If God is willing to stay with me, who am I to abandon myself?
At the start of our parsha, there is a command to bring oil for lighting the Ner Tamid, the “eternal light,” each evening to last through the night (Exodus 27:20). Tamid means doing something regularly, consistently, dependably, with constancy. Always there.
That is how God is with us, like this light, always there. However we are, no matter how low or how pathetic we feel, God is still tamid with us, still regular, constant, unshakable.
I know we give lip service to this concept all the time, but I don’t think we really internalize it or understand its power to heal us. We somehow still believe that we can lose God’s love, God’s care, God’s attention, like a light that shines upon us for a moment, and then, disappointed in us, turns away its shine, its care, its presence, as if God runs hot and cold with us.
The Added Layer of Abandonment
I invite you to bring to mind the last time that you felt emotionally low, collapsed, despairing, anxious, or distressed. As human beings, we cannot avoid such difficult emotions. But the question is – did you feel God’s Ner Tamid still shining on you through your pain? Or did you – as most of us do – on top of the distress, assume on some unconscious level that you are bad for feeling this way, that you are disappointing God, that God can’t be with you in this state because you are not spacious or faithful or open enough? Many of us hold the subterranean false belief that God can’t be with us exactly as we are, that we need to first move out of this difficult place to connect to God, to get somewhere else for that access to be possible. And so, in addition to the difficult emotion itself, there is this added layer of abandonment, our own abandonment of ourselves, and an assumption of God’s parallel abandonment of us.
Meister Eckhart, a medieval Christian mystic, writes about it this way: “What do you think, that God has abandoned you, especially now? What person sees a friend in sorrow, pain or loneliness without encouraging, without being near, present? Don’t be foolish, my friend; God is here (Mark Burrow and Jon Sweeney, Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets, p. 128)”.
With Us Through the Night
The instruction in our parsha is to light the Ner Tamid each evening so that it shines through the darkness of the night. This is precisely when we need to remember God’s steadiness with us, like a good friend, through the dark night of our suffering. We don’t have to perform or put on a good face or be “in the right space.” Just as we are, tamid, this light of God’s attention is always present.
What We Have Always Longed For
I wonder if you can feel how is Ner Tamid steadiness has the capacity to pierce something inside you, something that really needs to hear this and taste this, something that has been longing all its life for just such unconditional steadfastness. It’s as if you are a young child screaming and crying in a corner with a blanket over your head and every few minutes you lift up the blanket to peek out and see if your grownup is still there with you. What would it feel like if, when you look up, you find that no one is there for you anymore, that they’ve left, given up on you? I believe this has happened to all of us in some fashion, and that we continue to do that to ourselves, to abandon ourselves in our neediest moments. Only God can be truly steadfast with us. As the Psalm says, “Though my father and my mother abandon me, the Lord gathers me in (Psalm 27:10).” Imagining the child again, maybe now when she lifts the blanket, she can sense the comforting steady presence of God’s Ner Tamid, an always presence, patient and firm, offering light and support, not moving from its place.
It is fierce, this divine quality of steadiness, like a mother holding her child’s hand as they walk through wild winds or a dangerous area of the city, fiercely holding on, not letting go through the night. I will stay with you, the Ner Tamid says to us. I will stay with you through your tantrum and your illness and your outrage. I will hold your hand as you walk through war. Maybe feeling how, whatever state you are in at this very moment, God is steadfastly walking with you.
Becoming a Ner Tamid Ourselves
I believe that part of our mission in life is to evolve and become more like God. And so we, too, have the capacity to be that Ner Tamid, to be God’s unrelenting fierce steadfast presence for ourselves and each other. Maybe you can imagine that crying little one again and feel how you have such a child inside you. Maybe you can sense her pain and her fear, and also sense in you the instinct to turn away from her, to minimize or distract, really to abandon her in her distress. And yet you also have inside you the divinely planted potential to become your own fierce Ner Tamid, the ability to say – No, this time I am staying. Like, God, I am staying with this scared, hurting part of me, wrapping her up, holding her hand as she walks through danger and fear, trauma and shame. Staying. Sensing your staying capacity, your Ner Tamid capacity, like a firmly rooted oak tree, that fierce and that steady, not budging. The reason you sometimes think God has abandoned you is because you have abandoned yourself. Learning from God. If God can stay, I can stay, too.
Ruth
It’s like Ruth. VeRut davkah bah (Ruth 1:14). Ruth stuck with her mother in law Naomi in her time of bitterness and distress. She did not turn back, did not turn away, but stuck with her, like God, asher lo azav hasdo (Ruth 2:20), who, in abundant divine kindness, did not abandon Naomi, and never does abandon us. Maybe you can imagine Ruth walking with Naomi, staying with her, and feel that fierce steadfastness in your own body, in your own hands to hold and legs to walk alongside.
A Story
A Talmudic story: It was Erev Shabbos, Friday evening, and the daughter of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa was sad. Rabbi Hanina saw her distress and asked her – my daughter, what is troubling you? She replied: I messed up today with the shabbos candles. I mixed up the vinegar and the oil, and by mistake I used vinegar instead of oil to light for shabbos. Oh, my daughter, says Rabbi Hanina – don’t worry, the One who makes oil kindle can also make vinegar kindle (Taanit 25a).
Here is what I find touching about this story. Rabbi Hanina’s daughter is sad. She feels that she has done something wrong and is distressed about it. And what Rabbi Hanina teaches her is that we don’t abandon ourselves in such moments. He teaches her this first, by himself attending to her, noticing her sadness, asking and caring about it, not dismissing or belittling or ignoring it, but staying with her in it, being present to her distress. And second, he teaches her that God, too, stays with her, that God’s light does not only shine when she does everything perfectly, but also when she “messes up.”. God’s light, God Ner Tamid, is steady in the world, and stays with her, undeterred, even when she makes mistakes, even when she feels as sour as the vinegar itself. This is indeed a miracle, that vinegar can be kindled, that our difficult moods are also a place where God’s light can reside, that God’s light stays steady with us through the vinegar of our mistakes.
When We Make Mistakes
I invite you to think of a time when you were distressed, like the daughter of Rabbi Hanina, about a mistake you made or a perceived failure. And then take in Rabbi Hanina’s response – that mistake don’t make God no nevermind. God can work with vinegar just as well as oil, with your mistakes just as well as your perfection. God’s light is here for you in your imperfection, too. It’s okay. Divine power, divine care is bigger than your mistakes. Loving yourself through the failure, not abandoning yourself, as God never does.
The command is to kindle the menorah lights each and every evening, to stay constant with it, to become that steady a light for ourselves and others. The sun rises every morning, whether or not we deserve it. What would it feel like to be that steady with ourselves, to provide positive life-affirming support to ourselves no matter what, to be on our own team every single day, even when we don’t feel like we deserve it, to offer ourselves that unconditional loving light as reliably as the sun rises and as the Ner Tamid is lit? Not to let the fact that we used vinegar instead of oil confuse us and cause us to shame ourselves and turn away the light, but to be the steady Ner Tamid for ourselves, a beacon of divine presence sending out rays of care through the dark night of need and challenge, of mistake and failure, like a lighthouse calling us home through a stormy night at sea. To become like God is to become such a Ner Tamid, calling ourselves and each other home through the storm, staying fierce in our commitment and faithfulness, like an unmoving mountain, staying, not leaving when the going gets tough, when it gets dark and vinegary, staying, keeping the lights on anyway, tamid, always, so even the straggler can find her way home.
