On the night of the last of the plagues, at exactly midnight, something extraordinary happened: There was, according to tradition, a giluy shekhinah, “a revelation of divine presence.” Below I will consider four different aspects of the revelation of that night as it might apply to our own experience.
1. In the Midst of Darkness:
This revelation happens in the darkest part of the night, hatzot halaylah, at the exact midpoint as only God can calculate it, at the point in the night when there is no longer any remaining light from the prior day nor any emerging light from the day to come.
It is at this darkest point that the divine presence is revealed to us. The root galah has two meanings – “exile” and “reveal”. It is precisely in our galut, in our exile, in our suffering of disconnection and loneliness, that we are gifted with giluy, with a revelation of presence, of continual connectedness.
Anokhi yotze betokh Mitzrayim, God says of this last plague, “I will go out into the middle of Egypt.” Into the middle of our metzarim, of our narrow straits, it is right into the middle of this pain, that God emerges and is known.
The Israelites, on this night, as they receive this revelation, are standing in a doorway marked by blood on all sides, perhaps to symbolize the hundreds of years of blood, tears and suffering of their time in Egypt. It is as if all this suffering has become a portal for them, a portal to the divine, an opening to a revelation they could not otherwise see.
How do your pain, your wounds, your trauma, your suffering, how are they or how might they become a portal for you to the sacred, a doorway to revelation, a way of opening you to seeing who you really are, to finding the divine presence that dwells inside and around you at all times? Can we lean into the darkness and find in it the precise midpoint – its midnight – a place where we can meet God inside us, through the pain itself?
2. On Dogs and Dough
Something else happens on this night of revelation, something else that marks it as a night of intense presence – the dogs stop barking and the dough stops rising. Nature senses this higher presence and ceases its endless churning, as if in shock, as if, limbs raised in movement, the camera shot freezes and all is still and silent before the Almighty, no words uttered, all the extra puff falling flat into its essence.
Maybe that can happen, too, inside us. The dogs who normally guard us, all our protective parts that are usually on high alert, scanning and shouting out danger, maybe it is possible for them, in a moment of glimpsing the divine both in and around us, maybe they can relax, recede and be silent, sensing for this moment the total safety and trust in which we are always held.
And maybe, too, the dough risers inside us, the strivers that are always reaching for more, to do more, to become bigger, better, maybe they, too, can stop their restless activity and be still, maybe they, too, as they sense the Higher Power, can relax and rest, and allow us to return to our bare minimum essence, to just that point inside us that knows this connection, the inner sanctuary where the Shekhinah dwells at all times, without our awareness.
3. The Present, Presence and Eternity
Shekhinah, presence, comes to us when we fully inhabit this present moment. Again and again in this parsha we hear the term ba’ etzem hayom hazeh, “on this very day,” hayom, this day, today, right now, the present.. There is something strange that happened to the Israelites when they stepped into the present moment. By entering the now, what was revealed to them was not just this moment, but all of time – all the future Pesach celebrations with their children and grandchildren and endless generations, including us, asking questions and telling stories – the Israelites of that time stood totally still in the present moment, and by doing so somehow entered divine time, looked out from that doorway into all of time, into the vastness of God -time, hukat olam, another repeated term in our parsha, olam, forever.
So maybe we can do that, too, stand right now in this doorway of blood, totally still in the present moment of whatever is inside us, really resting in its center, in this moment of feeling what we feel, and allowing that to be a portal into a sense of all of time. Entering into the now, the divine now, we leave our limited version of time and enter into God’s time, vast and eternal and neverending, stretching out in front of us, as if we are standing in the doorway, looking out onto a huge open field, an expanse with no end, and allowing that spaciousness to enter our nervous systems and calm us.
4. Hidden Treasures
And maybe from this doorway we can also turn around and look behind us at the past of trauma and suffering and see some hen, some grace woven into our experience, maybe we can even see the gold and silver, the hidden treasures, buried in our metzarim, our narrow straits. The Israelites, upon leaving, collected gold and silver valuables from all around Mitzrayim. It is as if they were culling the hidden treasures from their trauma, seeing the gold now through the perspective of this magical doorway. Maybe we can also sense this possibility, get a glimpse of the glimmering precious jewels that are buried in our difficulties and our suffering.
May we stand in the portal of our suffering, amidst even the deepest darkness, and find the still point of eternal connection. May we be continually shown the Presence that lives inside and around us. I give thanks for the glimpses within the night.
Photo by Rachel Anisfeld
