Tend to the Part of the Garden You Can Reach

Yesterday morning, I went to see Rabbi Steve Leder for a long-scheduled chat. I had the Rabbi on the podcast, and we went well over our allotted time together, so made plans to keep the conversation going. We went long partly because we were talking about the stunning and powerful idea of creating a living will—an articulation of your values, for those you love, while you’re still alive—which he explores in his newest book For You When I Am Gone. But we primarily went long because we were talking about Judaism, early Christianity, and what it means to be a Jew. My dad is Jewish and my mom is a self-titled recovering Catholic; growing up, my dad took us to Jewish services in a Methodist church in Montana, but I never had a Bat Mitzvah. Partly because there was no one to teach me Hebrew, and partly because I learned around that time that I didn’t qualify as Jewish because my mom never converted. Feeling pushed overboard, I abandoned ship. But when I read Sarah Hurwitz’s wonderful Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life—in Judaism, which explores her return to the faith after a long time away, I felt called. And then COVID happened. (I made it to one service first.)

 I asked Rabbi Leder, in his opinion, whether I qualify as a Jew, and he explained that originally, Judaism was patrilineal—it became matrilineal because Romans raped Jews. Since you could always identify the mother, this switch became a way to protect and embrace all Jewish children. Sordid, yes, but more inclusive than I had thought. Plus, as he explained to me, Judaism is a tribe—a tribe that also has a religion, a culture of food, etc. My Judaism is written in my DNA. I think it’s that irrefutable reality that has me knocking——50% Ashkenazi jew according to 23andMe—that and by being two halves of something, I feel like nothing. I want to belong to a community. (Ideally, a community that wants me!)

At my request, Rabbi Leder gave me a reading list, and we made time for a visit, another reason why joining a Jewish community is so compelling: Rabbi means teacher, and you know I love those.

We settled in to chat, and I touched on the fact that I feel like I’m at the beginning of a next chapter, unsure where to spend my energy and attention. Do I try to build something new? Does it need to have scale? He responded with a Buddhist saying: “Tend to the part of the garden you can reach,” a phrase I found immediately reassuring. One thing at a time. Start where you are. Go deep, not broad.

This reminds me of a Carissa/Yeshua teaching moment last summer in Sedona, where she talked about sowing a pasture and planting seeds. So often, our eyes are trained on what others are doing rather than on our own rows—instead of focusing on what’s immediately in front of us, we sow our pasture in discordant and messy rows, distracted by what’s happening over there, fruit not meant for us to cultivate. Harvesting what we plant becomes impossible, our effort for naught. “Tend the part of the garden you can reach.” Attend to what’s in front of you. It is enough.

Rabbi Leder also told me about training to become a lifeguard at the summer camp he attended where they instructed him to “Throw, Row, then Go.” When someone is struggling in the water, first, you throw a buoy. If that fails, you find a boat. Finally, you go. The argument being that during an attempt to rescue someone who is drowning, they’ll pull you down in order to get themselves up. It is easy to be swamped and subsumed by other peoples’ suffering; sometimes there are situations where you can’t, or shouldn’t, intercede. It is not possible to always be of service, even when the desire to save someone is strong.

Those of you who have read this newsletter before know that I’m struggling around the right relationship in wanting to “help.” I feel like I need to guard against my own ego, which captures so many of us unaware (do I want to serve to serve, or because of how it makes me feel?). Good intentions can sometimes have a bad effect. I found some relief this week when I read the beautiful, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, by Roshi Joan Halifax. I have a lot more to say about this book, but in it, she explores the edge states of human impulses—when altruism, for example, bends toward toxic altruism. But there are ways to guard against this, to ensure that the relationship is right. She quotes Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen: "Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. [...] When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves."

I think this is so powerful, particularly in our helping and fixing culture: Neither is shameful—sometimes both things are required—but serving feels and sounds so much better. I love the vision that the lifeguard Rabbi Leder left with me: Throw, Row, and Go—whenever possible, I hope to pull my boat alongside someone else’s. The intimacy of presence and the offer of support, without the undertow and the potential hubris of being completely out of my depth.