By James Jacobsen-Maisels, Founder and Spiritual Director
There are times when we feel overwhelmed, helpless, as if life is closing in on us, like it is all just too much. In many ways, it’s the atmosphere of this time of year: the days are getting shorter, the darkness longer. What are we to do? Yet precisely at this time of year; precisely on one of those days, or in one of those fleeting moments when we feel closed in, we light the lights of Chanukah. We affirm that we are never helpless, never abandoned, never trapped. This is the lesson of the Maccabees. How could this band of brothers ever imagine that they could stand up to the might of the Greek empire? Yet, they did. Even if they had not emerged victorious, in the standing up itself, they already won their freedom.
The same is true of us. We are never helpless, never truly overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed is always our response to our experience of a situation, not the situation itself. In whatever situation we find ourselves, we always still have the possibility– the freedom, essentially — of determining our own reaction. We don’t have to be caught in our usual patterns of response. We don’t have to get lost in idolatry, in all the things we put at the center which are not really the center (pride, money, pleasure, success, being respected, defending ourselves, etc.). We assert our freedom simply by standing up, by refusing to accept our habitual patterns as inevitable, as inescapable. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. It’s ok. Not every Jewish revolt was successful. But we acknowledge and celebrate our capacity to be free and our genuine successes each time we do not fall as fully into our habitual patterns.
In Hasidism, they use the image of “vast floods” (mayim rabim) to symbolize the way in which we are overwhelmed by difficult thoughts, feelings, situations and patterns of reaction. They symbolize our feeling of helplessness. Yet the Torah reminds us we are never helpless for “vast floods cannot quench love, nor rivers drown it” (Song of Songs 8:7).
When we return to presence, when we return to love, we are no longer drowning. The flood may be present, too, but like the Hannukah lights, we keep on burning, clear and strong in our presence, loving and welcoming of whatever waters need our attention. For these floods too are nothing but the divine. What is the sound of God? “God’s voice is like the sound of vast floods” (Ez. 43:2). Right in the helplessness, in the overwhelm, in the “too much” is the divine. And if we can recognize this, all of sudden that huge monster is defanged, the flood becomes a lake, and there is a surprising ease in our relationship to what seemed like an untenable situation.
May we all light the light of our awareness this Hannukah, our ability to see our freedom and to lovingly welcome the vast floods as one more manifestation of divinity.