Perspective and Trust - Shlach L'cha 5773

(To listen to the sermon as it was delivered, please click here.)

I always feel bad for the dentist. The dentist gets a bum rap. No one looks forward to a visit to the dentist. No one gets excited or circles it on their calendar, or has a countdown to their semi-annual checkup. “Yay, I get a new toothbrush today!” “Woo-hoo, it’s time for my twice-a-year guilt trip about not flossing!” “Oh, how I love the sound of plaque being scraped from my teeth!” (Said no one.) Not that anyone really gets pumped for a visit to the doctor, either, but we all know: the dentist is in a different category of dread altogether.

And yet, as I had the unique pleasure of visiting Dr. Lana Goldman of Gentle Dental Associates in Park Slope earlier this week, I had a couple of mini-revelations.

As this was my first visit to Gentle Dental, I of course had to fill out the preliminary paperwork. You get through the obvious stuff, you give the person at the desk your cards for photocopying, etc. Then you get to the part with the fairly exhaustive list of ailments, conditions, behavioral tendencies. For some of these types of lists, they just want you to check the ones that apply to you. Other times, like this one, you have to answer each one of them, yes or no. Annoying? Perhaps. But I have to admit, I’m glad that they made me. And I’ll tell you why:

Perspective.

Let me explain.

We love to complain. Don’t we. We love to whine about all the stuff we have to do, all the stuff that’s going wrong, all the stuff that seems like obstacles delaying or preventing some sense of rest or happiness or sense of achievement. But then I was forced to look at every single variation following the words, “Do you have or have you had…” any of a dizzying number of diseases, syndromes, and chronic conditions. Aside from a very slight case of asthma that almost never really bothers me, and laughing at myself as I checked “rheumatoid arthritis,” as I have the knees of an 80-year-old man, I was only too thrilled to check off “no” for absolutely everything else. And then there was more internal laughing, coupled by a shaking of the head, as I thought about all of the silly things with which we are constantly pre-occupied. The shutdown of the subway cause it’s raining, or cause it’s not raining, or cause there’s too many people, or cause there’s not enough people. The internet at work going down so you can’t get something done. How my DVR likes to…just when…right…middle of a sentence. Even things a whole lot bigger than that. Like two years ago, as I drove into the city for our special Shabbat Unplugged over on the way Upper West Side and got into a car accident that was completely my fault. In my profuse apologies to the woman whose car I sideswiped, she said, “You know what? It’s really fine. It’s just a car. I have a son who’s been through a battle with cancer. You’re okay, I’m okay. This is not a big deal.”

Perspective. That was the first of my mini-revelations in the waiting room at Gentle Dental.

The second is trust. I don’t think we’re aware of just how much trust we place—and, by necessity, have to place—in the hands of people in our lives, people whom, most of the time, are virtually completely unknown to us. We trust the barista at Starbucks not just to make our drink to our liking, but also that the ingredients and machines used to make it are safe for us. We trust that our teachers, our camp counselors growing up, our co-workers, our political, religious, spiritual leaders, are who they say they are, that their credentials, their experience, their resumes, are accurate. We trust that our physicians and caretakers are telling us the truth with what they see in our charts, our x-rays and MRI’s, that they really do have our best interests at heart.

And then you think about your dentist, who stands over your open mouth a half-hour or more, using all kinds of instruments and tools and gunk, and that weird thing that sucks the saliva out of your mouth as your teeth are cleaned. At one point, for some phase of my cleaning, she needed me to close my eyes. And I did. Cause, what else am I gonna do? And as I closed my eyes for what felt like a pretty long time, I became acutely aware of the enormous trust I was placing, quite literally, in the hands of this little Ukrainian Jewish woman, whom I had met for the first time just minutes before.
So if all that is true—and I’m certain it is—how much trust is needed throughout every single day of our lives just to function, just to get by, then how much the more so with the relationships in our lives of a much greater intensity and intimacy, those with our family and our friends. We live in a world where trust is all-too-often seen as weakness, a scourge to be avoided, perceived as something that should appear on lists like on the medical forms, and then proudly checked “no.” I saw a shirt just yesterday that said, in enormous letters, “Don’t Trust Anyone,” with a picture of an AK-47 just underneath the words. That, unfortunately, is where all too many of us are at. Trust, in and of itself, simply cannot be trusted.

Maybe that works for the mob boss on TV, the CSI detective in her interrogations, the CIA operative undercover in a foreign country. But it definitely doesn’t work for us. No way. Not if we want to live meaningful, purposeful, enriched, full, beautiful lives. While our trust should be earned and carefully, thoughtfully given, never lightly tossed about, we have to realize that trust is at the very core of what makes life worth living. It’s how we truly, deeply connect with others, how we see and maximize the beauty of the world and the life bestowed upon us for who knows how long. Yes, we’ve all gotten burned, our trust betrayed—in love, in friendship, in school or in work. Yes, we’ve all felt the pointed sting, the mixture of anger, sadness and foolishness coursing through every part of us. But the answer can’t be to shut it off, to make trust a commodity we can no longer afford, to bury it for good, out of the reach of others, for fear of getting hurt again. It can’t be. Because if we do, that anger, that sadness, that foolishness will only grow and grow quickly, until we find ourselves utterly alone, hating the world and everyone in it. Because love without trust is a three-legged chair. And even the mob boss, even the detective, even the undercover operative, have to trust someone at some point.

Perspective and trust. They’re at the core of our lives, and at the core of this week’s Torah portion, Shlach L’cha, where Moses is commanded to send 12 spies—one from each tribe—into the land of Israel to see what it’s like, what grows there, and who the current inhabitants are. All twelve agree that that land “indeed flows with milk and honey, [and is] an exceedingly good land.” But ten of the twelve are afraid, doubtful of their ability, even with God’s help, to come into possession of the land sworn to them. And they spread that fear, that doubt, among the Israelites, like a virus of despair, until the people once again revolt against Moses’ leadership. Only Caleb and Joshua are return with words of positivity and faith, that perhaps it is a daunting task after all, but that with God and with each other, it can and will happen. Only Caleb and Joshua have the perspective to zoom out, to look down the road and see the bigger picture. And only Caleb and Joshua have the trust, the faith—in God and in their fellow human beings—to know that, as we read in our liturgy earlier, “the only we to get from here to there is by joining hands, marching together.”

So I pray, on this Shabbat, that we will be like Joshua and Caleb. I pray that we can have a healthy perspective in our lives; to not sweat the small stuff, at least not any more than we need to; to know in our hearts what really matters in life, what really imbues it with meaning and value, are our relationships with our loved ones. And to know, to appreciate, that what lies at the core of any and every single meaningful relationship in our lives, every single connection through which we see the beauty of God’s world and our lives, is trust.

AMEN.                           

B'har, Nachshon, & Jason Collins

To hear my sermon from Friday, May 3rd, please click the link below:

https://www.myrecordbox.com/s/recording/5161/b70d45882a99f09080ac86de5a1518ea