Journeying for Wisdom
In preparation for coming here to serve you, I went on a journey to ask for advice. Every year I feel a kind of urgency around this time. We are coming to a close of a cycle, looking for a sense of completion that will lead to a firm resolve, a new beginning. We want to clean up whatever messes we have left, clear away misunderstandings, and clarify our perceptions in order to direct our hearts towards what is holy.
As I prepared for this journey, my usual sense of urgency was magnified by the fact that this would be my last time serving you as rabbi for the High Holy Days. I come here trying to express the inexpressible, a task which requires equal amounts of chutzpa and humility. In the weeks before coming, I often feel the burden of leading you through this awesome passage. Always when I get here I am relieved when I remember that we are doing this exploration in partnership with each other.
This journey that I took was at a time of anxious questioning. I was seeking the wisdom I might need in order to serve you well. The gifts I received seemed to address not only my needs of the moment but all of our needs as we face the challenge of living our holiness, moment by moment.
In my vision I came to a mountain. It might have been Mount Sinai, the place of our revelation. Instead of climbing to the top of the mountain I knew that I must find the doorway that would take me to my depths. I found a door in the mountain, which opened up as an elevator. I stepped in and pressed the button for the lowest level and the elevator descended to the very center of the earth, the place of wisdom. It must have been taking me to my own center. When the doors opened I walked out into a very spacious place. I sat down, closed my eyes and waited, praying for wisdom.
In a short while I felt a presence at my right side. I opened my eyes to find a deer who began gently nuzzling close to me. I opened my hand and she ate something out of it, then looked at me through her large brown eyes, which seemed like great pools of compassion. When she spoke to me, the words were soundless but clear and went directly into my consciousness. She said, “Speak directly from your heart into the hearts of the people.” No sooner had I absorbed her message than the presence of the deer dissolved and I was left alone.
A moment later I felt a presence at my left side. I turned to face a very fierce and wild Mountain Lion. He seemed to be the embodiment of courage, strength, and deliberateness. He calmly and matter-of-factly said, “Just do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said. Pay no attention to people’s reactions.” I took in his presence and his message and then he too dissolved, leaving me alone.
I sat there waiting and praying for a while longer, until I heard a stirring directly in front of me. An old man with a kind face and sparkling eyes walked up to me and smiled. “You know you’re only planting seeds,” he said. “You never know what will grow. You never know.” He seemed to be silently laughing at all my seriousness and I slowly let his smile inside me till I too was smiling. And with a hint of mischievous glee he added, “You might as well enjoy the planting.”
In a moment he was gone and I sat alone in that spacious place feeling quite blessed and content, grateful for the visits of the deer, the lion, and the old man. Suddenly there was a sound coming from behind me that completely startled me. I actually gasped in surprise and my whole body came to attention. It was a moment before I realized that the sound was the sound of the Shofar. A very long blast. A Tekiah Gedolah that like a sharp knife cut right through the dullness in my mind leaving me totally awake and alive.
I was still shaking a little when I found the elevator door, pushed the button for the surface of my life and returned with this story. The advice I received on my journey was indeed helpful and I wondered if there might be a gift for all of us wrapped in its images.
Psalm 42 uses this same image of a gentle deer. “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so does my soul long for you, O God.” The deer represents the soul’s yearning. She comes to us to awaken the wisdom of the heart, what in our tradition is called “Chochmat HaLev — Wisdom of the Heart”. Heart wisdom bypasses all the argumentation and discussion of the reactive mind and addresses the soul’s yearnings directly. Heart wisdom expresses itself in music, color, laughter, tears, and dance as well as words. “Speak directly from your heart into the hearts of the people,” the deer said. To speak into the hearts of the people you must first open your own heart and then cultivate a compassion for the other, whose heart beats in the same rhythm, bears the same pain and shares the same joys. The Torah tells us to “know the heart of the stranger, for you too were strangers in the Land of Egypt.”
When the deer tells me to “speak directly from the heart,” I must examine my heart and understand why it sometimes remains mute. The Torah speaks about the “foreskin of the heart.” We are commanded to “circumcise the heart” so that it can speak to and hear the heart of the stranger. In order to cut through the layers of defenses that accumulate around the heart there are times when gentleness just won’t work.
Then the lion appears. The lion of Judah is a symbol of the Jewish People and our fierce love in the face of every disaster, every holocaust. This fierce love says, “The truth must be spoken; justice must be done.” The lion urges us to prophesy. When your chief concern is whether others will like you or not, you cannot “say what needs to be said or do what needs to be done.” Needing other peoples approval can keep you from even knowing your own truth. The lion moves us to action. But whatever we do or say however courageously may not produce the immediate results we are looking for.
“You are only planting seeds,” the old man reminds us. “And you never know what will grow.” Even the heartfelt tears that we weep today in our sadness may be the seeds of tomorrow’s joy. Psalm 126 says,
“Those who sow in tears,
Will reap with songs of Thanksgiving,
Those who weep as they go out,
Carrying their bags of seed,
Will come back singing with joy,
Carrying the harvest in their hands.”
“You are only planting seeds,” the old man reminds us. “And you never know what will grow.” Sometimes the word we say or the gesture we make will not be acknowledged or noticed, but a seed may be planted. You never know. A certain measure of detachment from the results of our actions is required. The motivation for doing justice and speaking kindness cannot be dependent on the apparent success of our actions or words. Instead the old man advises us, we’d better learn to enjoy the process of planting itself. You never know what will grow. It’s one of my new spiritual practices to interrupt myself at the times of most intense effort. I ask myself, “Are you enjoying every moment?” It stops me in my tracks and usually makes me want to take a deep breath and notice what I might have been too busy to notice before. Each time someone close to me dies, my journey through their dying time magnifies the preciousness of life and reminds me to enjoy this moment.
In the work of Tikkun Olam (the Repair of the World) each of us can only do our own small though essential part — the moment-by-moment planting of seeds without ever knowing what will grow. Every once in a while we might be graced with a glimpse of the whole project and how our own small effort fits in. Or, God-willing we might live long enough to reap the harvest, although the fruit will no doubt surprise us.
And surprise is the essential ingredient to fully waking up. When the shofar blows we must be startled out of our complacency, surprised by how alive we can feel, opened to unimaginable possibilities. When I fully surrender to the sound of the shofar, then I let it shake me up; I let it rattle my certainty; I let it move me to trembling.
May this Yom Kippur be a journey for each of us to our own deepest wisdom. We call to us the deer to bring gentleness to our path and awaken the heart of our yearning. We call to the lion to awaken our resolve to speak the truth and act justly. We let go of our expectations and open to the joy of each step. We pray that when the shofar sounds at the end of this Yom Kippur we will wake up and be ready to be surprised by the new life before us.
©2002 Shefa Gold. All rights reserved.