Seeing The Possible (Rosh Hashanah 2023)

There is a famous midrash that every blade of grass has a constellation of Angels urging it to Grow! Grow! (Midrash Rabba 10:6). Actually the real story is that every herb has forces or angels that strike it so that it will grow. And so it is with us: growth is a physical, emotional, and spiritual imperative that we may not always like, but cannot ignore. One of my favorite quotes about this is by Norman Mailer: "There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same" (The Deer Park). Perhaps that is why we read: Fortunate are the people who know the sound of the Shofar – who get an opportunity for a reset each year (Holy Days Siddur). As you all know, there are only two commandments concerning Rosh Hashanah: to do no laborious work and to hear the sound of the Shofar. That's it. It's a wonderful thing about Judaism that we have an actual date scheduled each year to grow. Not that we don't grow every day: our bodies change over time, our perspectives change, our relationship to the Divine changes, and our urges and desires change. In Judaism, however, we make an appointment to consider ourselves and the trajectory of growth that we would like to see in the coming year. It is as if God has said to us: I will give you 4 great gifts: intelligence, creativity, choice, and Holidays to have time to contemplate and use your creativity and choice to the fullest. This day is our opportunity to do what God commanded the Kohen Gadol, Aaron, the high priest, and later, the High Priest Joshua during the time of Zechariah: "Remove your dirty garments." (Levit. 16:23, Zech. 3:4) In other words: see what's really there, underneath the outer shell of your clothing, the pure light and pure love of you, all your possibilities. Love is our natural state. How do we know that? Because it feels so good when we love. We are going with life when we love. In Prov. 5:15-18 we read, "Drink water from your own cistern, Running water from your own well. Your wellsprings will gush forth In streams outside. They will be yours alone, … Let your fountain be blessed," This can mean, Bring yourself from outside yourself to your true nature. See the majesty that's really there. There is a wonderful quote I recently heard about: a nun, Macrina Wiederkehr, who was a spiritual teacher in a monastic community in Arkansas wrote: "O God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is!" We are here to feel loved, supported, nurtured, and to learn the inner truth about ourselves. R. Jonathan Sacks commented on the section of the prayer, Unetane Tokef, which means, the power of this day: "the great shofar is sounded and a still small voice is heard. It is the still small voice of our intuition, of God whispering to us. We intuit that we are truly great, but can't prove it, mostly to ourselves." There is a question asked in Judaism: When will God appear, today, if you listen to God's voice – the still small voice. This voice can guide us and each of us can hear it if we listen. The Chassidic masters said, everything is God. This means, in a certain sense, we are God too. The scientists, the quantum physicists, and all the spiritual teachers say, Everything is energy. Which is it? It, of course is both – everything is energy, God energy, and we are energy, God energy. If everything is energy, it's easy to see that energy can be changed. It's possible to change our energy. When we need to confide, to be comforted, to cry out, we relate to God as a personality, as contemporary theologian Elliot Dorff has written (Contemporary Jewish Theology P. 113), but at other times, we can relate to God as creative energetic force, as life itself, as Love, as Goodness itself. Not that there is no physical reality, but that there is an opportunity to make more changes to our state, our inner and outer states, than we have been taught. Much more is actually possible than we think. Here is an amazing fact to consider: Each year, each of our bodies create billions of cells: About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you. That means that we are all made of new cells – our cells are young! This creates much more opportunity for us to use the gift of intuition and creativity to make the life we want. I recently read about two studies from the Mayo Clinic that concluded that optimists live an average of 7 years longer than pessimists and live in better health. This tells us that by our mental and emotional states, that which we think and feel, we make actual physical changes in our bodies. Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, z'l, my teacher of blessed memory taught that each of us should be a possibilist. Here's a story from another research paper I read about. A group of men volunteered to participate in a study in which they went to a summer camp location for a week. They were given cues from their youth: the same music, sports, cultural references, in order to have them relive their lives of years ago and trigger them into believing they were young again. The men arrived with bodies that were typical of their ages - 60's and 70's - and somewhat creaky: They were measured, weighed, and their vitals were taken. At the end of the week, they were playing softball and other sports as if they were over 40 years younger. Their physical bodies had actually changed in measurable ways. I've spoken in previous years about taking the word hate out of my vocabulary. This year I've taken the word impossible out of my vocabulary and so can you. Had Sarah and Abraham not believed that having a child in their old age was possible, we would have no Judaism, and perhaps, no monotheism. If the Israelites had not believed Moses that they would have a miraculous deliverance from Pharoah's pursing army, there would be no Torah. In Rabbi & Author Rami Shapiro's first year at Hebrew Union college, he was told that he could either be a prophet or a clerk. Prophets tend to be unpopular. Rabbinic Clerks are accepted and respected. It's no fun being a clerk; it's exciting being a prophet, especially being a prophet to oneself: a leader of the self in marvelous directions. The prophet Jeremiah (15:19) gave us guidance for this. He wrote, "Assuredly, thus said The Eternal: If you turn back, I shall take you back, and you shall stand before Me, If you Extract the noble, or the precious, from the base, or the worthless." That's our task – to find the treasure of the possible within ourselves. The quantum physicist Max Planck wrote: All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind." So what does God think about life? That it is good. "Ki Tov," God said in Genesis (1:4). In our Holy days Machzor, our prayerbook which speaks about God as object outside ourselves, when we read, "God is exalted," it doesn't touch us unless we realize that there is no separation: the God in us is exalted, we are exalted. How can we exalt ourselves, extracting the precious from the worthless and fusing our energy with Divine energy? One way is to follow the wisdom of someone who spent her life extracting the best from the worst. I've adapted a quotation from her. Perhaps you can guess who said this: “People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. If you speak with respect dignity and care, you may not be respected. Be respectful anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your Divine Self. It was never between you and them anyway.” It's a quotation from Mother Theresa. She says that all struggles, conflicts, and challenges are really inner, with the self. As another teacher said, there's no one out there (Werner Erhard, EST Training). Another way to extract the precious from the worthless is by being a possibilist. By believing in goodness, in the miraculous, in the power of love, the power of optimism, the power of thought, the magic of the life force of the Divine within us; the possibility of our own exaltation in living as our best and highest self. If everything is actually energy, God energy, then anything is possible. Energy can be changed. We just have to begin to see the possibilities.