There are certain books you know are made to be bestsellers: anything with dramatic ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster, an incredible chain of events, and a surprising ending. Having just finished a year serving as a Hospital Chaplain at Johns Hopkins Hospital, however, I have become aware that the most powerful stories are not between the covers of a book at all but are held within the human heart.
The Torah, in introducing the development of mankind and the Jewish People, begins, “This is the book of the stories (toldos) of Man.” Each human being has a story waiting and needing to be told. We live in a society where the world of news and entertainment keeps us glued to “great events,” while our own stories don’t get a hearing, even by ourselves and our families. As a chaplain in a hospital, I was allowed into people’s lives in a way that most of us don’t get a chance to experience. People facing death, loss of a loved one, a new diagnosis, or psychiatric issues have one thing in common: Each person has a story that he or she needs to come to terms with, a story that needs to be heard and appreciated and viewed through the lens of a human being struggling to live as a child of G-d.
I worked with a patient who tried to kill himself after never having given himself the time to mourn the loss of his wife, whom he nursed through cancer. Emotional pain that is never allowed to see the light of day ends up festering and holding the one running from it in its clutches.
In our Torah society, emuna and bitachon (faith and trust) are the currency of our lives, a source of tremendous strength. Yet ignoring our human emotions can lead to a Judaism which is overlaid with painful unresolved questions. Something happens to a person who is told “just have emuna,” without attending to the hurts underneath. We could say that such advice has the paradoxical effect of blocking the emuna.
Think of Elul, when we strive to live with “I am for my Beloved and my Beloved is for me.” This closeness can only come about after the Three Weeks, when we expressed our grief as a nation over what we have lost. This model of national pain and loss as a doorway to living a life of a more authentic relationship with our Creator is of course true for us as individuals as well.
I was asked to meet with a young mother whose husband had only a few days to live. There was nothing I could say to alleviate her anguish, nor did I try. I felt as though we were a thousand feet under water. However, I saw by the end of her wailing and raging that she was able to come to a place of acceptance and strength. Through experiencing fully her grief, she was able to get back to the surface and take a deep breath of air. I learned to respect that people have the inner wisdom to know what that they need to do to survive in this world. By “holding” them in their pain, I was able to create a space in which they could begin to transcend their grief.
An image that came up for me after many of these experiences was that of G-d asking Moshe Rabbeinu to stand within the cave on Mt. Sinai as He revealed the 13 middos of rachamim (mercy), which we are currently crying out in our tefilos. It is in that narrow, sacred space of our own caves – our pains and disappointments, our losses and despair – that we, too, can experience G-d’s mercy.
There is a similar idea regarding the shofar. For the sound that emanates from the shofar to be kosher, it has to be blown from the narrow side. I had several meetings with a very successful lawyer who found himself in the narrow end of the shofar after his career fell apart from his “flying too close to the sun.” He shared with me how he was told by his family that he should move on or he would end up in a nursing home, though he was a relatively young man. People had given him readings that minimized his loss by stating that one shouldn’t overly identify with work, and that other areas of life were more important. Though these were values I shared, I reverently acknowledged this man’s pain and loss, allowing him to share what his work meant to him and how he had built himself up from the blue-collar family he was raised in.
He was very eager to learn, and I shared with him several Torah teachings that I thought would give him chizuk (encouragement). The next time he saw me, he greeted me with a big smile and thanked me for the “breakthrough” moment he experienced. Thinking about our hour of discussion, I asked which particular teaching did it for him. He said it was “just” the validation of his deep sense of loss of something precious to him, something no one else had done. That was a breakthrough moment for me as well.
Another time, I visited a patient who was recovering from surgery and was not allowed to eat or drink. She complained of being desperately parched and not being able to take the discomfort. I sat with the woman for several minutes as she expressed her feelings of desperation. I asked her what she had done for herself in the past when she was in terrible pain, for example during childbirth. She told me how she focused on the life she was bringing into the world. That sense of purpose gave her tremendous ability to rise above the immediate pain. I asked if there was something similar she could hold onto now. She said no, all they did was remove a tumor. When asked about a purpose in her life now that she was tumor free, she cried that she could think of none.
I knew she was very fatigued and asked if she was open to exploring this more deeply or if she wanted me to come back another time. She wanted to continue, so I asked her if she related to Scripture, which she did. Since her main source of discomfort was thirst, I told her that King David, in Psalms, speaks of “his soul thirsting for the Presence of the Living G-d.” I asked her to meditate on the fact that physical desires are often outer manifestations of our deeper soul, and that her terrible thirst could also be viewed as a profound yearning for G-d’s Presence, a thirst for a profound meaning in her life, that in her spiritual world she was also parched, and that this discomfort was a rare window into her soul. The physical thirst would soon pass, when she was well enough to drink again, but her soul would still be thirsty unless she attended to it.
She listened intently, and we sat in silence for several minutes. She thanked me, and her husband, with tears in his eyes, thanked me. The next time I visited this patient, she was sitting up in a chair looking quite well. She told me she had thought a lot about our meeting and wanted to know if I would sing a song. I agreed, asking what song she would like. She chose “To Life, to Life, Lechaim” from Fiddler on the Roof. I smiled to myself, thinking about the amazing ability of the human spirit to refresh itself and of G-d’s amazing way of giving people just what they need to hear.
My son had just become a chasan the week before!
Rabbi Blackman can be reached at 443-255-2617 for private consultations.
