Today is fourteen days, which are two weeks of the Omer. Malchut of Gevurah: The Ten and Five of Wands.

Today I’d like to look at this pair as a negative expression of Sovereignty in Discipline.

Have you ever worked at a job where a colleague wasn’t meeting their obligations so that you stepped in to make sure the work got done? Have you ever been in a situation where there was such disorganization that you decided you had to take things into your own hands in order to stave(!) off chaos? That’s one of the situations on view in the Ten and Five of Wands.

A teacher of mine once said that people who take too much responsibility are often found in corporate corner offices. And that people who take no responsibility are often found in jail cells. (I can only hope that Cult 45, who recently said that he takes no responsibility for the health crisis we are in will find himself in a jail cell soon).

An example of this can be found right in the Torah. After the Israelites passed through the sea and began their trek to Sinai, they stopped in Midian, the home of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro. And Jethro could see that Moses was in overwhelm. He was micro-managing all the affairs of the people, so that every day people came to him to adjudicate every little problem.

As someone who had grown up in the court of the Pharaoh, you’d think he’d have understood how these things are done. But perhaps he didn’t believe that there were any people among the former slaves who had enough distance from the mind of slavery to be able to stand in and judge these cases. Jethro set him straight:

“What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear away, you as well as this people that is with you; for this thing is too heavy for you—you are not able to perform it yourself alone.”

—Exodus 18:18

Jethro told him to find good men from among the tribes and appoint them as judges so that Moses would not have to judge every case. Yes, Moses was a micromanager, but in all fairness, he didn’t have the benefit of a management training course even if he did grow up in Pharaoh’s court. He was just thrown in the deep end of the pool (or Red Sea as the case may be) by Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, so he took it all on. Only after instruction by Jethro was he able to let go. Trying to do it all wasn’t good for him, and it wasn’t good for his people.

Sovereignty here doesn’t mean being a ruler over others. It’s about being a ruler over oneself. When we believe the responsibility is all on our shoulders like the figure in the Ten of Wands, we also believe that the structure will collapse without us to keep it all in place. This leads to both resentment at the others who aren’t strong enough to share the responsibility (or so we believe that they aren’t strong enough) and engenders a sense of grandiosity that tells us that we’re the only ones capable of doing things right.

In spiritual communities I have seen this happen, so that a spiritual leader who may have started out with great wisdom and compassion suffers from burnout and becomes bitter. And I have seen this in corporate settings as well.

It is also something that happens between parents and children. Have you ever seen a parent grow impatient with a child trying to learn to do something and take over? This violates the boundaries of the child and disrespects their sovereignty. It leads to children who grow up thinking either that they can’t do anything right, or that they don’t have to finish something because someone will finish it for them.

But when we respect both our Sovereignty and that of others, thus respecting the boundaries of Gevurah, our individual sovereignty is part of a larger structure where we are supported as we support others. We take healthy responsibility that does not seek to take on more than is our due.

So what do you need to let go? What responsibility should you be sharing?