Summary of the podcast

Rabbi Mark Gellman starts the podcast by introducing the topic of scars and telling his own story. He has a scar on his chest that was put there by a surgeon’s knife at age 10 due to Marfan Syndrome, a genetic defect. He was ashamed of the scar, avoided situations where it would be revealed, and rarely went to the beach with friends during the summer. Eventually, he overcame his shame when a beautiful woman told him she thought his body was hot, which led him to marrying her. The podcast explores how different people cope with the visibility and psychological impact of scars.

Rabbi Gellman tells the story of how he married Betty after she told him she wasn’t ashamed of his scar. He reflects on how his scar affected him, both physically and emotionally. He learned that it decreased his body image, but increased his compassion for others. Although it was an unwanted blessing, he says it helped him to work on his soul, nature, and character. He encourages the listener to think about the scars they bear on both their body and soul, and to try to see them in the same wise and weathered way. He states that there are three kinds of scars: those that happen because we do the right thing and get scarred for it, those that come from our mistakes, and those that come from our experiences. He ultimately concludes that our scars can teach us many things, and that we should embrace them.

This conversation explores the two types of scars we bear in life – virtue scars and mistake scars. Virtue scars, the result of doing the right thing, are often reminders of moments of courage and the things worth fighting for. They may be the result of protecting a friend or speaking out for what is right. Mistake scars, on the other hand, are the result of moral weakness and remind us of our brokenness. The proper reaction to mistake scars is not guilt but shame, as it encourages us to repent and forgive ourselves. Both types of scars are reminders that it is in our power to do better and strive for the good.

The conversation explores the idea of moral improvement by looking at the three types of “scars” that shape our moral character: virtue scars, sin scars and accidental scars. Virtue scars come from the moral strength we develop from doing the right thing, sin scars are a result of our moral weakness, and accidental scars are those we bear due to accidents, abuse, genetic inheritance or socioeconomic disadvantage.

The choice presented to us by these accidental scars is to view them as disfigurements or as opportunities for a new wisdom and deeper compassion.

The conversation is illustrated with a story by Shell Silverstein called The Missing Piece, in which a circle finds its missing piece and is made whole. The moral of the story is that even when we feel like we are missing something, we can find joy and meaning in life.

Timestamps

0:00:00 Topic: Scars and the Impact on Our Humanity 

0:02:49 Reflection on the Power of Scars: A Personal Story 

0:04:53 Topic: Understanding Virtue and Mistake Scars 

0:10:46 Topic: The Three Types of Scars and the Challenge of Accidental Scars 

0:13:27 “The Power of Transforming Scars into Triumphs” 

0:15:30 “The King’s Granddaughter and the Precious Ruby: A Story of Faith and Redemption” 

0:17:54 “Making Roses Out of Scars: A Conversation with Rabbi Mark Gellman” 

Transcript

[0:00:00]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: Hello. I’m Rabbi Mark Gellman, and welcome to The God Squad, a podcast you can believe in. Today we’re talking about scars. That’s right, today we’re talking about scars, because this is a podcast about things we all share, things that are common to our humanity, and scars is definitely one of them. Let me begin with my scar. I have a few, but my most important scar is the scar on my chest. It runs right down my chest, and it was put there by a surgeon’s knife when I was ten years old. He was trying to correct what’s called in medicine, apectus excavator, which is a basically depressed breastbone that was pressing on my heart.

[0:01:14]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: It’s part of a genetic defect I have called Marfan Syndrome. The wound on my chest healed up right away, but the wound on my soul, on my character, on me, bled for years. You see, I was ashamed of the scar on my chest. I played all sports, except I never learned to play basketball because I just wouldn’t play shirts and skins where there was a chance I would have to take off my shirt and reveal my scar after gym class. In fact, I showered in a separate shower room, and I rarely went to the beach with friends in the summer.

[0:02:08]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: Eventually, in college, a beautiful woman told me that she thought my body was hot, and I immediately married her. Well, I married her as soon as she agreed, that is. And suddenly, at that moment, I was not ashamed of my scar anymore. Some years into our marriage, I reminded Betty of how much what she had said had meant to me. And she said that what she meant was that she thought I had a fever. But by then, it didn’t matter.

[0:02:49]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: My scar had already healed. And even now, after I shower and after I look at myself in the mirror, in all of my naked and massive corpulence, I still look at my scar and I think about how much I suffered because of that mark on my flesh. But I also think about how I would not be the person I am today without that scar. The same scar that disfigured my body, you see, helped me to work on my soul, my nature, my character.

[0:03:31]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: The mark that decreased my body image, increased my compassion for others. The thing that made me hurt helped me to feel the hurt of others. It took me years to see my scar. Not as a disfigurement, but as a blessing. Yes, an unwanted blessing, to be sure, but a blessing nonetheless. Now, after many years of looking at the scar on my chest, I am certain that it has helped me deal with life in a deeper and more compassionate way.

[0:04:11]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: Today, I want you to think about the scars that you bear on your body and the scars that you bear on your soul and try to see them in the same wise and weathered way. So what do we learn from our scars? Well, we learn that there really are three kinds of scars. Some of our scars happen because we do the right thing and we get scarred for it. Some of our scars happen because we do the wrong thing and we get scarred by it.

[0:04:53]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: And some of our scars happen because of nothing that has anything to do with our virtue or our moral weakness. They’re just accidental scars that happen when we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. So first, let’s think about our virtue scars. Virtue scars are the result of doing the right thing. They are the marks left on our bodies and on our characters when we suffer for doing good. They are the marks left by our moments of courage.

[0:05:44]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: They are the marks that remind us that some things are really worth fighting for. It hurts to be scarred for doing the right thing. But it is only in that risk that the world and our lives are redeemed. Some of you bear virtue scars that were cut into you when you fought for our country. God bless your scars. Some of you bear the scars of a C section from a risky and protracted labor to deliver a healthy baby.

[0:06:20]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: God bless your scars. Some of you bear the scars of a fight where you were protecting a friend or perhaps just a stranger in need. God bless your scars. And some of you bear the scars of losing a job or a client or a friend because you would not cheat or steal or lie or gossip. God bless your scars. When you look at your virtue scars and ask yourself would I take this scar again for doing the right thing?

[0:06:57]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: If the answer is yes, then it’s not a scar at all, but a badge of moral courage. It is the indisputable sign that you really do believe what you say you believe. Our virtue, after all, is not the sum of our beliefs about what is right. Our virtue, when you get down to it, is the sum of the scars we bear from actually doing the right thing. And that is why God wants to see our scars. God wants to judge our virtue by what we have sacrificed to protect it.

[0:07:37]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: There’s a saying in Proverbs god always wounds the one he loves. It’s not God that wounds us and it’s rather that we willingly accept our wounds when we decide to become good people or people trying to be good. All people who try and are scarred because of it bear goodness into our darkened world. Our scars of virtue are the most enduring and ineluctable signs of our service to the good and to human flourishing.

[0:08:24]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: We become what we were supposed to be. When we are scarred for the good, the second type of scar we bear is different. Of course. It’s not a virtue scar, but a mistake scar a moral mistake. These scars are the marks that remind us of our moral weakness not our strength, our moral lassitude, not our moral courage, our brokenness and not our wholeness. They happen when we ignore what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

[0:09:08]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: The proper reaction to mistake scars is shame. Now, shame is not guilt. Guilt is often a self destructive and demeaning emotion. Guilt is when we beat ourselves up about nothing. Shame is when we beat ourselves up about something. Guilt is when we feel responsible for everything that anyone ever did wrong. And shame is when we feel responsible for what we actually did wrong. Guilt aims at nothing constructive. Shame aims at repentance and forgiveness. Shame is the clear viewing of the ways we have fallen short and the clear knowing that it was in our power to do better.

[0:10:05]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: Those two knowings that are the challenge that we face every day. The knowing that we could do better and the knowing that we did not. Those are the engine of moral improvement but they are blocked when we engage in self deception and evasion and victimology and a thousand other excuses to shift the blame or deny the blame or cast the blame away from the place it most surely deserves to be. And that place is our own moral weakness.

[0:10:46]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: In addition to virtue scars and sin scars, there’s a third type of scar the accidental scar. This is the scar we bear neither because of our moral weakness or because of our moral virtue but simply because of accidents or abuse, genetic inheritance or socioeconomic disadvantage or the thousand accidents implicated in our genome and our birth. These are the scars that are like the scar on my chest. They are the result of being dealt a few bad genetic cards.

[0:11:35]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: The challenge and choice presented to us by these accidental scars is, however, also profound. They present us with a choice the choice of viewing these inherited physical, social or emotional limitations as disfigurements or as opportunities for a new wisdom and for deeper compassion. There’s a wise story by Shell Silverstein called The Missing Piece which makes the point in a modern idiom. It’s a story about a circle that was missing a piece, a large triangular wedge that had been cut out of it.

[0:12:20]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: The circle wanted to be whole, with nothing missing. So it went around looking for its missing piece. But because it was incomplete, it could only roll very slowly as it rolled through the world. And as it rolled slowly, it admired the flowers along the way. It chatted with butterflies. It was warmed by the sunshine. It found lots of pieces, but none of them fit. Then one day, it found a piece that fit perfectly.

[0:12:46]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: It was so happy. Now it could be whole with nothing missing. It took up the missing piece and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle it could roll very fast but too fast to notice the flowers, too fast to talk to the butterflies. When it realized how different the world seemed, when it rolled through so quickly it stopped and it left its missing piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away, realizing for the first time that it was missing nothing.

[0:13:27]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: The Great Story some of you have done this, and you are my heroes. You are my teachers in this, in making lemonade out of lemons. Some of you bear the scars of learning disabilities, and yet you learn. Some of you bear the scars of physical deformities, and yet you play. Some of you bear the scars of betrayal, and yet you still love. Some of you bear the scars of loss, and yet you still hope. Some of you bear the scars of abuse, and yet you still can find a way to believe in other people’s love.

[0:14:17]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: Some of you bear the scars of poverty, and yet you are generous. Some of you bear the scars of physical or emotional abuse, and still you are able to care for others and love them. You have transformed your weakest moments into testimonies of your strength as you have transformed your scars from marks of failure to signs of triumph, from numbing fear to the life of faith and from disfigurements to the most exquisite adornments of your weathered but still life affirming souls.

[0:14:55]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: And all of you know the same thing you are not strong enough or brave enough or wise enough to do this alone. You had partners in this work of scar transformation, people who believed in you, people who love you. For those of you who are religious, you know that your partner in all of this was God. There’s a story about a king who had a very large ruby that he treasured more than any of his other precious gems.

[0:15:30]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: One day in an earthquake, the ruby fell from its case and bounced down the stone steps of the castle. When it was recovered and cleaned, the king discovered that the ruby had a deep scratch on its most visible facet. He called all the royal jewelers to examine the ruby, but none of them could remove the deep and disfiguring scratch. The king grabbed the ruby and retreated to his inner sanctum to mourn the ruining of his precious possession.

[0:16:03]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: Then the king’s granddaughter came to him and said softly, grandpa, would you give me the ruby? The king huffed, Take it. What do I care now? It’s ruined now. Days passed, and the king did not emerge from his room. Then suddenly, there was a knock on the door, and the king’s granddaughter entered quietly and approached the king, who was sitting in his bed, looking out into space. Without saying a word, she put the ruby into her grandfather’s hand and turned and left the room.

[0:16:38]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: In a moment, the king exploded through the door and screamed, where are you, my dear, my genius, my lovely granddaughter. She looked up from the bottom of the grand staircase and smiled. The king hugged her and kissed her on the cheek and summoned his jewelers and courtiers. And with all of them present, he said, what none of you could do, my granddaughter accomplished. Look. He placed the ruby on a table near a window with bright light. And there they all gasped and smiled and congratulated the king’s granddaughter.

[0:17:16]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: What she did was to engrave the petals of a rose flower at one end of the scratch, using the scratch as the stem of a rose. The rose looked so natural, it seemed as if that ruby had been created all along just to hold that rose. And we can do with our scars what the king’s granddaughter did with that ruby. We can make our scars the stems of a bouquet of roses for God and for each other and for the world.

[0:17:54]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: What seems at first to be a wound can be the foundation for a new design for our lives. What we once saw as a disfigurement of our body or our soul caused by terrible accident or fate or fortune can be transformed into a thing of beauty, wisdom, compassion, and love. Helen Keller made a rose out of her blindness. Beethoven made a rose out of his deafness. I knew a man, Henry Viscardi, who made a rose out of his shriveled limbs and helped to pass the Americans for Disabilities Act.

[0:18:37]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: And my pal Tommy father, Tom Hartnett, made a rose out of his Parkinson’s disease. We can all make roses out of scars. The way we view our scars is a choice. That’s the lesson here. We can blame others or improve ourselves. We can deny our moral weakness, or we can try harder to be better than we were. We can sink into self pity or make roses. The choice is ours. And our families and our friends and our community in the world waits for us to declare our choice with our lives.

[0:19:33]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: It is our fate, but our choice to be decorated or disfigured by our scars. You. I’m Rabbi Mark Elman. Thanks for listening to the God Squad. The god squad podcast is a production of the mark gellman institute. I know the guy. And this episode was produced by Steve Lubetkin. And until next time, you can find us on Google, Apple, Spotify, and many other fine podcast locations. I’d love to hear from you at God Squadpodcast.com.

[0:20:26]  Rabbi Marc Gellman: God bless us, one and all.