lengthen your amen

There have been two refrains playing on repeat in my head all week long. 

The first refrain comes from the wisdom of Whitney Houston:
“… I decided long ago
Never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity”

And second, the words to the equanimity meditation that I shared on Rosh Hashanah. 
May I be at ease with the changing conditions of life
May I allow joy and sorrow to arise and pass away
May I open to how it is right now
May I be peaceful

I am working hard to cleave to these words in a week that has threatened to throw me off daily. 

…

Four days post inauguration and the prospect of four years is dreadful. Even as I have tried to minimize the news reel, to overwhelm executive orders with the din of snowball fights and hot chocolate, the fear has seeped in, and its impact on my soul is wholly unwelcome.

On Wednesday, my cousins in Italy texted that they are afraid. Fascism is rising there and everywhere. They worry it feels like 1937. I know some of this is historical trauma (they survived WWII in hiding), but I don’t know how much. I fluctuate between allowing my concern to overwhelm my consciousness and returning to the present tense, to warm soup and kid snuggles. 

At my installation some 9 years ago, I offered myself to you as a heart of many rooms. And that offer still holds true. We are going to need all of those rooms. There will be room for grief and rage, and also room to get married and dance and sing and name babies and celebrate birthdays and sheer delight. 

I've been thinking a lot about how to approach these next four years, including how to approach my Friday emails. What I know about myself is that, in my heart of hearts, I am a rabbi, not a politician, public thinker or political scientist. What I do best as a rabbi is teach Torah. I know I don't want to share four years of Torah about Trump. He doesn't deserve that much of our attention. The prospect of four years of Friday emails responding to executive orders, and worse, is unbearable. I don’t think it will serve us, because it's what we're already interfacing with during the rest of the week. So I want to share what you can expect instead in this weekly exchange.

Certainly some weeks, like this one, I will try to respond to some of what has transpired, so we can all remember together that we are not alone in this reality. I am witnessing and experiencing this too, alongside you, and some weeks I hope to share ancient wisdom that I hope will soothe you, as it has soothed me. 

I also expect that the Torah shared here in other weeks, I hope many weeks, will be timeless. This will take effort. I will intentionally be turning our attention elsewhere, to something enduring, something older, something good, something that draws us towards compassion, wonder, joy and connection.

This week, a week when the Torah tells us about Pharoah’s callous heart, I can feel my own heart contracting. As this poem Heart by Dorianne Laux permits, I found myself with a quiet heart. A heavy heart. A hurting heart. 

Yesterday, when it came time to say the blessing for the study of Torah at Parsha and Poetry I found myself unable to get the words out. But as the class spoke the final words, “la’asok b’divrei Torah,” I squeaked out an “amen.” 

Amen is a word of witness, an affirmation, drawn from the same root as emunah, meaning faith. I am not so naive to tell you to have faith that God/dess will protect us from these powerful evils. But I do think this is a moment to cultivate a steadiness of mind, a spiritual buffer zone for the heart, which is a kind of inner faith in a concept of the Divine who brings you inner strength, boosts your dignity and gives you courage. 

My morning tender amen reminded me of a teaching in the Jerusalem Talmud (Megilah 1:9). 

 הָעוֹנֶה אָמֵן … אֲרוּכָּה. יַאֲרִיךְ יָמִים בְּטוֹבָה.
One who lengthens their amen, lengthens their days for the better. 

There will be days when we can’t muster the words to say a blessing or share good news. And those are good days to remember to say a long amen, knowing that too is enough to enhance our days for the better; remembering “The heart shifts shape of its own accord—” 
This too shall pass. 

May this space, this community, be a place where you cultivate the discipline to bless the good in your life. To witness others and feel seen. To reset each week with a long, slow, heartfelt amen.