Genesis Cycle Four

Vayigash

How do we accept people who mess us over? How do we bless the darkness that reigns over ourselves and others ?

Here’s a scene. Someone you love has hurt you. Let’s say he is your husband and has left you. Then he needs something from you. He needs you to stay quiet maybe. Not to be too open about your life. He, in turn, has been suffering and you have grown. What do you do the moment of meeting?

Here’s another scene. Your family has not told you that your father is dying. You live far away. You know he’s sick and want to visit but are told not to. You listen. He dies. They then take your inheritance. Years later they try and do nice things, pay visits, give birthday presents, send small checks to the children. What do you do each time you see them?

It is so easy to push people away. It’s so easy to see actions on this earth as self-directed, born from the minds of individuals, born from the muscles, the hearts of mankind. It’s so easy to do a deep-dive into subjectivity and place the world into a dark cave, one filled with billions of needs, trillions of human feelers. This world…the one of which I am speaking…is created by jealousy, greed, kindness, fear, ego and even human soul. It pounds to the rhythm of human-want. It is a world in which forgiveness is a continuous action always recurring never complete. It’s the one in which we take everything personally. And I think we all know what it’s like to take things a bit too personally.

But what if action does not completely come from us? But from an amorphous merge and flow that holds us all? What if connections and separations are all merely waves on one ocean, all contributing to the delicate and intricate atmospheric conditions that assure our survival? What if there is a dual responsibility and the here-and-now is determined by individual volition as well as by this all-encompassing pulse? This is a world in which forgiveness is already accomplished, a done deal. Hurtful actions and forgiveness are concurrent in this set-up. We move on from pain because it’s the obvious thing to do. All that’s left is to bless.

And there’s your mother. And she has flown ten hours to visit you for two days and to see your children. She wants to take you out to dinner.

And there’s your ex-husband. And it’s important that he know something. But you hear the voice on the voicemail and the words are slurred and he’s drunk or just plain out-of-it.

Do you throw arrows at them, slam the door in their faces, kick them out of town, out of your house, out of your face, let them starve for your light, the kind you know reaches way beyond the sun and stars, the kind you’ve been developing since all of this happened, since you’ve been so devastatingly hurt? Do you forgive but still cringe at the thought of them? Do you withhold your blessing?

Or are you grateful for what has occurred in the time/schism, the gifts you have received, the steps you have climbed, how you have arrived at a place of greater giving and peace…and are you aware that something has to be done…so do you embrace them? Really embrace them? Without faking it, pretending, embracing for the sake of appearance? And not only that…do you bless the darkness that reigns over them?

This is what happens in Torah. Jacob blesses the Pharoah.

Before we continue therefore I want to look at the idea of blessing. What is a blessing anyway?

In Berakhot 9:1 we read that we are to bless for the evil as well as for the good because we are to love God with all our heart…with both inclinations. We also read in the same mishnah that we are not to enter the temple mount with stick, shoes, wallet or the dust on our feet. If we are to bless therefore…as we do in the temple…we need to let go of anything that attaches us to worldly needs and perspectives…the stick, the shoes, the dust on our feet (in other words our personal stuff) as well as concepts of good and evil. So, to bless we need to make ourselves into a vessel. Clean. Clear. Open. True.

This is because the act of blessing is the act of funneling our light…given from God…to another person or group of people and even back to God. And if we are clean clear open and true it’s a lot easier. We are to walk in God’s ways and bless. Even in out liturgy we bless God…baruch atah adonay…26 times before we arrive at the Sh’ma. Since the number 26 in gematria is God we are blessing God while becoming God. And this is a lesson. We become that which we bless. We insert our heightened selves into the soul of that person or that being. And in so doing we bring peace and healing to families torn or ruled over by darkness. We bless the darkness so that we can become it so our light will enter it, transform it and raise it. We bless God so we can take on God’s radiance to rise to that holy place. God blesses us to approach us.

As I have said in this weeks parasha Vayigash in 47:10 Jacob blesses the Pharoah..

Let's remember that Joseph, as he says, was sent ahead of his family even if his brothers meant evil. Yes, his brothers throw him into a pit, and sell him to the Egyptians. They show his blood stained cloak to his father so even his father does not look for him. Yet Joseph sees these actions that would be unforgivable to so many as merely connections and disconnections in a much larger picture. In 50:20 he says that God made it this way so the life of a great nation can be preserved. Talmudic rabbis interpret this as a reference to how Joseph saves the Egyptians from famine.

But I think Joseph is also referring to this blessing by Jacob. I think that much of this happens so that Jacob, his father, can fulfill God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, 22:18, 26:4 and 28:14 that all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.

A blessing of this sort does certainly lift up the whole world and it takes the whole world to come to God if we are to come at all.

Bringing this to today: In life we act out past dramas, present concerns, yesterdays emotions, todays fears, tomorrows doubts. Friends and lovers can slide back and forth with earthly concerns, petty difficulties, expectations and assumptions, ego-pits, mind-dumps. I think the true Jewish practice is continually trying not to take the small things too seriously and not pausing too long around the actions that have felt so horribly hurtful. If we can do this… bless the darkness that causes the actions… breathe a sigh of relief…feel the joy of the blessing as it passes through us… watch carefully and with compassion as we help each other to rise…I think in a reciprocal way the acting-out will fade. And more and more we will all become messengers here simply to bless with joy and to love God. This is the world I want to see. I write this last paragraph with gratitude for a friend who has watched me act-out more times than I can count. Maybe 26 times in all.

As Rumi writes:

Why would God want a second God? Fall in love in such a way

that it frees you from any connecting. Love is the soul’s light, the taste of morning

no me, no we, no claim of being. These words are the smoke the fire gives off as

it absolves its defects, as eyes in silence. Tears, face. Love cannot be said.