"Forgiveness"

Yom Kippur, as it is observed in the state of Israel, is a day like no other in this country. On the Day of Atonement, life in the Jewish state comes to a halt. Stores are closed. TVs are off.

"It's almost like the world is on pause," explains an Israeli quoted this week in the LA Times. On Yom Kippur, she says, "The silence is deafening. I don't think there's any other place in the world where everything stops completely just because it's a holiday; no cars on the roads, no planes in the sky, no open stores, no shopping. It's so quiet you can hear the birds singing all day."

When my family lived in Tel Aviv, we, too, were told on Yom Kippur the county would hold its breath; on that day there would be no school, no shopping, no cars on the roads. And Israelis love their cars almost as much as Angelinos. But on this holy day, a day set aside from all others in the Jewish calendar, on this day -- schoolchildren can walk right down the eight-lane highway to Tel Aviv. You can roller skate in the fast lane. Skateboard in the underpasses.

I wonder what it would take for us to experience that kind of pause, that kind of silence, in this country.

Here, empty highways are the stuff of apocalyptic movies. At the end of days, we’ll take to the 10 in packs. Walk up the carpool ramp on Bundy Drive, with feet pounding the old concrete. Maybe a dry wind will move the weeds by the roadside, we’ll see a brave flower on a stalk, swaying. A little out of breath, we will pass the traffic light at the edge of the freeway. We will come to the crest of the 10, and we do not need to turn over our shoulder. No need to merge four lanes in half a mile. There is not a car on the road. Just our footsteps pounding the concrete. Just our sneakers on the lane lines.

What could we hear in that kind of quiet? What could we touch in that kind of space?

In the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur brings to a close the 10 Days of Awe. The clock starts ticking on Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year. It is said that during this time, God judges her people for the sins they have committed over the past year. It is said that only God can judge offenses against God, and only people can judge offenses against people.
The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is dedicated to preparing oneself for God’s judgment. If God finds you worthy, you will be gemer tov, written in the book of life as a blessing, at least for one more year. If not, well, better not to speak of it, really.

But many people also think of this time of year as a time to reflect on the judgment of other people. Perhaps some of you have received calls, letters, or emails at this time of year from Jews who ask for your forgiveness for any offense they have caused you, either intentionally or unintentionally.

What I find so interesting about the request for forgiveness, is that it is built on the absolute assumption of judgment. Why do you need to ask for my forgiveness? Because I have judged you in the past, because I have not written you in the book of life as a blessing.

Why do I ask for your forgiveness? Because I know you have judged me for my past actions, and not written me in the book of life for a blessing.

I think we learn how to judge much more easily than we learn how to remove that judgment. We are skilled at building jailhouses of judgment: wrong this, bad that, no good here. We have less practice how to set one another free.

The Kol Nidre service begins with a prayer in Hebrew: Unlock the gates of righteousness, O God. I will go into them.

When I think about my personal practice of judging, I think of the Myers Briggs personality test. Are any of you familiar with the Myers-Briggs? This is often a feature of career counseling, and some workplaces use the results to inform work teams and help people get used to different work styles. When I took this test, I scored off the charts as a “J”, for being a “judging” personality type. Any other Js in the crowd this morning? Are you making a to-do list on your order of service? Because I’ve done that before.

Now the reason I remember this so well is because it felt like a good fit for me and the way I most often approach the world. I like to make lists and cross things off lists. I prefer, when I can, to know and follow the rules. I appreciate structures and deadlines.

On the other end of the Myers Briggs spectrum from “J”s are “P”s for “perceiving” personalities. Overall, those who are more on this side prefer to keep their options open and not rush into decision-making mode. They are comfortable with less structure and a looser approach to deadlines.

When I first took this personality test and felt the fit of my results, I immediately called a friend of mine. Anim, I said, you’re a P! You are the strongest P I’ve ever worked with! And he said, Ah, Rebecca. Oh, yes. And I said, wow, it must drive you crazy to work with someone like me, who is so pushy about deadlines and work charts. And he said, no, I like hearing about all the information you are taking in. But I know it must drive you crazy to not be able to have me make a decision. I tend to drive strong Js up the wall. And I said, Yes. You do drive me crazy. That is true.

As helpful as this distinction in work styles was for me, I was uncomfortable with the connotation that my preference for some kinds of structure meant that I was not just a “judging” personality type, but a judgmental person, too quick to dismiss others, to find them wanting in some way. I’m sure the Myers Briggs folks make a distinction between these labels, but they do come from the same root.

And there are strong currents in our society that encourage and support and glorify being not just a “judging” personality type, the kind that makes decisive decisions and gets things done, by golly, but actually glorify being judgmental. Bad reviews are more fun to read than good ones. Getting voted off the island is more interesting than getting along on the island. Watching talentless singers be told they have no talent is good TV.

But when you sit down with yourself for a half hour, or sit with an honest friend for a few hours, I find the fun of judgment starts to wear a little thin. There’s only so much good gossip I can indulge in before I start to worry about what my gossipy friends are saying about me. Yikes! It’s not a very safe and loving feeling.

In seminary I went to a workshop led by Adam Lobel, a Buddhist teacher and scholar at the Shambala Institute. Adam had been invited to speak about Buddhist meditation practices and how they could support spiritual leaders in providing supportive, life-changing pastoral counseling. Instead of giving us a presentation on his techniques, he invited us to try an exercise he called “Warrior Questioning.” For three minutes, I would sit in front of a fellow student, and every sentence I began would start with, “I judge myself when…” After each sentence, my partner would say nothing more than, “Thank you.” Our goal, in practicing receiving the self-judgment of others, was to not judge them. No matter what was said, we were practicing offering a non-judging presence: no good job, no bad job, just a listening presence.

My spiritual friends, the three minutes that followed were one of the most honest and powerful of my three years at Harvard Divinity School.

I judge myself when I don’t understand the Buddhist spiritual exercise we’re supposed to be doing. I judge myself when I forget to feed the cat. I judge myself when I get a parking ticket. I judge myself when the things I’m judging myself for seem so petty, and the concerns of the world so large. I judge myself when… well, you fill in the blank.

It turns out – no surprise -- both my partner and I were carrying around a big load of self-judgment. What a welcome relief it was to open up a holy pause, a spiritual space, to put down that load for a little while. To offer one another not good, not bad, just presence. No gossip. No bad reviews. No sarcastic comments – sarcasm being, I’m told, another name for judgment, with humor. A space of non-judging.

It was a profoundly humanizing exchange, as well. I think the quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr. in the order of service speaks to this. King writes that when we understand that we are made of both good and evil, and so is everyone else, we are unable to hate our enemies. When we put down our load of self-judgment, and listen to another human being talk about the same old stuff he’s been carrying around, too, it’s harder to feel alone and isolated. It’s easier to feel connected and powerful.

Putting down self-judgment, just for a minute, just might make it possible to feel the power of love. Which is a fraternal twin with the power to forgive ourselves and one another. For three seconds. For three minutes. For three years.

We have much more practice in judging ourselves and one another than in not judging. We’ve spent a lot more time thinking those around us need us to say good person, bad person – rather than just, well, there you are, person. For this reason I am so curious about what would happen to us, to our relationships with other people, to our connection with the sacred in our lives, to our world, if we had 364 days every year of when we could practice withholding judgment. And maybe then one day of judgment, one day of settling the scales, of thinking about what, exactly, to write in that book of life, just for accounting purposes.

The Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi writes,

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

As the UU minister Greta Crosby wrote in her meditation on forgiveness, sometimes the wrongness in our lives is the separation we feel from one another. It is the illusion of our separateness that keeps us stuck in the same bad habits, the same destructive stories of how we have been wronged, a place where we reaching out only to blame, shame, or attack others. Maybe this year, the wake of the holy pause of the Day of Atonement – or is it the Day of At-one-ment— maybe this will be the year when we open up a space, a silence, a stillness, a moment, when we can put down the burden of judging, and see ourselves and one another more clearly, as if for the very first time.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

May it be so.