Keep the Faith: 'Cracked Whole Hearts'
We are in the middle of the holiday of Sukkot, a festival named for the booths or huts (sukkot in Hebrew) in which Jews are supposed to dwell during this week-long celebration. According to rabbinic tradition, these delicate sukkots represent the huts in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt. The holiday also helps to bring our awareness to our connection to nature and to our temporary and fragile existence in this world.
There is a Jewish kabbalistic (mystical) story that teaches — The world was once a large perfect, vessel, but through the power of creation, the vessel cracked, and the pieces went flying off in every direction. We humans, as God’s partners, are charged with helping repair this giant vessel.
Our world is broken. Not only is our world broken but we are also broken. We carry the scars and cracks from living our lives, from loving and losing. And yet, we are instructed to repair the world when we ourselves are cracked vessels.
Grief is complicated, and it often changes as time passes. We are reminded at holiday and family gatherings of who is not joining us this year or next. Of seats that remain empty. Of the birthday celebrations that they will never have. The milestones that won’t happen with their presence. The phone calls and emails that they can’t answer. The advice they can’t give or hear.
A colleague buried her infant son three years ago. She has been keeping a blog in his memory where she writes about the birthdays where he won’t be able to blow out his own candles on his cake and about how he would be starting pre-k with his classmates. She mourns the passage of time and acknowledges how she has changed in the years since his death.
Recently, she wrote about hardest part of her complicated grief. She wrote, “I used to be an unbounded optimist, a person of unconditional faith. Proverbial ‘glass half full.’ After three years, I still feel the probably irreversible personality change. As an optimist in perpetual grief, the cup is still full but cracked so, no matter how many times I fill it, the liquid keeps escaping. Over time the leak has stopped gushing, but as long as I live it'll still slowly leak.”
Often our cracks are held on the inside but there are times where we wear them on the outside as well.
There is a tradition in Judaism that when an immediate family member dies, the mourners engage in the practice of kriyah — of tearing a ribbon or piece of clothing that is worn externally for shiva, the initial week-long period of mourning. This practice dates back at least to Genesis when Jacob tears his garment on hearing that his son is dead. Likewise, in II Samuel (1:11) we are told that King David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and rent them upon hearing of the death of Saul and Jonathan. Job, too, in grieving for his children, stood up and rent his clothes (Job 1:20).
Rabbinic sources describe the act of kriyah as m’galeh et libo, an act revealing the heart. The tearing of a garment near the heart symbolizes the emotions felt in the heart at this time and that is worn externally. Even the best tailor in the world cannot take something torn, not on a seam, and make it look whole. After the initial period of shiva, the torn garment may be pasted or repaired, yet it will never look as it did before. The person who made the tear or who is wearing the tear will always know that it is there even when not visible to outsiders. This symbolizes that while life goes on, it can never be completely the same after a loss has occurred.
This act of m’galeh et libo, an act revealing the heart, is a physical manifestation of the cracks that we continue to carry flowing with our grief. But grief is not the only thing that can flow from our cracks. Joy, kindness, light, gratitude, love and laughter can also flow from our cracks.
As Rosh Hashanah was starting a couple of weeks ago, I shared the following story. Every day a man would take his buckets to the river to fill them with water and would carry them home on a long pole across his shoulders. One of the buckets had a crack.
Each day, the man would get home from the river, one bucket was full of water and the other, the cracked bucket, would be only half full. This went on every day, week after week, month after month … One day, the cracked bucket spoke to the man. “Excuse me sir. I’m so sorry,” said the bucket. “I really want to apologize and beg for your forgiveness.” “Why?” the man asked back. “Over the time that I have helped you, I’ve never been able to deliver a full load for you. I‘ve never done my fair share. You work so hard but because of my crack, you never get a full amount of water.” The man replied, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path but not on the other side of the road? That’s because I have known about your crack and so I planted flower seeds along your side of the road. Every day when we walk back from the river, you water them. Because of your crack, and your help, I have been able to add fresh flowers to my table. Without you being the way you are, I would not be able to bring this beauty into my home and into the world.”
We are all that cracked bucket and our flaws, those broken and cracked parts of ourselves can also be blessings.
Throughout our fall holidays, Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (Festival of Booths), we are reminded that we cannot turn back to a time when we were whole. We have to learn to embrace our cracked, imperfect, leaking beings. Just as we will never be able to repair that vessel that broke in creation to its prior perfect form, we too may never be fully settled in our grief.
As we stand in at the start of this new year, aware of our imperfections and our cracks, and trying to hold so many feelings and emotions at the same time, may we m’galeh et libeinu — reveal our hearts and hold onto our blessings.
Our hearts are not perfect. They are not even healed. They are cracked and leaking. But they are still whole hearts. Our hearts are hearts that can hold many things. Sadness and even grief, worry and sometimes fear, but also — at the very same time — hope and gratitude and laughter and love and kindness and light and joy.
As we move into this new year, may we not forget our grief, losses, and sorrow, for we always carry those things, but may we also learn to live with them and to feel full and whole. May we also hold in our hearts joy and meaning and life and hope and faith and love and may those also spill out into our world. May this year be one in which we strive to live each and every day that God gives us in this new year ready to work on rebuilding and healing ourselves and our world with hearts that are at peace.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Keep the Faith: How do we live when our world is broken?
