The Exquisite Beauty and the Agonizing Harshness of the Shofar

The Exquisite Beauty and the Agonizing Harshness of the Shofar

It was my second summer in Rabbinical School.  I was interning as a chaplain at UCLA medical center, and was assigned to the heart transplant floor.  Patients on the heart transplant floor at UCLA know the odds, and they know the reality.  Patients know that ½ will exit via the front door, and the other ½ will exit through the back door.  Patients know that the average person will stay on 6 East for nearly half a year waiting for someone, somewhere, with just the right blood type to get into just the right kind of car accident, have just the right type of brain hemorrhage, commit just the right style of suicide, or meet their end by some other tragedy that ends their life, but keeps their heart so intact that it can be removed from their body, packed in ice, airlifted to UCLA, and be given to someone who has 5, 10, or maybe even 20 more years to live.  Patients know that transplanted hearts don’t come from 92-year old patients with pneumonia who have lived a good life and die peacefully.  Patients on 6 East know that continuing their life will depend on someone else in the world dying in a way that may well destroy a family; that more than likely somewhere there will be grieving parents—not grieving children—crying out in anguish: “This is not fair—this is not how it’s supposed to be.”

I encountered an amazing reality that summer:  Many—if not most of the patients there were coping with reality amazingly well.  One after another I met people who—in one way or another—said to me: “This is my life’s reality and I’m going to make the best of it.” 

I remember an African-American man in his late 50s and his bass guitar.  His name was John.  I almost could have guessed that before he told me.  In most parts of the world you’d be hard-pressed to notice him.  But on the heart transplant floor of a hospital, the very serenity which would have made him almost invisible in our daily world was a striking reality.  

Almost any moment of any day you could find John picking out blues rhythms on that guitar.  Most of the time he would sit in a chair or on the floor in his room with the amplifier turned off, so you could only hear the tones if you sat very close in complete silence.  Occasionally he’d be invited to someone else’s room to play for guests who had come to visit.  John’s guitar skills were mediocre.  But the very heart that was failing to pump blood well enough for him to live outside a hospital room could pump emotion through that guitar in a way that couldn’t help but go straight to your soul.

When I sat and talked with John, he told me stories of his life—horrible, tragic stories:  being the only one of his 8 siblings to live past their teenage years; stepfather after stepfather who beat his mother, raped his sisters and sometimes even his brothers, and destroyed the meager possessions of their house in drunken or drug-induced rage; stories of growing up in the parts of New Orleans that the tourist bureau specifically tells you to stay away from.

John told me of getting his High School equivalency at age 22, and graduating college at age 35.  He spoke with pride of his career as a social worker for the county of Riverside, and with sadness that he had never married or had children.

What struck me even more than the frightening details of John’s stories, though, was the equanimity with which he told them.  These were the stories of his life.  They weren’t pleasant.  To this day he could feel the pain.  But this was the life he had been given, and he was going to channel every bit of it through the dark, soulful rhythms of his base guitar.  This was John’s story, and he was going to use every bit of it to connect with anyone around him who was willing to connect.  Connecting for him had only one requirement—the connection was real:  no whitewashing; no sugar-coating; no pity; no victimhood:  deep connection of soul over the realities of life. 

Patient after patient echoed John’s sentiments—this was the reality of their lives, and the holiest thing they could do was find a way to make it a blessing.

Then there were patients like Rachel.... (click here to continue)