Vayera

Avraham welcomed the angels into his tent

And he rejoiced in the good news they brought.

Wanting to share a meal with them,

he chose a calf who promptly ran away.

And Avraham followed him into a cave--

there he discovered Machpelah.

The journey that started with Lech Lecha

brought him into this holy place of HaMakom

where he embraced Sarah,

the linking of spirits,

the union of souls.

According to the Zohar

Avraham had a conversation with Adam.

and eight ancestral couples

were in this place, not just as a burial site

but perhaps as a womb of liminal connection,

of transcendance or transformation.

Maybe our journeys include meeting

long lost ancestors, like that uncle

we never met from the shtetl.

Sarah and Chava may have prayed

together at Machpelah

and Jacob and Leah were there too.

According to Genesis Rabbah,

Rebecca was born the day Sarah died.

Yet we see them together at Machpelah.

Rebecca brings back the light of Sarah's legacy

and the cloud of glory at the entrance to her tent.

As we shape sound to make speech

we make pillars out of the air we breathe.

And God appeared, Vayera, at the center,

God who speaks the language of Creation,

our divine utterances as part of that whole;

learning to encompass the infinite.

Human conceptions like time and space

take on new dimensions as we step closer

to fulfilling our divine purposes.

And as Sodom comes into our awareness,

we acknowledge our limitations.

But at the edge of consciousness,

we see that Lot's survival bore

the lives of Ruth

and then David, our special ancestors.