In this meditation we explore Pesach as the holiday of divine unconiditional love, a time when God “leaped over’ the mountains of our flaws and imperfections, our low spiritual state, to redeem us and to claim us in love. We take note that neither can we lose God’s love through our mistakes, nor do we need to earn it through our accomplishments. Dayenu — we are enough as we are. We see what it feels like to take in that kind of love, noticing what stops us from opening to it. Along the way, we talk about matzah and hametz, the Song of Songs, the “wicked child” at the seder and the marking of the Isarelite doorposts.
Sources (in order in which they appear in the meditation):
Mishnah Pesachim 10:4
Netivot Shalom on Pesach, in essay on מתחיל בגנות
Song of Songs 2:8
Pesikta deRav Kahana 5:7
Song of Songs 2:4
Idea about matzah from Sefat Emet on Pesach
Meditation Script:
Introduction:
Pesach is the holiday of love. We see this from the Song of Songs, the love song we read on Pesach, and I think it is also clear from the story of redemption, from the loving way that God pulled us out of the depth of the pit of Egypt. We will explore the nature of this love today and see if we can take some of it in, and why it might make a difference in our lives.
Meditation:
Get into a comfortable position . . .
The Mishnah says that on the night of the seder, we should be מתחיל בגנות – we should start with shame.
Shame: in addition to the physical toll of slavery, surely there is a long term emotional toll, the way one comes to view oneself as lowly and less than, not mattering as much as other people in the society, the internal effects of feeling downtrodden, humiliated and devalued as a human being.
We can start there, too. We aren’t slaves, thank God, but most of us do carry some shame, some sense of ourselves as flawed or less than or not fully worthwhile or valuable, something wrong with us that we feel ashamed about. Checking inside, noticing the shame and what it feels like, the turning away, the hiding, maybe a flush through your body, a sinking in your belly, a sense of – I am bad, something is wrong with me.
Love is the antidote to shame. Even if you don’t feel shame per se, most of us have some lack of self love, some basic ignorance around the full extent of how truly loved and valued we are in God’s eyes. And this love I think is the source of our redemption, our ge’ulah, our re-deeming, our re-claiming of our own inherent value, on Pesach.
Because on Pesach, the message is that God loves us no matter what. Tradition teaches that in Egypt we had sunk to the 49th lowest level of impurity, 49th out of 50, so really not doing well.
The Netivot Shalom points out that for God to redeem us in this state makes it an act of absolute unconditional love, ahavah she’einah teluyah badavar, a love that is not dependent on anything, and therefore nitzhi, eternal, unbreakable. If God had redeemed us when we were doing well, we would have thought – oh, God only loves us when we are performing well, when we do the right thing. But no – this way, we know that no matter how low we sink, God still loves us and cherishes us, and through that love, we are redeemed, through that love, by seeing ourselves through God’s eyes, we gradually come to revalue ourselves and to heal our shame.
The name Pesach comes from the divine act of skipping over our houses during the plague of the first born. The rabbis connect this skipping over to the Song of Songs phrase medaleg al he’harim umekapetz al hegeva’ot, “leaping over mountains and bounding over hills” and they explain that during the exodus, God was bounding over our mistakes and imperfections in order to redeem us. God leaps over whatever is in the way, all the human reasons that occur to us as to why we might not deserve to be loved or redeemed, God leaps over all those and says – in spite of everything, I claim you. The leaping over is a kind of claiming, like the placement of a flag of demarcation over our houses – diglo alay ahavah, the Song of Songs says, God’s flag is a banner of love over me – God leaps over us as a mark of connection and embrace – in spite of everything, I claim you. You are sunk low, you feel small and unworthy, and in spite of everything, God claims you.
Maybe taking a moment to let that message sink in, to let the parts of you that hold any sense of shame or unworthiness or smallness feel God’s claiming, to let all the voices inside you that say – I don’t deserve to be redeemed for this reason or that reason, to let them all feel that love. The antidote to shame is love, free flowing love for all of you. Maybe you can imagine yourself curled up in a ball, as we sometimes are in our most difficult moments, curled up small, and sense God passing over you, as God passed over Moshe in the cleft of the rock, too, passing over you as a sign of love and claiming, passing over you in a full embrace of who you are with all your warts and imperfections, God claims all of you in love. Let the shamed parts of you sense that and taste it.
There is more. It’s not just that we are loved despite our flaws, but also that we don’t need to earn the love through our performances and attempts to do things right. God’s love is neither stopped by our faults, nor is it brought about through our positive actions and accomplishments. We are enough – dayenu, we are enough for God to bestow kindness upon us, enough just as we are. Of course it is lovely to do good things in the world, and God wants us to do them, and to become ever kinder and more whole, but none of that is why God loves us. It is very important to separate this out – we are loved for free, hinam, veyehuneka – through divine grace, just because we exist. Nothing can stop that, and we also don’t need to earn it.
This is the message of the matzah, too. All year we think we need to be hametz, to be highly risen bread, to puff ourselves up with performance and accomplishment, and all of that is great, but on Pesach what we find out is – this is not why God loves us. We can be our very bare bones essence, like matzah, take off all the makeup and fancy dresses and jazzy dance moves, and be ourselves, loved just as we are, nothing extra needed. Maybe noticing in yourself how much of your energy and life force is taken up with performance and accomplishment and getting things just right, all the puffiness of it, and shedding some of the urgency around all of that, like extra layers of clothing, letting go for this moment of all that perfectionism and intense striving, and letting yourself feel how you are loved in your very barest essence, the core you. Dayenu, we are enough. See if you can feel the deep relaxation involved in this knowledge, the resting that is possible. Letting your shoulders drop and your jaws unclench, letting your whole body settle and rest and trust – you are loved as you are, you are enough, nowhere to run, nothing to do.
It’s not always easy to receive such love. The problem is not in God’s giving, the problem is in our opening to it. We have parts that are suspicious and wary, that don’t trust it, that insist on our need to earn the love and not lose it, that hold tightly to the notion of ourselves as not fundamentally entitled to it, not already included and belonging. We see this in the rasha, the wicked child of the seder. We all have such a part inside us, and its evil lies not in what it does to others, but in what it does to us – how it says to us – you are not included here; God’s love does not extend to you, you do not deserve redemption. Indeed, this part is right about one thing – the only thing that can take us out of God’s love, that can stop us from being redeemed, is our own refusal to believe in it for ourselves, our refusal to include ourselves in the love. From God’s side, the door is always open. But our lack of openness to receiving that love is what closes it. We lock ourselves out of love and out of redemption.
Which is why the Israelites, on the eve of their redemption, had to mark their doors. The only thing that is required to be redeemed is to make a declaration of belief in the possibility of that redemption, to say – I include myself. I believe that God loves me, that, in spite of everything, in spite of my very low state and unworthiness, God still claims me and will redeem me. To declare oneself, in God’s eyes, never irredeemable. I have to mark it in some way, to put blood on my doorpost, to signal concretely my faith in God’s unconditional love, and this one act keeps the door open inside me to receive it. I declare it, and in the declaration, I open the door, I open myself, in spite of everything, in spite of all of the rasha voices that say otherwise, let them, too, be included now, in spite of all of that, I open myself to God’s love.
So maybe spending a minute now checking inside for the places that are closed inside you, noticing them, and then taking a step back and including them, too, in the larger opening of the door to God, marking the door, making the declaration – I believe I am never irredeemable in God’s eyes, and then letting the love in, letting yourself be claimed and redeemed in this moment. Let God pass over you and claim you with love.
Mathil begenut umesayem beshevach. We begin with shame and we conclude with praise. This is not a linear journey. We start on one plane, the human plane of shame, of our self understanding as being flawed, and we end on another plane, on the divine plane, turning towards God with praise. What happens when we receive this divine unconditional love is that we become whole again, re-deemed, reminded of our true value and honor, and out of that very secure place, we are filled with gratitude and praise for the One who loves us into this wholeness. We are no longer looking at ourselves and our mistakes or even concerned with our performance and accomplishments. We have surrendered to being loved, and in that surrender, we are filled and overflowing, and offer that praise back outward, send it back in love to the one who loves us and to all those around us. Our shame was, in a way, a request for love, and, as we learn to open to receiving the love, we turn around and send it back up to God in the form of praise, in the form of song and thanksgiving, in the form of loving each other. It becomes a current of love sent back and forth and all around. Out of the hole of our shame arises the bounty of praise.
Opening to that current of love as much as we can in this moment, and also noticing and allowing the parts of us that are still skeptical and closed right now. Letting it all be included and embraced in the degel of ahavah, the banner of love, that covers each of us and all of us together. Resting under that banner for one final moment.
When you’re ready, letting go of the practice, opening your eyes and returning to the room.
Photo by Designecologist at Pexels
