examine endless possibilities, these last hours of Yom Kippur summon different work from us.  It is never too late to complete our birth.  True.  On Rosh Hashanah we took stock of our lives and considered what we have done to get us to where we are now.  The work of Yom Kippur is looking out into the uncharted landscape of where we’re going and taking the first steps into the unknown.

And I realize:  Maybe living with birth and death in the balance has everything to do with embracing the unknown. 

My mom received her Melanoma diagnosis four and a half years ago and from that time on she lived her life with even more purpose than her first 59 years.  Indeed, she lived these past years with birth and death in balance.  In the years after her diagnosis, she earned a PhD and traveled the world with my father.  She delighted in her 5 daughters, 10 grandchildren, and her great grandson. She spent time with friends and woke up early to see the sunrise.  In the way she lived her life, she taught us what it means to live while constantly being reborn.  She herself was herself pregnant with eternity.

On Rosh Hashanah the world is created anew.  On Yom Kippur, we are taught, we wear white to rehearse our death.  On Rosh Hashanah we look backwards in reflection in order to allow ourselves to stand ripe with possibility.  On Yom Kippur, we take the first, brave steps forward, into the land we have not yet charted.

And so I invite us all to reflect:  What are the first steps you are committed to taking?  What is the relationship in your life that you still have to mend, which you have been stuck reflecting backwards on or making excuses for these past ten days?  What is the project you have been imagining, or working on, or stalled in that needs your focus in order to become fully realized?  What is the unfinished inner work that requires your imagination?  What is the loss that chokes you with its power, which you are ready to begin stepping out of? 

If your Rosh HaShanah began pregnant with possibilities, on this Yom Kippur afternoon, decide: What land are you going to?

Second: Who needs you?

Stephen Levine writes:

When we begin to respond to discomfort instead of reacting to it, an enormous change occurs. We begin to experience it not as just “our” pain but as “the” pain. And it becomes accessible to a level of compassion perhaps previously unknown. When it’s “the” cancer instead of “my” cancer I can relate to others with the same difficulty, and I can send compassion into the cancer rather than helplessly avoiding it and turning its pain to suffering.[4]

As a rabbi, I have sat with many of you in houses of mourning.  I have celebrated your children’s birthdays and milestones, b’nai mitzvah and graduations.  I have been present for much that I am now newly experiencing in my own life.  When platters of cookies, trays of fruit, and stacks of chairs arrived at my home for shiva, it took me a moment or two to realize that these items were there because my mom had died, for me to sit shiva, as a compassionate response to my grief.  Immediately after these deeply personal realizations hit me, something much more comforting took hold.  This is what we do.  This is the Jewish response to loss.  And I found myself moving beyond “my loss,” as Levine suggests, to thinking about “the loss,” the losses that we all have experienced.  I was thinking about all of us who have experienced sickness and death, disappointments and setbacks, loss of work or financial hardships, divorce or estrangement, challenges and injuries.  Alongside the abyss of my own grief, I felt a great well of compassion and a heightened awareness of others’ pain open in me.

In the first guiding question I asked us to reflect on where we are going.  Now I would like us to focus on how we might use our experiences from this past year to better see others.

Just as much as joy is a part of life, so is pain. I invite you now to gently draw your attention to the more challenging parts of this past year and try what Levine suggests.  Flip the word that makes your experience personal – “my loss, my sickness, my termination, my failed relationship, my arrogance, my abandonment, my betrayal,” and allow yourself also to see these experiences as universal: “the loss, the sickness, the termination, the failed relationship, the arrogance, the abandonment, the betrayal.”  This is incredibly difficult work to do.  But, it is an exercise that allows us to recognize both our own painful experiences and also see that our hardships have the potential to bring us closer to others.

Last month, I discussed this universalizing principle with Rhonda Milrad, a therapist in our congregation.  She explained to me, 

In psychology, we often ask a person, as they are reflecting on their own limitations or the patterning of how they handle things, to reflect on something and to see it as outside of themselves. It’s called the observing ego. 

The observing ego allows us to step outside of ourselves and become much more resourceful in solving a problem.  It lets us step outside our reaction to the event that is happening.  It lets us see where we want to go.  Levine is asking people to pull themselves out of the pain, suffering, and difficulty of their moments.  A by-product of this is also probably causing more universalism, more connection to others.

There is the old adage, “When life offers us lemons…”  But, sometimes there is no lemonade to be made.  Rather, we might find strength in learning to use the lemons we have been forced to accept as catalysts for helping others to tend their own citrus crops.

Who in your life needs you?

If our work of teshuva is only about seeing our shortcomings and learning to tread new and better paths, or reflecting on our lives and charting new courses, I think we fall short.  Part of our work these High Holy Days should be in service to others.

So, I ask:  Who in your life needs you?  Who needs your compassion, your wisdom, your experience, your kindness?  Who needs your apology, your forgiveness, your offer of peace?  How can you take your pain, however vast or seemingly trivial it might seem, and use it to inspire your care for others?

Finally, Rabbi Hillel famously asks: If not now, when?

Why now?  You may be wondering.  Why now, in these final moments of Yom Kippur, should we ask ourselves: What land am I going to?  Who needs me? 

Because, when we began these High Holy Days, we started as individuals. We started by saying:  I’m sorry.  I was wrong.  I forgive you.  I hurt you.  As these Days of Awe draw to a close, we stand now in community.  Let us start again.  Return us.  We are not alone.  We have one another to move forward with.

And, because there is a purpose to our fast.  There is a purpose to our reflection and our prayer, to our atonement and our self-searching.  The intensity of these 10 days has led us to this moment, where we find ourselves stripped down to our essential cores, more open to change.  Now is the moment to hold ourselves accountable.

In a few minutes we will read the story of Jonah.  Jonah, our erstwhile prophet, who does everything to avoid the land he is sent to, who fails to find compassion for the people of Nineveh, who hides and delays and hems and haws rather than acting in the moment.  Jonah is begging us:  Laugh a little at me and learn from my mistakes.

My mom died on the same day that I began my third trimester of pregnancy.  And, this is one lesson I have learned from it:  Life is wildly unexpected.  We want our lives to be neatly organized and to flow in some sense of cosmic fairness, but this is not the way of the world and we have little control over it.  And so, we live our lives with birth and death in the balance.  What I have come to realize these past months is that this intersection of birth and death is actually a convergence we are meant to rehearse each year at this time. 

It is never too late to complete our birth.

A new land is calling us.  There are people who need us.  The time is now.