Turn, Turn, Turn

from Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation by Michael Lerner

Built into the High Holy Days is a deep psychological wisdom that can and should be reclaimed. In the ten days of repentance that extend from the first day of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, through the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, we may engage in a mass psychological process, as we participate in an individual and collective reassessment of our lives.

Remembering is step one—looking at what we have done and what we have become during the past year. Rosh Hashanah is called Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance.

The second step is to measure what we have done and what we have become against our own highest visions of who we should and could be. This step is facilitated when we collectively, through prayer, reaffirm the vision of our possibilities (what we could be individually and together).

The third step is called teshuvah or repentance. This does not mean merely a recommitment to “good values” that are so abstract that they function only to make us feel good when we espouse them. Real teshuvah means determining in considerable detail exactly what we are going to do differently in our lives, taking into account the things that will likely throw us off or undermine our resolve. This requires more than making just an inner resolve about our intentions—it requires figuring out concretely how the things that tend to undermine our resolve or deflect us from carrying out the changes we want to make can be handled. Teshuvah is not a series of New Year’s resolutions, but is instead a serious plan of action based on the deepest and most searching self-scrutiny. Obliviously we cannot accomplish all of this in one morning at a synagogue; the services are meant only to provide the collective affirmation of the commitment to the task, but the ten days of repentance are intended to provide the setting for a much deeper and more concentrated attention to change. To avoid using these ten days seriously, people fill up all their time with services, meals, socializing, and endless chatter. But this time period is really about something else: a fundamental transformation of self and community. Those who want to take full advantage of the occasion frequently use this time to review their journals, to look over their calendars of the past year, to remember what has happened, and to explore how they may remake themselves. This is also the time to straighten up unfinished emotional business with other people, to seek to rectify whatever misunderstandings or pain that you may have caused others.

Self-scrutiny is not meant for individuals only. The religious community as a whole needs to meet during the ten days of repentance and to discuss its own functioning and direction. Has the community really embodied its highest values? Has it really been sensitive to the pains of its members, and to the pain and suffering that continue in the larger world? Has the community used Judaism merely as a way to “feel good,” or has it been engaged in the nuts and bolts of social and political action to transform the world? Are the nice sentiments matched with serious action?

Most of the time, I’m an Anne Shirley kind of person. Who, you ask? Anne Shirley, Anne with an “e,” the heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Anne” books: Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island to name a few.

For those of you who haven’t read the books, or seen the Anne mini-series on PBS, Anne is a red-headed orphan girl who, by mistake, gets sent to Matthew and Marilla, an aging brother and sister on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the days before automobiles. Matthew and Marilla wanted a boy to help out around the house and farm. Anne, however, is not a boy, and her constant magpie-like habit of speaking too much is not at all what Marilla expected, or wanted. But Anne worms her way immediately into Matthew’s heart, and more slowly into Marilla’s, and they become a family.

It is not, however, without trials. For Anne’s vivid imagination takes her places that no parent ever wants a child to go. She inadvertently dyes her hair green (unlike today’s youth who do it on purpose). She inadvertently gets her best friend intoxicated when she mistakes the cordial for juice. She walks the ridge pole of the barn and falls off. One thing after another, she is always getting into scrapes that would exasperate the bravest parent, and while delighting the heart of her special Matthew.

It’s not the getting-into-scrapes part that I echo, but rather two other things Anne does. First, Anne lives her life looking for “kindred spirits,” those people with whom we feel immediately at home, where we know that words ill-spoken will be forgiven, where we can go to talk out just about anything, and with whom we can be with in companionable silence. I, too, look for “kindred spirits.” I also believe it is this search for “kindred spirits” that creates religious communities. As biological families travel further and further away from each other, we look for kindred spirits to sustain us upon the journey in other places.

And second, Anne has a marvelously unique way of looking at life. Even though she gets herself into all sorts of trouble, she wakes up every day with hope, expectation and anticipation. She says something like this: Every day when I wake up, I see a whole day ahead of me, a day of exploration, a day of wonder, a day to discover, and a day not filled with any mistakes!

This is a religious response—to see the possible in each day as it comes, and see the hopeful—that somehow this day it is possible to get through to the other end without any mistakes, without anything we regret, without anything that we have left undone, or anything that we have done wrong. Anne’s spirit is borne of the imagination of author Montgomery, yet it is also imbued with deep religious feelings.

Because what most religions have to address is the fact that we human beings are imperfect, that like Anne, we make mistakes. For even though many religions say we are made in the image of god, it’s not an exact image of those gods because it does not include perfection. Most religious traditions come up with ways to help us deal with the fact we are not perfect. Through confessions, repentance, and other sacraments, people of faith are led to believe that there is a way to make amends.

One good example is Judaism. This week, we are in the midst of the Jewish High Holy Days, the Days of Awe. Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, began at sundown Wednesday, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sunset on Friday. In between are the Days of Awe, or the Days of Repentance, a time for reflection. These are the most holy days within the Jewish calendar. I’ve always believed that this Jewish cycle better fits our world—we begin so many things anew in the fall that it seems right to acknowledge this as the New Year. As the natural world around us prepares for a time of inward growth, of fallowness, of being internally focused, it is right and good for us human beings to do that, too.

And that’s what the days of awe and repentance are all about. Turning inward, and coming to grips with our human selves—the Anne Shirley part of ourselves that makes more errors that we can even imagine. Before we can value our days, or make any new resolutions or new commitments, we must know where we have been, and what we have done in the year gone by. As one my friends says, “My there and then is why I’m here and now.” We must know the there and then, and then clear the decks, so we know what is (or is not) possible.

As Michael Lerner points out in the reading from this morning, this process is a multi-faceted one. First, we must remember. Not only the good things we’ve done, but we must also bring to the fore the things we are not proud of. Those times we have lost our temper without provocation. Or when we have slighted someone, either unintentionally, or intentionally. Or when we have not corrected the bill at the restaurant when they forgot something, or when we told a lie (or several) or whatever. We need to look inside, and know who we have been, both in the public’s eye, and in the privacy of our hearts. We have to search our souls, and see ourselves as clearly as possible. We need to measure our deeds and thoughts and wishes against the dreams and visions and values we hold dear, and see where we have achieved good things, and where we have not.

But knowing ourselves is not enough. Just as hiding our light under a bushel leads to problems with smoke inhalation, knowing ourselves without going further is a dangerous and futile effort. Instead, we must, as the Jews do this time of year, make repentance. Teshuvah—“a serious plan of action based on the deepest and most searching self-scrutiny.” Making amends, as Twelve Step programs name it. And not doing this just to alleviate our sense of guilt, but because it is the right thing to do. This is a time to rectify what can be rectified, to deal honorably and honestly with others. Not, of course, at the cost of others, but instead to find a way to heal our relationships with each other. A time to gain a new heart.

This is never easy work. In order to live less troubled lives, we often unconsciously rewrite our stories in the best light. We forget the things that we’ve done that have injured other people. We gloss over things that didn’t feel right at the time, but that we felt justified in doing. In order to survive, our minds cleverly adapt and change our memories. And sometimes, our memories do hold onto things just the way they happened, but because of our different perspectives on life, we can’t see the impact of what we’ve done on others.

Years ago, my friend Cathy and I took a driving trip together. She was visiting me in Calgary, and we both were en route to San Francisco, so we planned to drive together and camp along the way. We loaded my tent and sleeping bags into the trunk, and my golden retriever Jasper into the back seat, and took off.

Now Cathy and I had been friends for years, but we had never really driven together. Cathy tailgates, and she doesn’t use the turn indicator enough. I, though, am a perfect driver. There were a couple of tense moments, when I sweetly informed her that her driving technique could change a wee bit for the better, but we survived the couple of thousand mile drive with our friendship intact.

And then came Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Cathy, as a good Jew, followed the process that Lerner’s reading highlights. First, she remembered the year, reviewed her relationships with people. Then she held them up against her ideals of how she wanted to live, and found herself wanting a bit. And so she called me up, and apologized to me for anything she had done in the past year that had harmed me. Not having done the hard work that Cathy had done, I quickly told her that everything was fine, and she was forgiven. And then, I offered the same apology—I’m sorry for anything I’ve done in the past year that has harmed you. I expected the same, easy, quick forgiveness that I had given.

But I was wrong. For Cathy had done her work, and knew of hurts that I had inadvertently dealt her; ones that I was not at all aware of. My vision of our driving trip was that I had been good and honorable; Cathy’s view showed that I had injured her. Thankfully not too greatly—she was still willing to work it out—but we had to talk about it, and I had to take responsibility for the invisible unintended consequences of my actions. Neither one of us was done until we had the chance both to talk about the situation, and second how this sharing of our inadvertent actions would help us change how we were in the world.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not just an easy recitation of wrongs and immediate forgiveness. There are ritual elements involved. Jews are expected to do the hard work of review. Then, in the services, the whole congregation is asked to confess and repent their sins. I love the way the Jews do this. The whole congregation confesses the whole list of sins. Rather than individuals having to say, “I did this,” the whole community recites the list of sins, in alphabetical order. That way, those who can admit to a particular sin, can do so in the company of others, without drawing undue attention to themselves. It is true that those who wish can go through the recitation with no mindfulness at all. They can be thoughtless words uttered, without any meaning, without any attempt to reconcile one’s behaviour, without any attempt to live life in a different way.

But the real work of the Holy Days is to do that hard, in-depth work. To truly look inside, and see what is there. To claim, as necessary, our own inherent worth and dignity. We’re born with that, but to live into our worth and dignity, we must claim the times when we have failed ourselves. When we have missed our own mark. If we can’t reclaim these times, and make peace with them, then how can we ever believe that we have inherent worth? And, paradoxically and conversely, if we see only the bad things we have done, then how can we claim our value? If we have only missed the mark, then how is it that creation has done so badly by us? No—the challenge here is that we must claim it all—the good, the bad, and the indifferent—and know ourselves then (and only then) as people of inherent worth and dignity. Then we can move into the New Year full of how we will make a true difference in tikkun o’lam, the healing of the world.

Lerner points out, though, that this is a process not only for individuals, but also for communities. Communities must also take stock, to know who they are, and what it is they value in life. To know where they want to go, and how they will treat each other along the way. That’s the challenge and delight that awaits the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Marin this year, as you are in the passage between the professional ministry of Pam, and the ministry of those who will follow me. This interim time is the chance to look at who you are, and where you are going. Over the next few months we will take time to do that—to look at the past, share triumphs and disappointments, anger and frustration, delight and frivolity, to say the words that need to be said, to make the promises that need to be made, and to look to the future ahead. As an interim minister I come pre-fired, and so I am in a perfect place to learn with you and to hear from you about your experience in this community. It’s sort of like a therapist who helps you heal from pain, and then moves out of town. I’ll be having group meetings in October, so check your newsletter for details, or speak with me directly.

I know that the process of looking at our past is not without its own kind of pain. For as we articulate the places in which we have missed our mark, we must face the pain of such actions. Yet to me, this is also a time of blessing. Because it is the times when we have failed ourselves, when we blow it, that we learn so much clearer what it is that we hold holy, what it is that we hold as our visions, our ideals, our ethics and morals.

Sinning, missing the mark, shows us what we want to be. There is nothing like failure to make clear the values and choices we wish we had made. I know that when I do something that violates my self-chosen values, what happens most is that I am reminded of where I truly want to be. I know, again, what I wish I’d done, and what I vow to do in the future. Then, I can make a difference in the future. A teshuvah, repentance, that leads to tikkun o’lam, healing the world.

And that is what is at the heart of religious community. Times and places where we can come home, acknowledge the power of new beginnings, of making resolutions, of vowing to live a different way. We all know this, that at any time and any place we can vow to do things differently. But if you’re like me, you forget. Other things take precedence. We need religious communities, and special times of the year, like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to prod us into intentionally taking the time to do the work our hearts, spirits and souls need us to do. In religious community, and in our failings, we know ourselves and our values best. Sometimes it is only in our failings that we acknowledge our humanness, our value, our worth. Sometimes it is only when we face these failings—this humanness—that we can see most clearly why we come together, why this blessed community, is where we want to be.

Turn, Turn, Turn by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley September 16, 2007

Turn, Turn, Turn
by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley
September 16, 2007