Of all the miracles of engineering, I am most impressed by suspension bridges. Instead of being held up from the bottom, they are suspended from the top, as if they were floating in the air. The Whitestone, Throgs Neck, George Washington, Brooklyn, and Verrazano Bridges are all vital connectors without which we could not drive into and out of New York City, and they are all suspension bridges. Millions of people use them daily to drive over chasms and bodies of water without giving much thought to their safety or to the possibility of the bridges collapsing. This is because when they are well built and maintained, suspension bridges are perfectly safe. The science and engineering behind them have been with us since the first simple suspension bridge was built in the country of Bhutan in 1433.
Notwithstanding these facts, our experience of a suspension bridge’s safety depends upon how we cross it. I was reminded of this one morning in the Canadian Rockies earlier this summer, when I stepped out onto the Golden Skybridge, Canada’s longest and highest suspension bridge. For about fifteen minutes, the group of hikers I was with walked four hundred ninety-two feet across and four hundred seventy-six feet above the yawning chasm of a majestic canyon. As the wood-slatted foot bridge swayed in response to the wind and my slightest movements, I found myself swinging between feelings of insignificance and expansiveness. I would look over the cable rail to which my hands clung as I stepped with tentative lightness and thought of how little stood between me and death. I could fall and be lost in the unfeeling vastness; a mere speck flung thoughtlessly by gravity to the canyon floor. Suddenly, my mind would change course. I imagined myself as a bird flying over that beautiful vastness, taking in the expanding earth that widened within my field of vision as I effortlessly flew higher. Without the artificial comforts and distractions of an enclosed vehicle, I was forced and free to experience the confrontation between my body, the bridge and the seemingly limitless space above, around and below me. Walking toward the relief of solid ground, I strangely never questioned the stability of the bridge, the expertise of the bridge builders, or the wisdom of my decision to do this. I felt beckoned by those two opposing dimensions of trust: the reasoned conclusions we reach every day that people and things operate reliably and the leaps of faith we take when reliability crumbles below our feet like a broken bridge.
Crossing the skybridge was a fun diversion. I was thrilled to do it as part of my weeklong retreat from the narrow bridges of fragility, personal crisis, grief, anxiety and mortality that I walk with so many people in my community where I serve as a rabbi. One of my most thoughtful teachers about narrow bridges is the Jewish spiritual master, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Though historians warn us not to speculate about a person’s psychohistory, Nachman and his biographers wrote enough about his emotional battles that we can reasonably assume he struggled with some type of bipolar disorder, as well as devastating losses of faith, alienation and loneliness. What he never seemed to lack was the capacity to refract his suffering through a spiritual lens, as he fought to understand his turbulent life within the setting of his journey with God. Based upon his personal experience, Nachman repeatedly taught that every person must walk an extremely narrow bridge: no one is exempt from suffering and distress, and we cannot avoid that constricted, often dangerous path. Knowing whereof he spoke, Nachman counseled that what transforms and strengthens us during that crossing is to walk the bridge without fear.
I would like to believe he wasn’t preaching a platitude. He understood too well that fear is an involuntary emotion but that it is also ours to master so that it doesn’t crush or warp us. My walk on the skybridge reminded me about how we might cultivate that fearlessness. Suspension foot bridges are often too narrow and wobbly to allow people to walk them side by side. You must march gently in a single line, each person alone with no one next to you. Yet I found solace, maybe even inspiration, knowing that someone was at my back pushing me to move forward, and that someone else was in front of me, reminding me that he or she had successfully taken the step I was about to take. Adulthood involves confronting the paradox of being simultaneously alone and in community. A fearless life cannot be cultivated in utter solitude, yet neither can we outsource our courage to others. From out of the womb, we walk along the narrow bridge alone and together, hopefully leading and backing each other with courage and dignity. This trek through narrow places is perhaps the broadest, most liberating journey we can take.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY. Check out his writings at danornstein.com
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