We tend to be mired in the concrete, our perspective limited by what we can comprehend and know and hold on to. Hanukkah reminds us to open to the mysterious, the miraculous, the magical, the unknown.
Not Enough Oil
They thought that little jug had only enough oil to last one day. We feel that sense of insufficiency and lack a lot – not enough time and space and resources, not enough attention and love and goodness to really fill the need. Sometimes we feel like Pharaoh in his dream – that the skinny cows are eating up the fat cows, that scarcity is the ultimate victor.
And the thing is that there is truth to this story of insufficiency. On a realistic, concrete level, there are limits. There was only one jug of oil and it should, by the normal laws of nature, have run out after a single day of use. We do get tired and run out of energy. Sometimes there isn’t enough time to do everything we need to do. The Maccabees did have a much smaller army than the Greeks.
All of this is true on one level of existence, the space of concrete reality, the space of counting and knowing and measuring and predicting, the space of analyzing the data and declaring what is possible in a strictly rational way – one jug will last only one day..
Letting Go Of The Need to Know
Chanukah invites us to enter a different zone. We can ask these concrete, rational parts of us to make space for this other zone. It’s ok if they are skeptical or don’t understand it. It is a place to let go of the intensity of our need to know and find explanations, and instead to enter the Magical Kingdom where mystery abides unexplained. .
How do we let go of these rational parts of us that do want to calculate and know? There is an interesting law about the Chanukah light, that it cannot be used for any practical purpose, and the classic example of this practical use is to count coins. To count coins is to be in that practical concrete mindset of finding out the exact amount, of thinking that you can know and figure it out and that obtaining this information will help make us secure. This is where we normally put our trust, in the count, in the measurement of oil, in the gathering of data.
Looking Up Into The Light
But Chanukah asks us to look up from our coin counting at the light itself, to behold the eternal source, the mysterious light that stands behind it all. You can imagine yourself first looking downward at your coins or maybe, in our day, at our phones, imagine yourself looking downward in focused concentration on some rational task of knowing, trying to figure something out, feel your slumped shoulders, heavy and tight with the need to understand and to know, your body bent over in concentration and striving, your head tense from such sustained focus, and and then release the tightness in your shoulders and your forehead, letting go of the need to fully know, lift your head and look up at the Chanukah light. I don’t need to understand this light. I can just behold its glory.
Feel the light shining on you, warming you like a patch of sunlight on a cold winter day. Sense its radiance and otherworldly nature. Hear it whispering, inviting – “There is more to this world than you can possibly know. Come into the mystery.” We can let all those parts of us that need to count and know and understand, we can let them rest here, let them pause their ceaseless striving and relax into this space of the Beyond.
Abundance
All the worry over lack melts in the face of this light’s abundance. You thought there was only enough oil for one day, and by human rational calculations, in the world of coin counting, that assessment was accurate. But now we enter this other universe, and here, in the Magical Kingdom or perhaps Queendom, when we drop our counting and look up, we discover a cornucopia, an expansiveness, a capacity for growth in all directions. Maybe you can see how the light spreads, the aura keeps extending outward. We have reached the source and the source is endless. A lightbulb goes out, has limitations, but the sun does not. The Chanukah oil keeps burning beyond our expectations. We were holding tight onto our few coins to keep them safe, but now we float in an ocean of abundance, feeling plenty all around us.
Maybe you have some task on your mind that needs doing right now. Let the Chanukah light take that burden off your shoulders. We are prohibited from using this light for any practical purpose. This is not the space of doing, but only of being, resting in being. This light gives you life without effort, it feeds you without your counting of coins to pay for it. There is no doing or earning or fixing in its presence. There is only being, just as you are.
Your Own Abundance
And in the glow of this light, maybe you can sense your own enoughness. Mixed into that feeling of lack and scarcity is an underlying sense of your own perpetual inadequacy, that somehow no matter what you do, it will not be enough, never enough. You feel like the little jug of oil that has such limited capacities, is surely not enough for this life, for this job. But now, in the glow of the Chanukah light, you become aware of your own radiance, your own abundance. You see your light in its light. Be’orkha nireh or. In Your light, God, we see light. In your light, we see our light. We see it reflected back to us, are reminded of who we really are, that we, too, are made of this otherworldly light. Light reflects light. Feel the radiance of your own inner glow. Like the little jug of oil, you have been under-estimated in your capacities. There is eternity, there is abundance, there is this magical light inside you, too.
Dishanta bashemen roshi, You, God, have anointed my head with oil. The Chanukah oil flows over you from your head down to your toes, a divine flow of love and light and nobility, marking you, reminding you of who you really are, of the sacred eternal light that lives inside you, so that you remember and feel that kosi revayah that “my cup overflows.” I, too, am an overflowing cup of oil and light and radiance. I am a small jug whose capacities have been underestimated. I have so much more than anyone, including me, ever imagined, so much more light, so much more love, so much more to share and offer.
Shining the Light Out
On Chanukah, we shine all that abundant light outwards to the larger dark world around us. We place our menorahs in the window for others to see. We offer our light to the world. That is all we can do right now, and it is a lot – to fully inhabit your own glorious light and let it shine outward. Light moves naturally outward, it impacts its surroundings, its aura spreads, even over large spaces. Maybe you can imagine taking down all the walls in the world for this one moment, and letting your light shine endlessly to all corners of the earth.
And In
And as you do that, maybe also remembering the dark corners of your own soul, offering them, too, your light, and bringing to mind, too, the rational parts of you that count coins, and gathering them up, too, in the embrace of your own light, not leaving them behind, but gathering them all up like precious coins inside you, including them in the light.
Towards One Another
And on a more personal scale, we can also turn towards one another like a shamash, each kindling each other’s light with our own, each of us offering our light as a way of reflecting the light in the other person, beholding their light and our own in an infinitely reflecting mirror – the more I feel my own light, the more I see yours, and the more I see yours, the more you can see yours and I can see mine reflected back to me again, an ever increasing mirroring of light. We can feel the flow and overflow, the give and take, the reflection back and forth of light between us, and we can bask in the greater communal light that we create together.
As the Israeli children’s Chanukah song goes, kol ehad hu or katan. “Each one is a small light.” Vekulanu or eitan. “And all of us together are a mighty light.” Surah khoshekh, hal’ah shekhor. “Turn away, darkness, off you go, night.” Surah mipneh ha’oar. “Turn away before the light.” We send out the magical, mysterious light that is inside us, ever abundant and overflowing, we send it out into the dark wintery night.
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