From Shame to Joy

In this Jewish festival of Sukkot, the tradition commands us to enjoy.  It comes the week after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins at sundown with a service called Kol Nidrei, which has a morally legalistic framework of releasing us from our oaths and promises of the past year.   Why?

This release is considered a necessary pre-requisite to genuine atonement:  If we can't admit how fall we've fallen short of our good intentions, we can't renew our efforts to live up to a higher ideal, and worse, we may abandon the project of seeking lives of meaning and virtue all together.

Part of the genius of the tradition is revealed in the language.  For 24 hours Jews fast and attend services where we admit our collective sins of the previous year.  With each one, we hammer our hearts with our clenched fists.  The Hebrew uses the plural ~ together we have lied, committed perjury, held grudges, been jealous, been possessive, used hateful language, been greedy.... It's a very long list.  (Then the congregation listens to a reading of Jonah and the Fish (not whale!), in which God's powers of forgiveness are on vivid display in contrast to Jonah's avoidance of duty and petty pouting. Yom Kippur also affirms the 13 attributes of God we are wise to cultivate, among them patience and forgiveness, of self as well as others.)

I've been thinking a lot about whether I believe collective atonement means anything, or is even valid, and how it's different from some of the destructive shaming dynamics I'm trying to understand, which seem a form of imposed collective atonement that aren't working.  Here's as far as I've gotten:

I don't think there's any magical redemptive power in the practice.  I think a lot of people say the words without thinking deeply of examples in their own lives.  But most Jews come back next year to do it again, and every year we are different people.  We don't know when we or anyone else will be ready, but the doors open on an annual basis to see if this is year we're ready for change.  And while the details may not stick in memory, a process gets internalized that is constructive for the soul the rest of the year and over a lifetime.

Unlike Catholic confessional in which sinners are separated and isolated, which seems to me to confirm shame and make the sinner feel uniquely flawed, Jews gather to shout the whole catastrophe to the heavens together.  Each individual has the privacy to contemplate the list individually, but with the relief of being together in this messy project of trying to become good people.  The shame part is taken away, which gives the soul a reprieve to try again, instead of hiding in the shadows where destructive ideas can fester and motivate destructive behavior toward self or others. 

Individuals need to make a personal investment in any process of atonement if it will be meaningful.  I fear that the painful corrective we're feeling in our culture is that much of the progress we thought we'd made on racism and sexism was achieved by enforcing silence and shame, rather than finding a way into the hearts of people with unexamined prejudices.  As Americans, we need to keep seeking collective processes of atonement that resist shaming and reveal the greater joys available when all have a seat at the table.

In the end, we build a hut of wood and grasses in which we are commanded to take our meals, gather with friends and make merry.  One interpretation is that we build a new home for our souls every year after the hard work of self-reflection and return to our higher principles.  We do it every year because it's understood that the skill of the internal moral work is a lifetime project.   Our family's sukkah gets better every year as we improve our building and decorating techniques; I hope our souls are on the same path.  The hut is also commanded by Torah to be impermanent, made of biodegradable materials with roof coverings that allow viewing of the stars.  Our work is always impermanent, as are our lives, and there is always a heaven above toward which we need to fix our gaze.

It can feel like a betrayal of the cause to pause and let ourselves feel joy.  That's why the Jewish tradition commands it, like Shabbat, time in the week when we pause to perceive the goodness of things as they are, even if unfinished.  We need to feel joy, and we need to feel it together, or we are really doomed.

The spiritual "I'm gonna sit at the welcome table...I'm gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, Hallelujah..." has come to mind often recently, with many of the songs I sang as a member of the Glide Ensemble Choir.  In his sermon "An Attitude of Gratitude," Glide co-pastor Doug Fitch described the difference between Happiness and Joy:  Happiness is a fleeting feeling, a sensation that depends on outside circumstances to sustain it.  Joy is rooted in our sorrow, and can't nobody take it from us.  The voices in my head are asking us to sing along, to share our pain without which we can't reach our joy.  We can't do it alone.

Conspiracy of Love