Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann
Stanford University
Homecoming Weekend Oct. 12, 2008
Memorial Church
Revisiting Dreams
(Genesis 28:10-16)
In Queens, NY, a woman leaned out of her eighth floor tenement window
screaming for help. She was trapped inside the bathroom. The doorknob had fallen off,
and her three young children were alone in the kitchen while supper cooked on the stove.
A young man, who lived twenty miles away, happened to be walking down the street and
heard her. He bounded up the stairs. From outside the bathroom door, he told her to
place her fingers in the hole, lift the door slightly and pull it open. After calming her
distraught children, the woman asked the man in amazement, “How did you get into the
apartment? How did you know how to get the bathroom door open?” A smile spread
across his face—“I was born here and lived in this apartment for 15 years. As a kid, I
figured out how to get in the front door without a key and the bathroom doorknob would
always fall off—we learned to open the door just the way I showed you.”
Welcome to those of you who have returned to Stanford for homecoming
weekend—travelling again over familiar pathways, visiting the places which you once
called home, leading the way for others now living in those same rooms. President
Emeritus Donald Kennedy used to say in his Commencement Address about students’
anticipatory nostalgia for their Stanford years, “You have to leave—we need the beds!”
Yet, returning to a place where you acquired the keys to opening doors, a place
you once called home, inevitably brings both nostalgia and reflection. One of the
Hebrew names for God is hamakom, the place, and returning to this place brings sacred
associations.
In the portion we just read, Jacob learns that the place he is in is infused with
God’s presence. Achen yesh Adonia bamakom hazeh vanochi lo yadati. “Behold God is
in this place and I did not know it.” Remember where Jacob was in his life when he
proclaimed this insight? He was a teenager, newly leaving home. But unlike many of
you when you came to this place infused with the sacred, his leave-taking was filled with
complexity and a farewell blessing bestowed by deception. There were no parents
proudly accompanying him to his new room and checking out his roommates. There
were no Orientation Volunteers welcoming him to the next step on the journey. Jacob
went alone. His first night away from home must have been fraught with demons, fears,
imagined dangers and terrible loneliness. He placed his head on a rock and closed his
eyes against the dark. His dream comforted him.
For while Jacob was alone in sleep, he was accompanied in his dream. Upon a
ladder, firmly rooted in the place he was sleeping, but reaching up beyond his sight,
melachim—angels or messengers of the Most High were ascending and descending—
going forth and returning, rising and falling, mirroring dreams attained and dreams
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denied. In the transition from youth to adult, Jacob was accompanied by others, by
messengers, by those who helped him to know what to strive for and how to cushion a
fall.
In the text of this story, we read, “Vehinei sulam…v’hinei adonai nitzav alav,”
“And behold a ladder and…God is standing alav, upon it.” (Genesis 28:12). Alav is often
translated, upon it, but it can also mean, “with him”. God is standing with Jacob. God is
standing with Jacob through those Divine Messengers who assist him in moving from
youth to adult, those divine messengers who accompany him on the way, those divine
messengers who help him to become the best he can be.
All of you, all who have returned to Stanford this weekend to remember and to
reflect, along with all of you who are presently studying, making the transition from
youth to adult, are part of a congregation of divine messengers. Together, you form a
community across time and space, witnessing for one another the aspirations and the
disappointments, the preparation and the achievement of one another’s dreams.
In the Biblical story, Jacob exclaims, “Ma norah hamakom hazeh. Ain ze ki im
beit elohim.” “How awesome is this place! This is none other than God’s house.”
(Genesis 28:17) And how awesome, too, is this place-- filled with friends, memories,
rituals, community. How awesome! A place filled with divine messengers of vision, with
those who imagined the heights to which we might climb, cheered us along the way and
talked us out of locked buildings when we lost our keys or the knobs fell off the doors.
In Jacob’s story, God promises, “And here I am with you, and I’ll watch over you
everywhere that you’ll go, and I’ll bring you back to this place.” (Genesis 28:15) And so
it is with you, brought back for dreaming, brought back for reflection, and brought back
for friendship. In returning to a sacred place, the place where youth meets adulthood, we
let our deepest hopes speak, we listen for our lives.
As William Stafford writes in his poem, Ask Me,
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden: and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
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What the river says, that is what I say.
May we, together on this homecoming weekend, listen and dream as we have
been brought to this awesome place. May the messengers of the Most High accompany
us as we ascend and descend and may we know, with Jacob, that God is in this place.
Story is found in Small Miracles: Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life
Yitta Halberstam (p. 122-123)
“Ask Me” is found in Let Your Life Speak Parker Palmer
Thanks to the Reverend Nurya Love Lindberg for calling my attention to Let Your Life
Speak
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