This, the fifth week of the Omer, is associated with the divine attribute of Hod, which means both splendor and humility.
Left Leg
In the human body schema, Hod represents the left leg, a partner to the right leg of Netzach’s endurance from last week. That right leg of Netzach is a stepping forward into life with confidence and persistence to overcome life’s obstacles, to be menatzeach, to be victorious over what stands in our way. By contrast, Hod, as the weaker left leg, does not step forward, but acknowledges and accepts the reality of where we are, our current limitations and difficulties. Hod is related to the word lehodot, which means to acknowledge, both in gratitude and also in confession, as in viduy – to acknowledge our weaknesses and incapacities and challenges. This is Hod’s humility, which stands right alongside the confidence of Netzach. Confidence in the right foot and humility in the left foot. One foot moves fiercely forward, while the other hesitates and admits one’s limited capacities, opening to something larger.
Our Limitations
We will return to that something larger in a moment, but for now, I invite you to feel into the weaker leg’s sacred truth inside you, to get in touch with the sense in yourself of your own limitations. Perhaps bringing to mind some area of life where you wish you could do better, where you feel not fully capable of being who you would like to be, of serving in the way that you envision, of meeting what needs to be met. No matter how hard you try, still there are obstacles, both internal and external, that you have not been able to overcome. Hod asks you lehodot, to acknowledge those obstacles and those limitations, to recognize and admit and accept them.
This is like the first of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous: “we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.” What are you powerless over, in what ways does your life sometimes feel unmanageable, that you don’t have the capacity to handle what is being asked of you? Coming into awareness of that left leg, of those limitations, of that unmanageability, and admitting it, claiming it as an undeniable truth in your life, pausing all the forward movement of the right leg for a moment and resting in the left leg’s knowledge of how impossible reality feels sometimes. Just letting that be here, for this one moment not fighting it or fixing it. Life is so hard and we so often can’t handle it.
Weakness That Opens Us
This is the humble stance of Hod, the admission that opens us up to being an empty cup to be filled. Can you feel how those limitations, how the acknowledgement that “I can’t do this on my own,” can you feel how all of that opens space inside you to receive something, for something larger to come through you? Your weaknesses are actually a sacred partner here; they are what allow you to know that you need help, not to just keep striding forward on the right leg with confidence, but also to pause once in a while and let your limitations open you..
This is the wisdom again of AA’s 12 steps. The first step is the admission of limitations, the viduy aspect of Hod, the humility. And the second step is the splendor aspect of Hod, the receiving of something from beyond: The second step of AA says:”We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” A power greater than ourselves. Hod is both the admission of our unmanageability, the first step, as well as the experience of that greater Power,the second step, opening to the splendor aspect of Hod, how God’s great majesty is revealed to us through this back leg of our weakness.
Prayer
Hod is also associated with prayer, as it is this dynamic that forms the core of prayer, our standing or perhaps kneeling – perhaps the left leg does not so much stand as kneel – our kneeling in humble submission and surrender. Aware of how untenable our situation is as human beings, we kneel on this left leg and we pray to the great Majestic One to support us, to fill us, to reside in us. We cry, we implore, we yearn. We allow ourselves to feel our emptiness in the knowledge that there is One who can fill us, and who has filled us in the past.
Something Beyond
This is prayer, and this is the back leg of our way of being with God. It is the place of stumbling, not the sure footed walk of the front leg of Netzach. And it is here that we are most open to a true experience of God’s own Hod splendor. As we step back, God comes forward. We make room inside us for something that we cannot even imagine, for something out of this world to flow into us and through us and from deep within us. .This Hod splendor has mystical qualities, which is why this is also the week of Lag BaOmer and the great mystic Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Hod is our opening to the endless mystery of the beyond through our acknowledgement of our own severe limitations. It is both the humility of making room and the experience of splendor that is called forth through that act of making room.
Opening to Grace
I invite you to lean onto this back leg for a moment, to let go of the Netzach push to move forward and to rest where you are. Maybe look around and notice what is hard for you and let go of striving and struggling around that, accepting that it is so, these things are hard for you, resting in that acknowledgement and opening to the possibility of something else that can help you, not through your effort. Opening to grace, to flow, to something from another world, to the unknowable and incomprehensible and unexpected, to Mystery, releasing your grip and opening to Hod, to divine splendor and majesty and grandeur, to a light that breaks through to our world on occasion, letting that in for a moment. Feeling the sense of “I can’t do this anymore,” and letting some other power come in to take over for a moment, surrendering, dropping the rope and allowing the flow to come through you without understanding or effort or control. You don’t have to understand how it works. Just let it happen.
Flash of Lightning
What comes to us as Hod is not the same as the nourishment of Netzach. Hod is more mysterious and surprising, and also not as constant. Netzach is the drip drip drip of a steady, continuous reliable rain, day in and day out, while Hod is the flash of lightning in a night storm. It is a peak breakthrough experience, an epiphany, a revelation, like the lightning at Har Sinai, a sudden clarity that lights up what was dark before.
We need the steadiness of Netzach, but we should not underestimate the power of a Hod experience. It may last for only a second, but its intensity has an impact that stays with us. In that split second, as that flash of lightning sheds light on the dark, we are helped to see what we cannot normally see and to know what we cannot normally comprehend, girding us in faith in the invisible. It is like a gem we are given to treasure and carry inside us, forever changing us.
This is the function of miracles, and Hod partakes of the miraculous. We are all given such Hod signs and miracles, probably much more often than we are aware of. A spark of insight, a creative flow, a sudden unnameable shiver, a grace-induced shift in our mood, an inexplicable presence, an otherworldly experience of warmth or light, a pang of intense emotion, an unbidden need to cry, a deep knowing that comes over you, a friend’s note that appears at just the right moment. There are a thousand varieties of Hod, of God’s powerful light breaking through to our world. Perhaps taking a moment to bring such an experience to mind and its continuing impact on your system, the residual aura that resides inside you, taking out the gem and letting its glow warm and nourish you now.
Gratitude
When we have such encounters with divine Hod, we are overcome with gratitude for the tremendous grace we have been granted. Gratitude, hoda’ah, too, is part of Hod. It turns out that Hod’s connection to acknowledgment lies on both sides of the experience of God’s splendor. Initially, it is our humble acknowledgement of our limitations, our viduy, that opens a space inside us to experience divine splendor. And then, after we have had such an encounter, another type of acknowledgment naturally arises within us – the acknowledgment of thankfulness, the hoda’ah, the gratitude that overflows from such experiences. Both types of acknowledgment, hoda’ah and viduy, both types arise from the humility of that weaker left leg, from a sense of ourselves as in need; we humbly ask, and after we humbly ask, we humbly thank. We acknowledge that we cannot exist without this connection, without this light that nourishes us.
It is not our strong leg that can make such an acknowledgment, but our weak leg, out of the place of our lowness and limitation. It is from this place that we bow low in acknowledgment, we give thanks, we let the sense of our good fortune wash through us and flow out of us. It is from this weaker leg of need that we know that we are not alone and that we feel thankful for the light that breaks through the storm to remind us of our not aloneness, to remind us of the invisible presence that is still there in the night.
Both Legs Together
As we conclude, I invite you to bring your right leg of Netzach back into focus alongside the left leg of Hod, and to feel into how the two of them work together. We cannot walk on one leg, but through the dynamic movement back and forth between the two, placing our weight first on one and then on the other. Perhaps sensing how this might work for you internally, the shifting back and forth between confidence and humility, between steady long term connection to the divine and the more intermittent and intense sparks of Hod, between leaning in to strength and endurance, and leaning in to weakness as a portal to the divine, moving back and forth, not needing to choose, sometimes we move forward with confidence and push forward through the obstacles, and sometimes we slow down and turn towards the obstacles and towards our limitations. God is in our everyday commitments as well as in the breakthrough miracles that inspire us. Instead of focusing on one or the other, perhaps sensing the dynamic sensation of moving between them fluidly, of embracing them both without choosing, of integrating them into the wholeness of your being, somehow both confident and humble, both enduring and brilliantly spontaneous, as God is all of these.
Feeling the wholeness of your being, as you walk with both legs through this life.
Some Sources That Contributed to My Thinking About Hod:
Melanie Gruenwald, “Counting of the Omer: The Week of Hod,” Kabbalah Experience
Rabbi Dev Nolly on Hod in Kehilla Synagogue’s “Sefirat HaOmer”
Simon Jacobson on Hod in chabad.org
Jay Michaelson on Hod in learnkabbalah.org
The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
