Many came right up to Laurie afterward to say that they, too, have experienced one or another of the challenges she discussed, and how meaningful it was to them to be able to share out loud their experience with Laurie.
I hope you enjoy Laurie's marvelous speech:
Compassion and Community
Congregation Beth Israel Men’s Club
May 16, 2012
Congregation Beth Israel Men’s Club
May 16, 2012
by Laurie Black
Surely no life on this earth goes untouched by tragedy. There is a dark cloud of brokenness that can hang over us like a storm, and we then know this world is not as it should be, not how we might want it to be. But as lay leaders here tonight, one of the important things we can all do is show gratitude towards one another and to the families in our community that experience loss and sadness. Even more important will be to address the issue of the start of losing a generation at Congregation Beth Israel and how we will educate and help the next generation step up. My generation. We have to continue to educate ourselves and our members, about compassion and community – furthermore; we need to address the givers/contributors of our community…many of whose names are on the wall outside the sanctuary. We need to tell their story - the families of Point Loma and Del Cerro and other Jewish neighborhood pockets from the 1940’s and 1950’s. Many of us here tonight are their children. They taught us about community and caring and compassion. Now we will begin to share our parents stories, our stories and teach the younger one’s how to carry on.
By building strong compassionate leaders, we will be able to address many of the needs our community has in a comprehensive and engaged way. Compassion is REQUIRED to meet many of the needs in our community. It's the very foundation of identifying needs and recognizing them as essential. Without holding compassion as a priority in our hearts, in our families, and in our communities…we are just individuals, a little lost and trying to find our own way home. Compassion very clearly shows us that we are all "in this" together - that one person's suffering might as well be our own. Compassion is the true vehicle of us accepting responsibility - for ourselves and for each other. Albert Schweitzer said, “In everyone’s life, at sometime, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
How can we teach our children about the concept of compassion in our community? Here is one brief example from my own family. About 15 years ago, my husband Bob Lawrence and I were with our four children at Coco’s Restaurant. As we departed Coco’s, there was a man who stood at the outside of the restaurant and begged for money. In front of the children, Bob told the man, “I will not give you money, but I will buy you a meal.” And so indeed, Bob went back into Coco’s, sat the tethered man down at the counter, the man ordered and Bob paid for the meal. “Bless you! Thank you!” exclaimed the man. Our adult children still talk about this encounter with a homeless man did for their sense of obligation and compassion in their community.
Feeding others is a classically human way of bonding; it likely has its roots in that the most basic of interactions, the mother feeding the child. A few years back at a mediation retreat in Massachusetts, washing pots and pans in the kitchen, out came the manager of the retreat center, and he had something wrapped in aluminum foil. “This is for your good work.” It was this really big piece of cheesecake with glaze and nuts – at the retreat, an extra piece of bread and tea were a big deal. I broke it into four pieces, kept one, put three pieces in the bowls of the other yogis I felt connected with. At teatime, I watched and saw each person’s mouth drop. And then one person took her piece and broke it into another bowl to give away. The interesting thing is that I still feel very connected with the five other people through that sharing.
Stephen Post the author of Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Single Act of Giving defines self-giving love as “compassionate care for others that is unconditional; it is not dependent on reciprocation. Compassion doesn’t only strengthen social bonds and make us feel good - it can also measurably impact your health, both physical and mental.” Writer Cami Walker experienced this first hand. In her early thirties, newly married and working a high-powered advertising job, Walker was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis (MS.) She lost the use of her hands, the vision in one eye; the fatigue and numbness that come with the incurable neurological disease debilitated her. Within two years, she had quit her job, developed an addiction to prescription drugs, and become completely dependent upon her husband. One night in a state of depression she called her friend, a South African medicine woman who draws from the Dagara African tradition and has also been a pioneer in integrative medicine in San Francisco. Creazzo prescribed a ritual, “Give away 29 gifts in 29 days.” Walker was resistant. “I couldn’t even get out of bed so how was I going to give something to someone every day?” And Creazzo said, “It does not have to be material. It can be that you say something nice.”
On day one, Walker decided to give the gift of time and attention to a friend who was in a more advanced stage of MS. Her friend was ecstatic to hear from her and they made a plan to get together. “When I hung up the phone, I felt lighter and I was smiling. And then I thought ok it does feel good to give. I gave my gift and then out of the blue I got this call to do a consulting project. And I took myself out to breakfast and there was a guy who just anonymously paid for my breakfast that day!”
“If you knew the power of generosity, you would not let a single meal go by without sharing it,” the Buddha said. Giving was advocated by Buddha because it acknowledges the interdependence we have for each other. When we give without pretense we have then been moved and are awakened to the natural gladness that comes when the heart opens. Everyone here tonight has felt the high that comes from giving, a sort of “natural gladness.” Recent science suggests there is a biological basis for it. In 2006, neuroscientist Jorge Moll and a team of NIH researchers gave subjects some money and a list of causes to which they might contribute. They found that the mere thought of giving money to charity activitates the primitive part of the brain associated with the pleasures and having sex. Functional MRI’s indicated that donating money stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, the reward center in the brain, which is responsible for dopamine-mediated euphoria.
A year later, a study by Ariel Knafo and other researchers from the psychology department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered evidence for a genetic predisposition toward giving. Participants in a staged game were given money and told they could give all, part or none to an unidentified player. The subjects DNA samples were analyzed and compared against their reactions. Those who had certain variants of a gene call “AVPR1a” gave an average of nearly 50% more money than those not displaying that variant. AVPR1a facilitates the production of a receptor that enables the social-bonding hormone arginine vaspressin to act on brain cells. “The experiment provided the first evidence, to my knowledge, for a relationship between DNA variability and real human altruism,” wrote Knafo.
The Torah orders, “If there is a needy person among you, don’t harden your heart; don’t shut your hand against your needy kin. For there will never cease to be people with need in your land, which is why I command you to open up your heart to the poor and to the needy kin in your land.”
For about 30 years, most of us in the Western World have been having a party. We have been encouraged to be self-sufficient and independent, to become successful and rich, to search for true happiness and find the “real us.” We have been encouraged to buy our own homes, invest in shares, become entrepreneurs, travel the world, and borrow as much money as we liked to consume “things” that, upon reflection we didn’t really need or use. We have been cleverly and ruthlessly advertised and marketed to buy a lifestyle rather than, get a real life. We thought we had it all.
I thought that I had it all. June 12, 2008 I stood in front of the mirror on my 50th birthday and was relieved that I survived a half a century of tragedies, joys, four children, mother in laws, 4 of them, stretch marks, mortgages…and a joyous loving marriage of over 27 years. Four days later, my beloved brother Brian was killed on Father’s Day in a car accident. He had survived mental illness for over 20 years, went back to college, got a degree, married and was working at Alpine Residential Home as a counselor when he was killed. And then 4 months later my grandfather fell and died during the midst of my mom being treated for her cancer that had gone yet again into the liver…and my dad was in the middle stages of frontal lobe dementia…and then my beloved husband Bob Lawrence was diagnosed with Stage IV Malignant Metastatic Melanoma given 2 weeks to 2 months to live. This is when I really began to understand and learn about compassion and community, our community.
I was unable to bring the box of letters and cards that Bob and I received from Brian’s death and Bob’s illness. Hundreds and hundreds of letters, notes, donations, meals, books, videos, healing tapes, more meals, more letters, calls, emails…at one point during the last 3 years I thought there was wayyyyyyy too much technology to communicate… Bob and I were literally unable to get back to people who contacted us to send love and wishes of hope.
This is an important point. Human beings are keenly attuned to each other. When one practices compassion toward the self and internalizes compassion — that is, becomes compassionate at their core — others witness their unique presence and, at some level, recognize the embodiment of compassion. This can have a profound impact on others. When one accepts oneself compassionately as they are, being compassionate to others comes naturally and effortlessly. One of the central characteristics about compassionate action is that it requires that you give something of yourself, that you do not stand apart from the object of your compassion.
Indeed, I believe it is time to change the world, for every one of us wakes up and decides that we, as individuals and in groups, can tackle the challenges our community faces. We can all become leaders and authors of change by living more generous, proactive lives, by inspiring each other and setting an example for our friends and our children.
Tonight, most of us know in our hearts that it is good to be compassionate. Each one of us feels far better about ourselves when we can help other people, and we are touched when other people are compassionate and generous to us. Clearly, the challenge for all of us is to find a way to lead a more compassionate life in the real world.
But we can start here at Beth Israel. Now is the time for all of us to be more compassionate and generous, to recapture some of the practical simplicity of the ways we used to live when we depended upon one another. It is time to set out to build upon Rabbi Berk’s caring community and take the next steps toward a more compassionate, caring and generous life. This is not about money, although giving money to a good cause or even a person – quietly and without ceremony – can be an important element in a life worth living. Giving compassionately of ourselves is a great act of generosity.
Compassion involves paying attention to the plight of the poor and learning how we can help them. The Hunger Project is a great example of how we do this at Beth Israel. Our community is overflowing with people whose everyday lives do indeed involve an enormous amount of love and care for others, people who do their jobs but are also generous and compassionate with their lives. We need to cheer these members of our community on, celebrate their works and create many more participants whose daily work includes a generosity of spirit that we can admire and applaud.
This all being said, I know there is HOPE. We live in an exciting age in which ideas, campaigns and movements can spread to millions of people instantly through the Internet and social networking sites. All of us as individuals, families, Temples, schools, businesses, politicians, journalists, faith leaders – young or old – can use these outlets to spread the power of generosity, compassion and living a more generous lives.
From Rabbi Levi Isaac Horowitz: “Once upon a time there was a king who wanted to give a treat to the workers in his diamond mine. He told them that for three hours only they could keep for themselves all the diamonds they could pluck from the ground. Some got so excited that, as soon as they found a stone, they would polish it and fantasize what they would do with it once the three hours were over. Other just tried to collect as many diamonds as possible, leaving the polishing and the fantasizing to later. Needless to say, these collected much more than the others. “Why?” asks the rebbe, and answers: “Because they used their time for what was meant to be.”
Our challenge is to use the time we have now to live gratefully and responsibility, knowing that how we choose to live shapes our soul. Each of us has a unique inner potential that we are able to discover and share with others. The ability to accept death as a part of life provides comfort and the awareness that each day is precious. Our challenge is to make the very best of every day in this life.
No comments:
Post a Comment