Rabbi Sarah Fort - Wholeness

well i didn't want to write this sermon really i did not want to write this sermon i had this huge resistance in myself for weeks months even there was just something about this sermon that felt really difficult so i sat with that feeling what is so hard about this sermon i want to write it i need to write it i just couldn't bring myself to open my laptop and start writing eventually i did figure out what it was what i really wanted to say is important i think and i'm glad i get to say it but i feel like i'm telling you know telling when you're a kid and you do something you shouldn't and your little brother or sister goes i'm telling telling another weird thing happen this this high holiday season leading up to right now another weird rabbi thing now normally you couldn't pay a rabbi to talk or think or do anything not high holidays related in the weeks leading up to the high holidays it's weird normally we kind of hole up by ourselves we feel bad for our friends and family our minds are so preoccupied and we don't really want to go out we don't really want to socialize very much i don't think we're very much fun to be around in these weeks leading up to heir rosh hashanah as it draws closer and closer we become even more reclusive we draw further and further into ourselves there are sermons to write after all and services to outline music to practice high holidays become all-consuming but something odd happened this year now outwardly i don't know if very much changed i don't know if you would have noticed it but internally amongst us i noticed a huge change we'd become oddly talkative not necessarily with y'all sorry but with each other i've had so many phone calls and these very long texting conversations lunches and coffees normally that's the first kind of thing you schlep off leading up to the season because if anyone would understand the pre-holidays hermit thing it would be other rabbis and cantors but this year it seems like we can't stop talking to each other we just need to talk to each other we need to be with each other be with other people who really know what we're going through who really know where you are because when you're hurting when you're sad and angry and tired and lost the last thing you want to feel on top of that is lonely that's why i feel like i'm telling i'm telling on us rabbis cantors clergy we are not supposed to struggle we're not supposed to feel hurt or sad or angry or lost we're supposed to be strong strength cannot equal fatigue or grief or bewilderment because those are qualities that mean you're broken and broken and strong are opposites right we tell ourselves rabbis clergy leaders that we must lead by example that if we are strong then you are strong and if we show fatigue or grief or bewilderment then you will feel broken but i think we're giving ourselves a little too much credit we are not that powerful because the truth is you feel how you feel regardless of our facade and the truth is we have been broken we are we are so broken we are so broken and as much as i don't want to be a tattletail i was never that kid i more so don't want to be a liar i refuse to stand here and lie to you i've never found it helps very much anyway and let's say i wanted to i wanted to get you to believe that we rabbis are immune to the pressure that darkness and unrelenting anxiety of this world that we are forced to live in now we rabbis are magic able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and over all social political and medical travesties like it's nothing let's say i planned on getting up here tonight before you and telling you beautiful lies you'd have made me the minute i opened my mouth a most beloved colleague of mine a rabbi in this community and my friend very publicly proved only a few short weeks ago that we rabbis are not immune we have no magic like you i was heartened at the hundreds of community members who volunteered to search in the dead of night reform conservative orthodox of all stripes for this man who means so much to so many of us a rabbi who i can truly say and this is something i have never heard about any rabbi before not an unkind word can be said about him he is gentleness itself thank god he was found and is safe one thing i noticed again and again after the ordeal was over for the public was the shock still hadn't registered for so many of us i kept hearing people say i just can't believe it him he seemed so okay more shocking to me was that that was my own immediate reaction i would love to tell you that i'm somehow more perceptive but like i said i'm a rabbi not a magician and even i had that same first glancing thought when i heard what him i knew it was tough he just seemed so together his precious soul is not an anomaly we are all of us struggling out of the depths i call to you god the psalmist saying it because he knew it was true when your job is to shepherd but you don't know where to lead your flock are you not the worst shepherd and moreover are you not responsible for their suffering my brother's keeper cain asks god that after killing his brother abel and we rabbis teach that the answer is yes yes cain you were his keeper you were we are and we feel like we are failing you and how does that not eat you from the inside insidiously and truthfully truly truthfully i am not just speaking about rabbis anymore we are all of us in really that same way so very broken what we have had to endure what we human beings have had to endure in every country on every continent on this planet it is so much it is too much at some point if you are honest with yourself you have felt it breaking you the distancing and the confusion and the numbness and the whiplash of regulations mentally if not physically you have felt it all just breaking you down if it can happen to one of your religious leaders if it can happen in some form or another to all of your leaders and it is it's happening to you the numbers bear it out more americans report what is classified as depressive or anxious symptoms clinically than before the pandemic more americans are starting or increasing drug and alcohol usage now than before the pandemic more americans are overdosing than before more americans report trouble sleeping difficulty in eating worsening chronic conditions due to stress stress from what from this pandemic world we are forced to live in now this is not a rabbi issue it's not a type a issue it's not a ceo of fortune 500 company issue it is a you issue and it's a me issue too and i know the email i'm going to get after this it's going to say but rabbi you're up there squawking about me me me boo hoo it's so hard to be me i'm sad have you read the the paper rabbi have you checked the news more americans abuse opioids now more americans suffer suicidal ideation now how about more american children are going hungry how about the afghan children and the yemenite children what about the rohingya and the uyghur what about the hurricane in louisiana the flooding in the northeast and the fires out west not to mention a global pandemic i'm sorry some people are sad sometimes rabbi but we've got an entire world to save you're right we do you're right anyone who saves just one soul it is as if they have sustained an entire world our talmud teaches those words you don't have to save the whole world you just have to save one life and wouldn't it be enough if that one life was yours i think it would be enough if the one life you sustain is your own four high holidays ago i stood before you not here but at lakewood church i couldn't be here because this sanctuary had four feet of water in it courtesy of hurricane harvey it took us a year to get back here a quarter of us a quarter of our families took on flood damage and all of us took on flood trauma i stood before you and i said how people kept telling me people who did not flood it was bad for me but it could have been it could have been worse which to me was just code for my pain isn't really pain because this other pain that's pain but that's not how it works your pain is painful to you because it is yours you must live with it you must live with it i stood before you and i said how we all deserve sleimut wholeness physical yes and emotional spiritual mental that those are no less integral to our wholeness than replacing a car or fixing a house after a hurricane and that emotional or spiritual or mental health are not lesser healths to care for they cannot be ignored into betterness i said you would not ignore a toothache right hoping it would just go away on its own you wouldn't kick yourself for having a toothache in the first place you wouldn't remind yourself every time you felt a twinge in your jaw well other people have it bad because you're right they do and your pain in the immediate is a toothache if you have a toothache you seek dental care if you have a mental health ache you seek mental health care it is truly that simple and if you don't the consequences can be as painful and as fatal as leaving a splitting headache a terrible cough searing chest pain untreated so perhaps we feel sometimes like strength means never showing our broken pieces but even moses the pinnacle of jewish leadership despaired of his own life in the torah even god feels regret and sadness in the torah and neither of them oh neither of us none of us is greater than them i got it or perhaps because the pandemic has put physical health on laser focus we are hyper vigilant on that front and we should be but all of our social distancing has distanced us emotionally from each other we are so lonely and it is killing us so please call a friend or call your doctor or text the nami hotline 741-741 or if you're in houston call jfs or reach out to your clergy wherever you are and say that you're ready ready to care for your mental health you don't have to be a rabbi you can just be a parent or a child a man or a woman or single married divorced widow at high school valedictorian or qb1 have mayflower standing or be a recent immigrant because mental health is health and you deserve sleimut you deserve wholeness because you're a beautiful soul i feel like i'm telling like i'm saying something you're not supposed to say i'm telling on us all to us all about our brokenness when i say this but i can't afford not to we can't afford not to tell i know that i owe it to my son to my family to my friends i owe it to you to do all those things that keep my mental health where it needs to be when i try to do those things eat the right foods get enough sleep go to therapy talk to friends and colleagues i am a better mother daughter sister friend colleague rabbi for it and more than for all of you i try to do all those things the eating and the sleeping the therapy and the friendship i do them for me i honor the spark of divinity within me by saving it i do truly and deeply pray that you honor the spark of divinity in you and save you too you deserve a year of only sweetness [Applause]

Channel: Congregation Beth Yeshurun

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Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021