I returned home from teaching a beautiful, deep, contemplative retreat in the woods of Minnesota. It was such a joy that my husband, Rachmiel, was able to join me on this meditation retreat that focused on the practice of Devekut, God-consciousness, imbued with love. We settled into our home in the evening, taught a class on Zoom and reveled in the glow of our practice.
The next morning, as I was sitting at my computer, catching up with emails, I caught sight of something scurrying past me and I jumped. It was a chipmunk, who seemed just as startled as I was as It jumped into my plants which had become a chipmunk playground. (One entire wall of my meditation room is a lush and varied garden of succulents.)
When another chipmunk ran across the room, I screamed. It was just instinctual. For the next few days, I was screaming and jumping and being startled over, and over again as we tried to figure out how to evict a large family of rodents that had moved into our house while we were away.
It took nearly a week to figure out how they were coming and going through the dryer vent, to get the right traps, replace that vent, and get the traps working through many trials and mishaps. Meanwhile my nervous system went on overload with all that jumping and screaming and startling. At one point, I found two dead chipmunks drowned in the toilet, and I just “lost it.”
I had always loved seeing our family of chipmunks playing on our porch. So cute. So mischievous. And now in the sacred space of my home: supremely unwelcome!
Seeing my beloved and now hated chipmunks dead in the toilet just sent me over the edge. I cried and cried, while Rachmiel held me. He had never seen me so out-of-control, and I felt ashamed.
I called on a neighbor to come and help settle me down and he asked if this reminded me of anything. Immediately a traumatic memory from my childhood rose up. I was about 8 years old. My family was getting ready to leave on a vacation, and my father accidentally ran over two (chipmunk size) kittens. My brother and sister and I were crying, screaming and inconsolable. My father was so upset with himself, that he didn’t deal with it well. The tiny beloved kittens ended up in the garbage as we drove away.
And now all those feelings were coming back to me to be healed. As I slowly calmed down, I let myself forgive my dad, who was doing the best he knew how.
And when I turned to Rachmiel and expressed my shame at being so out-of-control, he said, “Now, I love you more.” I’m still taking that in.
When the chipmunks were finally gone, it took a while to clean up the mess that they left, and to smudge and reclaim the sacred space of our home.
I know that on the Path of Love, we just need to learn from EVERYTHING. We need to clear away the past hurts that sit inside us. We need to clear away the shame of not-knowing. We need to clear away the illusions of control. We need to become vulnerable.
Those chipmunks were my messengers, my teachers… exposing my vulnerabilities, sending me to heal the past, forgive my father and let Rachmiel love me MORE.
© 2024 Rabbi Shefa Gold. All rights reserved. Photo credits: Juliette Sweet