Omer, Day One

Tonight is One.

First steps are hard for me. It is so much easier to stay stuck in one place, unmoving. Even the pain of that - the pain of stuckness, the pain of sameness and stasis - all that seems so much easier than change.

I see infinity with every step, and it terrifies me, overwhelms until I can't move. I wait. I watch. I fear.

You get the picture.

Here's the thing that saved my life, heard at a time I needed it, when I was so mired in my infinity that I was drowning in it and I could barely breathe - I am not responsible for infinity. I am not even responsible for the Whole Picture, the Everythingness of my actions, the sum total of all the rest of my life, here at the starting line of whatever journey of change or discovery or unknown leap of fucking faith: Pray to God, and row towards shore.

One step. That's all I need do. One. The infinity, the everythingness that I hold so tightly - so that my back is bent and my fingers cramp with the strain of seeing that first step turn into that first mile into that first day into that first misstep into that muddy quagmire of mistakes and the unknown - 

All of that is (as a dear friend once told with, with all the love in her heart) is none of my damned business. All I have, all I can ever do, is take one step, the one that is right in front of me.

What happens from there? No idea. That's the deal - one step, whether I am inching along or racing by in my seven league boots - that One is filled with my faith (and my fear) - faith that I will be able to face whatever it is that stares me down in hat moment, faith that I know I will be ok - not that everything will magically go my way whenever I take that one step, but that I will survive it, with as much grace as I allow.

Some days I am more graceful than others. But it only happens when I put one foot in front of the other.

So tonight begins the Counting of the Omer. Whatever the ancients did with it, I choose to honor this mitzvah, this commandment, by taking a spiritual journey through these next 49 days, to discover what it is that I carry and hold on to as we all move from the Narrow Places of our slavery to the wide open spaces of the Wilderness and freedom - and binding, and grace, and community and revelation.

It's an awesome journey - literally - but however awesome, however rich and difficult and energizing this journey may be, it all begins with 

One. 

Tonight we count One of the Omer.

#countingthe omer #passover #journeytofreedom