Tikkun Olam

“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don't touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world.” – from The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

As I understand it, the Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam” can also be translated “to repair the world.” In a week where bridges were collapsing, murderous bombs were falling, famine was escalating, voting rights were being curtailed, and the daily deluge of misinformation was casting its ugly shadow on relationships among human beings, there was a lot of repair happening right here in my town.

On Saturday night, our region was brought to its knees by a major ice storm. Trees fell; tree limbs snapped off of trunks. By morning, electrical wires were scattered higgledy-piggledy all over the place. Most of my town was without power – many of us for multiple days. For much of the week, electrical crews were out en force, generators were roaring, chain saws were whining. Neighbors checked on neighbors. Friends offered shelter to those without heat or refrigeration. People even found ways to laugh. Reeve, the proprietor of Counterpoint Bread in Bowdoinham, had this to say in his weekly email: “I hope that you've all got power back by now and that your driveways aren't auditioning to be the set for a film about Napoleon's retreat from Russia . . . but if they're like mine then they are and they've gone full method-actor on it.”

Improving the world. Repairing the world.

There is nothing quite like an ice storm. The inconvenience and, at times, sheer misery, harm, and danger such a storm inflicts often offers up a counter-balancing event of unparalleled beauty — the ice light show. That's how it was for us the day after the trees dropped their heavily laden limbs. The sun came out, and for several hours we were treated to a show of dancing diamonds as sunbeams caught ice crystals just so.

That morning, the morning of the dancing diamonds, I took a walk around our neighborhood. So, so many people were out walking and marveling. Many were trying to capture the beauty on cameras. Although I have never seen a photograph that comes close to portraying the stunning magic of an ice light show, that did not stop me from trying, too. Everyone – friends, neighbors, strangers – stopped to talk, eager to tell their stories of the night before, when the sounds of crashing tree limbs and tinkling, shattering ice had punctuated their evening activities. It took me a full hour to walk a half-mile, so eager was everyone to connect.

Then the following day, I headed to the grocery store. Now, here is one great truth: Everyone goes to the grocery store the day before a predicted storm. And here is another: Everyone else goes to the grocery store the first day it is safe to venture out again. I was in that latter group. I navigated crowded aisles, dodging other carts, greeting friends, and managing to stay clear of clerks who were trying valiantly to restock shelves. Eventually, I made my way to the long line of people threading their way to the cash register.

Andrew was operating the cash register that morning. Andrew has worked at that market for several years now. Seeing him calmly deal with that day's crowd transported me back almost exactly four years ago, when the world was seeming to end because we were beset with a global pandemic. I recollected that day when it suddenly dawned on everybody that we might be stuck at home for a Very Long Time. I have never seen a grocery store so crowded and with people who were so frantic. For some reason, you could buy bags with 30 pieces of chicken dripping with blood, something I had never seen offered before. (I declined.) Cans of sardines were still in robust supply. But God help you if you needed hand sanitizer or toilet paper. That day. You know the one.

Andrew was at the cash register that day, ringing up people's groceries, sliding items quickly, beep, beep, beep over the scanner. His arms were moving as fast as they could. There he was, handling cash, credit cards, debit cards, and EBT cards. There he was, asking every single customer how they were when it was their turn to be served. At the same time that he was a blur of motion, he was simultaneously a study in efficiency and calm commitment, dealing with the impatient, annoyed, anxious, frightened public like an assembly line grocery store Buddha.

Finally, it was my turn. Andrew set about running my items through checkout. (No dripping chicken, toilet paper, or hand sanitizer. And no sardines.) After we dispensed with “How are you,” I made the simplest, most obvious observation, and I tried to say it in the gentlest, most sympathetic voice possible:

“You're working really hard,” I said.

Andrew actually stopped what he was doing (just for a moment, because this was that day). He looked into my eyes and replied, “Thank you for noticing.”

I could see that Andrew was tired. I could imagine he felt much like everyone else – impatient, annoyed, anxious and frightened. But I suspected he probably felt something else, too: invisible. And one chance comment let him know that somebody saw him.

I have thought of that moment many times since, because it showed me how sometimes the smallest gesture can mean so much, can bring comfort, can improve the world, can repair the world, tikkun olam. Truth told, I am sure I have received healing gestures like that small comment far more often than I have purveyed them. But, more truth told, all of us have the ability to bring repair and healing in our particular ways, both large and small.

Yes, it is important, critical, that I follow the news, that I yoke myself to larger movements, that I write letters to elected representatives and newspapers, that I join in civic discourse, that I donate what I can to relief efforts and other worthy causes. And/but the problems confronting our world are so huge. Sometimes sitting here in my smallish town on one of the America's shoulders, it can feel as though whatever I do or say makes little difference. At moments like those I try to remember that tiny moment I shared with Andrew at the local grocery store on a day when the world had gone insane. There can be power and comfort and repair even in the little things. What I do and say matters. The truth is that tikkun olam is something all of us can embrace and magnify. Remember, “every act of living [is] a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world.”

Love,

Sylvia

P.S. Now, as for ice storms, nobody describes them better than Mark Twain. I leave you with Twain’s words, because they are far better than any photograph (although I am including one of those, too!). Reading Twain’s description reminds me of my brother saying he likes to listen to Red Sox games on the radio because, “the colors come in better on the radio.”

“Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English friends, and I mentioned the ice-storm, using it as a figure—a figure which failed, for none of them had heard of the ice-storm. One gentleman, who was very familiar with American literature, said he had never seen it mentioned in any book . . .

“The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm is an event. And it is not an event which one is careless about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the doors, and shoutings, “The ice-storm! the ice-storm!” and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush for the windows. The ice-storm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are wrought in the silence and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs and branches of the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In time the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in hard pure ice; so that the tree looks like a skeleton tree made all of glass—glass that is crystal-clear.

“. . . The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock to the window and press together there, and gaze intently out upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word, nobody stirs. All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting—waiting for the miracle . . . at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and feels a swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows what is coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still higher, flooding the tree from its loftiest spread of branches to its lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then in a moment, without warning, comes the great miracle, the supreme miracle, the miracle without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and twig to swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a spouting and spraying explosion of flashing gems of every conceivable color . . .” — Mark Twain