I'm sweating. Sure, it's hot here in the desert, but it's not a sweat from the heat of the sun. I was just dancing. Not at a wedding, not around the bimah in the shul here, just dancing in one of the little boxes here on the side of our hill. Sting, Marley, Gabriel… singing about coming together, about joy, about loss, about feeling. Feeling. My good friend, past band member, and current Daff contributor Gavriel G. often serves as the little bird on my shoulder reminding me to be true to my feelings. Thank God, I was able to do that tonite through dance. Unfortunately, there's not always a stereo handy to blast waves of irresistible, emotionally-charged rhythms into your soul. Most of the time we're left to rely on much more mundane devices for such stimulus.
This week, we read about the inauguration of the Mishkan in the desert. The heads of each of the twelve tribes brought their own gifts to the ceremony. First was the tribe of Judah: one silver bowl, one silver basin, one gold ladle, one young bull, one ram, six sheep, six goat, two cattle, and five rams. Next was Issachar: one silver bowl, one silver basin…wait a second, this sounds familiar! As it turns out, each of the tribes brought THE EXACT SAME THINGS! How is that possible? Were all the other stores closed? What, God only registered at Macy's and each tribe decided coincidentally to get the same things? The Slonomer Rebbe says it was no coincidence at all.
Have you ever felt that your daily routine gets a little dry? A little repetitive? Sure you have. We all have. At times it feels like we've been doing things the same way for weeks, months, years, and there's no possible way we can squeeze anymore life out of things as they are. The twelve tribes each brought identical offerings; the only difference, of course, was the way in which they brought it. It says in the Gemara Sanhedrin, "God wants our heart." God wants to know how we think. God wants us to share how we feel when we're involved in an action, and God wants those feelings to be aimed at connecting our actions to God. It makes no difference if we're doing the same things or going the same places day after day, but where is our intention when we're involved in those things? Where is our heart? For the tribes, each had a completely different connection to the offerings they brought. Each was investing their gifts with a different purpose, focusing on a unique aspect of serving our creator.
Busting a move on the dance floor is an easy way to feel inspired; doing new things usually produces such an effect. But finding a new way to approach prayer, something I do three times a day; a new way to think about being happy; a new way to think about being in a relationship… that's not so easy. So how did the leaders of the tribes figure it out? How did they find their special way of bridging the divide that severs our feelings from our actions? Actually, I don't think they found anything. The feeling found them.
In my favorite Rebbe Nachman Torah (34), he tells us how to fix a broken heart. What do you do when your heart is so mired in guck that you can't even feel? You connect your heart to the specific lesson that is relevant to your heart at that moment. At every moment, God is sending us a reminder meant just for us. A little bird whispering the sweetest secret that only we can understand. Well, that's assuming you can feel that moment, right? Isn't the whole problem that your heart is covered in guck and you're not able to be so sensitive? True. But by talking to God, to friends, to teachers - actions we do everyday - we can bust ourselves out of the guck. How's that? Conversations with those others bypass all the guck and remind our hearts how to shine. That unique thing that our friend, teacher, God, has will draw out our uniqueness. We don't have to DO anything different. We only have to keep talking, keep looking for opportunities to connect, to share.
Maybe right now, you have no idea what your uniqueness is. Maybe right now you feel like that guck is just a permanent part of where you are. It's not. What is permanent is the heart. One per customer. Each one beats to its own crazy time. Each time you make a real connection with another, that interaction gives your heart a little wake up call. "I know you're in there, I've seen you before, won't you come out?" Once we start to sense even the slightest hint of that call, we've already started to act from our uniqueness. We've heard only the faintest whisper of the message, but it's infusing us with a new desire. And all of a sudden, I've never been here before.