The gifts are collected and the encampment is built. The priests are installed and ceremony is
completed. God’s presence, finally, arrives
in the Tabernacle. Appearing as cloud by
day and fire by night, when God’s presence was in the Tent of Meeting, the
people stayed put. When it lifted, it “accompany
them on all their journeys” (Exodus 40:38).
“On ALL their journeys.”
Surely the text, in its plain meaning, speaks of the journeys the people
will take on their way through the desert to the Holy Land – from Elim to Seir
to Kadesh and onward. I think it goes
further still to imagine all the journeys – the myriad experiences and
transitions -- of the countless members of our tribe, exalted and degraded, all
those who have marched, inexorably, from womb to tomb and throughout time.
The many ways to experience being a child and the many ways
to experience being a parent – each of these is a journey. So are the uncountable moments shared by brothers
and sisters, and the uncountable moments without them. The weddings celebrated under the canopy and
in the heart; the lives spent together and apart. The milestones we’ve achieved, and failed to
achieve, and failed to imagine, the hopes as fresh as the new day and the
dreams as tired as summer. The times
we’ve looked in the mirror and been pleased, and the times we’ve looked in the
mirror crestfallen. The ideas and the breakthroughs,
the art and the music that have poured from this people like wind from the sea. The marches towards freedom and the marches
to death. Flights of fancy and cold hard
truth. Journeys across solid ground,
journeys across turbulent seas, and journeys into the interior of the human
soul. We have done and felt it all: “the honey and the bee-sting, the bitter and
the sweet.”
As I contemplate my life, I’m aware that my own journey has
in fact been many journeys. Some have
been grand, like marriage, living in Cairo, or becoming a father. Some have been intimate, like a walk behind a
casket, a hug from a child, or a moment of prayer. And I see that journeying is not the distance
traveled, but rather the meaningful encounter, the honest connection between
two beings. I realize that my journey is
not limited to the path I walk. It is,
instead, the set of genuine interactions I’ve had with others and with myself. My life cannot accurately be described as a
thread, for it twists and loops and ties with the threads of other people’s
lives to such an extent that there is no possible way to extricate it from the entire
fabric of life and of wonder.
We are accompanied in all our journeys. We are never alone.
