What are you afraid of? What keeps you up at night? Is it something immediate? At work or school? With your family? Is it money or health? What about the global fears? The international rise of fascism and the future of democracy? The pressure cooker of our culture and the hazards of our new technologies? The growing loneliness epidemic? The fragility of our planet? The security of the Jewish people and the very real costs of maintaining that security, or its illusion? We live in a fear-soaked culture where our 24-hour news cycle and the miracle/gift/hazard of having it at our fingertips, in our pockets and on our wrists, gives us a constant portal into a world of fear, a world reacting from fear, as if the everyday fears and challenges of our lives weren’t sufficient to put us all on edge.
Years ago I read a book by an author I can’t recall with a title I can’t remember (I’ve tried so hard to find it over the years, and failed) that changed forever how I think about fear. This author had a terrible horseback riding accident which led to a long and painful recovery. When she was well again she was desperately afraid of getting back on a horse and really any manner of risk taking. In response, she became determined to make fear her friend. She wanted to be able to look over and see fear and acknowledge it without wishing it away. She realized that fear was going to be with her now, in a new way, and she didn’t want it to stop her from a robust and amazing life. So she practiced taking fear along on her journey. Each year she would set herself a new challenge, dog sledding, skydiving, slot canyoning, scary stuff that required navigating fear. And she worked with intention on her capacity to be with fear without letting fear run the show.
The creators of the Pixar film Inside Out, imagine for us, literally draw for us, a picture of a control board in our brains where various emotions take turns managing the wheel, as it were. The effect is funny and deeply thought provoking, based as it is, on actual brain science. In the original film there are five core emotions, one of which is fear. Now when I think about taking fear along, I can picture him: he looks like a skinny purple guy in a bowtie. He’s funny and cute but we all know that having fear at the wheel is exhausting, unsettling, and limits our capacity to be whole people, healthy communities, and capable world builders.
When I was a kid, my family of five would sometimes pile into my grandfather’s Oldsmobile, together with my grandparents, to make the short ride to church. Why we did not take two cars I do not know. It might have had something to do with limited parking, something we at CBT know a little about. But for whatever reason, my older brothers were always in the back with my mom and grandma. And as the little girl, I was always wedged in the front between my grandpa and my dad. This was in the days when car seats were like benches, so that front seat went straight across, no bucket seats, no middle console. Still it was a squashy affair, wedged there in between dad and grandpa and trying to stay out of the way of grandpa’s driving. I didn’t love it, but it was a short ride.
I want to imagine this evening what it would look like to reorganize our front seats to be more like my Grampa’s Oldsmobile on those rides to church. What if we could take fear out of the driver’s seat, not by banishing him to the trunk or the backseat through denial or distraction, pretending he isn’t there. I want us to be honest about fear … and I want him to slide over onto the passenger’s side, where my dad sat. And then, in order to keep him over there, I want to invite you to tuck hope in between, like the squashy little girl I was. I want you to make a little bonus space to nestle in some hope, as an antidote, or maybe even just a margin, a soft barrier, something to give us a little space from fear. How would the short ride of this day, this week, this month, or the long ride of this life, change if hope were wedged into the front seat – making space between you and fear?
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy and resiliency trainer Dr. Chris Johnstone in their book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy assert that hope has two meanings. The first is a passive kind of hope, a simple wishfulness for what we want to be true to happen. It’s an ephemeral kind of hope, easily squeezed out of the front seat when fear leans over to try and take the wheel. It’s not solid enough to ground ourselves in, to hold the space.
In its place Macy and Johnstone want us to consider practicing active hope. They write, “Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for.” Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for.
They continue, “Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take in a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take concrete steps to move ourselves or the situation in that direction.
“Since Active Hope doesn’t require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing our chances and proceeding only when we feel hopeful, we focus on our intention and let it be our guide.”
That is the hope I am looking for in the front seat, active hope, hope that drives us forward.
The critical first step is honesty, truthfully looking at what is. We are in a time of mass extinction and climate disaster. Judaism is facing an existential crisis. We are rewiring the human brain around technologies we do not understand. We live in a time of rising fascism. It feels terrible doesn’t it? But it IS happening. And the way forward is not to retreat into our distractions, not to hand the wheel over to fear, not to delude ourselves, but to actually look. To look at our world, at our culture and at our worst fears. We have to confront our reality in order to shape it.
This honest accounting is what this season on the Jewish calendar is for. We begin each new year with an invitation, maybe it’s a demand, that we do cheshbon ha’nefesh, an accounting of the soul, a deeply honest look at who each of us is today. That is always our first step in this work of tshuvah, of repentance and repair, because there is no change, no further unfolding of yourself, until you are honest about the person that you are today. Let us accept this invitation this year not only to look at who we are as individuals, but where we are as a community, a culture, a people, a species.
Writer, poet, and contemporary mystic Cole Arthur Riley knows that this kind of honest looking brings with it terrible sorrow. This is a difficult time for humanity; there is much to lament. In her work, This Here Flesh, Riley writes, “Lament is not anti-hope. It’s not even a stepping-stone to hope. Lament itself is a form of hope. It’s an innate awareness that what is should not be. As if something is written on our hearts that tells us exactly what we are meant for, and whenever confronted with something contrary to this, we experience a crumbling. … Our hope can be only as deep as our lament is.” Taking the time to look honestly at what is and allowing yourself to feel the deep longing for something different leads to lament. Let us during these holy days allow the time and space for lament. And in the place of sorrow about what isn’t, let us find what is written on our hearts that tells us what we are meant for, who we are meant to be, as individuals and as a collective. Let us unearth the hope in that lament, leaning into the vision of what is possible.
Each year at Rosh Hashanah we read the impossibly difficult piece of Torah that is the binding of Isaac, when Abraham participates in the near sacrifice of his second son and intended heir. Tucked into this section of Torah which we will chant tomorrow is a piece of Hagar’s story in which, against all odds, she finds hope. When Isaac is born, Sarah becomes jealous of Ishmael, Abraham’s eldest son from his concubine, Hagar. Sarah demands that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away. After some hesitation on Abraham’s part, God assures Abraham it will work out and directs him to comply with his wife’s wishes, which Abraham does. Hagar, a comprehensively disempowered slave-woman, finds herself and her young son in the wilderness – with nowhere to go, with no connections, and no resources, and, more pressingly, with no water. In despair, Hagar sets her child under some bushes, and steps away a distance so that she does not have to watch him die. And then she weeps; she laments. Her situation is hopeless.
That’s when she hears it, the voice of God or God’s messenger, or maybe the divine spark within, her own survival instinct, or what Riley calls “something written on our hearts that tell us exactly what we were meant for.” In her lament, Hagar attunes to that voice and looks up from her weeping. When she looks up, in hope, new possibilities present themselves. Her eyes are opened and she sees a well. With the renewed intention of saving her son, Hagar acts. Though it’s impossible to imagine what comes next in their story, Hagar takes the next step anyway, filling her water skin from the well and saving her son. The text is short on details but somehow from that pivotal moment, this lost-in-the-wilderness, attached-to-no one, slave-woman successfully raises her son in the wilderness, teaching him to hunt and finding him a wife. And Ishmael goes on to become the father of a great nation.
Hagar looked honestly. She lamented. She set an intention. And she acted on her intention, bringing her hope into being.
How do we hear that voice within in the way that Hagar did? We listen to our own hearts, to our prayers, to one another. Poet and theologian Padraig O’Tuama says, “I’m less interested in where prayer goes than where it comes from, which is the heart.” We can use these days of prayer and reflection, tonight, tomorrow, in 10 days on Yom Kippur, and in these Days of Awe that come between – to listen to our own hearts. To find and name our intentions. Use your time of silent prayer to attune to your truest calling. Use your time of quiet conversation with friends and loved ones in these Days of Awe to name the direction you would like things to move in or the values you would like to see expressed. Journal it. Walk with it. Pray it. Not so that there is a miraculous intervention but so that you are moved to act on those intentions, so that you are moved to active hope.
Contemporary Rabbi Rachel Timoner writes, “Judaism requires us to immerse ourselves in reality while clinging to the dream. As Jews we are to grapple with the world as it is, in its rank inequality, its obscene poverty, its cruel oppression, its wanton destruction of the natural world, and its routine degradation of human life. We are not to look away, we are not to pretend that this is an illusion, and we are not to wait it out … We are to enter the muck of this world, … while still holding on to the dream. We are never ever to give up on our vision of a world with equality, dignity and harmony among all life; and we are never ever to give up on our role in bringing about that world.”
Look – at what is real. Lament – the distance between what is and what can be. Out of that lament, name or identify – what you hope for, what is written on your heart. And in this new year act – move in the direction of your hope.
In these Days of Awe, can you slide fear over into the passenger’s seat and make room for hope, active hope, to tuck herself in the space between, allowing hope to be your navigator in the year to come?
