July-August, 2023 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
One day back in early 2016 I was visiting with a rabbi friend who’s a bit older than I am, and she was looking down the road toward retirement. On the national front, Merrick Garland had been nominated to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Garland and my friend are the same age and, as it happened, had competed on neighboring debate teams back in high school. My friend was ruminating: what would it be like to start a whole new act (as a Supreme Court justice in this case) at their age?
I was captivated by the question of “whole new acts” and spent some time talking with people my age about this notion. My friend retired a couple years later, Merrick Garland got a different role than he had been auditioning for in 2016, and I’m still kicking the question around.
I’d frame the question a little differently now: not so much concentration on “whole new acts,” but rather “in what direction(s) should I focus my energy?” Coming out of COVID isolation I hear this conversation all around me. What should I be doing with myself? What’s important? Life changed in unexpected ways for us all. For many it contracted drastically; for others it got more intense and demanding. For some, both were true. All of us who were lucky enough to do so got three years older. And we are all more aware than ever that life is fragile and temporary. As COVID for many of us becomes more endemic than catastrophic, the parameters of our commitments seem up for renegotiation. As Mary Oliver put it perfectly, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Life is wild. Life is precious. Life is finite. Life is lived in the midst of many demands, pleasures, opportunities and crises, global and personal. Each of us lives our own life, with our own natures, our own bodies, our own limitations and passions. At the same time, we are part of families, communities, cultures and landscapes. So many moving parts! Meanwhile we wake up each morning. What direction should we point?
One day years ago I was puzzling to Mickey about how much of my life should be pointed in the direction of the world’s huge problems. I think I asked, “What percentage of my energy should be devoted to seeking justice?” (Such a Margaret question!) And Mickey responded sagely. “There is no right answer;you just have to decide.”But how to decide? I went back recently and looked at the psychosocial stages of life proposed by the psychologist Erik Erikson back in the 1950’s. I remember studying them long ago and liking what he had to say. As with many things back in my distant memory, they’re more interesting than I remember. Erikson proposes eight stages of development in life, five of which occur during childhood. Each stage is characterized by a conflict. The three adult stages of adulthoodare characterized by intimacy vs. isolation (ages 19-40), generativity vs. stagnation (ages 40-65), and ego integration vs. despair (ages 65-death.)
If I understand this right (and I am no expert in any of this), in young adulthood we begin to bond with others, and also with community and world, in meaningful ways. As we get a little older, we enter the life of home and family-making, community-building, and “making a living.” At the last stage, we take stock of our lives, reflect on what we have done and not done, and perhaps feel at peace with how our lives have turned out, what we’ve accomplished. Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi speaks similarly of “sage-ing” and “Decembering” in his beautiful late-life writings.
I like the idea that there is a season to be all-in, to throw oneself passionately into work, love and service. Then there is a season to be practical and constant. And finally there is a season to step back from passion and generativity and to gaze over it all, hopefully with appreciation and satisfaction. At least I sort of like this idea. But what about that “next act?” Isn’t it always possible to cook up something new and beautiful and meaningful? Isn’t there always something new to offer up to our world? With all our finitude, shouldn’t we each try to manifest our unique gifts and passions however we can at every phase of life, maybe even especially as we get older?
I think what I am reaching for here—acknowledging the hubris of cobbling a new stage onto this venerable eight rung ladder of Erikson’s—is a stage called something like expansion vs. contraction. In this new made-up stage, we endeavor to understand more, to perceive more deeply, to connect more meaningfully with all of reality. And maybe to articulate what we know in new ways, through art, through service, through prayer, through hospitality, through contemplation, through learning. At the same time, our stride gets shorter, our mind more porous, our physical bodies more demanding. We rest in our limitations.
There is a curious word in one of the verses of Pirkei Avot that has always interested me. The sage R. Yehuda ben Tema (probably second century CE) is describing his own ladder of psychosocial development:
Ben Hei Hei used to say: At five years old, Scripture; at ten years, Mishnah; at thirteen, the Commandments; at fifteen, Talmud; at eighteen, the bridal; at twenty, pursuits; at thirty, strength; at forty, discernment; at fifty, counsel; at sixty, age; at seventy, hoariness;at eighty, power; at ninety, decrepitude; at a hundred, it is as though he were dead, and gone, and had ceased from the world (Avot 5:21).
“At eighty,gevurah,”a word that means both expansion and containment. Power. Concentration of energy. Distillation. Refinement. Depth charge.
Right now I hover somewhere between “age” (ziknah) and “hoariness” (seivah). That sounds about right for me! But I like the idea very much of moving in the direction of gevurah. Maybe, if I am blessed to have any “next act,” it will be in the direction of depth and concentration, some kind of refinement of all the wild, precious time I’ve been privileged to live so far. And I hope that for all of us, at whatever age and stage we find ourselves right now, we have the possibility to grow.
PAIGE NOTES
Chodesh tov / Happy new “moonth!”
As we find ourselves in the longest, brightest days of the year, our Hebrew calendar knows how to balance us out. Chanukah comes in the darkest, shortest days of the year, right around the Winter Solstice, in order to bring us extra light and warmth when we need it most.
Similarly, these Hebrew months of Tamuz and Av, around the Summer Solstice, greet us with darker, more mournful holidays, because the wisdom of our tradition knows we can handle it now more than any other time.
Tisha B’Av, literally “the ninth day of Av,” traditionally mourns the destruction of the Temple. With the option of fasting to fully embody the loss, this can be a day to grieve for whatever loss you feel. Some perceive one’s own body as atemple, the place our soul dwells, and I have attended some Tisha B’Av gatherings that focus on eating disorders, cancer, and other body-centric pain. Others see Tisha B’Av as a day to mourn all the destruction in our modern world, from shootings to racism to wildfires. This can be a powerful way to sit communally with our grief, rather than in the quiet suppressing many of us are compelled to practice due to the frequency of these disasters.
During this liminal time, when many wildflowers are past their primes yet the rivers still run clear, the abundance of sunlight fortifies us with the time and capacity to sit with the darknesses of life, knowing we have one another for support and for reminders to put on our sun screen.
with blessings for healthy, well-balanced mourning,
erev rabbi paige lincenberg
