MSNBC.com

Oct. 12, 2005 - On Rosh Hashana, I preached about the first secret of life which is also the most frequent commandment in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testaments: “Be not afraid.” This week, my Yom Kippur sermon is about another secret of life: “Do what you love.” This is some of what I said. To know the rest you had to be sleeping next to my congregants …

Kids just don't outthink their lives, but we adults almost always outthink ours. Kids know what they're good at and they know what they love because that is what they are doing whenever we give them free time. Children are as happy as we let them be. Then suddenly, usually around adolescence, we ask them how they expect to make money doing what makes them happy—and you wonder why adolescence is such a tough time? We unintentionally kill their passions under the guise of loving parental career counseling. To avoid our loving but ultimately destructive imprecations, many of our kids just surrender and tell us like robots about some job that they know will get us off their backs and allow them to return to doing what they love.

This has humorous consequences. In the last 25 years I have done more than 2,500 bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies for 13-year-old boys and girls. Among the boys, almost every one of them told me they wanted to be sports agents. Among the girls, almost all of them want to be designers (either clothing or interior). To date this synagogue has produced not one single sports agent and not one single designer.

However, when you ask children what God made them good at (or if you are from an atheist home, what their DNA made them good at), they flood your life with hundreds of different and unique answers from hundreds of smiling faces. One fourth-grade girl said, “God made me good at stopping fights.” Another said, “God made me good at listening.” One boy said, “God made me good at understanding why things happen in history.” One said, “God didn't make me that good at putting things together, but I am really good at taking things apart.”

That knowledge of what God made us good at is precisely what drains out of us as we supposedly grow up. It's not that every adult has forgotten it, just most of us. It's easy to spot the ones who have not forgotten what God made them good at. They are the happy ones. They are the ones who have smile wrinkles, not frown wrinkles. One guy who did not forget said to me, “God made me good at chemistry and at hunting down sick genes.” That man is Dr. James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA. One man 100 years ago this month said, “I was made good at tracing the lines that flow from God.” That man was Albert Einstein. One grown-up woman who recently died said, “God made me good at doing little things with great love.” That woman was Mother Teresa. Some extraordinary adults remember what all ordinary children know: the key to life is to love what God made you good at and to do what you love.

Knowing what God made you good at has nothing to do with the job you work at to pay the rent. So when you know the secret of doing what you love, it does not necessarily mean that you will get a job doing it. There are not that many paying jobs for good listeners or good fight-enders or good takers of things apart or good bedtime-story readers or loyal friends or good feelers of the kinship of sorrow. Occasionally you can snag a job doing exactly what God made you good at—I thank God every day that this happened to me, but that is the life equivalent of winning the lottery. The odds on this happening are very long.

So for those of you who feel trapped in jobs you hate, or in classes where you are being forced to study subjects you hate, take hope from this secret of life. Your schoolwork or your job or your obligations to make lunch for the kids every single day need not stop you from doing what you love today. Your life is not only your job or your grade in school, or your family obligations. Your life is fuller than that, broader than that, thicker than that, more soaring than that. Your life is doing what God made you good at. If even part of what God made you good at is used in your job, hooray, but the odds are that what you are good at spills over past your job and into your life. And no matter how crappy part of your life is, the other part, the part where you do what you love, can be glorious.

During one of my ask-the-rabbi sessions with the fourth grade, one girl asked me, “I don't know what God made me good at. How can I find out?” My advice to her is my advice to you if you don't know. First, ask your parents. They know you best, though they are not always honest. They sometimes will tell you with all the love in their hearts, “Honey, God made you good at being a sports agent.” If they tell you that, then go ask your friends. They don't know you as well as your family, but they're more honest. If family and friends do not tell you clearly what they think God made you good at, then ask yourself this question: “When am I most happy?” The times you are most happy are the times you are doing what you love and what you love is always what God made you good at.

Well not always … I remember counseling a kid who was barely 5 feet 1 inch tall that his obsessive dream of playing in the NBA was not likely to occur because God had made him vertically challenged and genetically Jewish. In time, through college, he grudgingly realized this and is now a happy, well employed … sports agent. No, actually he is a happy and successful assistant basketball coach.

We all need to be like the boy trying to hit fly balls to his dad. He threw a ball up into the air and said, “I'm such a good hitter.” Then he swung and missed. He threw up another ball, missed the ball again, and said, “I'm such a good hitter.” After the third and fourth failed attempt to hit the ball, he just threw the ball up in the air again and said, “I'm such a good pitcher!” When we embrace our blessings, just like when we embrace each other, we must do so honestly.

I think God judges us by how well we have used our unique gifts to shadow God in the world. The most famous Hasidic story is about Reb Zusia who was crying at his impending death. His Hasidim, gathered around him, were surprised at their master's tears. “You were a great rebbe, you are going to the world-to-come with honor. Why are you crying?” He answered, “Now finally I understand that when I am called before God after I die, God will not ask me, 'Zusia, why weren't you Moses?' God will not ask me, 'Zusia why weren't you Abraham?' He will ask me, 'Zusia, why weren't you Zusia?' and I will not know what to say.” Our lives are meant to do just one thing: to know what to say when we meet God. Today of all days, we affirm that no matter what our age, our task is the same as Zusia's—our task is to fulfill our true destiny, to find our true purpose and please God by doing what we love. Today of all days, we affirm that it is never too late to do what you love and to be what you might have been.

This is what it means to be made “in the image of God,” (Hebrew: b'tzelem elohim.) Obviously being made in the image of God does not mean that we have a big toe just like God has a big toe. It does not mean that we are all powerful or all knowing or all good because God is all powerful, all knowing and all good. So what does it mean? The Hebrew word tzelem comes from the root word “tzel” which means “shadow” and so, we are all God's shadows. But because God has infinite attributes it stands to reason that God has infinite shadows and this means that each of us shadows a different part of God. Some of us may shadow God's mercy and compassion by being drawn to acts of loving kindness in our life. Some of us may shadow God's demand for justice in an unjust world, and those people are drawn to devote their lives to acts of tikkun olam, acts of social justice that will alleviate the pain the world. We are all shadows of different parts of the same God. Being God's shadows perfectly explains to me how we are all different and how we are all the same. God's shadow falls across our wounded world through an infinity of differently blessed lives; each shadow bearing equally the holiness of the Creator, but each shadow bearing a unique shape meant to be discovered and used to find happiness, fix the world and please God.

God gives each of us unique blessings and thus unique destinies. That is what it means to say we are all made in the image of God or to say that we all stood at Sinai. And we are all standing at Sinai right here and right now. God is looking at you, just you, to ask you, “Did you discover what I made you good at? Are you working at what you love? And are you helping those who have not yet discovered the shape of their spiritual shadow to do what I made them good at doing?

If you can feel in your soul that you are standing at Sinai amid the peals of thunder and lightening and at the foot of the smoking mountain and in the midst of the assembled people, and there, which is also here, and then, which is also now, that God is actually speaking to you, just you, to teach you the secrets of life. God is speaking to you, just you, to lead you to the place of green pastures and still waters where you need not be afraid. God is speaking to you, just you, to teach you how every day your blessings exceed your burdens. God is speaking to you, just you, to tell you that life is too short not to do what you love….

And then I said amen and sat down.