Sermon: RH Day 1

aspirations. We fail at the competition of life. When that happens, the feeling of failure is like an illness – causing us to feel helpless and empty; concentration eludes us; and it is difficult to try again.

A book on the shelf of a local library attracted my attention. Its title was “How to Succeed at Just About Everything…” But I think that a more appropriate life title would be “How to Fail at Most Everything…” for ultimately, in the face of death, and separation, and aging, life is about failing (hopefully in a dignified manner). A love which disappoints; a career derailed; spouse abandoned or abandoning; a child who has gone his or her own way; and of course, the painful failure of our inability to stop the dying of loved ones.” Those are the headline failures. But on the inside pages of the newspaper of life, are the less dramatic but more prevalent failures; failing to understand that our options are suddenly restricted by our anatomy; failure to stay on this planet permanently; the failure no matter how hard we try to give those we love the most protection from danger and pains which come with age and sickness. As an eight-year old commented when asked to speak on her first failure, “It sucks.”

At the loss of her mother, Edna St. Vincent Milay, yearned for a quality which her mother took with her to the grave; “The courage that my mother had was with her, and is still with her still; rock from New England Quarry, now granite, in a granite fill. The golden broach my mother wore, she left behind for me to wear. I have no other thing I treasure more; yet it is something I could spare! Oh, if instead she left me the thing she took into the grave! The courage like a rock which she has no more need of, and I have!”

The end of Musaf this morning, we chant “Hayom T’Amtzmu” “on this day, oh Lord give us courage.” Each who has failed, needs “Hayom” – on this day – “courage like a rock.” This is the day of our courage. From where do we obtain it? How do we learn to live in the face of our failures?

First of all I want to raise the question “What is the gauge in life by which you and I measure whether we have succeeded or failed?” Returning again to popular headlines of this past year. I think of the case this past year of Sandra Bullock. You remember that two things happened to Sandra Bullock in the same month. First she won an Academy Award for best actress. Shortly thereafter, her husband confessed that he had been an adulterous jerk. So the following question occurred to me when I read those two close events in her life: Would you or I take that as a deal? Would we exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow? Of course the answer is easy. Personal fulfillment comes in this case in marriage; professional success is vital but not as fundamental.

So to get back to the question which I raised “What is the gauge by which to measure success or failure in our lives?” The answer is of course personal fulfillment is success or what some might call happiness.

You know that there is research which supports that truism? Over the past few decades researchers have been studying personal happiness as contrasted with worldly success. One of their key findings is that worldly success grows shallow roots, while interpersonal bonds grow deep roots. Sounds like what a rabbis of old said “Oh Hevruta Oh Metata” – “Or friendship or death.” Sounds like a comment by the Talmud connected with the blowing of the Shofar today. We say “Ashrei Haam Yodai Teruah” – “happy are those who know the sound of the Shofar.” Commenting on that verse at the shofar blowing the Talmud expands to a related verse in the Book of Psalms “Wealth and riches are in his house forever”. What exactly does that mean, ask the sages? That verse applies to a person who writes the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, they say, and then lends those writings to others. Did you notice what is the common denominator of all those acts of righteousness? It is not the skill or privilege to write a Sefer Torah, or to write one of the other Sacred Scriptures. It is the privilege after one is written to lend one to someone else. You understand what that Talmudic passage means? Personal fulfillment in life is not to have a superb skill. It is not winning the Academy Awards. It is the connection which comes with real interpersonal relations – in this case: lending something we treasure to someone else. Sort of like cooking an exquisite meal which is then shared with others, rather than being enjoyed alone. “Ashrei Haam Yodei Teruah” – “happy are those who really understand the sound of the Shofar.”

And other research in modern times tells us the same thing. People aren’t happiest during the years when they are winning the most promotions. They are happy in their twenties, then happiness dips in the middle age, and then on average, hits a peek just after retirement at age sixty-five. Yes, people get slightly happier as they climb the income scale, but that depends on what the experience does to them. Does increased wealth inflame unrealistic expectations so that one is frustrated at not having more and more? Does increased worldly success destabilize settled relationships? Like a marriage, or relationship with kids?

According to another study joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same personal fulfillment gained as doubling your income. So the clear finding from all this research echoes the statements of our ancient sages on the Shofar that professional success exists on the surface of life, real satisfaction in life emerges out of interpersonal relationships which are deeper. Maybe that’s why the tradition also said “Aseh Lecha Rav, Kene Lechav Haver” – “Get yourself a rabbi/teacher, acquire for yourself a friend.” The gauge by which we see if we have succeeded or failed in life is the quality of our interpersonal relationships on all levels.

Secondly, the person who has failed at some point stop feeling sorry for himself or herself. A callous approach from a rabbi you say? “Man” the Bible says “is born into trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). What that means is that failure is not a gate crasher in our lives. It has a reserved seat there.

So what does one do after one fails? How is it that we can turn the corner of life? How is it that we can in the words of “Hayom Tamtzeino” help God to make today the day of our courage?

Well, we should admit to ourselves when we have failed. We may indeed have contributed more than we received to the breakup of our marriage. Indeed, there may have been decisions that we made with our child which led to their isolation and antagonism. Indeed, our loss of health may be the result of our conscious decision to over indulge. By acknowledging our failure, we have the possibility of moving on. Buy not acknowledging our failure we risk not even realizing that we should move on.

Moreover, strange as it seems, we can turn the corner by realizing what failure has contributed positively to our lives. You all know the name E.R. Rawlings. She is the British author of the Harry Potter books. Several years she gave a commencement speech at Harvard entitled “Failure in Life.” She outlines how she failed miserably early in her life – leaving her in extreme poverty, stress, depression, alienation with her parents, and all the rest of life’s headline failures. But then she says something that struck me and I quote her “Failure gave me an inner security that I had never obtained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected. I also found that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies. Acknowledging that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to succeed. You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity….So given a time turner I would tell my twenty-one year old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a thankless acquisition or achievement. Your CV is not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control. And the humility to know that will enable you to survive.”

Also, after admitting failure, amass the psychic energy to move on. Some of you may have read “The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps” by Terrence Des Pres. It is a moving study of differing reactions of individuals who perished and survived in concentration camps. One of his major conclusions is that those who survived certainly did so because of good fortune, but also because of a crucial personality trait – the capacity to make a psychic turn after an initial shock and despair.

“That kind of decision – to save life through death – was forced upon survivors repeatedly. The point now is that like each morning’s waking, these moments of return to the world are psychic acts of turning, - as if one turned one’s actual gaze from left to right, from darkness to possible light. As one survivor says, “I simply did not dwell on the horrors I was living through” (Donat, 304). There was no other way, and to become a survivor, every inmate had to make this turn. Once it was made, the possibility of coming through was greatly increased, for now some part, at least, of their fate was up to them. They now paid sharp attention, not to the horror or to their own pain, but to the development of objective conditions which had to be judged constantly in terms of their potential for life or for death.”

Many of those who perished, writes DesPres could not make that mental turnaround.

Also, that psychic turn from failure to recovery requires small secure steps and not grand ones. The grand ones will frustrate and bury you.

A ship in a harbor is safe. That is not what ships are built for. A poet named Carl Wilson Baer wrote: “Courage is armor that a blind man wears.” Each of us, after a failure, has limited knowledge and insufficient evidence about the future. So we must act with the armour courage to move ahead on instinct and insufficient knowledge. The first step after failing requires the most courage because we have been burnt once. The younger person who has failed at a romantic entanglement must courageously seek the next one. The individual who has failed in health, must hesitantly, but courageously, do life’s business anew. At that point, we need the “courage that a blind man wears.”

Recovery will be a process, not an event. Processes unfold, they do not happen all at once, going up a straight line. A better analogy is the jagged curve of lightning. Healing will emerge from confused stages of denial, anger, depression and recovery. What is true regarding the death of a loved one, happens also in other dimensions.

When we have failed at health, at love, in a career, turning is achieved with small turns back into life’s routines, rather than the expectation that we can suddenly return to life as it once was. We may never be able to regain the whole, but we can fully exploit the part. Lamenting what has been lost will only make matters worse. Taking advantage of what remains will surely make matters better.

For each of us to succeed in this new Hebrew year is a hopeful goal. But we know that some of this year may be about failing. When we fail in life, we can recuperate, if we follow this prescription. Then this will “Hayom T’amzenu” this will be a time which strengthens us with the help of the Almighty.