First Parish Unitarian UniversalistEnough
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
April 24, 2005
Isn’t that [“Dayenu,” just sung] a great tune? So upbeat! So gladful.
In the usual Passover Haggadah (the order of service for a Seder), “Dayenu” is sung after the Maggid, which is the telling of the story of the Israelites coming out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in Israel, and the recitation of the ten plagues. We heard that story in our second Reading this morning, in rhyme by former Boston Globe columnist Linda Weltner who is a member of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Marblehead MA.
For me on Passover, the “Dayenu” tune repeats itself in my mind’s ear in a familiar, happy way all through the rest of the Seder. At a subliminal level, it reminds me of all for which I, too, am grateful.
It’s a song of thanksgiving, a song of gratitude.
“Dayenu” is translated from the Hebrew as “that would have been enough.”
As in, “If God had brought us out of Egypt and not split the Red Sea for us, that would have been enough.” In other words, even for that, that alone, the Jews would be grateful.
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, a professor of liturgy at the Hebrew Union College in Manhattan, says that he thinks this song is sung because “if we just read it, we might concentrate on its words, which are enough to stop us in our tracks.”
He goes on to explain, “We say, for instance, ‘If God had only brought us to Mount Sinai but not given us the Torah: Dayenu.’ But do we honestly believe we would have been satisfied if God had said, ‘Look folks, I have a Torah up there, but you can’t have it; enjoy the view.’
Another example: ‘If God had split the sea for us but not led us through it on dry land: Dayenu.’ Really? What good would the split sea have been if we had been restrained on shore for the Egyptians to kill us? …. Any single step toward freedom would not have been enough. Only the entire thing is dayenu. Less would have been a teaser.”
Only the entire thing is dayenu. Only freedom is enough. Yet, it strikes me that it is only when a community looks back from the vantage point of later years that it knows what the “entire thing” is. This is true for us as individuals, too, isn’t it?
I think of my daughter, about to graduate from college next month. If she looks out from where she is now, she doesn’t know what her future holds. But, I can look back from where I am now and see that the decisions I made when I was where she is led me, eventually, to being with you here, today, at First Parish Unitarian Universalist-Canton, MA! One thing leads to another.
It’s also only in looking back that we can see that a really good situation developed as a result of something that seemed devastating. That personal growth or increased faith, or both, resulted from how we dealt with a hardship. That a good job followed being laid off from a previous one. That new friendships began because of reaching out for support after a divorce or the death of a loved one.
We’ve missed out on something really important if we fail to sing “Dayenu” when we feel grateful. But, how much more secure we would feel if we could somehow sing it even during the hard times. To trust, in the midst of hardship, that it will not last forever.
That, like the Israelites, we’ll be freed from slavery and find ourselves a new home. That some good (though not necessarily what we expect) will come for us in the future if we do what seems right in the present, and so, paradoxically, we can feel thankful even for our hard times.
I’m reminded here of the Buddhist belief that our suffering comes from our attachment to things as they are. From clinging to the way things are, either to hardship or to good times, wanting things to stay the same. Or as contemporary American interpreter of Buddhism Sylvia Boorstein says in her book It’s Easier than You Think, “pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” (p. 16). We’re going to have painful experiences in life, but suffering as a result of them is something we choose, in how we respond to our pain.
In one of the many Passover Haggadah’s I’ve collected over the years, it is suggested that after the singing of “Dayenu,” those gathered will be invited to call out those many things for which they are today grateful and after each one the whole congregation will respond, joyfully calling out “Dayenu.” I wonder, were we to do that, how hard would it be to call out our current troubles and sorrows as if we are grateful for them? It would be hard to rejoice over them even when we feel, or hope, that it is calling out the best in us or helping us to grow. I personally don’t think I could call out “the death of my best friend” or “increased power of the religious right in the public arena” and then join you in joyfully saying “dayenu” in response, even though I may feel that I have grown as I respond to these troubles.
But, let’s spend a few moments pondering the things for which we are grateful, whatever they are, and after each one, all responding silently with “dayenu.” (silence)
We here gathered have so much for which to be thankful! Even half, or a quarter, of it would have been enough! Dayenu!
Back to Passover and the story it tells of the Exodus form Egypt, Rabbi Lawrence explores another aspect of dayenu.
“…think of it,” he writes, “under what circumstances do we normally keep pleading, ‘Enough.’ Not just when we don’t deserve something, but when we don’t really want it. It is as if every time God moved us closer to our fate, we pleaded, ‘Enough already! Please, God, no more.’”
[In light of the history of the Jews since], “We can well imagine our ancestors pleading, ‘Enough already,’ all along the way. Who needs being chosen? Every single redemptive step implies further obligation. Wouldn’t just a little obligation have been enough?...
Because we were taken from Egypt, we must deliver others from servitude. Because God brought judgment upon their idols, so we must speak out against today’s forms of idolatry. Because God fed us in the wilderness, we must feed others in the deserts of their lives. Because God gave us Torah, we must study it, know it, live by it…
And on and on it goes. Do we really need all this?” he asks.
Passover tells, and the Rabbi is elaborating on it, the ancient freedom story of the Jewish people (back to whom we as Unitarian Universalists trace our religious roots), but there is a universal resonance in it, especially in the “Dayenu” aspect. What I think might be universal—or at least I feel it speaks to me and I have a hunch to you, as well--is that essential movement, the Rabbi describes so well, from gratitude to serving others, from feeling thankful to sharing, from being free to working for freedom for others, from being loved to loving another.
It’s almost an involuntary movement. I mean, for how long—Hours? Minutes?— can one dwell in heartfelt gratitude without then being moved to do for others what has been done for us? If our own life or that of those closest to us is charged with problems, we must necessarily focus inward at least for a time. But, if our life at this time is blessed, we are moved to go outside our own circles to work for peace, for freedom, justice or love in the wider world.
Someone recently told me that when she wakes up each day she says to herself, “Hey, I’ve got a new day!” And, talk show host Oprah Winfrey advocates a bedtime routine of naming five things that happened in the day for which we are thankful.
All that is required of us is to greet the day with thankful anticipation and to really pay attention all day, so that at its end we know what we are thankful for, why to sing Dayenu! that night.
I want to close with a Dayenu kind of poem, a poem of thanksgiving and gratitude. It’s by Stanley Kunitz, whose poetry I have read aloud here before.
An article appeared in last Sunday’s Globe Magazine about him, almost 100 years old, and his fabulous garden. This poem moved me to tears, to think he greets each new day with gratitude even at age 99+, or maybe his gratitude is why he has lived that long.
It’s called The Round, by Stanley Kunitz.
The Round
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed..."
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.