#BlogElul 8 - Believe

Sometimes, belief is hard. It is so much easier - sometimes - to know. There is precision in knowing, and absoluteness. It is clean and sharp, like a sword. Sometimes

Belief can be messy - all dotted lines and fill-in-the-blanks. It is mutable, changing and wind-swept. There are no handholds in it, nothing to hang the piton from, so that you can swing yourself up, or out, or down. And sometimes, what I want, all I want, is the easy certainty of knowing. Not that the knowings - the facts and figures and truths - are always easy. Thing is, once you know, you're done. There's nothing more to do with that item, other than store it in its proper basket in some empty corridor in your head, along with all the other knowings that wait to be dusted off or be shined under the light of a passing thought.

Sometimes.

I wrestle with belief. I dance with God. It is the same thing, I think.

Here is an exchange that I had today, with a friend who helps me to see:

Me:  You know that sound we've been talking about for the past few weeks? That cry - the one with no words, the one that starts in your soul, or someplace deep and secret and afraid? I just had my "Aha!" moment of the day. I think I've been making that sound my entire life, waiting for someone - anyone - to hear. Or maybe respond. But really, I think just notice.

Friend:  Hence your search for God, no? 

Me:  Hence the search. Someone, something should hear, no? Why not God? Or do I make that sound because I fear there is no God? 

Friend:  Or, you need to have the faith that the sound is all you need. 

Me:  I may never have that kind of faith. I may never be that willing to be that silent or that alone. 

Friend:  But that's not being alone at all; in fact, I think it's quite the opposite. 

Me:  I wish I could believe that.

Friend:  Hence, the search. 

Me:  So wait. What am I searching for? Or is it all God - the search, the faith, the silence, the solitude? Is that my struggle: that I think they're all separate?

The thing is, I couldn't have had this conversation a day ago, or a week ago, or a year or three ago. Or I could have (and probably did, or some iteration of it). That's the thing about belief: it changes. It isn't set. It grows and shrinks and doesn't give me handy, tidy answers.

I struggle with it, dance along its thin edge.

But I am caught, ever and always, and held, so that I can wrestle and rest and believe, even for an instant, sometimes for eternity, until I'm ready to start the dance again. And for today, in this moment of Elul, for just this instant, I am grateful that I can come out of the hard precision of knowing, into the silence and solitude of belief.

(c) Stacey Zisook Robinson

2014

01 Nisan - Believe - #blogExodus

I got let go from my job yesterday.

I imagine this disconnected, drifty, free floating anxiety that I am feeling was exactly what the Children of Israel felt when they were Let Go. Even across this gulf of 3,500 years (give our take a decade or three) I can believe they got the news, and then just... continued on with their lives, perhaps waiting for feeling to catch up with action.

I mean, really-- one minute you're in the middle of your regular life, in the middle of some motion, maybe putting the casserole into the oven, or making a left-hand turn, or just putting a brick on top of all the other bricks of the pyramid you're building, moving from one place to the next, just like you've done, time and again and again and again.

And you may not even be thinking about it, that motion, that action. Certainly not thinking that this is the last time you're going to do this thing, this whatever- it-is thing, this common, ordinary, every day thing that you have done, that maybe was once done with joy or reverence or anticipation or dread or something, some noticing thing that separated it from every other everyday thing, but now is merely a background noise kind-of-thing, an unquestioned thing altogether, a means of getting from here to there, even when you have no idea that here is Here (and God only know where There might begin or end). You're just in motion.

And then word comes down from on high: you are Let Go. So what do you do, mid-motion, except exactly what you were doing, because while change may be lightening-fast, it has its own path to follow before it catches up to Now.

Or Then. We were talking about Then, weren't we? The slaves, the Children of Israel, living out their lives in the narrow spaces. Putting one foot in front of the other, day by day by day, ad infinitum, in joy or reverence or anticipation or dread-- in something that may have been fullness, or maybe somewhat hollowed out-ish, all reedy and breathy and unsettled (but not empty; never that-- that would be too clean, too sterile for day-to-day living, and day-to-day living is way too messy for that). But probably, when it omes down to it, it was all of this, all full and hollow and messy, all together, all at once.

What I wonder, from my vantage point of 3,500 years and all of those nearly-invisible will-o-the-wisp filaments that connect me to Them (and Then), what did they think, when  word finally reached them, mid-motion? Were they happy to have been released? Afraid of what would come next? Terrified at the thought of change? Or maybe it was all good-- joy at the thought of liberation and their sudden freedom?

Did they believe their lives would be immeasurably better, to be freed from their taskmasters' chains-- or even better at all? Did they cower just a bit, bowed by the sudden uncertainty of their lives, believing that all was lost, or did they believe that everything would be ok, that miracles happen, that the seas would part and they would be shown the way? Did they believe in a land of promise and blessing? Did they believe it was opportunity that waited just around the corner, over the next sand dune, and past the oasis-- or was it chaos, lying in wait?

Once we are Let Go, once we are freed from our bondage, once we finish the turn, close the oven door, take that step--  do we (do I?) let belief, and faith and hope guide me through the desert that lies between me and the Promised Land?

As I prepare for my own astounding journey from the narrow places towards redemption and freedom, what do I believe?

#blogExodus #Exodusgram

c Stacey Zisook Robinson
02 April 2014