Parashat Naso: Shalom Is a Container

There is a lot of pain that is surfacing in our world, A lot of injustice and suffering and fear. There also continues to be a current of uncertainty and unease and even confusion.

How does a person hold steady amidst it all, without denying either the suffering -- of self and other -- or the general unease?

Above all, at all times, but especially in times like this, we need to hold some place of peace inside us. There can also be empathy and anger and hurt and suffering and fear and anxiety, but underneath it all -- holding it all -- there must always be some eternal, unbreakable steadiness, a place of imperturbable peace. Shalom.

This week we read Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing which ends with the blessing of Shalom. May God grant you peace.

Shalom is one of God’s names. We have access to this place by tapping into the point inside us that is always connected to our source above, to the panim (the face) that shines down on us in the priestly blessing, to the place inside us that is beyond this world, beyond what happens today or tomorrow or yesterday, but exists outside of time and place, in that other world, where there is only peace. Can you feel the steadiness, the calm, the clarity of that place inside you? We all have it, though it is covered up most of the time.

That place is the container that can hold all the rest. The rabbis, explaining why peace is an essential element of this and any blessing, say: eyn keli mahazik berachah ela shalom. “The only vessel that can really hold blessing is peace.”

Peace is a container. It holds the blessing, and maybe it also holds the difficulties. Shalom is related to the word shalem. It is complete -- it has seen it all and it holds it all, the good, the bad, the joy, the suffering. It is like an ancient tree in the woods; it stands still and steady -- while the world swirls around it -- witnessing it all.

Shalom stands as a steadying force for the restless act of seeking blessing. Seeking blessing is an acknowledgement that there is some lack in the world, something that needs to change, to be fixed. Shalom stands amidst that energy and holds it in the knowledge that, even in the face of lack and restlessness and a need for change, there is also always completeness; things are also already done, already perfect and immutable. And somehow, in that knowledge, it draws down the needed blessings and change to make this world we live in more perfect.

Shabbat is also called “Shalom.” This Shabbat, may we feel the Shalom inside us -- the knowledge of an already perfect place of unending peace and stability -- and allow it and ourselves to become the keli , the vessel, for all the blessing that this world so desperately needs.