Tikkun Olam: Repairers of Creation

This weekend I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor, a documentary about Fred Rogers. When he was asked to come out of retirement for a video message after 9/11, he said:

"No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be 'tikkun olam,' repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbor and to yourself."

Last night I broke a glass dish. It was my left hand's fault, the one still recovering from my MS relapse last year. My hand slipped, the bowl fell, and glass scattered across my kitchen floor as I said, "Shit." 

I thought about Fred's injunction to be tikkun olam, a repairer of creation. I didn't really want to attempt to repair that glass bowl. I could neither repair nor eat the avocado that I'd been smashing into the bowl. I may never fully repair my left hand. In a quick moment of almost-bedtime defeat, I thought, "Why bother repairing?"

Michelle Thorley (@florafamiliar) shared about repair on Instagram this weekend. She wrote:

"To create can be exciting and rewarding. To break can be satisfying and final. But to repair--that is long and often difficult."

I thought again of Fred Rogers and his injunction for us all to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation.

Michelle's post was a clue! Fred and Michelle both argue not merely for the repair of immediately personal issues, though there is value there. They argue instead for societal, systemic, interpersonal repair.

But here's the thing: I've been learning the skills I need to help enact societal repair, and it's also super personal. I (and you) cannot repair creation without acknowledging that repair is needed, without seeing where it requires mending, without watching closely for cracks and chips. And where better to practice noticing cracks in creation than within my own self? If I truly desire to be a repairer of creation, I must first shatter open, myself, to the brokenness of the world on both large and small scales. I have to experience disrepair.

I will remain unable to comprehend the world's brokenness until I claim my being part of it. I both require repair and owe repair. We all do. 

Today is 9/11. In 2001 the attack on the twin towers shattered our collective understanding of safety. The news coverage shattered most Americans' positive or even neutral perceptions of Islam and its adherents. It shattered relationships between nations and individuals. Death itself shattered the heart of anyone who lost a loved one to the tragedy.

Repair of these wounds is tikkun olam: repair of all creation. And despite 9/11 being over 20 years ago, some of those wounds are still wide open, still awaiting their healing and repair.

In the great Jewish tradition of interpreting, reimagining, and reinterpreting scripture, one modern interpretation of tikkun olam theorizes that the Creator left a bit of the world unfinished, waiting and ready to be repaired (improved upon) by its inhabitants. Human action, rather than the hand of divinity, will therefore be the primary driver behind the world's final completion and perfection. Our role as repairers of creation is not just superfluous to existing creation; rather, it is the completion of creation.

Today I cried remembering the large-scale tragedy of September 11, 2001. Today I also cried remembering the small-scale tragedy of my clumsy left hand. They were the same tears. And they were tikkun olam, at least for me, as I cried them.