in their lives . While I , as a rabbi and chaplain , use tools of words and a listening ear as ways of responding to suffering , the expressive artist could pick up where words felt limiting or were elusive . She offered the tools and materials of creating art as a way to contain , or at least express , the swirling chaos . From her I learned that working with a round canvas , much like the seder plates on our tables tonight , can be healing . That first session , our medium was colored glass . My hands and heart seemed to know the order they craved as they pulled together colors and pieces into a mosaic on a small , round , board - the shattered pieces ultimately forming a coherent whole .
Two thousand years earlier , in the wake of the destruction of the Temple and tremendous unrest , the rabbis used all the creative tools in their hands to restore order out of the chaos of destruction . Our seder , whose very name means order , offers us now familiar ritual so that we can step out of times of shattering chaos , even momentarily . It helps us to bring those fragments into an organized and coherent whole . Modern trauma theory eventually recognized what the rabbis knew instinctively : Where trauma overwhelms , provide sensory grounding and order .
Kadesh , Urchatz , Karpas , Yachatz , we recite , as we bring our senses into the present : the taste of the wine , the feel of the water on our hands , the smell of the parsley , the sound of the breaking matzah , the sight of the symbols of the holiday
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