In Parshat Bemidbar, the Israelites are counted and placed as God instructs Moshe to take a census of the people. Each person, each tribe, was to surround the Mishkan, the sacred center of their community. The text is precise, even logistical; it includes names, numbers, and directions. But behind all that detail is something deeply human. It is not just a counting.
Each person matters. Each person belongs. Each one is seen and known and named. Each one has a place in community.
Over time, a community becomes a kind of encampment, gathered around something sacred, and also made holy by the people who show up week after week. People who stand next to one another, sing next to one another, carry burdens together. People who remember one another’s names, and stories, and birthdays. People who create a place by the way they dwell in it.
Reading Bemidbar this week, I find myself thinking about what it means to stand in a community, not only as individuals with roles, but as people bound together by presence, purpose, and care.
Being counted is not just about being tallied. The census and the list of names are not just about numbers and logistics. They are about being seen. And when we are really seen, when we are held in someone else’s story, in a community’s story, we do not just belong. We carry one another forward.
With tonight’s farewell dinner in mind, I have deep gratitude for the way you have seen me and allowed me to see you. It is such a precious and rare gift to be seen in such profound ways, and it is what has allowed our relationship to grow and flourish over these last eight years. While I am here for a few more weeks, in this moment I pause to note the beauty of being counted and seen. Of being able to count others, to see others. May this continue to be the core of who we are as a community, to allow each person to be known, named, and seen.
