海角大神

Anne Lamott is one of my rabbis. I know Ms. Lamott is not Jewish, but over the years she has crafted a homespun theology that is kind and wise and downright sensible.

In her latest book, 鈥淪titches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair,鈥� Lamott tells readers we live 鈥渟titch by stitch, when we鈥檙e lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching.鈥�

Hope, meaning, and repair are in the details of life. When I was younger, I used to fixate on the big picture and get overwhelmed. Here is what I tell my children when they start to get anxious: Take life in 10-minute increments. It will give you the time to notice the fine, intricate parts that create a life.

Lamott鈥檚 book is also a response to the first anniversary of the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. To that end, Lamott does not hesitate to tell her readers that life is grim, the world is a mess, and, quoting the writer Barry Lopez, 鈥淸all] that is holding us together is stories and compassion.鈥�

A number of years ago, I was at a school meeting in which the principal asked what we, as parents, hoped that our children would get out of Jewish day school. We went around the room and most parents said that they hoped their children would be happy and satisfied with their lives. I love the sentiment, but I don鈥檛 want my children to be happy and satisfied all the time. How will they help to repair the world if the never get fed up with the poverty, hunger, racism, and all of the other maladies plaguing our world?

I want my children to be compassionate, and then I want them to be even more compassionate. But coupled with that, I want them to be optimistic. In my mind, an optimist doesn鈥檛 close her eyes and wave away the bad and the ugly in an 鈥渆verything is going to be all right鈥� way. That feels empty to me. An optimist takes Lamott鈥檚 stitches and makes something of them. 鈥淵ou have to keep taking the next necessary stitch, and the next one, and the next,鈥� she writes. 鈥淲ithout stitches, you just have rags.鈥� That鈥檚 the kind of belief in the power of good that I鈥檓 taking about.

And God bless Anne Lamott for bringing up the overly sensitive child. I want to say this as clearly as possible: There is no such thing as being overly sensitive. I know what I鈥檓 talking about. People call me overly sensitive all the time. The overly sensitive child is the fifth child in the Passover Seder. Nobody says it better than Lamott when she writes, 鈥淎lmost everybody worth his or her salt was a mess and has been an overly sensitive child. Almost everyone had at one time or another been exposed to the world as flawed and human. And that it was good, for the development of character and empathy, for growth of the spirit.鈥�

When Anna was little, she told me that she couldn鈥檛 stand it when people were angry with her. My guess is she felt misunderstood when a friend or a parent berated her. As the overly sensitive child grows up, she never quite gets over the events that made her sad in childhood.

And then there is the quandary of what you say to people when they ask you how you are. You don鈥檛 want to open a dam of feeling and possible sadness, so you say you鈥檙e fine even though your child may not be faring well in school or your elderly parent is having trouble remembering your name. Things are so perfunctory in our society. But like the great teacher and spiritual counselor that she is, Lamott鈥檚 good news on the subject is that 鈥渋f you don鈥檛 seal up your heart with caulking compound, and instead stay permeable, people stay alive inside of you, and maybe outside of you too, forever.鈥�

When I said the Kaddish for my father eleven years ago, I was determined to keep him alive in my heart by not missing a day of prayer. Sometimes I brought my kids to minyan in their pajamas. There was Adam shuffling around the chapel in his Scooby-Doo slippers. Anna sometimes participated in the service with her friend Jackie, whose mother was also mourning her father at the same time I was. We called them the 鈥淎shrei鈥� girls because they opened the evening service with the ubiquitous Psalm of David.They were overly sensitive children in training.

Like this startling world of ours,children don鈥檛 always grow up the way you expect them to. Love and beauty have infinite forms. Once again, I summon Anne Lamott to explain 鈥渢hat we are shadow and light.鈥� We are raised to be bright and shiny, but there is meaning in the acceptance of our dusky and dappled side, and also in defiance.鈥�

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