Holidays and Holy Days are mountains in time. They are moments when some are able to acquire a deeper understanding of life and what life requires of us. On this sacred day, as we climb above the clamor and the pettiness of daily life, we hope to reach a vantage point from which life is viewed differently. We can see how many hours of our life were spent nursing grievances. Perched upon these mountains, we often become wiser. Insults, disappointments, and hurts we’ve suffered appear smaller. These sacred times are the substance of life. They teach us, as Benjamin Disraeli said, “life is too short to be small.” From the top of these mountains, we see more clearly that life is too short to be unforgiving.
It was William Blake who wrote that, ‘great things happen when men and mountains meet.” If that mountain is a mountain in time, then our encounter has the potential of uplifting us, transforming us, and bringing something great and wonderful into our lives.
For many years I have had this book real close to my desk. I have loaned it out very sparingly because I have found its message too compelling to let go for too long. A colleague of mine, Rabbi Charles Klein, wrote a book called “How to forgive when you can’t forget”. Isn’t that our biggest problem? We want to forgive people, but when we look at them the acid in our stomach churns, our blood pressure rises, the old hurts return.
Too infrequently do we see the tears of reconciliation. Far more often, we see the emptiness or the tears of people we all know. They are the tears because there is a void in their lives too painful to be dismissed. And they are the tears of the powerful and famous who have the world at their fingertips, but live with an emptiness in the heart. Have we not all watched interviews of people blessed with so much in life? And yet, in moments of candor, as the discussion focuses on their family life, you hear their voices crack and you see their eyes well up with tears as they speak of the estrangement from a loved one.
Rabbi Klein relates an article that appeared in a “Dear Abby” column many years ago. Clearly the person writing was seeking something we might be familiar with.
“Wouldn’t it be terrific if a special day would be set aside to reach out and make amends? We would call it ‘Reconciliation Day.’ Everyone would vow to write a letter or make a phone call-and mend a strained or broken relationship. It would also be the day on which we would all agree to accept the olive branch extended by a former friend. This day could be the starting point. We could go on from here to heal the wounds in our hearts and rejoice in a brand new beginning.”
Maybe this writer would have been happy to hear of Yom Kippur, a day set aside for all these activities. Wouldn’t it be the most meaningful day every were we to turn to the people, just in this room, that we have harmed and hold out that olive branch and say those words of reconciliation. We could bare our souls and open our hearts.
Did you see the movie “The Bucket List”? If you have not, then you must. I feel that it is one of the most important movies of our time. Not to ruin the film if you haven’t seen it, Morgan Freeman is an auto mechanic diagnosed with cancer and Jack Nicholson is a financier who owns the hospital that Freeman is in. Nicholson then discovers he has cancer and the two of them are put in the same room. They begin to share between treatments their desires for the end of their lives and they create a list of things they must do before they die. Reconciliation was on the list. At the end of the film, after all the reparte’ between Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman was over, the most important line said was “his eyes were closed and his heart was wide open.” On Rosh Hashanah I prayed that our eyes would be open this year. Today we pray for open hearts. Open Hearts. Go see the film.
A story in the Talmud tells of one rabbi who sent his students out to observe the world. He wanted them to leave the study hall and take note of the qualities of character which were most praiseworthy among people. When the students returned to the academy, they shared the results of what they had observed. The rabbi was most pleased with the student who said possessing a good heart is the most praiseworthy trait of character.
What is a good heart? It is a heart that can feel the anguish of another who desires to be forgiven. A good heart is one that is compassionate enough to respond with love and tenderness, even when the dictates of justice might suggest otherwise. When we look for a humane response from another person, we plead, “Have a heart.” We look to the heart, hoping that a person will be moved enough to overlook a wrong, and be compassionate enough to feel another’s anguish.
My faith speaks of a God that does not write people off. Patiently, God waits for people, not counting the number of times they have failed in the past. With love God waits, believing that people can transcend themselves and that their tomorrow can be different from their yesterday.
This philosophy is found in the story of a man who was preparing for the approach of the High Holy Days. An acquaintance, who was also something of a skeptic, asked why he was going through the routine of repenting for all his sins if, year after year, he only commits them all over again. The man replied saying, “You’re right. From year to year, I repent and succumb to many of the same sins for which I’ve repented. But each year, I believe that maybe this will be the year that I will change.”
Rabbi Klein also related this story in his book.
A young boy was flying his kite. The kite went higher and higher until it could no longer be seen. A passerby saw the young boy holding a string and asked him what he was doing. The boy replied, “I’m flying a kite.” The man was now perplexed for he saw no kite. And so he asked, “How do you know the kite is up there?” The boy responded by saying, “I can feel it tugging at me.”
When we feel a tugging force pulling us toward someone that we have been separated from, it is time to consider reconciliation. The pulling we feel is a force that can take us beyond our anger and enable us to leave the bitterness in our past. Allowing ourselves to give in to this force puts us on the road to restoring a relationship.
Ecclesiastes analyzed life and observed, “There is a time for rending and a time for joining together, a time for silence and a time to speak, a time for hostility and a time for peace.” After bonds have been severed by anger, there is a time to reunite those who belong together. After silence has intruded where once there was words, there comes a time to speak. And after reprisal and retaliation, there comes a time for people to create peace.
Far from being an act of weakness or a gesture of capitulation, reconciliation is a gift we give ourselves even as we offer it to someone else. It permits us to bid farewell to the thoughts which, when replayed in our minds, cast a darkness over our lives. Tomorrow never looks so good as it does to those who have released themselves from the awesome power of the past.
Reconciliation is an act of real love. This kind of love understands that disappointment and hurt are inevitable and that they can be the occasion for growth. Real love is found where people live with awareness that, above all else, there is a treasured connection that binds them together. This connection is strong enough to survive hurt, precious enough to warrant our compassion in judgment, and more powerful than anger.
Oh to be sure, we have our doubts. Are the words of reconciliation merely a string a syllables strung together so that we are pacified in our wounds or is there heart and soul behind them? Are we so cynical that we can’t expect change, even when change seems so far off.
Finally one of my favorite stories…
A king had a precious diamond. There was no diamond like it in all the kingdom. The king was so proud of this diamond that he had a special display box made for it and a special polishing rag and each day the king would take the stone out of the box and polish it so that it shined more brightly than ever. But alas, one day while the king was polishing the diamond, it slipped from his hands and fell to the stone floor. It sustained a very deep and penetrating scratch. This King was bereft. He called for craftsmen from all over to repair the diamond and remove the scratch but no one could. It was too deep and could not be removed without cutting away some of the diamond. The king wept. After some time a craftsman came from a far way land and asked for an audience with the king. He said that he could restore the diamonds but it would take some time. After many days there was a knock on the palace door. The king came running, anxious to see the diamond. Before the craftsman handed over the diamond he said: Sometimes the scars we receive are deeper than we can ever imagine, but the real test is what we can turn them into. And with that he handed over the stone to the King. A smile soon appeared as the king saw the new diamond. For the craftsman had turned the scratch into a rose. Healing had begun.
And this, my friends, is why we are here today, not to seek forgiveness for the grand sins for which we are not guilty, but for the simple ones. The ones we do all too often without even thinking that have torn our relationships, that have brought sadness into our families, that have severed friendships and brought darkness into our lives. That is why we spend this day here…to right those wrongs, to repair and return and renew our lives. We are hear to turn our scars into flowers and to open our hearts to one another.
May we each find the courage and strength on this day of return to reach out to those from whom we are distanced and seek reconciliation and renewal. May our eyes be lifted and our hearts be opened to this possibility. Amen.
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