by Rabbi Nancy Kasten
Where do people in our world today find the strength to cope and persevere in the face of dislocation, fear, and suffering? We can draw upon our own experiences of discomfort to help us better understand and feel connected to others whose struggles seem distant and different from our own.
Sitting in an orange kayak near the shore of the lake, under branches of a tree providing little protection from the pouring rain, it was a struggle to pay attention to anything other than my sodden seat and the goosebumps on my arms. I was spending the day at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Western Massachusetts. The facilitator for this early morning activity encouraged our group to direct our focus away from our discomfort and toward the patterns of filtered light glistening on the ripples of water or the yodel of the loon heard from a distant shore. I knew if I had been in her place, I would have offered similar suggestions. Yet my response in that moment was resentment, bordering on anger. What was wrong with this woman? She should never have taken us out on the lake when she knew it might rain. What was wrong with me? I should have made an about-face when I felt the first light drizzle on my walk to the beach. I was with 10 other people yet I felt utterly alone, uncared for and unable to care for myself.
I began to imagine what it would feel like when I got back to shore and could wrap myself in a fluffy towel. I reminded myself that in less than an hour I would be back inside, and could take a hot shower and put on dry clothes. Suddenly a switch flipped, and I remembered the story on the radio the day before about migrants traveling through the Darien Gap. The image of a mother of three, Maria, who ripped her towel off her backpack and threw it away because it was getting caught on the rocks as she ran through river rapids. What was Maria imagining as she struggled to get herself and her children to solid, dry ground? The next thing that entered my mind was a description of Palestinians huddled together in Gaza in January, when it was raining and cold for days on end, and there was no shelter, no warm clothes, blankets, food, or medicine. Where did mothers and fathers and children find strength to make it through the next hour? The next day? The next week?
By this time the rain had all but stopped, and my shoulders and back started to feel the warm caress of the sun. Just as I began lifting the kayak paddle, one more image came to mind. My grandfather, whom I called Zayde, making hot cereal for me when I was a child, wearing slippers that showed his two missing toes on one foot. Zayde lost those toes to frostbite when he served in the Czar’s army in Siberia. He lived most of his life as an American in New York, but in his final years he moved to Miami for the warm weather.
I realize now that it never even occurred to me to pray to God to help me through my misery. But I believe my faith provided the resilience required to give that experience meaning, and shaped the lessons I derived from it.
Being cold and wet is always miserable, no matter the circumstances. My discomfort was blessedly short-lived, but what I learned from my response is enduring. When I focus on my own suffering, I feel isolated and alienated. But when I see my experience in light of the human story, connected to others across space and time, suffering is eased by other responses—like curiosity and compassion. I feel part of a bigger puzzle, a sense of belonging to something transcendent and eternal.
Critics of religion will say that religion fosters a tribal mentality that serves to divide people rather than to unite them. Ironically, the word religion comes from the Latin compound re-ligare, which means to re-tie or to bind back together.
To be sure, religion distinguishes individuals from one another, as do biology, nationality, socioeconomic status, education, and a host of other characteristics and qualities, some unalterable and others discretionary. But difference only leads to division when we allow it to.
At this time in our country and in the world, when religion is being appropriated to justify dehumanization, racism, oppression, and all forms of discrimination and recrimination, it is up to us to prove the critics wrong. The goal is not to defend religion for its own sake, but rather draw upon it to diminish our own suffering and the suffering of others.
Starting on September 2 and continuing every Monday for ten weeks through November 4, Faith Commons will be offering ten 10-minute reflections on topics related to the upcoming election through the lens of religion. Our premise is that religion should be used to unite people and groups of people rather than to divide them, and that the founders of our country shared our view. We hope you will join us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at faithcommons.org.
Additional Resources:
Israeli Author Etgar Keret embodies inclusion and empathy and offers insight into and remedy for our diminished access to compassion.
Etgar Keret: “When you say Israel is committing genocide, it means you don’t want to have any conversation.”, la Revue K
Amanda Gorman’s Covid-era poem inspires us to unite in hope and faith.
Video: The Miracle of Morning
If we want to protect religion, we need to be engaged with politics.
Christian communities face growing political divide as religious affiliation declines, PBS News
From Washington’s Farewell Address:
“This spirit [of party], unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind … [but] the disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions … A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”