I love the poetry of John Roedel. It is unadorned and straightforward. There are no mysterious segues or ambiguous metaphors. One doesn’t have to read it repeatedly in hopes of “getting” it. His work expresses the rawness of loss, fear, and disappointment. He knows what it means to feel utterly lost and alone. Some of you, including my entire family, would say, “Of course you like it. It goes deep, and it goes dark.” And all of you would be right. I do not perceive the light right away. I always notice the darkness first.
When I was a little kid, I feared the dark. I always wanted the hall light on and kept my bedroom door wide open. Some adults – I blame my father, but what else is new? – would invariably switch it off after I fell asleep. They didn’t consider that I often woke up in the middle of the night. I would panic every time. I would get so angry that they left me in the dark. But I was too afraid to complain about it, fearing some very unpleasant retaliation.
I made a decision. I couldn’t do anything about the hall light getting turned off, and I couldn’t risk getting caught with a flashlight on at 2 a.m. So, I decided to embrace the darkness. It hid me away from my parents. It gave me solace even as it once threatened me. My big move, the moment I knew that the darkness was my ally, was when I closed my bedroom door. My only illumination was a little sliver of light by the bottom of my door, coming from the bathroom down the hall.
In the brooding darkness, I had my own quiet territory to reflect on my young life. And when I heard Brian Wilson sing his heartbreaking autobiographical melody, In My Room, for the first time, at my Bar Mitzvah, for God’s sake! I immediately knew that we shared that odd sense of being free and imprisoned in the very same space.
There’s a world where I can go
To tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room (in my room)
In this world I lock out
All my worries and my fears
In my room
In my room (in my room)
Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray?
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday?
Now it’s dark, and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room
In my room (in my room, in my room)
In my room (in my room, in my room)
My guess is that John Roedel loves that song as much as I do.
Yom Kippur comes from a dark place. It’s a scary proposition to consider how we’ve hurt others and imagine seeking forgiveness for those wrongs. It means being vulnerable. It means acknowledging that sometimes we are not doing our best. We are not looking out for others. We are flawed. And then there’s the chance that someone will come to us and ask us to forgive them. That’s scary, too. It means daring to consider the possibility that we can release our grudge, our clenched jaw, our sense of victimhood and say, “Ok, I’ll never be indifferent to the pain you caused me, but your request to be forgiven moves me to move away from this place of pain that holds us both back and emerge to a better place.”
I hope all of us gather for Kol Nidre, streaming or in person, and dedicate ourselves to acknowledge the dark – AND – reach for the light. We can do this.
The Stern Gang wishes you a sweet new year and a fast that provides space for meditation and truth.
Before Shabbat 