For a year now we have been reading the Torah. It began far away from us in distance and time, galaxies upon galaxies and eons upon eons. . A cosmological combustion that cooled into oceans and soil and rock, sea creatures and land animals and birds, and the human.
We read of a mythical paradise in which the human could not abide. Gently Torah took us by the hand and eased us into the realm of sagas, stories about characters who lived large and for years far beyond those of anyone we ourselves have known. Seamlessly the narrative turned into a language that sounded more like history, with waypoints we could identify: Egypt, slavery, freedom, lawgiving, a caravan of displaced people on a trek toward safety and a place to call home.
Unaware of being lured into self-awareness, we reach this, the penultimate Torah portion, Haazinu (“Give ear”). And we are shocked to discover: This whole book, this whole year of reading, has not been about others. It has been about ourselves! “All the words of this Torah, it is not an empty thing for you, for it is your life…” (Deuteronomy 32:46-47).
One of America’s greatest poets, Walt Whitman, wrote of this fusion of self and others and nature and universe, of the divinity of common things:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
….
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own…
(“Song of Myself”)
Torah has compassionately guided us through a story-telling that helps us to discover both the storms that rage within us and the power that we have to weather them and emerge stronger, more complete. The key practice it has taught us is to listen (shema), to give ear (haazinu), to be attuned to the oneness of all creation and to its Source. Torah concludes with us at the edge of the promise, which turns out to be that dimension where we realize its fulfillment lies in our hands. “And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own.”
It is the season for being at promise’s border and to discover our power to write the next chapters of a holy text.
