— A Heap of Witness

Twenty years
in another man’s house,
under Laban’s watchful eyes,
through heat by day
and frost by night.

His wages changed
like the moon,
ten times.
His life was weighed
on another man’s scale.

But the Friend
had not forgotten him.

*

Jacob heard Laban’s sons:
He has taken
everything our father had.

And he saw Laban’s face
turned away from him,
like a sunflower
that has found another sun.

Then God spoke:
Return to the land of your fathers,
and I will be with you.

The road he had feared
was the reed bed
calling the reed
home.

*

He called Rachel and Leah
out to the field,
away from their father’s walls,
where the wind
could carry the truth.

Your father’s face
is no longer toward me.
But the God of my father
has been with me.

He cheated me.
He changed my wages.
Yet God has seen
the work of my hands.

*

The sisters listened.
They remembered too.

Their father’s house
had been a cage
painted like a home.
He had sold them
like sheep in the market,
and spent
what was theirs.

So they said,
Do whatever God
has told you.

*

Jacob rose.
Wives, children,
flocks, servants,
everything God had given,
a caravan
slipping out at dawn
without a word to Laban.

The door of the old house
closed behind him
like a book.

*

But Rachel carried
something hidden.
Her father’s household gods,
wrapped and tucked away.

No one knew.
Not Jacob.
Not Leah.
Not Laban.

*

We leave the old house
and think our hands are empty.
But the heart is a deep saddlebag.
It carries old fears,
old loyalties,
old wounds,
small gods
we never meant to bring.

*

Three days passed
before Laban knew.
Seven days
he rode after them.

Then, in the night,
God came to Laban
in a dream:
Be careful.
Say nothing to Jacob,
good or bad.

The Friend had stepped
between the hunter
and the hunted.

*

At last Laban caught up,
anger in the air
like dust before a storm.

Why did you steal away?
Why carry off my daughters
like captives of the sword?
And why
did you steal my gods?

*

Jacob did not know.
Search everything, he said.
Whoever has your gods
shall not live.

A careless word,
an arrow shot into the dark,
falling closer to Rachel
than he knew.

*

Laban searched
tent by tent,
bundle by bundle.

Rachel sat on the camel saddle,
the gods hidden beneath her.
Do not be angry, my lord.
I cannot rise.
The way of women
is upon me.

And the gods
stayed hidden.

*

What strange gods,
small enough to hide,
small enough to carry,
small enough to sit on.
And still
people trusted them
with tomorrow.

We do the same.
Money.
Control.
Reputation.
The approval of others.
Little clay gods,
smooth from our worried hands.

But the God of Jacob
cannot be hidden under a saddle.
The Beloved
does not fit in our tent.

The ocean does not live in the cup.
The cup
lives in the ocean.

*

Then Jacob’s anger rose,
twenty years of it,
pouring out like water
over a broken dam.

Twenty years
your ewes did not miscarry.
Twenty years
I paid for every torn lamb.
Heat consumed me by day,
frost by night,
and sleep fled my eyes.

You changed my wages
ten times.

If the God of my father,
the God of Abraham,
the Fear of Isaac,
had not been with me,
you would have sent me away
empty-handed.

But God has seen
my affliction
and the labor of my hands.

*

God has seen.
The whole road
fits in those words.

The God who saw Hagar
by the desert spring.
The God who saw Leah
in her lonely tent.
The God who saw Jacob
asleep on a stone.

The Beloved sees
the labor no one praises,
the tears no one notices,
the years no one remembers.

Sometimes that is enough
to keep a tired soul
walking.

*

Laban answered:
The daughters are mine.
The children are mine.
The flocks are mine.
All you see is mine.

Mine, mine, mine,
the old song of the fist.

But Jacob was learning
a new tongue.
Blessing cannot be owned.
It is wind through an open hand,
received,
tended,
passed on.

*

So they made a covenant.

Jacob set up a stone
as a pillar.
His kin gathered stones
into a heap,
and they ate bread
beside it.

Laban called it
Jegar-sahadutha.
Jacob called it
Galeed.

A heap of witness,
two names
for one memory,
a line drawn in stone
between yesterday
and the morning.

*

The stones said:
Remember the wounds.
Remember the years.
Remember the anger.
But do not carry
the old war
into the new day.

*

Laban said,
May the Lord watch
between you and me
when we are out of each other’s sight.

Not a spy’s eye.
A prayer.
May the Holy One stand
in the space between us,
a quiet flame
keeping both tents
from burning.

*

They broke bread.
In the morning
Laban kissed his daughters
and his grandchildren,
blessed them,
and went home.

And Jacob turned his face
toward the hills.

*

Ahead,
Esau was waiting.
Fear was waiting.
The unknown was waiting.

But Jacob was not the man
who had fled Canaan.

He had learned to labor,
to wait,
to love,
to be deceived,
to carry the weight of others.

And deepest of all,
he had learned
that the Friend does not leave
when life turns unjust.

*

The God of Bethel
had walked beside him
twenty years,
through another man’s house,
through changing wages,
through family wounds,
through the long night,
on the long road home.

Home is not only
the place we return to.
Home is the moment we see
the Guest
has been walking with us
all along.

*

The stones remained.
The covenant remained.
The wounds were not erased.
But the war was over.

Peace is not forgetting.
Peace is remembering
without letting the memory
hold the reins of tomorrow.

*

Jacob walked on.
Beyond the next hill
waited the brother
he had wronged.

The past was riding out
to meet the future.
But this time,
Jacob did not walk alone.