Broken Open

I have been reading this remarkable little book that was on the NY Times list this past week. It was written in 2005 by Elizabeth Lesser, a therapist and founder of a retreat center. The book is entitled “Broken Open”. It is about all the challenges we face in our lives, all the brokenness. Its about divorces and deaths, trouble with children or parents, its about job losses and working where you are unappreciated. Its about all of us and all our issues and I thought it would be a good subject for a comment.

Let’s begin with a story.
First, a vocabulary term. In Polish, the term for a piece of luggage is chimidunchik. It’s important to know this term for the story.

A man gets on a train. It’s crowded and there are very few seats. He spies a seat a few rows back and approached to claim it. As he neared, he saw that there was a suitcase on the seat and a man sitting next to it. He says: Excuse me, can you please move your chimidunchik so I may sit? There was no response. More people are getting on the train, the aisle is getting crowded and all the seats fill up. Again he asks, can you please move your chimidunchik? And again he was ignored. Normally a patient man, he gets very agitated for being ignored. He begins to shout. Chimidunchik, Chimidunchik! Can you move it now! And still no answer. So the man in a fit a rage, grabs the chimidunchik and throws it out the window of the moving train. Satisfied and somewhat exhausted, he sits in the now vacant seat and turns to the person there and ask him, Now what are you going to do! Nothing he replied, It was not my chimidunchik!

Now while we might have anticipated the slapstick ending to the story… the chimidunchik has greater meaning for us tonight. What I learned from this story is that everyone has their chimidunchik and many of us know it … but some of us do not. Everyone here has baggage. Some is light and we carry it well and effortlessly manipulate life so that our baggage doesn’t slow us down. Some of us deny that we even carry baggage. We, like the man on the train don’t own up to the baggage that follows us wherever we go. Still others are weighed down by the baggage they carry. The burden is so great that they are immobilized. Their burdens are heavy and they continue to grow and compound.

In looking at our own journey in Exodus, we can see how the baggage that our ancestors carried into the wilderness affected them. Now I am not speaking about the piles of gold and silver and precious materials that they took from the Egyptians. The text says this they carried almost burdenless as they moved from place to place. I am speaking about the years of brokenness and emotional bondage that many of them brought from Egypt. They carried the scars of servitude. They carried the memories of the generations who died in slavery and the countless broken prayers as they sought Divine deliverance. And as we know some of them carried false memories of the beautiful existence of their time in Egypt and longed to return. All of these, broken baggage carried like the bricks of the pyramids.

Some of them, I would say most, carried few burdens as they crossed the boundaries into the wilderness. Their steps were light; they sang and danced their way to freedom. Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote a transformative passage on the way some of us respond to adversity. He survived that horror because he refused to allow the Nazi’s to take his soul. He called it the last of the human freedoms, the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. He said, when you exercise this freedom, when you choose to learn and grow from the weight of the world, you are putting your soul in charge of your life. You are hopeful, expansive and eternal. You are living for the deeper truth.

Those that carried weighty burdens, the pain of loss and the memories of shattered dreams and unanswered prayers, they were weighed down as they crossed the sea. They were wounded shattered shells of people whose lives were fading from them. They, more than the first group, carried the pain of slavery with them. And unlike Victor Frankl, their souls were compromised. They were not focused on the bigger picture. They could not see the pillar of fire as God led then into freedom. Yes, they would die in the wilderness, victims of cruel bondage. Free of the shackles of injustice but bound to the memories of their taskmasters.

The third group, those who memories were warped into believing in the beauty of Egyptian life could never move on. They carried the most with them. Their baggage weighted them down as they crossed the sea. They could not look forward into the divinely centered world that they were to inherit. Their head were turned looking longingly at the parade of idols they were forced to leave behind. Those that they carried with them, and to be sure they did, weighted them down so much that the horses could not move and the wagons could not roll. Not wishing to move on themselves, they carried their past as their future, forever to wallow in the muck and mire of their mind.

I was so taken by this story about the baggage we carry and the impact it has on our life that tonight I want to share with you what I believe is the core teaching from her book. It is called the Phoenix principle. Are you familiar with the mythical story of the Phoenix? The Egyptians called this bird the phoenix and believed that every 500 years; he renewed his quest for his true self. Knowing that a new way could only be found with the death of worn out habits, defenses, and beliefs; the Phoenix built a pyre of cinnamon and myrrh, sat in the flames and was burned to death. Then he rose from the ashes as a new being, a fusion of who he had been before and who he had become.

Lesser writes:
You and I are the Phoenix. We too can reproduce ourselves from the shattered pieces of a difficult time. Our lives ask us to die and be reborn every time we confront change – change within ourselves and change in our world. When we descend all the way down to the bottom of a loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth.

How many of us are struggling because of family loss, our own personal health issues, job struggles, the economic pressures? I would venture a guess that no one here is immune from these burdens. We have all seen our dreams shattered and our goals made more distant. And if not personally, we have witnessed someone else’s world come crashing down as we have stood by not knowing how to respond.

Is there a Jewish answer? Does our tradition speak to the story of the Phoenix? In other words, how far must we fall before we can rise. So much reliance on faith. In the darkest times, we must reach inward to our faith and in the same way that Victor Frankl rose from the ashes of the Shoah, so too can we rise from the ashes which we feel may surround us.

Jewish people have, in the words of our prayer book, “survived oppression and exile, time and again overcoming the forces that would have destroyed us.” The prophets of Israel, who often foretold of impending disasters far worse than anything we have experienced or face, gave repeated assurance that dark days would not last forever. “Comfort, oh comfort my people,” writes Isaiah. “[God] will slake your thirst in drought, and renew your body’s strength; you shall be like a watered garden, like an unfailing spring. Your people shall rebuild the ancient ruins and lay the foundations for ages to come…I will cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. This is the promise of the Eternal.” And the Psalmist assures us, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” And thus it has proven to be. Despite everything, Am Yisrael chai! The Jewish People lives!

We enjoy greater freedom, security, prosperity, and opportunity than any generations in Jewish history and we should never take those blessings for granted. No matter how much we may have lost, hopefully temporarily, we still have more than most of our ancestors dreamed of possessing.

The things of infinite value are not material; they are personal and spiritual. They are loving relationships, good health, the chance to pursue happiness and experience beauty and meaning, the privilege of being Jews and Americans. Most important of all, we must lift our eyes from our own troubles and devote ourselves to helping others, to light candles rather than curse the darkness. All around us and right near by, there are people who need our love, concern, and assistance. Some of them are exposed to the elements year round and involuntarily, not just briefly and by choice, and need our material support. Others simply need a helping hand or a friendly word. Ironically, when we concentrate on the problems of others, our own are lightened. Maybe that is the key here. The Phoenix doesn’t just rise from the ashes, it must be lifted. That’s what our ancestors learned in the wilderness, Torah could not just rise from the flames of the burning bush, it had to lifted and carried by generations of people willing to bind themselves to its teachings. We need one another to rise from the ashes and become whole again. No one can do it alone.

Can the broken be made whole? Lesser writes these closing words:

Over and over we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open-not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live. The promise of being broken and the possibility of being opened are written into the contract of human life.

When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens to your heart, expands your understanding and leads you to freedom.

Finally, a prayer written by my colleague, Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro:

A blessing/hope for all of us….
May God who has blessed our ancestors and brought them through times of uncertainty,
Support and help us in these days of uncertainty and concern.
May anxiety not overwhelm us.
May there be calm in our hearts.
May we be blessed with a sense of trust and confidence in tomorrow.
Let there be goodness and satisfaction in our lives.
May we find purpose and meaning through community, friends, and family.
Amen.