Introduction:
The seder is a place to process our suffering, our narrow straits, our Mitzrayim, in a holding container of luxury and spaciousness and protection. The seder is a merkhav yah – a divine place of spaciousness, with endless time and room for everyone, and it is a leyl shimurim, a night of divine protection into which we bring our greatest fears and traumatic experiences and let them rest in safety, at least for tonight. The four wine cups we drink throughout the seder are the supporting posts that mark out the holding container of generosity and cornucopia and comfort that we have entered. It is into this soft space that we welcome the brokenness of our own personal Mitzrayim to rest right here, right now.
Meditation:
Come into a comfortable position. Close your eyes if that feels comfortable. Sense the ground under you and the seat you are sitting on – sense how you are supported and held right at this moment, and that you don’t have to do anything to deserve it. Relax into that support. Let your body sink into it, your shoulders relax, your jaws unclench, your body settling into the space and trusting it.
Bring your attention to your breath, just noticing it coming in and out of your body. As you notice your breath, see if you can sense how it functions as a cord of connection between you and something larger, between you and God above, the God who is breathing life into you at every moment. Maybe you can also sense how this breath is a cord of connection between you and every other person at this table, at this seder. There is a golden thread that is weaving a net of connection and care between all of us right now, creating a space, a divine space inside each of us and between all of us, a mishkan, a sanctuary, a holding space that is capable of holding anything with love and spaciousness and patience and endurance and infinite gentleness. We are resting together in a soft cushion of comfort and care. Relax into that holding space and let yourself be held..
Now feel inside for any of your own personal brokenness – like the brokenness of the yachatz matzah. Check inside and see what is hurting right now, what feels broken, what feels difficult, what inside you is needing attention and holding – maybe it is related to a specific incident that was hurtful or a long term struggle – sense inside for the place of hurt and brokenness, and just allow yourself to sense it, to touch it – to touch the physical sensation of that hurt.
And now invite that brokenness to rest in the holding space we have created together tonight, the holding space that resides inside each of us, and that exists in the connected space between us and in the larger world, in the very air itself. Let that broken piece of you sense that holding space, its softness and safety and spaciousness and care, let the broken piece feel it as soft cushion and come to rest in it. The hurt, the brokenness – it does not need to change. It can remain broken and in pain, but let it feel the holding space around it. Let it know it is not too much. We are here right now with it and we can hold it.
Stay with your personal Mitzrayim as long as it needs. When you are ready, and only if it feels right, you can expand the circle to include the suffering, the Mitzrayim, the narrow straits of other people – other people that you personally know and care about, that you know are suffering right now, and other people in the larger world that are suffering right now, and other people from the past who have suffered. Bekhol dor vador. “In every generation.” This is a space that is beyond time, that can hold the pain of all generations. Allow into this holding space whatever Mitzrayims seem to want to come – people from across the globe and from across time, our ancestors who were slaves in Egypt or victims of the holocuast or anyone else who suffered in some other way – invite them in with all of their pain, and let them, too, sense the holding space of this seder container, the dvine holding space that resides in each of us and even more strongly, among us as a group as we come together. Invite it all to be held tonight in this protected space, in the soft gentle cushion of our care.
There is healing here, or at least a glimpse of it, of the possibility of it, for us, for our Mitzrayims, and for all previous and future generations. Take another minute to rest in this space, and when you are ready, let go of the practice, open your eyes and return to the room.
Photo by Ben Mack at Pexels
