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September 17, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Rosh Hashanah Day Two
What’s Your Cathedral?
September 17, 2023 — 2 Tishrei 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
There is an old joke about a mother who wakes up her son and says: Honey, you have to get up. It’s time to go to shul. The son resists. I don’t want to go to shul. I want to sleep. Honey, you have to go to shul. I don’t want to go to shul. I want to sleep. You can’t sleep. You have to go to shul. Give me one good reason. Give you one good reason? What about: you’re the rabbi!
What do we do about the things we don’t want to do? It’s easy to respond to the things we want to do. Want to go to the Taylor Swift concert? Yes. Want to go watch the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics or Bruins? Yes. Want to go away to the Berkshires or Cape or Martha’s Vineyard with your loved ones? Yes. But what about the stuff we don’t want to do? Two things are both true, and they cut in opposite directions.
One, people like doing what they want to do when they want to do it, not what they feel they have to do. Like the rabbi in the joke who does not want to have to go to shul, we resist what we have to do and gravitate towards what we want to do.
But two: if all we do is what we want to do when we want to do it, that is an inconsequential life. If you think about the people you really admire, if you think about the funerals you have been to that leave you inspired, it is never because somebody focused on their own needs. Rather we admire people who sacrifice their energy, time and peace of mind to pursue some greater good.
Thus our dilemma. We like doing what we want to do. But a worthy life means doing what we don’t always want to do. How do we thread this needle?
The story is told of a man who sees three brick layers working in the hot sun laying bricks in the heat of the day. The sweat is pouring off their brows. He asks the first brick layer: it’s so hot, why are you laying bricks in the heat of the day? He answers: I am earning a living for my family. The man asks the second brick layer who answers: I am a brick layer. That is what I do. I am building a brick wall. The man asks the third brick layer who answers: I am building a cathedral.
Think about something you do that you don’t necessarily love doing. What’s your cathedral? What’s the why behind it? Building a cathedral requires blood, sweat and tears, hard work on a hot day. But if we know our cathedral, if we know our why, we can turn have to do into get to do because that is how deeply we believe in our cathedral.
I want to talk to you about three cathedrals we can all build: at work, at home, and in the world.
Let’s start with work. What makes work work is that it is often hard. We bump up against stuff. We bump up against goals that are hard to accomplish. We bump up against change in our workplace. We bump up against challenging personalities. We bump up against failure and frustration, sometimes repeatedly. And when we bump up against all that, it is easy to get burnt out and demoralized. That is when it is especially important to remember our cathedral, to get in touch with our why, turning have to do into get to do.
The actress Tovah Feldshuh has been starring on Broadway for 50 years. She observed that she did a one-woman show 592 times. She was asked how she summoned fresh energy 592 times, day after day, sometimes twice a day, performance after performance. Her answer: Every time she got on stage, she knew somebody was seeing a Broadway show for the very first time; somebody else was going to be seeing a Broadway show for the very last time; so she needed to hit it out of the park.
Our cathedral is that people are counting on us. If we are a teacher our students are counting on us. If we are a doctor, nurse, dentist or therapist, our patients are counting on us. If we are a lawyer or a CPA our clients are counting on us. If we are in business, our customers are counting on us. Our cathedral is mattering to real people.
We need to keep that cathedral in mind especially when the going gets tough. When we encounter frictions and failures, conflicts, the times we lose sleep, the repetitive monotony of our version of 592 performances, it is helpful to step back and ask: why? Why am I doing this? Why am I still doing this? And the answer is: Cathedrals don’t get built on vacation. Cathedrals get built in the hot sun when the sweat is pouring off our brow. If we can stay in touch with our why, we can turn the stuff we have to do into the bricklaying we get to do because that is how deeply we believe in our cathedral.
What about at home? The Journal did a piece this week about tennis great Roger Federer’s life after his retirement from tennis. The title of the article was “Less Cardio, More Carpool.” The article quotes Federer:
I’m basically a professional driver now. I take the kids to tennis, back and forth, drop off at school, pick up. Yesterday morning we even picked up a friend on the way to school. The logistics with the four is nuts. [The article continues]
Federer chauffeurs his 9-year old-twin boys and 14-year old twin girls to school three to four times a week, playing Queen, Jon Bon Jovi and the Backstreet Boys on the stereo.
How are we supposed to think about carpool and the 1,000 details that go into home life? What is a lens with which to see all these activities while we are in the middle of doing them? Can we perhaps find our cathedral in owning the fact that everything about our home life is transitory.
It’s not easy doing endless carpool for our young children. But you blink twice, and they are not there to schlep around anymore.
It’s not easy shopping and cooking for a family of 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or however many you are blessed to have under your roof. But you blink twice, and 6 becomes 5 becomes 4 becomes 3 becomes 2 becomes 1, so the time to see and seize that joy is now.
For the last three years, it was not easy going to Israel every six weeks to see our aging father. What I would give now to go to Israel to see him one more time.
If we can see the daily details of our home life as doing favors for the people we love most, we can reinterpret those daily details. We get to take out the garbage, we get to do grocery shopping, we get to cook dinner, we get to do the dishes, and yes, my personal favorite, we get to do the laundry because all those daily acts are labors of love.
We can build a cathedral at work. We can build a cathedral at home. What about building a cathedral in the world?
When we look at the world, all too often it feels like it’s a hot mess. I have heard from so many people that they have stopped reading the news because it is just too depressing. I get that. I get how tempting it is to throw up our hands and say, Oh my God, I want to retreat.
But we are descendants of Abraham, and Abraham’s charge from God is vehyei berakhah, be a blessing. Here is a question for Rosh Hashanah, 2023: In the hot mess that is our world today, what are we going to do to be a blessing? I do not have the answer that is right for you. But that is a question we all share.
Another way to put that question is: how do we do our version of Charles Strobel? Last month, in an op ed for the Times, Margaret Renkl, wrote an appreciation for Charles Strobel when he died this summer at the age of 80. In 1985 he was a priest at Holy Name Catholic Church in East Nashville. He looked outside the church window and saw people sitting in the cars in the parking lot, trying to stay warm. He went outside and invited them in. This became his life work. Brick by brick he got 200 congregations, churches, synagogues, mosques, all temples of all religions in Nashville, to house unhoused people. Brick by brick, he got 7,000 volunteers to staff those shelters. Brick by brick, he mobilized energy and goodness so that 1,500 unhoused people were housed every winter. Can you even imagine how many emails; how many meetings; how many phone calls; how many thank you notes; how many solicitations; how many disappointments; how many rejections; how much heartache and heartbreak Father Strobel endured on his way to launching all this goodness and humanity in Nashville, Tennessee?
Now we are not Father Strobel. But his impulse is so Abraham, and we are Abraham’s descendants. What kind of cathedral can build in the world? It wasn’t easy for Father Strobel to change the landscape in Nashville. And it won’t be easy for us. Cathedrals don’t get built on vacation. Cathedrals get built in the hot sun, with the sweat pouring off our brows. But one measure of our life is how hard did we work, how much did we care, how much time did we give, to build a cathedral that makes our world better.
Want to dos are great. Vacations, concerts, sporting events, doing what we want to do is great.
And, a life of consequence cannot only be about what we want to do.
What cathedral are we building at work, doing hard things that wear us down because people are counting on us.
What cathedral are we building at home, doing labors of love for the people in our lives that we are blessed to have while we are blessed to have them.
What cathedral are we building in the world, responding to brokenness not with retreat but with the energy to make a difference in the world.
Cathedrals, cathedrals, cathedrals. Lives of meaning contain cathedrals that are built in the hot sun. What cathedrals are we building in this new year? Shana tova.