Dear Gentle Reader,

(To borrow a phrase from Lady Witherspoon of Bridgerton fame.)

You might remember my finding a stack of sermons in our storage unit all typed (like on an electric typewriter) on 5 X 7 cards – mostly green, some blue, all of them pre-word processing days from the mid-70’s to the early 90’s. They are mostly High Holy Day sermons and tend to have some common themes.

Here are some general impressions. They are too long and tend to be repetitive. They are inconsistent but some are brave, and some are foolish, and all try really hard to be relevant, some succeed. They are also incredibly “chutzpadik”. Who am I to be saying these things? Who am I?

Take the one about “Love and Marriage.” I didn’t date a lot of these sermons but in researching the books or articles I quote I think this one is from the mid-70’s. That means I was in my mid-thirties and had been married for maybe ten years. What the ……. did I know about love or marriage?

But it did begin with a great Chasidic story about two boys who used to like playing Rebbe when their father (the Rebbe) was taking a Shabbat afternoon nap. They would take turns and critique each other’s ability to model their father when he counseled people who came for advice. This time the congregant was asking his Rebbe about marriage as he recounted the quality of his relationship with his spouse. At the end of the play acting, the son who was playing the Rebbe asked his brother to critique his “performance”. His brother said: “You did great, and you said all the right things, but you forgot the most important piece of any Chasidic session. Abba (dad) always began with a sigh – all Chasidic stories must begin with a long, slow, deeply felt sigh.

And so it is. Today is Eileen and my anniversary. And I think a sigh is appropriate – the sigh that slows us down and invites us to reflect on the days and years of our marriage. The sigh that admits not every day was perfect but year after year we turned our challenges into blessings. 

Sighs come in many variations. There is the sigh that says: here we go again. Life has a way of repeating lessons unlearned. And it is hard to change; it is easy to fall back on old habits and ways. It is easy to point your index finger at and forget that there are three others pointing back at you. It is easy to forget the word of the day in a marriage is “us”.

You are probably getting the wrong impression here. Another sigh. We have and we are blessed. Not only with children and grandchildren who are a constant source of joy and pride. Not only with relatively good health given our years. Not only with affluence and influence and meaningful roles we played in society. Not only with people who love us and people we love. Not only with laughter and joy and even sorrow and loss – but most of all, we are blessed with each other in good times and bad times, in the work we do when we say: I love you.