New life experience: watching as someone steals your packages off your front stoop. Not a thing when you live on the 15th floor, as we did until last year. I didn’t have this new life experience, but other members of my household did, and then had the additional new life experience of working with the police to identify the thief (who was having, as it turned out, a pretty unlucky day and had already been caught by the time our incident was reported, just minutes after it happened. I guess wearing sweats during a heat advisory and working in broad daylight didn’t work out so well for the blending-in part of the job). That’s not my point, nor are the root causes of why someone would steal, which invites us to explore compassion in equal measure as we strive to maintain a civil society. My point is this: the South Orange Police Department was on it. I mean, they had already found the guy by the time we called, and in working with them, their level of professionalism and expertise was clear. 

The next day, the power on our street went out. A nuisance, but also sort of an adventure, especially as it was Tuesday, my day off, and I was in the middle of cooking large quantities of brisket for the freezer of a friend who lives alone and is undergoing surgery soon. Again, not my point. My point is that we reported the outage along with our neighbors, and after a few hours, PSE&G figured it out. Lights and AC and oven back on.

Day three: the street paving crew showed up to fix the potholes on our block. To be clear, the entire street needs a new surface, and we were told that we’re on the list for 2026. Which on the one hand is nuts; how can our towns be backed up by years on such things? And on the other hand: wow, that’s amazing, they have a system and are working through it, and in the meantime are providing the temporary fix of potholes repaired.

Here’s my point: there’s a whole lot that really works, and a whole lot of real live people in our very towns who work to make things work. 

And yet, we walk around filled with anxiety and dread, watching election season unfold, despairing over government and country. At the state level, in a week in which our own senator was convicted; at the national level, watching debates and national conventions; at the international level, following the news from Israel, Ukraine, and now France, among others. Yes, there is a lot to be anxious about. I do not diminish that or disregard that sensibility. We have a lot to fret over. But too often, we lose the ability to see the good mixed in. To see all that is working.

Too often, in other words, we lose the ability to feel gratitude. We have trouble even seeing, much less naming, that which is going well.

I once heard a dharma talk in which the teacher (whose name I no longer remember) pointed out that every time he emerged from months of retreat at the monastery, he was struck anew by the headlines in the newspapers. The economy on the brink of failure! The government about to collapse! Or some other doomsday titillation. How is it possible, he thought, that every time I come back out into the world, we are always on the cusp of some terrible disaster? He went on, in this particular talk, to say: every single person alive right now is here because someone had enough compassion to care for them. Someone got up all night long when each of us was an infant, to feed us, to clean us, to soothe us. And this is happening all the time, every day and night, always, in the whole world. Every day there are people who get into fast-moving trucks to race to help people in medical need or to extinguish fires. But you won’t see the headline: “woman got up every two hours to care for a child” or “firemen did a great job last night.” All that works, all the kindness already here with us, is reduced to background noise until we stop noticing at all.

Modah* ani lefanekha: I am grateful before you. These are the words Jewish tradition invites us to recite every day, first thing in the morning when we wake up. Some say it right as they open their eyes, or when they get up out of bed. I often say it when I first leave my house in the morning – something about leaving the cocoon and encountering the fresh air brings the words to my lips. The line is an orientation, a way of setting an intention: no matter what else creeps into my day, my heart, I hereby orient myself around gratitude and finding the good. Looking at what is working, starting with my own being alive today. I am grateful before You. Or, I am grateful before you. Either way. I am grateful.

Is it terrible that there are people who steal in the community? Yes. Are police officers always perfect, impartial, correct in their judgment calls or actions? No. Does the economic system which undergirds how we run electricity have major problems? Absolutely. But is there a whole lot that works every day, for which we should be grateful, for which we might cultivate a sense of gratitude, which we might even put into action by thanking the good people who show up to work every day to serve us? Yes. 

I am grateful for all of that. I am grateful before you. I am grateful before You.

Some Modeh Ani resources:

• Cantor Kissner and I have a Modeh Ani playlist going on Spotify, which we wanted to share with you. Rock on.
• Here’s a link to an all-English-transliteration version of the traditional prayer in video form.
• Andhere it is in slow, learn-with-me-syllable-by-syllable Hebrew for those learning or thinking about learning Hebrew
• And finally, for those who don’t use Spotify, here’s at least one fun musical version you can find online.

*Modah in the feminine, modeh in the masculine