When something happens where you realize you could have died, it’s a chance to think about things. It can even be seen as a gift to reevaluate things.

Last week, returning from a food-shopping trip, I was standing with my neighbor Nelson (you know him) at a bus stop, and we were checking the app to see when the next bus would be arriving. Suddenly we turned around, and there it came!

For some reason, the bus stop shelter had been built about thirty feet from the bus stop post, so we had to hurry. I knew there was an old man sitting inside the shelter, so I was sure the bus driver would stop there. I rushed with my cart in tow. Just as I reached the shelter, squeezed dangerously between one wall and the curb, the bus came full speed ahead, missing me by inches. Then we had to run back in the other direction, the old man hobbling behind us, to catch the bus.

Was the bus driver having a fantasy of running me over? He had to have seen the old man waiting. Why would he make him run too?

We got on the bus, took a seat, and the old man sat opposite me. Of course, we immediately started complaining loudly about the bus driver. Why was he being so aggressive? “He saw you sitting there!” The old man nodded.

In my mind, I wondered about this false construct we live with called race. The old man was Black, as was the bus driver, so it would seem that he would want to be kind to the older man. On the other hand, was he lashing out at me as an older white woman who represented so much that is wrong with society?

Across the aisle, there was a woman who had seen the whole thing, a Latina woman who had just come from the food pantry, and we all complained together of the aggressiveness of some bus drivers. Then she got up and went to the bus driver, asking directions with “sweety” this and “sweety” that.

Nelson and I laughed about her sudden change of attitude.

But it made me think, maybe that’s exactly what he needs: love, not scolding and anger.

Perhaps the bus driver was having a really hard day. Maybe his life sucks right now, or in general. Maybe he’s angry at the world.

Or maybe none of it was intentional. Maybe he’d been speeding to get across the avenue and misjudged the distance to the bus stop, and couldn’t safely slow down faster.

In this week’s Torah reading, God gives Moses the instructions for building the Mishkan, the mobile home for God to “dwell amongst” the Israelites as they move through the desert over the next forty years. They are asked to bring gifts from the heart, materials to help build the sanctuary. They bring so much that they are finally told to stop; it’s too much.

What does it mean, “dwell amongst” them? Isn’t God omnipresent, unable to pin down, put away, place in a box? If we wonder if there is “a God,” then it certainly is easy to question God’s existence precisely because…well, honestly, isn’t it obvious? We can be apologetic and talk about God existing but not dwelling amongst us, retreating from the world after creating it, leaving it up to us (which is one theology), but that’s still problematic when we think of the mess we’re in. Can’t God step in once in a while, please, and help us?? Even a little??

So I’m thinking, since God “dwelling amongst” us sounds way too abstract, maybe it’s easier to talk about being “godly” as human beings, or acting in a “godly” manner; if God has left it up to us (free will and all, you know), it’s our job to heal the world. Thus, we can choose between caring for other people’s pain or ignoring it, as one example, between inflicting more pain or being a vehicle for healing.

I keep thinking about the Jewish Florida Man from a couple weeks back who shot a car 17 times thinking the people inside were Palestinian. It turned out they were Israeli Jews, a father and son visiting. (They were fine, thank God, though traumatized, I’m sure). And then the father went and posted on social media that they’d been shot by a Palestinian!

Meanwhile, organizations like AIPAC and the ADL were completely silent around it I guess because it’s just too embarrassing to talk about a double whammy hate crime on the part of Jews who are always claiming to be the victims. This is a dangerous mentality. It’s so much easier to be the victim than to take responsibility for our own actions and stop pointing fingers. Without a doubt, antisemitism is on the rise, but so is anti-Arab sentiment.

We’re in an all-around tragic political situation that’s caused a rise in hatred and hate crimes, which has in turn but also separately for other political reasons, made some people think it’s okay to just shoot someone because of assumptions they make.

This combined with the incident last week with the bus driver got me thinking about how we inflict and cause more pain in the world through our assumptions, and how we put people in boxes with our presumptions, the way we’d like to be able to put God in a box and know exactly what he/she/they are all about, the way we’d like to understand this crazy world.

So instead of worrying about God dwelling amongst us, maybe we should worry more about how we can think and act in more godly ways.

How generous am I in my thoughts and assumptions about others, like that bus driver? How can I be a vehicle for healing and love in the world as opposed to perpetuating anger and violence?

If I can’t say I am acting in those godly ways, then I shouldn’t be pointing any fingers.

So, what gifts can we each bring to this very messy world right now?

May we constantly reevaluate our attitudes and actions—without needing a brush with death!

May our gifts be so abundant that we come to a point where we’ve built a world where “God” can dwell amongst us.

And please say Amen.