(Smash down the children’s building blocks. )

We just heard from Dr. Biana Kotlyar Castro about a time to heal.  

It is ours to praise
the beauty of the world 

even as we discern
the torn world. 

 For nothing is whole
that is not first rent 

     Marcia Falk 

What are the first steps toward healing. What if, before you can heal, you have to break.  What if before you build you have to destroy. You have to demolish before you can reconstruct.  That’s what Dr. Andras Angyal taught at Brandeis to his psychology classes. It isn’t easy. He recommended that before you can rebuild you need to take out the central beam and have everything come crashing down.  

There is no question that these past 18 months have been difficult. It has often felt like that center beam was crashing down. Often, I hear something like “I just want to go back to normal.”, whatever normal is. Or I hear the phrase we need to learn to live with the new normal. Whatever that is.  

What if…. 

What if we practice the Japanese tradition of kitsukuroi, which means golden repair. It is  “the art of restoring broken pottery with gold so that the fractures are literally illuminated. Featured recently in the Wall Street Journal – “The artists believe that when something has suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful. The true life of an object (or person) begins the moment it breaks and reveals that it is vulnerable.”  

What if we recognize that other cultures have this practice too.  In many native art forms, Intuit, Navaho, Mayan, Turkish and Persian, artists deliberately leave something imperfect. Only G-d is perfect. An intentional flaw is woven in or a bead left out.  Or as Wanda Pitzele confirmed to me, a spirit bead is woven in.  

What if we learn the lesson the king learned:
Once there was a king with a prized jewel, a perfect diamond. So perfect he kept it under wraps and locked away.  Every morning he would check the diamond to make sure it was still perfect. One morning the king awoke,  he found a single think crack descending down one facet. His precious diamond was ruined. It was no longer perfect. 

He called in all the best jewelers of the entire kingdom, hoping someone could fix it. Nothing could be done. The crack was so deep that any effort to remove it would make it worse. But one craftsman, from a neighboring kingdom thought he could save the diamond. The king laughed. Everyone else had said it was not possible.  However, seeing that there was nothing else that could be done, the king said that the jeweler could spend a single night with the diamond. If he succeeded in fixing the diamond, there would be a great reward. If not, he would be put to death. 

The jeweler took the diamond and locked in his room, examined the diamond carefully. It was beautiful, sparkling like the fire of the sun on the surface of the water. But the crack could not be removed without destroying the diamond further. What could he do? He worked all night and emerged in the morning with the diamond and a look of triumph on his face. The entire royal court, the king, the queen, the ministers, even the jester, gasped. The scratch had not been removed. Instead, it had become the stem of a beautiful rose, etched into the diamond, making the diamond even more unique and beautiful. The king embraced the simple jeweler. “Now I have my crown jewel. The diamond was magnificent until now. The best. The most perfect. But it was no different than the other stones. Now I have a unique treasure.” 

What if that is the story behind Leonard Cohen’s song the Anthem:
“You can add up the parts 

but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
     Leonard Cohen 

Leonard Cohen – Anthem (Live in London) 

What if, that crack is something even more broken.  What if it is the shards of glass from the very beginning of creation. When G-d began to create the world, G-d’s presence filled the universe. In order to make room for creation, G-d drew in a breath, contracting creating room for our imperfect world. From that contraction, tzimtsum, darkness was created. When G-d said, “Let there be light,” the light that came into being filled the darkness and ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light. The light was too bright and it smashed the vessels and the holy sparks were scattered. We were created to gather the sparks and the shards back together again. To build and rebuild. That is the work of tikkun olam, repair of the world. 

When Moses came down the mountain, he didn’t just break the tablets, he smashed them. As the midrash teaches, the shards were gathered up together with the new tablets and placed in the ark of the covenant. The new tablets and the shattered rested side by side. Rashi says the broken ones were set down under the new ones, like a foundation for them.  Just like Angyal was suggesting. We need to break down in order to buildup. 

What if the tradition of smashing a glass at a wedding, mirrors this tradition, as we now gather the shards together to make a beautiful mezuzah.  

What if a teaching on the V’ahavta agrees:  we are told to place these words of love on our hearts. In a Hasidic tale, a disciple asked the rebbe: “Why does Torah tell us to place these words upon your hearts? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answered: “It is because our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.” And the Kotzker Rebbe says “There is nothing as whole as a broken heart.” 

What if as Parker Palmer says, “Suffering breaks our hearts — but there are two quite different ways for the heart to break. There’s the brittle heart that breaks apart into a thousand shards, a heart that takes us down as it explodes and is sometimes thrown like a grenade at the source of its pain. Then there’s the supple heart, the one that breaks open, not apart, growing into greater capacity for the many forms of love. Only the supple heart can hold suffering in a way that opens to new life.” 

What if our suffering leads to new life, a more meaningful life, a more authentic life. 

What if we can be like Simone Biales and be vulnerable enough and courageous enough to explain why she dropped out of the Olympiccs. BUT, and this is really important, As Rabbi Jon Spira-Savett said this summer, If she wants to talk in terms of broken that’s for her and no one else to say. He’s right. 100% and he continues, “And furthermore, we are not entitled to describe anyone else who suffers psychologically or spiritually or physically as broken. That’s not how this metaphor works or helps. I can be broken, I can say that about myself. I can listen when you say to me this is how you feel, what you are experiencing. But I don’t get to say that you.” are. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/wholeness-not-brokenness-what-simone-biles-actually-taught-us/?fbclid=IwAR14JdnnkiglY3AHBnOKjbjY1BsSQr2ghHoa14RaWFWi74-mVRoYGjoOjbs 

And we know that the mental health needs are real. Especially coming out of the pandemic where things like suicide calls, domestic violence, substance abuse are all up ~40%. We know that access to mental health care is not equitable and hard to find for many. The recent issues in Elgin Township 708 board highlights this disparity.  

What if…. We are like baseball players. Rabbi Harold Kushner reminds us that no one expects a hitter to hit 1000 percent. Hitters who are over .300 are considered great. No one expects a team to win all 165 games in a season. But good teams win more than they lose.  We are not perfect and we don’t have to be perfect to be loved. There is enough love to go around. 

Kushner concludes his book saying, “what G-d asked Abraham was not “Be perfect” or “don’t ever make a mistake.” But “Be whole. To be whole before God means to stand before Him with all of our faults as well as all of our virtues and to hear the message of our acceptability. To be whole means to rise beyond the need to be pretend that we are perfect, to rise above the fear that will be rejected for not being perfect. 

But before we can be whole, we need to be broken.  

Now that we have been broken, what is it we want to rebuild? What are the rocks that go back into the vase, that just 10 days ago I stood here and broke—that was accidental. What is it we want to rebuild? What is it we want to create?
 

What if…we then create a world, a new normal where people are allowed to thrive, where there is access to medical care including mental health services. 

What if…we then create a world, where bullying is a thing of the past and kids are not afraid to go to school. 

What if…we then create a world where people can disagree but don’t settle a dispute with a weapon. 

What if…we then create a world as Isaiah will talk about tomorrow where this is not the fast that G-d desires but rather we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless. 

What if…we then create a world where everyone can sit under their vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid. 

What if…we then create this world and build this world on love.