Out of the Narrow Places
February 4, 2009
Jewish Living | Torah
(1 comments)
By Marge Eiseman
I wonder why the conversations I've been having lately seem to have the same underlying theme - I can talk to people in different cities, from various parts of my life, and we are all exploring the same thing. Change, creativity and trying to move out of the stuck places are the dominant themes.
One of my friends calls this "living in Torah time", and sees the conversations of the mundane as actually our sacred journey played out beyond the temporal bounds of time. The current story we are learning, Parashat B'Shallach, where we collect Joseph's bones and finally face the moment of crossing the Sea with all the attendant miracles and wonders, is an amazing meta-story for us to look at in our culture and our personal lives.
We have been stuck, many of us, in fear and anxiety. When the panic rises, we cling to the known, even when it isn't useful or appropriate. This is what our ancestors did, when they cry, "Weren't there enough graves in Egypt? You should have left us serving Pharaoh. We warned you before we left..." and the fear rose up as strong as a wall keeping them from moving forward. The text calls it a cloud that obscures the daylight, but we feel its thickness even now. When Moses finally answered them, and said "The Egyptians you see now you will never see again. God will deliver you but you must calm down and still yourselves," it was foreshadowing what I find myself doing in this time of extreme fear - exuding calm, enthusiasm and trust.
In one of my conversations today, Rabbi Harley Karz-Wagman from Wilmington, NC quoted Rabbi Ed Friedman, who talked about this role for the rabbi as being the non-anxious presence in the congregation. I was telling him about a book I just picked up, The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz. Fritz writes about how we must change the underlying structures in our lives to create changes that we want. He talks about how our life is like a river, and like water, we follow the path of least resistance. So when God wants us to leave the fear and depression of slavery, God actually cuts a new channel - opens the pathway for us to flow through!
The lessons of living in Torah time are huge. We can echo our ancestors' fears or choose to step up and hear the resonance of the voices of faith and calm. Let us decide to create the structures that support us and help us find our much-needed way out of the narrow places and into the expanse of the future!
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Wow Marge...all too true about clinging to the known when panic arises. That seems to be why so many of us are stuck in a rut, both physically and spiritually. That book sounds like something many of us should get our hands on. Thanks for posting.