Encounter the Mystery
Rabbi Ron Shulman
Shabbat Vayetzei 5771
Robin and I were driving home one night a couple of weeks ago. It was about 11:30 p.m. We were heading toward Pikesville on the Beltway, approaching exit 17. Suddenly, a large deer jumped the meridian from the Outer Loop of the Beltway and landed right in front of us, interrupting our conversation and drive. Quickly, I did what I could to stop and swerve away. I was unsuccessful. Fortunately, there were no other cars in our vicinity. The deer and the front ride side of our car weren’t as lucky. After impact, the deer scampered away. The car is in the shop. And, thankfully, we’re absolutely fine.
Robin and I, of course, were startled by our encounter with this deer. But once we got home, learned that insurance would help with the car repairs, and told a few folks what happened, we put the experience behind us. In truth, the only thought that lingered for the next day or two was the timing, the coincidence of meeting the deer at that precise moment.
Had we been driving a bit faster or slower, had we left the theater a few minutes earlier or later, had we been slowed by traffic, had the deer meandered a few more feet down the roadside before leaping, had any number of things happened just slightly differently, we and the deer never would have met.
How true for all of our lives. So many, if not most of our chance encounters and daily experiences result from the convergence of movements, decisions, and circumstances completely beyond our design and control.
We all bump into people we didn’t expect to see. We’ve all been pleased to find ourselves in the right place at the right time. We’ve all been troubled to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’ve all found what we were looking for just at that minute we needed to have it.
“Look,” demands Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, a modern day Jewish mystic. “I understand about coincidence and even what Jungians call synchronicity. But suppose there is something going on in the universe which is to ordinary, everyday reality as our unconscious is to our daily lives? Softly, but unmistakably guiding it. Pushing us here, pulling us there, tripping us up, guiding our steps, feeding us our lines. Most of the time, we are unaware of it. Yet every now and then, on account of some apparent ‘fluke,’ we are startled by the results of its presence, chastened by the forces it exerts on our own secret premeditations. We realize that we have been part of something with neither our consciousness nor consent. It is so sweet – and then it is gone.”
Think about his words. I often do. They run counter to what I do believe. I don’t believe God directs the course of our lives, but I do believe that God is present in the experiences of our lives. Just the same, Rabbi Kushner’s words make me pause every time I seek meaning, the sense of God’s presence in some coincidental encounter.
Consider Rachel’s cry to Jacob and his response to her in this morning’s Torah portion. We read, “When Rachel saw that she had borne Jacob no children, she became envious of her sister; and Rachel said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die.’”
Recall that Jacob’s uncle Laban required Jacob to marry his older daughter Leah first, before Jacob was allowed to marry Rachel. When Rachel cries out to Jacob, her sister Leah has already given birth to Jacob’s first four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
Also, understand the Torah’s perspective. While we bear genuine and gentle sensitivity toward our family members and friends who share Rachel’s angst and desire to be parents, in the Torah it is God who determines that each of our matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel should conceive.
Jacob is angered by Rachel’s ultimatum. Incensed, he yells, “Can I take the place of God?” It is, to be kind, a surprising response. He is insensitive to his beloved, favored wife. I imagine that he is angry he cannot share with her what he has enjoyed with Leah. I don’t think Jacob views this as the challenge of circumstance or difficult coincidence. I assume Jacob believes God controls his family’s destiny.
I can’t do that. God’s presence supports me when times are tough, and heartens me when things are good. God does not control what may happen. And most certainly, neither do I. I find God in my ability to respond to what is, in the promise and pain of adjusting, caring, coping, healing, growing, and celebrating.
Still, we can share something very powerful and compelling with our patriarch Jacob and the modern mystic Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. We can learn to pause and look at the surprising and mundane moments of our lives through a different lens.
Rabbi Kushner teaches that we are too often unaware of how we are connected to each other, and to life’s mystery, through our lives’ circumstances and everyday coincidences.
Jacob sensed the same thing, waking from his dream with which the story of his journey begins. “Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Eternal God is present in this place, and I did not know it!”
The next time you are surprised, the next time you encounter something unexpected, the next time you find yourself wondering about an experience how it is or what it means, recognize that in every encounter of our lives we discover both the happenstance of coincidence and the presence of God.
Though we live in such a vast world of people and places, we repeat the routines of our lives over and over. We return again and again to familiar locations and activities. That’s why for all the times we miss something or someone, we’re surprised every now and again when we meet them.
The joy of our lives is to discover so much wonder and curiosity. The privilege of our lives is to encounter the mystery.
© 2010 Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman
