The following teaching was given by member Maranda Kosten on Yom Kippur morning,September 16 2021/10 Tishrei 5782.
In the year 5780, I returned to God.
I made a sharp departure from “him” at the age of 9 or 10. I had a crisis of faith when I realized that I just didn’t buy the idea of a God as a guy in the sky watching over me. I nervously made a visit to the Rabbi’s office on a break from Hebrew school and told him in tears that I could no longer be Jewish because I didn’t buy the God myth. He looked at me with pride and said, “Ranj, you are taking the time to question God and discern what God means to you. You are more Jewish than anyone!”
I left Rabbi’s Sherwin’s office, feeling better that I could stay Jewish, but very unresolved about my relationship with God.
In December of 2018, 34 years later, my husband, Timo, died in a climbing accident, leaving me alone to raise our two children who were 4 and 10. Then six months later, I learned that I had breast cancer and would have to undergo treatments that would take a year to complete.
In those moments of trauma and deep loss, I found myself longing for a God to bring comfort. It was the first time I actively sought God, only to feel a divine presence in fleeting moments as I grieved, but nothing I could hold on to. Nothing I could count on.
I asked Rabbi Ariana to suggest a prayer that I could recite in the mornings to connect me to something bigger than myself. She suggested that I say, “Modeh Ani” before getting out of bed.
I spent some time studying the prayer. I even watch an hour-long Chabad video that helped to break it down word for word and I loosely translated it in my mind as:
Modeh Ani Lefanecha
I surrender (my heart) to you
Melech Chai Vikayam
Creator of life that is eternal, everlasting
Shechasarta Bi
You have returned within me.
Ni’shmati
My spirit. (You have returned my soul to this body)
B’chemla
With compassion. (I will have compassion for myself and all beings everywhere.)
Raba Emunatecha
I am bound to you (through my body.)
In the early summer of 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, I had finally finished chemo and radiation and was recovering from my mastectomy. I would get so tired by 4:00 in the afternoon, that I would have to lay down for what I called a “napitation” – a combination of a nap and a mediation. Some days there would be more meditation, most days there was more nap.
One day, laying in bed, in my cool, dark basement, while thinking about my newly adapted prayer, it hit me that my cancer treatment was finally over. With excitement, I visualized going back in time to the me who had gotten the cancer diagnosis that previous year. I saw the me who was completely overwhelmed and furious by a cancer diagnosis only 6 months after Timo’s death?!
I assured that distressed me that I was going to be okay. That I was going to come to a new understanding of the world and my place in it and that I would be a better version of myself. I told her not to worry and to trust that it would be okay - that I made it!
The meditation was kind of working and I felt so good about it, that I decided to continue it by visualizing my future self coming to reassure my current self that I didn’t need to worry about the cancer coming back.
And somehow this triggered a panicked thought. ”Oh my god, what if that future self is coming to tell me that the cancer returned and that I am going to die?.” My face got flushed, my heart rate increased, my stomach started to twist into knots. And then it hit me, OF COURSE, A FUTURE YOU IS GOING TO TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE GOING TO DIE BECAUSE ONE DAY YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!
And then I started to laugh because, at that moment, it all seemed so absurd. That we sit around, worrying about dying when dying is actually the only thing in life that is guaranteed to happen.
And then I realized that I am here now. I could feel the life force that was animating me, keeping me still alive after going through a year of cancer treatments... and then I realized that the animating force in me is GOD. God is within me keeping me alive. And all those years of rejecting a notion of God imposed on me by our society, just faded away. I had been looking for God “out there,” but really God was in me -- of me -- and it became so simple.
And I started to realize that if God is what animates me, then God is what animates everything. And suddenly the “Shema” converged with the mad rantings on the Dr. Bronner’s magic soap bottle that boldly proclaims “All One!” And for that brief moment, I succumbed to oneness. To God.
I spend a lot of time trying to return to that “God moment” as I manage the responsibilities of raising two kids on my own, who are quickly diverging from the path I started with them to a path of their own. The responsibility of managing a house with two needy dogs and dirty clothes and dinners to make. The responsibility of bringing in money to take care of the other responsibilities.
I try to breathe in these “real life” moments and remember to return to that even more real life, which is ephemeral most of the time. I try to return to my breath, my heart, my body, and for just a moment to hold that animating force that we all share that makes us all ONE with each other. I hold that animating force, light, love, energy, the universe, the great mother, my ancestors - all of it - I hold that in the forefront of my consciousness and feel relief: a weight lifted, a moment of ecstasy.
And then I hear “Mom, I’m hungry” and suddenly, I am once again, afraid to die.