Let’s suppose that, every morning, you wake up at the break of dawn. You don your robe and slippers and make yourself some coffee. When it is ready, you pour it into your favorite mug and stand by the bay window that looks out on your back yard. Cherishing those few moments of silence before the kids get up, you have a chance to watch the world fill with color and sound and come to life.
Now, imagine that, at the end of each lunar month, you fold up your house and everything in it. The bay window, the bed, the coffee maker, the mug - everything is disconnected from everything else and loaded onto a truck. You drive for a day or two in some direction, and then you stop. You unload your bay window and your bed and your coffee maker and your mug, and then you put them all together in the exact same way.
The next day, you wake up at the break of dawn. You don your robe and slipper and make yourself some coffee. When it is ready, you pour it into your favorite mug and stand by the bay window that looks out on new your back yard. Cherishing those few moments of silence before the kids get up, you have a chance to watch the world fill with color and sound and come to life.
And then one time, your drive takes you to a place that is not so pretty. The scene that unfolds as the sun rises is not nearly so pleasant - maybe the back yard is strewn with empty bottles, and someone has graffitied something hateful on the wall. Just the same, you watch the world fill with color and sound and come to life. Somehow, the daily ritual provides you with a way to take it in, to process what you see, and to consider how you will move forward.
This is how I view the mishkan. The mishkan was built as a wandering Temple that moved as the Jews moved through the wilderness. It shared many features with the Temple that would ultimately be built in Jerusalem - a menorah and an Ark, altars - but it differed in one essential way: it was designed to be dissembled and moved. The boards that constituted its walls were easily separated from one another; it’s primary furnishings were fitted with rings into which poles were inserted and the object was lifted and carried; the loops and hooks that connected the massive tapestries that covered the mishkan could easily be undone.
The mishkan was dissembled and reassembled at least 42 times in the wilderness, as the Jews moved from Sinai to Israel. The trips between those 42 encampments may have been uneventful, like moving from one nice Boston suburb to another. But just as often, all hell breaks loose. A mass rebellion occurs; there is a panic over perceived lack of water; a rock is stricken in anger; the spies return; Miriam dies; the people demand meat and God plagues them. Each time something like this happens, the mishkan is once again reassembled, the candles are lit, the incense is burned, the daily offerings are offered.
What is the experience of lighting the candles when one has moved from one suburb to another? Perhaps not so dramatically different. And what is the experience of lighting the candles when one is looking out on a back yard strewn with empty bottles, and someone has graffitied something hateful on the wall? Perhaps at such a time one feels the darkness so deeply that they are sick to their stomach, and they know with a deep knowing that the light they bring is the light that the world needs in order to survive for one more day.
Such is the nature of a life guided and framed by ritual. A few words of gratitude upon waking, a half-hour of sitting meditation around midday, a blessing over food, a walk in the woods after dinner - all of these work as lattices for our days and weeks and months and years, marking time and pointing inward or outward, reminding us to notice and to open. And they might not impact us so much when we do them - until suddenly they do. Suddenly we are acutely aware of being awake, of clinging to mindfulness like a raft in turbulent seas, of deeply needing that walk, of feeling genuine gratitude for food when food has suddenly become a bit more sparse.
Passover is coming - that odd collection of exotic foods, silly songs, stories told, broken matzahs hidden and found. Woven into the fabric of the “different night” are tales of families struggling to communicate, mysteries tellings of late-night rabbinic jam sessions, recollections of promises made by our Redeemer, mystical math that makes 10 into 50 into 200. Within each of these is the promise of realization, connection, gratitude, growth. And most of the time most of that potential remains latent - until it doesn’t. Suddenly, the hagaddah pops. Each line, each story, each character shakes off the dust and struts its hour upon the stage.
Perhaps this year is such a year. For many of us, life has been turned inside out or upside down. We may find ourselves confined to tight quarters with family, with little exposure even to our next-door neighbors, with less to distract us than we would like, face to face with our personal and familial patterns, and suddenly, we may say, “Ah! So this is slavery! And I am my own Pharaoh!” And suddenly, the haggadah pops and comes to life and we can see just how much we need it.
Perhaps these scripts, songs, prayers and stories can help us sort out our lives a bit, straighten out our relationships a bit, speak our minds bit, hear each other a bit, see our blessings a bit, and set our course toward next year in Jerusalem.