Losing It
Pinchas 2011/5771
©Rabbi Neil A. Tow
She shakes a pillow and all the feathers inside scatter over the ground.
He throws a pitch and watches, stomach tightening, as it flies straight and easy to the sweet spot on the bat.
The child yells and says something terrible to her parents.
What do all these three events have in common?
We say or do something and what we’ve said or done blasts away from us like a rocket from the earth. They are moments that we cannot retrieve, and most often we end up feeling sad or upset for what we did or what we said.
The one who shakes the pillow feathers out feels bad because she was illustrating a point using the pillow but now the feathers are stuck in the ground and blowing in the breeze.
The pitcher was trying his best to throw a strike and end the game.
The child felt he was right and that his parents weren’t listening and so he raised his voice since he did not know any other way to express what he was feeling.
Pinchas, the title character of this week’s parsha, is a person who acts in a similar way to all three of these cases. He acts in a very strong way in the moment and in the opening words of the Torah portion God blesses him and rewards him.
It seems strange that God would reward Pinchas for acting impulsively, for seeking a revenge of sorts on people who were misbehaving. God steps in to bring Pinchas back.
It seems strange to us since we know that we (usually) cannot retrieve what we put out into the world. We can try to soften it, try to change it, try to ask forgiveness for it, but we cannot alter the fact that in the given moment we lost it—we lost control.
Pinchas seems to have received rewards and praises for doing something that would only earn us shame, embarrassment, and a longing to apologize (if the other person allows us to apologize).
How can we make sure to not be in the situation of Pinchas, in a situation in which the only option we have left seems to be to act with great force?
The classic wisdom of thinking carefully before we speak is still good advice.
But we sometimes speak without thinking first, or we think that what we say will mean one thing and the listener hears something else. We have to be willing to apologize, and also to be flexible.
We also need to try again, to be creative and find the strength within ourselves to admit where we went wrong and make a different type of effort the next time.
Even though Pinchas may have acted in a very strong way, he did show courage. We need courage, too. We need courage to let go of the way we hope the world will turn and to confront the world as it exists and flows through our thoughts and actions.
And that’s where synagogue Chinese food dinners come in…
The stronger the community in which we live, that is, the stronger the friendships we make, the stronger the support we provide to one another, the better our ability to build bonds of trust and willingness to forgive each other, and also to celebrate one another.
Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz taught that the Pinchas in our parsha acted in a strong way. But he acted within the community of Israel. He did not separate himself and build an altar to himself.
The Rabbi of Koretz judges Pinchas positively by arguing that he was still part of the people, in other words, in his mind and among the people he was one of them.
We do our best to express ourselves as individuals and also to find ways to live together as a community.
May the power and beauty of our individual voices and actions come together into a web of community and meaningful relationships that will reaffirm that each of us is among the people of Israel, the people of the Eternal God of the Universe. Then we will be better able to avoid "losing it", and if we do, we will have many people around us to gently push us back on the path. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment