TOL’DOT | Making room for all of us to be blessed

וַיִּתְרֹֽצֲצוּ הַבָּנִים בְּקִרְבָּהּ וַתֹּאמֶר אִם־כֵּן לָמָּה זֶּה אָנֹכִי וַתֵּלֶךְ לִדְרשׁ אֶת־יְהוָֹֽה

The children pressed against each other inside her. She thought: “If this is so, why do I exist?” So she went to inquire of God.

Genesis 25:22

 

The twins, Jacob and Isaac, are struggling in Rebecca’s womb and she cries out to God, “Why? Why do I exist if this is life?” God replies to her that this struggle is necessary and will continue. It will not be fair or just or understandable. One nation will rule over the other, this is their karma.

Jacob and Esau, the two boys, come into the world with the karma and trauma of struggle in their bodies and very being. Jacob grasps his brother’s heel as they go through the birth canal together, perhaps crying in his heart to heal the separation. Later, Esau cries to their father Isaac, “Please, father, bless me too! Isn’t there space for both of us to be blessed?”

This is the question for our time, for all time. Isn’t there room for all of us to be blessed? Isn’t there a way to heal the trauma of violence and separation that we all have been born into and that gets passed on and re-lived through the narratives, cultures, and systems of domination?

I thought about this today as I stood in vigil in support of Black Lives Matter. I have stood with others in my town for more than 5 months at the base of one of Asheville’s monuments to the former slave-owning class.

I am a white-bodied person, holding a sign that says, post election, “Stay Involved Because Black and Brown Lives Matter.” Every now and then, a passing driver shouts at me, “All lives matter.”

I give them a thumbs up because I agree, all lives matter. I can embrace what I imagine is fear and confusion in the shouters when they interpret "black and brown lives matter" as meaning,  you don’t matter.

And still, I hold my stand in support of Black Lives Matter because I don’t want to ignore the historical and present truth that we live in a system here that has prospered by devaluing and committing violence against black and brown lives.

How do we live our lives without choosing sides and still not ignoring what seems true about our own history and experiences? This is the nonduality of being, neither attached nor ignoring.

In a Zen Buddhist teaching story the teacher holds up a stick of bamboo to his student and asks, “What is this?” If you say it’s bamboo you’re attached. If you say it isn’t bamboo, you are ignoring.

Let us make space for everyone to be blessed, each according to the blessing they choose.

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Toldot/Generations:  Avraham’s Teshuvah

     This is the story of Yitzchak, son of Avraham. 

     Avraham begot Yitzchak.

     Genesis Toldot 25:19

Long after

Avraham begot Yitzchak

he haggled over land

to bury a wife

whose last moments

were a shofar blast of

three unbearable wails -

He could never

get it out of his body

or his mind even with

the busyness of 

finding a wife 

for a son who like God

would never come face to

face with him again. 

Where does wisdom

and forgiveness live?

Everywhere and nowhere,

in Ur, Haran and the valleys

and roads of Canaan, in that

inner concealed geography

from which he was always 

arriving and departing,

a wanderer till the end. 

Elana Klugman

edit. 11-4-21

____________________

My Son the Man

Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,

the way Houdini would expand his body

while people were putting him in chains. It seems

no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper,

guide his calves into the gold interior,

zip him up and toss him up and

catch his weight. I cannot imagine him

no longer a child, and I know I must get ready,

get over my fear of men now my son

is going to be one. This was not

what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a

sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,

snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,

and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me

the way Houdini studied a box

to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.

Sharon Olds, 1996