The Haggadah begins the midrashic telling of the story with the phrase arami oved avi (Deuteronomy 26:5), “my father was a wandering Aramean.” That word oved literally means lost. My father was lost. In modern Hebrew the word for suicide is a form of the word oved, lehitabed, to be so utterly lost and despondent that you give up, you see no point, you lose yourself, you cause yourself to be lost. My father was lost, we say at the start of the seder. We have a legacy of lostness and hopelessness.
Arami oved avi literally means “my father was a lost Aramean,” but the Haggadah also offers another non-literal midrashic reading: “an Aramean tried to destroy my father.” These two meanings are perhaps not unrelated; it’s like the sense of endless persecution from the outside seeps into us as a tendency to feel despair and impossibility and powerlessness on the inside, to lose ourselves even as we are being made to be lost, to participate in our own loss internally. The legacy is both – both the traumatic events and the internalized hopelessness.
Your Own Sense of Lostness
I invite you to tap into any or all of that in yourself in whatever way you sometimes experience it, your version of it – the sense of being lost, without recourse, nowhere to turn, unmoored, despairing, anxious, frightened, confused, not knowing where to go or what might help, flailing about because of a visceral sense of dread and impossibility and doom. Feeling that the world is a mess and will inevitably get worse and there is nothing to do about it. Collapsed in a heap with no sense of agency or power. Having no ground under you or as if you are free falling with nothing to hold onto, nothing to help you steady yourself. Or maybe in you it is just a gnawing near constant worry. Noticing how it is for you and honoring and acknowledging your particular experience of oved, of lostness, and also recognizing if there is in your experience a legacy aspect from avi, from our ancestors.
What the Hopelessness Needs
These feelings are the suffering of parts of us that hold trauma, burdens or unmet needs. They are asking for something. Sadly, we often cannot solve their external problems for them or take away the reality of their worries. These parts are right that sometimes the world is pretty bleak and difficult, though we can also bring some awareness to the fact that they are wearing black tinted glasses, that they are only seeing one side of things, only the worst of things. So we can offer them a little space around their version of reality. But at the same time, becoming aware that reality is almost beside the point – they do not need us to argue with them about what’s true or what will actually happen or even to make everything ok for them. The point is that they feel hopeless, lost, anxious, scared, without ground. And they need something from us in that visceral emotional experience.
They are like small children sitting huddled and trembling alone in a corner, not knowing where to turn, no one to comfort them. What they need is not argument or analysis. What they need is loving company, someone to hold them and stay with them through the night of their despair. What they need is an anchor, something to ground them, something that can meet their shakiness with unshakable calm.
There Is Something That Stands
What is that something? What holds us, what is our anchor when we are lost? I believe this is what the Haggadah refers to when it says: vehi she’emdah. “And it is this that stands,” this hi in the feminine, it is she that stood strong for our ancestors and continues to stand strong for us through it all. Vehi she’amdah. There is something that still stands even when we are oved, wandering about lost and uneasy. She still stands.
What is it that remains standing while everything else is lost and hopeless, collapsed and shaking and unmoored? Literally, in the Haggadah, the word hi meaning “she” refers back to the previous paragraph where we speak about God’s havtachah, God’s promise to always stand by us through the generations. What is the essence of such a promise? Steadfastness, loyalty, unconditional love and support, sticking with someone through thick and thin. Such a promise says – I am here and I always will be. I am your anchor, your steadfast ever loving company. You can lean into me and I will not fall.
In God and In Us
On one level, this steady company refers to God, and specifically to the feminine aspect of God, the shechinah, the divine presence who is known for just that – for the capacity to be ever present, to stay, to be with, to dwell with us always. On another level, though, this capacity to stay with someone is also in us – it is also a divine potential that lives in us as creatures made in the divine image. We, too, can be that loving and steady, and when we are, it is God in us, divine energy flowing through us.
I believe it is this capacity that our suffering parts are asking for. In a way, they are angels sent to activate that potential in us. They need us to become their anchor, and so, through their need, we grow into it.
Becoming That Anchor
Maybe sensing that divine steadfastness, the promise of staying with someone, maybe sensing that in your own body as a kind of fierce strength and love, the capacity to walk alongside someone no matter what, to hold their hand as you walk together through the wind. Feeling that fierce loyalty in your body and offering it to the little hopeless parts of you, letting them sense that anchor in you, strong and steady, not going anywhere. Maybe they can pause all their flailing about for a moment and look up at you and feel your calm, that you are not going anywhere, that you are not joining in their lostness but remaining centered in yourself, offering that to them, a sense of presence and okayness and assurance. I’m right here. I know it feels impossible and scary and hopeless. I’m right here with you, by your side through it all, loving you, holding you. Vehi she’amdah. I stand with you, steadfast in your storm.
The Tree of Life
Vehi she’amdah. That hi is reminiscent of another hi – Etz hayim hi, she is a tree of life (Proverbs 3:18). She is the tree of life that stands in the middle of the garden (Genesis 2:9), in the middle of our bodies, a sturdy resilient tree with deep roots, standing strong through all weather. Feeling into that tree of life in your own center, in your core, your trunk, feeling that strength and resilience, like a divine promise, the promise of life that lives inside you, a fierce life force that sustains us and nourishes us and keeps us going in the face of challenge. Yes, we fall down. Again and again, we collapse, we despair, we get lost and shaky and unmoored, but each time, we get up again, we stand up tall again – vehi she’amdah, there is something in us that cannot be shut down. No matter how many times we are pushed down, still we rise again, still we stand up again. Like green shoots peeking up through the pavement, that life force in us will not be paved over, but persists, insists. Vehi she’amdah. I am still here. I still stand.
A Greening Force
This life force in us is what the 12th century abbess Hildegard of Bingen called viriditas, the “greening force,” a divine life affirming energy that courses through all of nature, fueling growth and healing in plants and in us, ever desiring green growth and flourishing despite adverse circumstances.
Vehi she’amdah. No matter how down trodden and vulnerable you feel at times, I wonder if you can also touch into the place in you that persists, that still stands, that ever desires your healing and flourishing, like a light that will not go out inside you. We are surprised by how long people continue to live even when they are in the final stage of dying. Our will to live, this life force inside us, is so strong.
Gathering the Parts Beneath The Tree
Sensing into that tree of life in your center – vehi she’amdah – feeling it perhaps in your spine, the ability to sit and stand tall, to say – I am here, with dignity and pride. Feeling that tree in your center and gathering in all the parts of you that feel lost or hopeless or scared or ashamed or anxious or sad or grieving or hurt or less than, all the parts that are in need of an anchor, gathering them all in to sit around the circle of that tree inside you, to sit under its shade, under its canopy of love and care and peace, sukat shelomekha.
Skeptical Parts
And maybe noticing if you have parts that are resistant to this invitation, that refuse, that say – I can’t feel that. I don’t have such a tree inside me. I am not resilient. Or maybe they say – I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in God or in this intangible notion of something unshakable. Noticing these voices if they come up and naming them – skeptical parts, self doubting parts, hopeless, nihilistic parts. And maybe sensing how they, too, are in need of the energy of this tree, how they, too, are suffering, feeling groundless and despondent and incapable, how much they, too, need such an anchor, such holding, such love. Sensing their need and inviting them, too, to sit under the tree.
Imagining the Scene
Imagining the scene, perhaps bringing to mind your favorite very large tree and seeing all the parts as small children sitting around under the tree. And experimenting with feeling both energies in your body at once, both the solid patient eternal calm of the tree and the groundlessness and anxiety of the parts. And maybe now one of the children tentatively reaches out her hand to touch the bark of the tree and the tree’s steady pulse enters her, its energy calming and anchoring her and all the others. They are co-regulating with the tree, you are co-regulating with the tree, your breath and heart beat slowing down to the tree’s steady ancient rhythm.. Vehi she’amdah. That divine tree is always standing inside and outside you, ready to anchor you.
Returning To Our Ancestors
Arami oved avi. My father was a lost aramean. Our ancestors were lost but they also knew about this anchor and passed on that legacy as well, the legacy of vehi she’amdah, of something that still stands. So as we return each year to the seder, in our own mix of lostness and strength, we both receive and offer that anchor, backwards and forwards, through all the generations before and after us, as the Haggadah says, bekhol dor vador, in every generation.
We receive it as a gift of wisdom and strength from our parents, remembering not just their trauma but also their resilience. And we offer it back to them, too, offering them retroactive healing through our growing divine capacity to be loving, steady anchors, offering it back to them as well as forward to the children we raised when we, too, were at least partly still “lost parents.” In the timeless space of the seder, we can reach backwards and forwards in time so that all of us from all the generations sit together under the tree of life that still stands. Vehi she’amdah. She still stands. Fiercely she stands. Fiercely you stand.
Photo by Engin Akyurt at Pexels
