Rachel Weeps
Where was God when empire murdered the innocent and where is God now?
I saw the heavens open, and Rachel, the mother of us all, whose children are more numerous than the stars in heaven, standing before the Holy One. Her arms were outstretched toward the world as she gazed upon the lives of her children: their pain, their suffering, their loss, their joys, and their celebrations.
Then I heard her say:
Blessed are you, O Holy One, in the ground that we walk and in the place that we live. For you fill all that is, was, and ever shall be, staying with your people always. Your grace flows through all things, but some harden their hearts and deny it entry. Peace be upon the earth to people of good will, and may the light ever shine as the Word resonate in the stones.
Mother of the Lost and the Living
In life I was barren, watching my sister give birth to tribes, and yet in time my beloved Joseph and Benjamin were born to me. In delivering Benjamin, I passed beyond seeing, giving my life to give him life, not as a sacrifice, not as a payment, but because of the pain I could not bear.
These are not my only children, for my children are all those who are lost in exile under the cruelty of empire. They are those who are lost and unseen, who carry memory of me forward, and all those who act in goodwill.
But I do not shun those who have hardened their hearts, for they are just my children who have gone their own way and forgotten the peace that could fill their hearts and lives.
I Have Seen This Before
I watched with sorrow as Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. My heart broke when the rest of our people were taken. I cried out when they were freed and chose for themselves a king who would punish and take from them.
I held them under the tyranny of the kings of David and Omri and wept bitter tears when they were marched past my tomb on their way into exile. I exulted with Esther and Judith in their triumph, and I stood firm with my people when they returned to the land.
And again, like a river prone to flooding, I watched as empire after empire washed over the land, colonizing them and treating them so cruelly.
I have delighted in their joy. I have wept with their sorrow. I have sung with their songs and danced in their celebrations. Through it all, my children have grown and prospered, and I have found more than I ever imagined in them.
Bethlehem
I shouted for joy when the child was born to Mary and Joseph and sang with the angels when they greeted the shepherds. I watched in horror as Herod sent his troops to slaughter the children, to kill hope, to kill promise, to rob them of their lives.
No mother could avert her gaze from such tragedy and pain. I had seen it so many times before, in the fear that leads others to control the world around them, believing that life can be tamed.
How many will be slaughtered in the name of the false god of safety? How many must be sacrificed before the fearful believe that they have found security?
I cried out to the Holy One, who lived in and among those children, who felt their pain as their lives were cruelly ripped from them. Together we wept with the families.
God did not do this hateful act. It was born from the fear of empire.
A king placed a throne and decided who could sit upon it over the lives of the innocent, causing them to be slaughtered. No chair brings power. No crown authority.
In the illusions of their heart, they pretend they are strong so others cannot see how weak they are. Their might is brittle like a dead leaf. So they sharpen their tongues and their swords to go out and do violence so they can secure their place, so they can hide their true selves from the world.
They sacrifice the lives of others, believing that it makes them strong, safe, and secure, all the while sowing the seeds of their own downfall. Those who live by the sword will die by it. Peace and goodwill are far from them.
They built a gilded cage within themselves to hide away the part that speaks with the voice of God. They walled it off with malice, fear, hatred, and disgust. The word of God cried out from within them to stop, but they refused to listen.
Where God Was
The Holy One lives in the very breath of all beings, in their substance, at their root. They grow in God’s soil, and with God they find life and find it more abundantly.
God was in the soldier and in the child, but the soldier did not listen to the voice crying out, telling them to stop. God screamed with those children. God wept with their families. God struggled in the cage within all those who enacted such violence against the innocent.
But they had hardened their hearts and refused to listen.
Where was God in this tragedy and all the others?
There. In the midst of it. Screaming, “Stop! Don’t do this!”
God Stays
God does not abandon any of us, and we are incapable of abandoning God. All we can do is build up calluses deep within us to muffle that voice into silence and to prevent the light from shining forth.
The Holy One, HaMakom, the place where God is, did not move. Through the grief, the silence, and the emptiness that followed, God was there.
God aches when we ache. Our suffering is God’s suffering. Even though it can feel like being itself will yield and give way to sheer and utter nothingness, it persists.
Rachel Refuses Comfort
Over the many times I have watched my children in pain and suffering, I have refused comfort. Not because I do not deserve it or desire it, but because I do not want to abandon them in their pain, grief, and sorrow.
One day, the grieving will do its work, and it will bring its own kind of healing, even if it does not bring about full restoration.
I refuse comfort, not out of stubbornness. I refuse to be comforted because I do not want the easy and trite answers that plaster over the pain and grief of this world.
God did not plan the massacre of those children, did not desire it, and did not sanctify it as a sacrifice in the holy name.
While it is true that God moves in mysterious ways, that is because God moves secretly within the hearts of the people. God moves in the flow of life, unseen by many and only touched by a few.
The mystery is not a secret. It is like the mystery of the wind. Where does it come from and where does it go? The more we sit with the wind, the more we know, the more we understand, the more we can see it. But if we do not sit with the mystery of the wind, it remains just that, a mystery to us.
Yes, we find God in delight and savor and awe and wonder, in creativity, justice-making, and celebration. But God is not absent in our pain, suffering, and grief.
God is HaMakom, the place. Wherever we are, there God is.
To say that this pain, this grief, is part of God’s plan is to ignore that whisper within us that tells us that God yearns for life and life more abundantly.
Trite platitudes and simple comforts shield us from the reality of the world we live in. All have suffered loss. Suffering is inescapable in this world. It comes, but it also goes.
It lingers through our own attachment and aversion. If we hold on too tight or push away too hard, we overextend ourselves or we curl ourselves up into knots, and our suffering increases.
It is in the open place that it can find healing, where the wounds can be washed out, medicated, and treated. They may leave scars behind, but in time, wounds heal.
What She Leaves With Us
Weep with those who weep, for all who mourn will be comforted, but they must mourn first.
In our mourning, we must not give birth to shame and guilt for those things in life that bring us delight and solace. We can mourn through laughter as well as through tears, and sometimes with both simultaneously.
In these times of darkness, we must remember the light that we carry with us, all that we have found wonder in, delight in, and savored before.
And eventually, when the time is right, a new creativity will rise in us and teach us the compassion we need to walk forward. But we cannot rush the process.
The greedy, the power-hungry, and the fearful will steal agency to the best of their ability from us and deny us our basic right to live lives with meaning and purpose.
As long as we learn to live in HaMakom, the place where God is deep within us, we will learn that God is with us as much in the dark times as in the light.
The Spirit weeps when we weep and laughs when we laugh and makes utterances and sounds beyond our comprehension to say the things that we cannot bear to say.