Rabbi’s Message, November 11, 2025
This Sunday, we’ll gather from the comfort of our couches for our monthly TJC Book Club! While it’s not a spoiler, I wanted to share a simple but powerful exercise that Dr. Lisa Miller offers in Chapter 14 of The Awakened Brain. In it, Dr. Miller invites us to grab paper and pencil and look back over the landscape of our lives with a few guiding steps:
On a sheet of paper, draw the road of your life.
Along that road, draw a moment when you faced a hurdle — a loss, a disappointment, a death. Mark that moment as a closed door.
Now consider what unfolded because that door remained closed. When we can’t claw open the door we wanted, we sometimes discover another that was quietly waiting. Draw that open door and the new landscape beyond it.
In that new landscape, identify the messenger or helper who showed up — perhaps a person, a practice, or an unexpected turn of heart.
Repeat these steps until your page holds three closed doors, three helpers, and three open doors.
Dr. Miller reminds us that when we trace these patterns, when we draw out these experiences for ourselves, we awaken to the possibility that even in our most challenging moments, guidance still has the potential to arrive.
This week’s Torah portion, Chayyei Sarah, offers a similar idea wrapped in our ancient narrative. After Sarah’s death, Abraham sees the depth of Isaac’s grief. Isaac’s world closed with the loss of his mother — a slammed door of the most painful kind. Yet through his father’s concerned care, through the help and wisdom of their servant Eliezer, and through Rebekah’s openhearted arrival, new doors began to open. The text tells us:
“Isaac then brought her [Rebekah] into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death.” (Genesis 24:67)
Isaac’s healing did not come from forgetting his sorrow but from allowing himself to be guided — opening himself to the idea of receiving help, opening his heart to the possibility that love can return. The comfort he finds is not the absence of grief, but the re-entry of connection.
Maybe, like Isaac, we are still walking the stretch of road between a closed door and an open one. This week, let’s take time to draw our life roads and notice where helpers have appeared along the way. Sometimes they are family or friends. Sometimes they are moments of synchronicity — a book, a stranger, a sudden inner realization.
This week, may we cultivate the awakened eyes to see the messengers who stand beside the closed doors of our lives — and the courage to walk through the ones that have opened.
And! To discuss more insights and experiments from Dr. Lisa Miller’s Awakened Brain, join us on Sunday from 7 to 8 pm!
Shavuah Tov,
Rabbi Lauren
