Rev. Joseph Boyd
A Jewish tailor living in a shtetl has a dream. In the dream, he sees a treasure buried under a bridge leading to a castle. The tailor knows the capital has a castle, so he packs up all his belongings, and travels until he comes to the exact bridge he sees in his dream. The difference is in his dream, the bridge was empty. In reality, a Cossack is standing guard right in front of it. Frozen with indecision about how to approach the situation, the tailor stairs at the bridge, uncertain how to proceed. Finally the Cossack notices the tailor frozen in place, and shouts out to the tailor: “What are you staring at?” So the tailor is honest, and confesses: he tells the Cossack his dream about a treasure buried under the bridge he is guarding. The Cossack laughs in his face, and says “I too had a dream that in a shtetl under the stove of a Jewish tailor lies a great treasure. But you don’t see me chasing after silly dreams, do you? You travel here wasting time and money for nothing. But I know the difference between a dream and reality.” The Jewish tailor returned home, dug under his stove, and found a treasure that allowed him to live in prosperity the rest of his days.
Many of us, like the Cossack, are afraid of listening to dreams. We may think they’re silly. We may think they have nothing do so whatsoever with reality. We may believe that the only things that are real are things you can touch. We may be standing guard outside our own life, unable or unwilling to enter it, even when we’re told there is treasure buried right under our nose. Or maybe we’re like the Jewish tailor, and we have the courage to follow a dream. We pack our belongings, and spend time, money, sweat and tears, and venture forth to places we don’t know well, encountering strangers we never imagined we’d have to meet. The moment of fear for us may come when we realize there is a discrepancy between our dream and reality, and reality is posing difficulties we are not sure how to handle.
This is a story by the way that bridges traditions. It’s found in the Muslim tradition, Jewish tradtion, Christian tradition, even in contemporary Buddhist literature. I find it amazing that the Jewish tailor tells the Cossack the truth. He tells the whole story about a treasure being buried mere feet away from where they’re standing. He seems to be willing to risk losing the treasure, having the Cossack say “Well, why don’t we check?” But that doesn’t happen. The Cossack never leaves his post.
Sometimes we need someone like the Cossack to point us in the right direction. Sometimes we need someone who is practical and down to earth who can share with us something awesome, even though they may find it foolish. Sometimes we need someone who never dares to dream, to help make our dreams a reality.
Our church hosted a workshop on Stigma and Resilience. It was a workshop to look at how stigma manifests in this valley, and how resilience is cultivated. We had various academics, community non-profit directors, concerned citizens, and college students all engaging this topic. A theme that kept popping up was that stigma manifests differently, but there are commonalities. One of those commonalities is a feeling of not being good enough. It’s a chronic feeling of low self esteem. It’s a sense that goals pursued will end in sure defeat or disappointment. One of the themes that emerged in our workshop is that the Youngstown community generally speaking feels fortunate just to survive, and has yet to imagine let alone practice what it would mean to fully live and thrive.
This is also a place full of resilience as well. We discussed how even in some housing projects, we had participants share that people would look out for you. Like the Cossack, they would stand guard and tell you when you were acting a fool, and needed to straighten up.
This is now my third year in Youngstown, and I am just now beginning to feel what is at stake here. We are the reverse of this story. We once had a great treasure that even a humble tailor could enjoy. We were a place where a working class person with little more than a high school education could feel prosperous. Then it was as if someone broke into the house while we were asleep, and robbed the treasure from our own home. Now we still have the home, the home we had when we felt prosperous, but now the treasure is gone. And by treasure, I don’t mean just money. I mean inherent value, purpose, worth. This is part of the story, but not the complete story.
When I was researching awe, one of the definitions made me laugh. Awe was described as an emotion comparable to wonder, but less joyous. There is a weight to awe. It’s a heavier word than joy, and having some substance or weight is not a bad thing. I think I know where the substance of awe comes from: Fear.
We are afraid often when we are out of our element, especially when we have trouble sensing where we are. This is why it’s common to be afraid of the dark or be afraid of heights. It’s why public speaking is a great fear. When we are put in a strange place, and we’re vulnerable, and we feel unsafe physically or emotionally, we feel fear. Sometimes fear can be so great we literally have the feeling we’re being attacked by a circumstance even though there is no mortal danger to us. We can feel swallowed up, overwhelmed, taken over. I’ve noticed my body grows rigid when I feel fear. I grow stiff. It’s an adaptation, probably learned. It’s a way of cutting out stimuli, so I can focus and regroup. Fear is a way of telling our body that something is wrong. It’s a way of telling our cells that we are in some kind of danger, and we need to either defend ourselves or get out of dodge. Fear shuts down part of ourselves, or heightens our awareness to an uncomfortable degree. It’s really inconvenient sometimes.
When I was working as a chaplain in New York City, sometimes I would feel great fear when I had to talk with someone that was going through something that seemed unimaginably difficult to me. I was paged to meet with clients who had just moments before lost a loved one or who were waiting in fear sometimes, to pass on themselves. I told my supervisor that I often felt this fear before knocking on their door. It was life or death, literally. And it felt unknown. I would knock, and my palms would start sweating, and my heart felt like it was beating in my throat. I knew that I needed to stay reasonably calm, because freaking out wouldn’t be much help to them, but sometimes I wasn’t sure I could do it. I shared all this with my supervisor. My supervisor gave me a Cossack answer, a seemingly down to earth but mysterious answer. He just said: “That’s good.” I said “What do you mean? It’s not good. It’s a problem.” He said: What you are experiencing is holy fear, and that is the best kind. I thought he was playing a mind trick with me. You can add holy in front of anything, and make it sound good. But then he explained. He said: Are you familiar with the story of the Burning Bush in the First Testament, where Moses saw a burning bush and becomes afraid? He said that’s holy fear. It’s fear that leads to the holy. It’s fear that leads to awe. To use our story, it’s fear that leads to a buried treasure.
I have since come to see fear as the first step toward awe. Awe is being open to wonder in the greatest sense. It is not knowing. It is not knowing exactly what we’re encountering, what we’re feeling, what we’re seeing. It’s not knowing where we are: whether we’re in a humble shtetl or a grand castle in the Capital. It’s a profound waiting for things to be made clear.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Youngstown because I identify parts of myself here. This is a city that knows loss and grief. It has experienced terror, and after this, yes, survival is a treasure. A sense of relative calm, what can look moribund on the surface, but really is a kind of holding. A moment of stasis to recollect, cut off stimuli, and re-group for a bit. This is not a place full of survivors. This is a place that has survived, and thus births resilience.
What are we going to do with this deep well of resilience, now generations deep? I’ll tell you what to do with it. Sometimes you need a Cossack to tell you in no uncertain terms what to do, so I’ll play the role this time. I had a dream that in a pew on 1105 Elm Street at 11 am on a Sunday morning, a great treasure would be found. To find it, it would require a person to become genuinely interested in every person in the pew: to care for their well being, their happiness. All it requires is that a person walks to the pew, and sees one thing beautiful, dare I say awesome, about each individual in it – then the treasure will be made known.
If you’re a Cossack, very practical and steady, I have another version for you. I have to say Cossack you’re doing a great job defending this place. I know you have probably survived sieges and battles I can barely even comprehend. I know you are made of sturdy stuff, and I have no doubt in your ability to survive. I had a dream that in this very spot was buried a great treasure, but now I know the truth. I know I must dig a little first. I must dig beneath my own false optimism and cynicism to find something true and lasting. I must dig beneath my knowledge, my own deeply held opinions, even my beliefs, to find this treasure. Thank you for teaching me not be careless and dreamy, but do the work that needs to be done.
We need both. We need those with eyes to see, and those with hands to dig. We are in Advent now. This time of waiting is a time of fear. It’s a holy fear. It’s a fearful time, because most of us don’t even know what we’re waiting for. We’re just waiting. For many of us, we feel that we’re waiting for nothing. We’re waiting, frozen like the Jewish tailor, because we have no idea what to do next. Life did not go as we expected, so we’re laying low for a bit out in the cold, happy to survive. We’ve done this last year, and we’ll do it again. The reasons are unknown to us. We are not waiting for a Savior any longer. We’ve given up on that. We are not waiting for the fulfillment of a dream. We’d be surprised if we even remembered what the dream was. But we wait, and we stand guard. And we wait for a dream, and if not a dream, maybe a dreamer who has gotten lost and will tell us with utmost seriousness about something we find ridiculous.
The fear may be different, depending on who we are at this moment, but it’s doing its job. The fear is holding us captive, stuck in place, surviving. This is good. This is an important part of the story. It’s just not the complete story.
You know you’re not at the end of the story, if this one thing hasn’t happened yet: rejoicing. Rejoicing is like awe but lighter. It fills the air. It fills the sky. It fills the soul with music of yearning, and then celebration. It’s a marker of captivity, of being frozen, of surviving, and of finding our way back home toward warmth. It’s exaltation that knows grief. It’s a hallelujah that is broken, and knows all the money and time that has been spent on hope, on what many call frivolous. It knows the delay of gratification, indecision, and the tearful confession. We know deep in our shivering bones, that we will go forward just to come back, and that’s okay. The treasure has been there all along. And it’s waiting for us, and we wait for it. It’s a mutual waiting that when the time is right leads to an unexpected meeting. And in that unexpected meeting lies the true nature of our treasure.