The Presents of Presence: Va-Yetzei
Yesterday: I’m standing at the sink washing and cleaning the kitchen, and suddenly I become acutely aware of the water. How amazing that I can open the faucet and clean water just pours out. I have a flash in my mind of people in places where this is still not the case.
I think, also, of the fact that I have no idea what it feels like to actually be starving.
This week’s Torah reading starts with Jacob on the run, sleeping in the open with a rock as a pillow, and his famous dream of the ladder with angels going up and down. He wakes up and states: “Surely, God is present in this place and I did not know it!”
He then makes a vow that if God stays with him, protects him, gives him food and clothing, and gets him home safe, he will accept this God.
Later in the parsha, following the beautiful story of love-at-first-sight between Jacob and Rachel, is the heartbreaking story of Leah.
Rachel is barren while Leah keeps giving birth to Jacob’s children, hoping each time that this will be the time when Jacob finally loves her.
Before the birth of her last child, she states, “Now God has taken away my disgrace,” and names this son Joseph.
The Hebrew word for “take away” is asaf, while Joseph, or Yosef, means “add”. The root of each word is the same, while the meaning of each is opposite.
Is God’s presence measured by how much abundance is in our life? If we don’t know God is there, does that mean God isn’t there?
Jacob will only accept God if he makes his life safe and abundant.
Leah’s life feels empty without the love of her husband, yet she is abundant with children. Rachel’s life feels empty without children, yet she is abundant with the love of Jacob.
This Thanksgiving many of us are mourning the fact that “it won’t be the same this year.” We can’t gather with family and friends in large groups. Some will even be completely alone.
At the same time, over the past nine months, I’ve heard over and over about the blessings that have come out of the pandemic--always in a hushed way; it’s too awful to admit that anything good could come out of so many people suffering, dying and losing loved ones. Many can’t pay rent, buy food, or have become homeless.
Without dishonoring the horrors of the past months that are continuing in much of the country, much of which could be and could have been prevented, what this pandemic is teaching us is a new way of being. There are things that have been taken away, but also things that have been added.
As we all know, material abundance does not translate into happiness or gratitude. It’s so easy to be grateful when everything is going well, and much more difficult when times are tough.
Yet, people who live with the least are often the most grateful. A person living with chronic pain might be grateful simply for a good night’s sleep. A starving person might be grateful just for a morsel of bread. I spoke with an 88-year-old woman yesterday who lives alone and who, instead of complaining about not having contact with others, is incredibly grateful for Zoom--unlike so many of us who complain we’ve had enough of it.
Our losses are real, and we need to mourn what’s been taken away, but that doesn’t take away what’s been added.
As human beings, like Rachel and Leah, we have the well-known tendency to look for and notice what’s lacking. It’s a literal survival mechanism. Perhaps Rachel wouldn’t have had a baby if she hadn’t cried out to God.
Some people call God “Presence”.
Let’s continue to find creative ways to offer the presents of our presence to each other until we have figured out a new way of being and living with each other in the world.
Because maybe that’s where God is: in our presence.
This Thanksgiving, let’s be like Jacob in the moment he wakes up from his dream and says, frightened as he was: “God was present in this place and I did not know it.”
