The Sacred-Everyday
Dear friends,
I once asked Erika’s teacher, Ray Deal, a traditional medicine man from the Navajo nation whether his tradition has a Sabbath. “We don’t differentiate,” he answered, “all days are sacred.” I remembered this conversation this morning when I woke up with the phrase “the sacred-everyday.”
It’s sometimes easier to connect with for me when I visit the enormous part of our planet that is not shaped by human beings. I look at a tree, standing still performing its task with constant stillness. I see the mist on the water in the early morning. I hear the various sounds of the birds, and I know that sacredness abounds all the time, it’s just a question of paying attention to it.
In our meditation chevrutah this week Amy said: “When I focused on my breath I could hear the birds. When I was busy with my thoughts I couldn’t hear them.” Sacredness is a lot about listening, or some might say uncovering. We uncover the sheen of dullness and notice something beautiful.
Harav Kook, chief rabbi of Palestine in the early twentieth century wrote about this concept in his book Orot, Lights:
הקודש שבחול, שירד עד לידי החולין הגמורים, הוא יותר נשגב וקדוש מהקודש שבקודש, אלא שהוא מסתתר הרבה. ואין קץ ותכלית לתיקוני העולם שיבאו מכל הטוב הבא לעולם בדרך חול,
“The holiness that is in the mundane, when it goes down into the fully mundane, is higher and holier than the type of holiness that is in holiness. However, it hides a lot. There is no end to the healing that will come to the world from all of the goodness that comes into it by way of the mundane.”
One way to think about this is through the eyes of parenthood. As a parent, I am completely in love with my boys. This doesn’t mean I always feel love for them, but that my attention is turned toward them, that I think about what they need and that I live with them as part of my own existence. When others might see them as cute or sweet or annoying (all of which I see too!), what I see in their behavior, or hear in their words comes within a context of deep intimacy and love. The sacred, in the form of love, pervades the mundane and changes the way I see them, and them me.
That last example is a type of the sacred-everyday, which points to the connection between holiness and love. When we are commanded: והייתם קדושים, “be holy,” we are being invited to play our role in the grand story of universal love. In the evening prayers, before the Shma we acknowledge the sacred gifts we live amongst with the blessing: “Baruch atah YHVH ohev amo Yisrael” “Blessed are you YHVH, who loves His people.” We are loved by the universe, a simple type of love that is hidden within the everyday. When we listen to it, we sometimes are able to hear it.
Yesterday, one woman who knew how to live with the sacredness despite tremendous devastation passed away after 96 years on this planet. Rita Berger z”l, Mother of Susan Berger and grandmother of Talia Feldberg passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones. Rita, which many in our community knew, was a deeply loving person with incredible elegance, strength, and fortitude. Her steadfast belief in her capacity to create a better life for herself and those she loved, following childhood experiences in the Holocaust, enabled her to live a life full of family, joy, and humor. Along with Simon, her husband of 73 years, she inspired all who knew her. In addition to Susan and Talia, she is survived by her children Ellen and Mark; granddaughters Amy, Lexi, and Rachel; and great-granddaughters Liat and Noa.
Shiva will be at Susan’s home
65 W. 13th St., Apt. 5I New York, NY 10011
Tuesday 4pm to 8pm
Wednesday 4pm to 8pm
Thursday 4pm to 8pm
May Rita’s memory be a blessing, and her life a continuous reminder of our ability to peel off the shell of the cruel and the mundane and find within it love and sacred purpose.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha