Maybe I need you

D’var Torah from Rosh Hashanah 5786

Part 1: Things are bad 

God, 

Things are bad. 

Things are so bad. 

I can hardly believe it. 

Are you seeing this?

Are you seeing every life ripped from the earth?

Are you seeing that it wont stop?

Part 2: Vidui

Are you seeing that

I tried everything and it still wasn’t enough. 

I am guilty. 

I couldn’t stop so many bad things from happening. 

Are you watching? Because if you are, I’m so sorry. 

I have sinned before you

in the things I did and the things I didn’t do. 

I have sinned before you

mistakenly and intentionally.

Part 3: Unworthiness

All I could ever want - just one thing - is to be in your arms. 

But I fear I am unworthy. 

And in my unworthiness, I am like Sarah, I become jealous. I see Hagar and the thought “Did God pick you and not me?” rings through my brain. I wish I didn’t feel like this but I do. 

And God whispered to me, “Of course, I love you too.” But I couldn’t hear it behind the noise of my brain. So I make Hagar suffer. 

Please God, have mercy on me. 

Part 4: Heaviness

My anger has run dry. 

I am so tired. 

God, I am so heartbroken. 

I am so depressed. I am so anxious. 

I stand before you, exhausted and lonely

Tired of feeling tired. Lonesome from feeling alone. 

How can I even go on? 

The death and the suffering weigh a thousand tons. 

Life is precious but it was too heavy for me. I dropped it and it shattered into a million pieces. 

I don’t even know where to start picking them up. 

Part 5: I need you, God

I need you. 

God, I need you to help me carry this. 

I need you to show me the way forward. 

Please remind that even as I bleed, you heal

That I am lost, but you know the path. 

I could go on if I knew you were here. 

If I could feel your love. 

Loving God, I need your love. 

I call out even as I choke. 

Part 6: Closeness

And then I take a moment, close my eyes and hear something. 

Can you hear it?

I can almost make out a voice saying, “Of course, I love you too.”

It feels like an embrace. Like being in warm water. 

It feels like safety. 

And I know in my heart that God, you understand. You’ve known all along. 

And while my brain continues to chatter, I know deep in my body that you love me.  

Your warmth opens my pores and I breathe out. 

And I can’t help it. I laugh out loud. 

Because when the weight lifts a bit, I feel so profoundly surprised. 

Like Sarah, I laugh because I was barren but then a life started growing deep inside of me. 

It’s hard to imagine

That in my exhaustion, in my old age, I could have life that is meant to grow from my body.

Part 7: Another 

Then, I hear something else. 

You laugh. 

I am startled, realizing I am not alone. 

I panic for a moment, unsettled that your joy makes a mockery of mine. Bothered that you might have been feeling my feelings. 

But you were. You were praying the same words. Feeling the same not-enough-ness, needing to be heard and seen, realizing that there might yet be life inside of your body. 

Laughing because for some reason all of this makes you laugh. 

We hear each other as if for the first time. We lock eyes. 

And our eyes say: “I’ve felt crazy. Been called crazy. But we can’t both be crazy.”

Part 8: And then

And then we start to cook

Because what else can we do? I guess we are hungry. 

We start to cook and we make the most magnificent meal. We invite all the other normal people who were called crazy and we all talk about what it’s like to be honest.  

We try to be kind, caring, and we try to apologize when we make mistakes. 

“Im sorry I thought you were the enemy. Now I know we are the same.”

We put our feelings into poetry and music. We make art and we always make lots of food. 

Now, we know. 

We can never go back to being alone. 

We grasp each other. We know how dark it is in this world. 

We realize that we need a place to come home to each other. 

To a place that reminds us what it is like to feel God. 

To a place that reminds us that the life force in us is small but mighty. 

“אַל־תִּ֣ירְאִ֔י כִּֽי־שָׁמַ֧ע אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶל־ק֥וֹל הַנַּ֖עַר בַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הוּא־שָֽׁם”

“Don’t worry. God hears the voice of the child wherever she is.”

Part 9: Final thoughts

God, 

It’s been a long year

Please let this year be different

Hold us in our not-enoughness, in our jealousy, in our pain 

Hold us in our kindness, our love, our creativity

Hold us as we hold each other 

God, may this place we create serve to remind us that we are so far from being alone

Ken y’hi ratzon

May it be so 

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