Part 110: With a Railing You Can Walk Down a Dark Staircase

bov good morning to all we continue our amuna Shear we uh don't have formal sponsors this morning but we'll dedicate our learning to a continued for our dear friend M should have a speedy and painless and full recovery and we continue to also very much have in mind our beloved F hasem should show him and his family kindness and love we are the of about how our life can be informed and inspired how we're only truly living if we're living with amuna if we're living a self-centered entric life if we're living a life in which we've edged God out our ego is inflated then we're not alive even we're dead even while we're alive we're dead even while we're alive how do we find life meaning purpose how do we find resiliency endurance how do we find the will to go on in life it's it's by embracing a life of Faith a life of Courage a life of trust a life of amuna so we're going to go right into the text because we usually don't and then we only end up reading one line each week so we'll start with the text and see where we go we're on page I on the bottom this is and the title of the piece that we are in the middle of is called attaching ourselves to God and therefore finding Joy when one is living a whole sense of amuna right till now we've been talking about the measure the metric one can use to determine how our amuna is is our anger if we're quick to anger if we lose our cool if we get bent out of shape if we become exacerbated frustrated when uh when things don't go our way then we think that we're in control and it's all about us and if we find the capacity for patience and for flexibility and for forbearance and for every other word that starts with an F then it means that our amuna is fantastic because we realize we're not in charge we're not in control runs the world life does not always go so smoothly life is not always so pleasant and pleasurable life is not always so comfortable shall upon him at times we endure we live in life moments where God is hidden we don't understand where he is why things are happening the way they are people suffer struggle they go through hard times loss pain and it feels in those moments that Hashem is hidden it feels in those moments that Hashem is invisible where is he in those moments it shouldn't be a conflict with those moments shouldn't challenge our amuna it's the opposite we need the amuna we need to lean on it for support we need it to uplift us we need it to inspire us we need it to know and believe that there will be a brighter day that we will turn the corner to know that there is a tomorrow to know that whatever happens is not random is not chance but whatever happened is for a reason the we're going to read shortly and says the greatest Praise of Moshe is his name his title his appalation is in all my home this is the source of what do we wish for a couple when they get married they should build a what does that mean our hope our dream or aspiration for them is that they build a bias what does it mean to wish for a couple that they build Moshe is described and all of my people and all of my home and all of my nation and all of my world says Hashem Moshe is what does the word mean it's a great bakery what else is NE Tred it means trustworthy trusted trustworthy reliable's grandson explains he is established he is reliable he is a foundation all hours of the day he's not fickle he's not someone who is going to um who's not reliable it's not somebody who who's going to change or not be there when you need him he's not somebody who it's a fed and it's going to wear off it's not somebody who is going to fade but rather kava established consistent umad to plug to put a peg in in a place that is trustworthy what does that mean a if you hammer in a nail and you hammer it in a strong nail and it's firmly planted or rooted it's hammered in firmly it's going to be able you can hang something very heavy from it a little nail a tiny little nail you put it in the wall it's a little nail always we don't hang things that often when we do it always amazes me you find a little nail and you hammer it in on the right angle and you take this heavy painting I tell you I don't go in the kitchen that often but every time I do I'm amazed that kitchen cabinets don't fall down if you've seen the way my wife packs platters in a kitchen cabinet it is probably it's m nigla it's a revealed Miracle the kitchen cabinets do not come crashing down I don't care how many screws you put in the wall the w dishes and plates and Crystal and and uh glasswar and platters and it's all packed packed packed packed packed it's a miracle the whole thing doesn't come down why because a little a little screw a little nail holds up the whole cabinet and all that weight because even when you have something small but if it's put in in a way which is reliable which is trustworthy if it's firmly planted and rooted even something incredibly heavy can hang from it says that's what it means the description of M that word means firmly planted rooted foundational reliable not something which is flimsy or flexible not something which is a fed or will fade away but something which is reliable moshe's Faith was UN wavering is Hashem says you know all these other people they have a lot of lip service they give me they talk about me all day long and then they go to work and they're ruthless and then the stock goes down and they want to know where I am then they encounter a little hardship a little trouble a big trouble and they totally bail on me K says the rest of the world they say one thing with their lips and they do another thing in their action but but in all of my entire world he's he's reliable he is always there his trust his faith in me his willingness to stick with me de he sticks with me he knows I have his back no matter what's going on of all of my world Manu he is the most reliable and he is the model the archetype for us one of the times the when refers to Mas he's talking about one of the times that was in Warsaw there was a terrible darkness that descended on the entire city of wara and he had to go down four flights of stairs in the pitch black it was utterly and entirely dark what did he do he held on to the railing and he walked down so after that experience came back and he told Thea boys he said Amun is like a railing see when the lights on in the hallway when the lights on in the staircase you could run up the stairs and you can fly down the stairs and you know the railing is there but you don't need to rely on it you don't really need to hold on to it if you're young and you're spry and the staircase is well lit you could run up and Skip up the steps and you can run and Skip down the steps and you're good to go but you know in life in life sometimes there's a blackout and sometimes you find yourself in a staircase and it's pitch black and you can't see anything and you wonder where is Hashem where's the meaning and the purpose and the order where are the reasons why is this happening and those moments you are vulnerable to fall down the stairs it's pitch black and if you try to move you feel paralyzed you feel debilitated you're experiencing such pain such loss such hardship such anger such resentment such so many questions such doubts such uncertainty that if you move if you move you're going to fall down the stairs a big part of my job in my life and it's a privilege it's not a pain it's a privilege is to help people going through hard times and one of the biggest pieces of advice that I learned early on and that I try to give often is to people who are in an acute painful situation could be it health marriage finances fertility any area of Life get to the end of today so often a person is projecting out what will be next week and next month and next year what will be next decade what will be when I grow old what will be how will it be what will it look like why will it be and you know what you can't you'll get Frozen debilitated you you'll collapse you'll Panic so the whole goal the whole mission just get to the end of today where do I have to go what phone calls do I have to make who do I have to see what do I have to get done by the end of today that's my whole job and when your mind when your brain starts taking you to tomorrow shut it down don't let it cuz nothing good can come of it just get to the end of today because the person in that acute situation says if I try to take one step I'm going to fall down the stairs my world is Pitch Black right now I'm in a dark out I'm in a blackout and if I try to move I will fall down the stairs and I will break my neck emotionally so said you know what you have to do in those moments that's why there's a railing so if you spend your time installing a railing in life then when you're in a blackout in a staircase you'll have a railing to hold on to to make your way down but if you never put in a railing because you figured the hallway is always going to be lit and life's always going to be bright and the sun's always going to shine and I'm always going to be young and Youthful and spry and be able to jump up the stairs and down the stairs and skip the stairs and hop the stairs and then God forbid you get a little older God forbid there's a blackout and there's no railing to hold on to and so one has to work hard in the good moments and the good times to increase amuna and to flex the amuna muscle and to work that amuna muscle so the railing is there to hold on to God forbid if or when the blackout comes and the blackout comes for everyone because I have a news flash for you we've not yet figured out a way to not die and that means that every one of us is dying we're dying from the moment we're born we're dying different people at different rates God forbid some were accelerated some were young than others but we're all dying and when a person lives till their 90s and they pass away it's terribly sad for those who are left behind but it's not tragic I sometimes look with Wonder at those who react as if it was a a tragic infant death someone's in their n0 did we think they'd live forever it's sad we should cry we should mourn we should grieve but it's not tragic we're all going to die so we're all going to encount we have not yet healed all sickness we've not removed it from the it's one of our hopes and our prayers it's a prophecy that will live will Merit to live till a time where we can wipe away all tears and erase all illness and disease and Achieve an immortality we should be Z to live to such a thing but until then there is sickness and there will be death so we will all confront blackouts in the staircase we will it's going to happen if we don't believe it will now to certain degrees and at different times I'm not equating all the blackouts sometimes the lights dim sometimes they go out entirely sometimes there's a secondary light from the Next Room sometimes they're not all the same but we will experience it and if we don't work hard to install a railing we'll find ourselves stuck in the middle of the staircase in the pitch black fearful we're going to fall and break our neck but if we spend our life and our time putting in a railing we know we can grab onto it and we could hold on to it for dear life and it will guide us down the stairs safely the goal of the mission is to absorb as much light in the moments of light so that that light will illuminate the darkness when we find the darkness when there's light and brightness when you wake up in the morning and you say everything's amazing I have my health and I have and I have are there Cs and pains and difficult yeah but on the whole everything's amazing and relative to other people and other things and relative to other struggles my life is amazing it's amazing a doctor we had lunch with a doctor over y who was talking about how sometimes in the hospital he and another doctor are complaining about something about their car or the new house that they're building and the thing they're putting in and he said this uh this nurse says yeah these are these are rich people problems can't help himself from saying these are rich people problems and he has enough self-awareness to admit to say yeah I guess they they're rich people problems they are there are rich people problems and if we have rich people problems we should thank our lucky stars every day that these are our problems rich people problems or what we call first world problems first world problems these are first world problems so says RI if we're living in moments where you wake up and you say everything makes sense and everything such and and you know what absorb all that light and store it because you know that the dark will come it does it comes for all of us it comes to different degrees and at different times and different levels of intensity but there is Darkness for everyone and the more that we absorb and store and Bank in the times of light and good the more that we can withdraw the more it will be there when there's dark the enables us to stand upright we hold on to that railing for dear life and it enables us it gives us a stability it gives us the ability to be upright you see if you're in the dark staircase there's a blackout just when you were walking down the stairs if there's a railing to hold on to not only not only are you not afraid that you won't fall down the stairs you can retain your sim what's not to be happy you have a a railing to hold on to it will guide you is it dark yes is it annoying yes is it dangerous yes is it scary yes but if you have a railing you won't lose your cool you don't get angry and you may not even get sad because you realize one should be if one is grabbing onto the railing of amuna in life and it enables us to stand upright and to guide us out to the light then one need not get sad that doesn't mean that there aren't painful moments and we don't shed a tear and we don't endure sadness but it means that even within the sadness we see a light even within the broken heart there is opportunity even within the broken heart there is opportunity did I share this last week or two weeks ago I don't remember cut SCB has an amazing expression the Kut says there's nothing as whole as a broken heart there's nothing as whole as a broken heart it's a very very deep teaching it's a very deep idea there's nothing as whole as a broken heart and I must admit that I never fully appreciated or understood it until I was reading David Brooks's new book recently and in it he talks about that when he was uh still is a columnist at a newspaper that we won't name in inside of Sho um he once asked his readers to write in about the most valuable lesson they learned in life or something like that and he puts the quote of one of the lessons that his readers sent in and I still reserve the right to use this in a future Shear because it's worthwhile to print in a source sheet for everyone to have and he writes he writes the following in fact I can read it to you because I have it on my phone and hopefully I didn't just stop the recording to find it David Brooks heart hold on I'm finding it oh this person who writes in here it is this is what the person writes four years ago my wife of 21 years passed away as a result of a brain tumor her passage from diagnosis to death was less than 6 months as shocking at that time was almost as shocking was the sense of personal growth and awakened understanding that has come from the experience for me through reflection and inner work to a point that I almost feel guilty about how significant my own growth has been as a result of my wife's death in his book a hidden wholeness Parker Palmer writes about the two ways in which our hearts can be broken the first Imagining the heart as shattered and Scattered the second Imagining the heart broken open into new capacity holding more of both our own and the world's suffering and joy Despair and hope the image of the heart broken open has become the driving force of my life in the years since my wife's death it has become the purpose of my life I found to be an unbelievably you say the name of the book and the author again the name of the book is it's David Brooks and the name of the book I think is called the second Mountain maybe something like that second Mountain if you Google it you'll find it this passage of this person who lost his wife of 21 years clearly a relatively young man young woman 6 months after diagnosis and he describes a broken heart can look one of two ways a broken heart can be broken shards shattered pieces UT ly broken or a broken heart can be broken open revealing new capacity and broader feeling and holding more and achieving more what that broken heart looks like is up to us there are things that break our heart death loss collapse pain suffering they break our heart do they break it into shattered pieces or do they break it open to new Vistas a new feeling that he writes is up to us I think that's what the kutb means that there's nothing as whole as a broken heart I think that's what it means that the the Aron the Aron the Ark of the temple held both the whole tablets the whole L and shus the Broken Pieces too we hold on to Brokenness because if approached properly Brokenness also yields not only sadness but even the capacity for Greater Joy it's an to me a very very powerful and that's what that's what R is saying is that a person who lives with amuna person who flexes that amuna muscle person who's installed the railing in their life in that blackout in that darkness in the moment of a broken heart it can be not shattered into pieces it can be broken open to new to new feelings I think also it could also mean on a practical level that when you go through something after you heal and go through that breathing process you then are also open to helping people who are going through you have more heart to be able to open your up to people to help them because what you beautiful beautiful so the rebon suggest that what it means to have a broken heart in a way that your heart has become open is that you take your pain to help other people I once gave a drush I spoke about after an RCA convention and I terribly apologize I don't even remember his name and he deserves for me to remember it he he visited recently um there was an award given to a chaplain and he he when he accepted that reward explained what led him to go into chaplaincy is that when he was young he had to leave College to come take care of his dying mother and he sat in the hospital and he was with her as she faded and left this world and that experience he was so lonely and so desperately needed support and guidance and lacked it that he decided he would become a chaplain in a hospital and dedicate his life to taking his own pain and helping other people not experience what he had experienced that's the notion of having a broken heart and the Heart becoming the Brokenness of it opening it to use it to help other people so that's this theme is that amuna is that railing hold on to it and it enables us to experience the Brokenness of a broken heart in a very different way we tend to think that faith means belief faith that there's a creator of the world and that there was the Revelation at SII which we just celebrated but now says R we're studying that the Torah expects of us at a different level when it comes to and Faith there are different levels when it comes to the it says that a believed inem and it was considered to be charitable is when the Jewish people were in MIT were in Egypt it says the people believed when it came to the splitting of the sea we achieved an even yet higher level as it says we believed in hem and moshe's faithful servant who is we got to an even higher level we have been shown to know that God Hashem is God you know that's our we haven't repeated this in a long time that's our MTO our bumper sticker that's our sign in our home we still have a we have a goal to to make signs for this that we can carry and put around a OD mil we have this tradition of that when a person is in a dark place in a dark moment when you're looking for that railing you know there's a railing there but you're trying to find it to grab on to you just repeat say or tradition and a milado a milado a milado there is no one there is nothing but him the brisar rovs testimony that when he was on the train fleeing from the Nazis and he was about to be caught and he said I'm sure there were righteous Jews who said who did go to their death I'm not suggesting that they didn't or that it's as simple as saying M but he talked about his own experience of saying so this is this is the level of T the greatest Revelation the moment unprecedented paralleled Revelation at we were shown to know now I'll just digress for one moment it's fascinating that the PK doesn't say you were shown to believe it doesn't show you were shown to believe the Torah asserts that we can have knowledge of God's existence not belief not Faith the Torah asserts that we can have knowledge if we simply examine the evidence we have enough information compelling persuasive evidence to have knowledge of God's existence what is the definition of knowledge if you look in the dictionary you'll see that knowledge is an abundance of evidence supporting a thesis there is no such thing as absolute knowledge of anything how much scientific knowledge ends up getting reversed debunked challenged we take a thesis we test it we have a hypothesis we accumulate as much know as much evidence as possible and when we have an abundance of evidence when the evidence is overwhelming we call that knowledge and however much knowledge there is that gives us the confidence to drink this coffee and not be concerned to Tainted with poison however much knowledge we have to cross the street and not fear that we are missing a blind spot of a car coming however much knowledge we have to be willing to take a medicine that we pick up at the the pharmacy and not believe that it's going to kill us is the amount the exact same if not more knowledge evidence to know that there's a God that there's a God we've given talks in the past Where We examined some of that evidence the Torah does not expect you to take a leap of faith Torah certainly does not expect you to have Blind Faith the Torah says examine the evidence and if you examine the evidence now here's the key you have to examine the evidence objectively if objectively if you examine the evidence with a bias if you examine the evidence with a predisposition if you think that if I conclude that there's a God that's not really compatible with the life I want to live so I come into the examining of the evidence I've already reached my conclusion even before I examine the evidence you have to be objective and be a blank slate tasa when you examine the evidence and there is enough evidence not to believe not to take a leap of faith but to know that hem is our God when we stood at with the greatest Revelation and we knew with certainty without a doubt that there was a God it was the level of Prophecy God opened the seven heavens and we saw palpably we saw we felt we knew we heard we experienced undeniably with no doubt CLA knew with faith with a basis that there was an undeniable absolute certain God if someone would tell me right now that you're not sitting in front of me I would say you're insane you're crazy you cannot convince me you could spend all the time in the world use all the arguments in the world there is nothing you can say to convince me that you're not sitting in front of me right now nothing and that's what we felt at har there was such certainty and absolute knowledge that Hashem was there there was nothing anyone could say or do no argument they could make which would make Isel entertain for a moment that there wasn't a god is not binary this is such an important idea and with it I guess we'll end today but amuna is not binary it's not you have auna or you don't have auna you're a Believer or you're a denier it doesn't work that way it's not binary it's not a switch on or off it's a spectrum there are levels of amuna and that's okay we're working our way up up we're building our muscles it's not all or nothing it's not binary and for some people who it's hard to have the highest level of Faith they think if there's only two Alternatives if it's either having absolute Faith or no faith some will therefore choose no faith so we have to understand and accept and share with others that Amun is a spectrum there are levels of Faith CLA Isel Rose they ascended those levels of faith and so do we in our lives we have to understand if you're not Rising you're slipp back in those levels of Faith but we have to understand that it's not all or nothing it's not a binary choice and to be growing in that direction to be increasing in that direction let's finish over the generations you read this we have experienced a descent and our Amun has become weakened we have more doubt more uncertain more cynicism more skepticism but we have to know that planted firmly inside us like that nail on the wall that can hold up a painting planted firmly inside us is that capacity for that amuna and that's why we are called calls us we the Jewish people are it's a great song we are we are people who believe the children of people who believe and even in that from where do we derive our belief because we are look at a holocaust Survivor who still believes look at our parents and grandparents look at others going through hardship and suffering and if they believe from where do we draw our why are we MIM how are we M because we are Ben because when we look at others and we know that in our DNA is not only irritable bowel syndrome in our DNA are not only the classic at least ashkanazi genetic diseases but however much we believe that those genetic diseases are passed down to us in our DNA also passed down to us in our DNA is our capacity for amuna is the strength to have that faith we have a railing our ancestors have bequeathed to us strong railings to hold on to and to guide us down during those dark times have a great day