Torah as Mirror: The Laugh That Knows
WEEK FOUR – Originally published 11/12/25
This weeks Torah As Mirror has been so alive for me, I designed a new piece of art to go with it. And I wanted to share.
We have been traveling together for some time now through these weeks of Torah — tracing the quiet places where the ancient story meets the daily one. Each portion has carried us a little further into the heart: the doorways we approach, the thresholds we cross, the messengers that arrive when we aren’t quite ready. What I’ve been learning is that revelation does not come all at once. It unfolds slowly, as we do. And each week, the Torah holds up a mirror to remind us where we’ve been and what has already begun to change within us. This week is no different. It is another doorway. Another laugh. Another revelation that doesn’t announce itself, but comes softly, as love changes form.
This week, I said goodbye to my physician of decades.
Someone who has known the history of my body and the history of my life.
The kind of relationship that forms quietly, over years, in the small rooms where truth is spoken without hesitation.
I have been sitting with the tenderness of that parting — not as an ending, but as a change in shape — the kind we don’t always have words for.
This week brought a quiet shift.
A goodbye that wasn’t an ending.
A recognition of love changing form.
If any part of this meets you in your own becoming, I’m glad we’re here together.
Torah as Mirror
Where the story in the text reflects the story in us.
Where the sacred isn’t somewhere else, but already inside our ordinary days.
Where we read not to be certain, but to become more aware.
This is not about belief or correctness.
You don’t need to hold a particular theology to be here.
I want to make these stories accessible and relatable to all.
The Torah is wide.
It holds joy, fear, heartbreak, courage — just like we do.
So each week, I return to it the way one comes to a mirror:
to see what is already trying to speak inside my life.
This week’s portion is Vayera — “And God appeared.”
Abraham is seated in the doorway of his tent in the heat of the day.
He is still healing from the pain of circumcision.
Still nursing a wound between what was and what will be.
And this is where revelation comes:
Not after certainty.
Not after strength.
But in the middle of becoming.
After the open wound of separation scabs over.
The portion moves through quiet turning points.
These are not clean moments.
They are love changing form.
And there is laughter here —
Sarah’s laugh when she is told she will carry life at ninety.
A laugh shaped by everything that came before: longing, disbelief, tenderness, endurance, hope.
I know that laugh.
When Margie, my physician of decades, walked into the room this morning and saw me after years of shared stories, medical history, relief, irritation, closeness, quiet care, laughter and tears and sometimes anger — she laughed that same kind of laugh.
A laugh that said:
We have lived a long story together.
And here we still are.
And when she realized I had come through the rain — not as a test of endurance, but simply because this moment mattered — she laughed again, softer this time.
It was the laugh of recognition: that some goodbyes deserve to be made face to face, in the same air, in the same room, with nothing between us but our shared years.
And then her face changed.
There was a softness in her eyes — and a question:
Have I done enough?
Did I matter?
I wanted her to see herself the way I see her — steady, present, wildly devoted.
The kind of healer who doesn’t make a show of care because she doesn’t need to.
It felt right that we were together in the same room for this threshold — the way we had been for so many others.
I said goodbye to Margie, who is retiring at the end of the month.
She has known the history of my body, and the history of my inner world.
She helped me feel like one continuous life, not just a body that had been cut up into pieces.
When I told her:
“What you’ve given me is already part of me.
You don’t have to stay for it to remain real. You have done enough.”
She paused.
Her eyes softened further.
She asked if she could hug me, “for that.”
I said yes.
And as she turned to leave, she said:
“Goodbye, Jenny — Dr. Holland.
You were more my doctor than I was yours.”
As she walked through the doorway, something in me settled.
The love did not leave.
It changed form.
And stayed.
At Abraham’s doorway, three messengers appear.
Not winged.
Not dazzling.
Just present when his heart is most tender.
I know those messengers.
My children:
Amelia.
Addison.
Noah.
Not metaphors.
Not lessons.
Real people — shaping me into who I am becoming.
And also — the companions who stay near in ordinary time:
Baruch.
Nova.
Shomrei.
Their nearness.
Their steadiness.
Their unguarded, chaotic presence.
The messengers in my life have come with laughter,
with sadness,
with perfect timing,
and with forgiveness that shook me.
Jung would call this individuation —
the slow realization that strength and steadiness have taken root inside.
Kabbalah would say the vessel has widened —
that the soul can now hold more light than it once could.
From an attachment perspective:
Some relationships become part of the architecture of the nervous system.
Not because they were perfect,
but because they were steady.
A person who shows up through years of becoming becomes a kind of inner landing place —
a quiet knowing that we were held, seen, and accompanied through time.
That kind of bond does not end.
It simply shifts its location —
from between two people,
to within the one who remains.
The sacred is not elsewhere.
It is here.
In the way love changes shape and remains.
We all have someone whose name rises when we think of love changing form.
A person who walked with us through something real.
A person we recognized, and who saw us back.
If you let yourself remember them now — just for a breath — notice how the heart pulls toward both gratitude and the memory of what was shared.
This is what it means to have been loved.
There comes a moment in every real relationship when the love doesn’t disappear — it simply moves inside.
It shifts from something held between two people to something that now lives within the one who remains.
And this is also how we come to know God.
Not as something outside of us, waiting to be reached or convinced or proven.
But as a presence that moves inward inviting us to embrace our wholeness.
This is not an ending.
It is a continuation of love.
Echoing my brother Shane:
Nothing given in love is wasted.
Nothing true is ever lost.
It becomes part of who we are,
how we listen,
how we see the world.
And that is what remains.
Blessing for Everyone
May we let love change without believing it has disappeared.
May we trust what has already grown inside us.
May we recognize the quiet messengers who stay with us.
May we laugh like Sarah and Margie
not because the promise of new life is unbelievable,
but because some part of us always hoped it might be true.
Love,
Jenny