How’d You Know?

Thoughts from a chaplain in the wild (or just the synagogue)

“How’d you know? I was sitting behind you; you couldn’t see me”

Slichot evening, way past my bedtime. I was regretting showing up but a colleague who I wanted to eventually call a friend was leading, so begrudgingly, I made myself present (despite yawning about every five seconds). I was sitting in the front row when something inside me told me to go check on said colleague (who I now call a friend). We had only known each other just under two weeks at this point, essentially strangers. Walking up behind her, I placed my hands on her shoulders gently, feeling the fluffy warm jacket she had draped around her shoulders and leaned over, “you doing okay?” She grabbed my hand on her shoulders with her own and looked back at me. We locked eyes for a moment and then someone else demanded her attention and I moved on to the next activity. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure if I was overstepping in that moment or not. That moment didn’t cross my mind again until the following day when this new friend and I were sitting on her couch, and she asked me the question I began this post with, “how’d you know?” I didn’t have an answer.

And this wasn’t the only time in that month I was asked a similar question.

How’d you know? You couldn’t even hear what they were saying.

I’ve worked for a number of clergy in my day, so waiting while they finish something pastoral or political (or both) is not out of the ordinary for me. This time, it was five days to Yom Kippur and I was sitting on the cracked blue paint of the steps leading up to my childhood rabbi’s house. From the other side of the trees, I could hear hushed tones, the tone I often refer to as “something pastoral,” coming from one clergy member to another. I forgot about it until after when I realized I had been right.

My instinct, the tone of voice, small subtle shifts of body language, I know something is wrong, but I rarely know what. I think I’ve always been this way. Maybe it’s the hyper vigilance that is a result of childhood trauma and growing up in chaos? Or many hours in the trauma bay where knowing everything that is going on is literally my job? To those I care about in this beautiful, broken, overwhelming world, even if you don’t hear it or don’t know it, I can see when something is off, when something is wrong, and I love you not in spite of that bitterness, sadness, or brokenness but with all of that and more.