That Can’t Be All: Vayak’hel
Just the other day, a friend texted that she has to go for surgery next week and she’s scared.
I started thinking right away how I could support her. I decided I should offer to organize and lead a healing circle for her. I immediately went into overdrive, planning it all in my head.
At first she had a hard time accepting such a gift. She was embarrassed. How could she deserve such a thing? And to be the center of attention like that?
I told her the wise things others had said to me in the past, but that I never really believed applied to me—that in receiving you are giving, and how important it is to learn to receive as much as to give. Platitudes, but true.
Once she’d accepted these tenets, she said she’d like to ask others to make offerings, and I immediately relaxed. I could breathe. I didn’t have to do it all myself. I could let it unfold in a more relaxed way. We talked and I sent out an email.
No sooner had I done that than people started responding. It seemed like every singly person wanted to offer something—a prayer, a psalm, a song, a poem.
All were humble, saying only if there was room for them. Of course there was room!
But then it got to the point where so many offers were pouring in, I wondered if I should tell them, no more! But how could I? The richness of it and the desire to give were so beautiful and touching.
It made me laugh, because it reminded me of this week’s Torah reading; the Israelites are asked to bring their gifts of precious metals, special yarns, stones, skins, craftsmanship as offerings to help in the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle, that temporary dwelling place for God in the desert.
The response is so great that Moses has to say, Okay, enough! Stop. There’s too much.
But I wondered, how can it be too much?
It feels like such a let-down when a person wants to give and they’re told they can’t. I thought, there must be other channels for these gifts.
Because there can never be an over-abundance of love and sharing, and that’s what the gifts represent. They are our natural desire to build something beautiful for others, but also for the common good.
Again, like I talked about last week in “I Asked for Rags” in relation to our limited imaginations, there must be another way of using all the offerings; there are endless ways that society needs improvement.
As for me, it was another lesson in accepting help from others as a gift as well, and that I don’t have to do it alone, either.
May we open our imaginations and find ever more creative ways of giving and accepting gifts—for, as much as it is a platitude, in the receiving there is giving, and in the giving, there is receiving.
And say Amen.
