Aaron, the High Priest, climbs Mt. Hor and dies.
I imagine him, in his final moments, surveying the land and his
life, too. He saw the journey from
slavery until now, a continuous line superimposed on the landscape before
him. “Here I built the Golden Calf; here
I spoke against Tzipporah,” he thinks.
But I also imagine that, from his heightened vantage point, he was also
able to see what he couldn’t see before:
“There was an easier way around that mountain; there was a spring of
fresh water so close to us, but we didn’t find it!” He is suddenly aware that life is full of
possibilities, of countless roads not taken.
Later in the parsha, God defines the boundaries of the
Promised Land. But, looking at the Land
from the Mountaintop, Aaron couldn’t see any such demarcations. All he saw were swaths of forest, the sapphire
sea lapping at the shore, and the wind blowing hot across the desert. There were no boundaries and no barriers,
only open space. As a younger man, a
journey-man, he had encountered confrontations, impediments, and obstacles to
be overcome. Now, looking back on his
life, he sees possibilities unexplored, choices he hadn’t known existed,
solutions that were there for the taking.
“If only,” Aaron thinks, and breathes his last.
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