Fear, Faith, and a Really Big Sea... plus a Miracle or Two

I'm at that damned Sea again. Just when I think I've done it, finally managed to cross the Sea and leave it behind, I find myself staring at its implacable immensity, with the light of heaven mirrored in its unsplit surface. My feet are scarred and just a bit bloody. These reeds can cut like knives, apparently.

I expect to see a throng, or at least a large crowd of people, milling aimlessly about, stymied by the Sea. There is always some crowd, some random group of people waiting to cross, waiting for the Sea to spilt, the Miracle to happen. Waiting to be freed, at last. At the very least, I hope for Nachshon, the first one to get it - the first brave soul who decided that his faith was stronger than his fear, the very first to step into the wind-whipped water even before it split, who walked while the waters almost swallowed him whole, who walked because God had to be with him, because Moshe had to be telling the truth, because what else could he do? And just like that, between one breath and the next - between one hurried gulp of air before the waters covered him completely - the Sea split.

The waters parted, just in the nick of time. Nachshon and all those milling about people and the disordered chaos of all their things, the kids and the goats and the bubbies and zaydes, the aunts and annoying sisters and neighbors, all the knowns and the unknowns and the carts and donkeys and mothers and fathers and bread-that-didn't-have-time-to-rise - all the stuff that they carried, all the crush of people, our distant ancestors who were once slaves were now suddenly, blessedly free - all because of Nachshon's simple walk of faith, allowing that impossible Forever Sea to open enough for them all to cross.

Nes gadol hayah sham. I know, I know - wrong holiday, but the sentiment is the same: a great miracle happened there! Yay God! Yay us! Yay all of us - all the myriad generations that followed, from there to here, and then some. From the Forever Sea of reeds and water to my own Forever Sea. of mirrored surfaces and razor-sharp weeds. 

We are commanded to act as if we. too, had been redeemed from the narrow places, had seen the wonders of Fire and Smoke with our own eyes, had stood at the Sea with fear and doubt, and had found a faith that could carry us across.

I always assume - hope? pray? - that the finding is a one-and-done kinda move. I am naive that way.

Every year, it seems, I find the Sea again, I stand again at its ragged shore, and I wait for the faith to come. Where the hell is Nachshon when I need him? Where the hell is the miracle? Every year, I splash around the edges, getting wet and muddied and loud in my complaints fervent prayer; I feel alone. I feel connected. I need help. I am loved. I am broken. My body is breaking. I am lost. Where are you, God? Why am I here? 

I'm exhausted.

So with all this muddy mess swirling around in my head, i am reminded of a midrash. Not one of my regulars, that feel all warm and comfy and filled with answers that square the circle. This one is different for me. It begins two men; let's call them Shlomo and Ben. They were milling about with all the other lansmen, afraid and unsure. Who is this God we're supposed follow? Where's He been for all these years? (thought Shlomo) What's taken Her so long, if She's so powerful? (thought Ben) And just who is this Moshe guy, claiming to be one of us? This they declared together 

We're supposed to trust them, they thought, shaking their heads as they stared at the water that stretched to the horizon and back. The ground began to shake a little, and in the very far distance, they could just make out the call of a horn. Ben and Shlomo looked around a little, and saw the first line of chariots moving quickly towards them.

Perfect. Rock, meet hard place. 

Ok God - if You're ever gonna save us, now's a good time.

And that's when Nachshon made his move. All those bubbies and zaydes and family and the candle-makers and the brick-layers, all those recently-freed slaves held their collective breath – and the Sea split, and there was dry land. A miracle. Maybe this "God" God is the real deal. And so  all the people ran and celebrated, and sang and danced and were finally free to find the rest of their story.

Shlomo and Ben watched from the sidelines and shallows. They wanted to take their time, to make sure, just in case. They were smart like that. Just as the last family trundled past, donkeys braying and kids laughing and this or that threatening to fall from the over-stuffed, over-loaded wagon, Ben and Shlomo shrugged and followed.

It was a difficult and perilous journey for the two friends. The mud sucked at their feet, trying to claim their sandals. More than once, Ben had to help Shlomo up from the gooey mess. More than once, Shlomo had to do the same in return for Ben. They kept their eyes glued to their muddy, treacherous path, too afraid to do anything else, willing themselves not to fall. Their iron wills failed them, again and again.

We had plenty of mud in Egypt, grumbled Ben. And we used all that mud to make bricks, replied Shlomo. What is this place, they said together. The ground is illusion, seemingly solid until it sucks at our feet, drinking us down. The water seeps into every crack and hollow, and the damp gets into our lungs. What is this if not Egypt?

The day grew darker, the air more damp, and it wasn’t long until they were alone. Still they walked, grumbling and frightened, so sure of the mess they were in. The mess, they knew, was as forever as the Sea that may or may not have been their current escape route. Their wretched journey from one narrow place to another - so they were positive - only proved them right. This was no deliverance. 

When they finally reached that distant shore – they never quite noticed. Sure, the ground wad more solid, and there was certainly green grass mixed in with all that muddy brown, and the air dried out and even smelled sweetly sometimes, and they could hear a little music mixed in with the drone of bees and the soft roar of water. But Shlomo and Ben could only look down, could only see their own feet, their own fear.

They missed the miracle. They missed the play of light against the straining walls of water, and all the fish and sea creatures who swam up to watch them, flaunting their scales and fins and their bright colors before the delighted eyes of the people who walked between the watery walls. They never saw the sun kiss the very top of those walls, looking as if the water were liquid fire. They missed the faces of each one of their fellow ex-enslaved people, who would, each of them, in their own time, look about in wonder and awe and joy and absolute delight at the watery world around them as they danced (as best they could) through that muddy, squelching path to the Beyond – beyond the narrows, beyond the captivity, beyond the pain – and they rejoiced.

Shlomo and Ben? All they got was mud.

I have been here before, at this Forever Sea, I have stared out at it, afraid, alone, immobilized, praying for the faith of Nachshon to finally have courage enough to step into it, even just an inch or two. To walk, and know that I will be carried, that the Sea will split, that I will be able to walk through whatever it is that keeps me tethered to this place of doubt or grief or fear. Please God, release me from my self-imposed bondage, so that I can finally walk on dry land, and leave this Forever Sea.

I have  prayed, year after year after year. And every year – ta da! – a miracle of movement, and the world shifts and the light shines and I am through it, whatever that it may be. Or, if not exactly through, then at least making progress towards. 

And it hits me,  not all at once,  but slowly, building as inexorably as the rolling tide: I may be on the shores of this all roo familiar Sea yet again, but I am different. I am not searching out my annual vision of Nachshon, waiting to find my faith, to jump on the bandwagon of leaping and letting go. This year, I'm looking for the lesson of looking up.

I've spent way too much time looking down at the mud at my feet, hearing the desperate squelching of the ooze. I've become so intent on movement, on doing and fixing and working and changing, I seem to have missed the miracle.

I miss the colors and the wonder and the absolute awe of being carried, not from narrow to narrow, but just carried. I miss the grace of kindness and the intimacy of my vulnerability. Just as I need not wait for Nachshon to begin it all, I don’t need to lurk on the fringes in the back with Shlomo and Ben.

So this year, my prayer as we approach the shores of that Sea, as we prepare for redemption and faith and miracles  is a little different – 

Dear God, who is surely in my doubt as much as in my faith, who creates the waters that carry us and the light that shines – let me learn to be. Let me learn to look up, to see the glory that abounds, even in the darkness and the squelching mud. Let me know that even when the ground becomes suddenly unsteady and the silence becomes too loud that there are hands to hold and shoulders upon which I can lean. Teach me, please, that the Fixer of Broken Things can be, herself, fixed. 

Let me know, finally, that my truest prayer, and most honest, no matter what words I may use, is, ever and always: Dear God, I need help – and let me be brave enough to accept the help that surely comes, every time.

And let us say, amen.


Chag pesach sameach.

5778

First of Nisan - Launch

I missed the launch. This should not surprise anyone. 

Yesterday was the beginning of the month of Nissan, and thus, the launch of #BlogExodus, a creation of my friend Rabbi Phyllis Sommer. The trick is to write, blog, post, snap or chat, based upon a prompt that she has provided, for the fourteen days that lead up to Pesach (Passover) and the Exodus.. Yesterday, being the first of Nissan, the prompt was "Launch."

As I said, I missed it. Oy. Well, almost missed it, if I can eke out a few words on the prompt before sundown. Glory be - Jewish days always begin at sundown (thanks to the original launch, otherwise known as Creation, where we read "it was evening, it was morning; one day"). Which, according to the prophet Google, is at 7:14 pm. So, I have plenty of time.

Which brings me back to "launch," and missing it - or just barely making it. I tell myself that I hate being latte, which I do. Late always meant sitting on the curb in front of the school, its windows dark and the sky going that lovely shade of gray just before dusk, waiting. I felt like Godot, every time, and wondered, will this be the time, out of all the times, that they forget to pick me up? They never forgot. They were just always late. So my mantra has always been "I'd rather be three hours early than 2 minutes late."

And I have awesome intentions of being on time. And I mostly am. But more and more these days, I run late. And the simply late is morphing into the merely late, into the very late, more and more often. So late, that I ran the risk of missing the launch altogether.

Which may not be a bad thing, in this case. One, I write better (so I like to think) under pressure. I hate having a blank screen to stare at, with nothing but time between me and the pixels. I spend most of that time writing and deleting the first sentence of the thing I think I am writing. My Editor, the one who lives in my head, has a veritable field day on those days. I don't have the time to dust off the eraser when I'm pushing a deadline (mea culpa (if I can borrow the phrase) on all my various typos and grammatical vicissitudes).

Two, though, now that I know I'm running late, racing for the launch (so to speak), I got to thinking about our ancestors of way back when, when they really were fleeing - and fast. And what about anyone who might have been late? 

Timing was tight, I think. We go from the actual passing over of the Angel of Death at midnight, to taking up their clothes and possessions, their cattle and goats and sheep, along with their bread before it was leavened, to "borrowing" the gold and silver from the Egyptians, who were weeping and wailing at all the death, to the journey itself - all those people, all those kids. Obviously, they had different kinds of kids back then - I have one (got a perfect one on the first try), and I have tried to leave lickety-split with him from infancy on, and quick - let alone orderly, with everything one is supposed to take for even the shortest journey on the first try - is a miracle of the highest order. For me, it was a miracle I could only dream about.

So maybe I re-think the "timing was tight" thing. There was a helluva lot of movement happening, and even more moving parts. Pharaoh was (I presume) still in dazed mourning, so he wasn't yet amassing his hosts and their chariots. Still, with 600,000 men, plus the women and kids and anyone else - that's gotta take a helluva lot of time to communicate, coordinate and commence.

It had to take some time to launch. And so maybe everyone launched together. Maybe everyone got it together, so if little Joshua forgot his pet lamb, certainly his cousin Ya'akov would grab it. And maybe Yael really needed to polish her cymbals, so Ruchel packed up the last of the plates and cups. And they all knew, once they got where they were supposed to go, it would all get sorted out in the wash.

Still, there had to be someone who was late. Someone who wasn't quite as organized as her neighbors; someone who had a few extra treasures he wanted to bring - a rock that looked interesting, that would remind him of the home he had made in these Narrow Places, or an embroidered tablecloth that had been handed down since the last time they were in Canaan. Or something. Someone of those 600,000-plus people had to have been late.

So - what then?

So maybe, redemption comes when it comes. Maybe it comes when we do the work of it. And maybe - just maybe - it comes when we are finally willing to leave the Narrow Place in which we find ourselves, when we let go of the bondage to which we cling so tightly, when we are finally able to look up, to see, at last, the wonders being offered to us with an outstretched hand, and so begin  our journey. 

So, today, the first of Nissan, we launch into our journey, some together, some rushing to catch up. 

I'll meet you at the Sea, timbrel in hand xoxo

For anyone interested in Blogging Exodus, here are the prompts Rabbi Phyllis has created:

Fear, Faith and a Really Big Sea-- an annual redux (times 3)

And so we have made it through one more circuit in the sweeping arc of that planetary dance around the sun. At almost full circle, it seems this particular essay of mine is becoming an annual thing. How bad could that be, though: an exercise that forces me to think about fear and faith and the part they both play in my life, the leaps that I have made and the stumbling around in the dark that I have done?  I have managed to navigate through my days with both faith and fear, though not in equal measure. The balance seems to be in favor of faith these days, and that is truly a thing of miracle and wonder.

It should come as no surprise that I have taken some long and twisty paths to get to this place. I gravitate towards the dark and twisty, and feel, somewhere in my head, or wandering around my heart, that life and things and lessons have more meaning if they are difficult to come by. While the shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, I prefer the road that diverges and is less traveled. We may eventually get to the same place, but the view, and the adventures in between, seem to make the journey that much richer (and the destination that much sweeter).

This year, I have less tested my faith than discovered it. Sometimes, I have had to rediscover it on a daily basis. My faith can be a tad quixotic. The glory, as I see it now, is that (at last, or at least for today) my faith has tempered my fear. Now, rather than lying cold and dank in the pit of my belly, ready to slither and coil outwards in a quickening spiral that radiates through me, spinning me madly, my fear is smaller, seemingly more docile and compliant. If it is not missing altogether, I at least have gained the ability to act upon my fear more realistically. More sanely.

The monsters hiding under beds and in closets may be real, but I have (hopefully) found better armor and more appropriate weaponry with which to defend myself. It surprises and delights me no end to find, in the tangled mess that is my current quiver, faith and hope are my most prized (and most used) arrows.

There is still much unchanged, or at least undifferent. It is still about fear, and faith in the face of that.  And it's about staring out at the vast and dark sea and being stuck and being afraid and having faith.  It's about being forgiven, at last, and forgiving, all in the same breath.

So the year turns, as it always does, and time flows in some holy and sacred river, and it is, once again, Passover.  There is beauty in that cyclical passage of time.  There is grace in getting to this season, again, of God's redemption.  Once we wandered a dark and empty desert, and then were brought home.  Once we were slaves, now we are free.  

Here's the post that sparked all this a few years ago:

I'm in one of those places: stuck, prickly, at the very edge of letting go, trembling with the effort to not tip over the edge into the abyss of the unknown, desperate to take that final leap of faith and soar towards light and wholeness. I am astounded, as always, when I think how inextricably intertwined my fear and my faith have become. I have heard (more times than I care to remember) that Fear (always pronounced with a capital F) is an absence of Faith. No. I think not. I demand Not. I am too intelligent--- God is too intelligent-- to demand unthinking blind faith like that, to insist that faith is a guard against fear.

Fear keeps the lights on at night and smells of sweat and tension and anxiety-- sharp and unpleasant. If the fear is great enough, it can keep me rooted and curled in on myself, covers pulled tightly over my head, unmoving. Paralyzed. Stuck. Tentative. Invisible.

But my faith: sweet and sure and graceful. It wraps around me like light, like breath, like life. It sometimes moves mountains. More often than not, it is just enough. Enough, not to beat back the darkness or vanquish my demons, but enough to put one foot in front of the other, to walk, however falteringly, forward. To know that, no matter what, I am enough, I will be ok.

And so, faith and grace being what they are, I think of my fear, and my stuckness, and I am reminded that it is Pesach (Passover). And in the midst of all of this darkness, there is also redemption, and release.

I got to tell the story of Nachshon at assembly a while back during Sunday school. It is my favorite midrash, I think. (For those of you reading this who are now totally lost in the tangle of my narrative, a midrash is a rabbinic story, a device used to fill in some of the blanks and the holes in the Torah. Kinda folkloric, they are the stories behind the stories.) So, Nachshon-- he was a slave with all the other Israelites who found redemption at the hand of God. He was Let Go, with a capital L and a capital G, brought out with a Mighty Hand. He packed and didn't let the dough rise and ran, breathless and scared and grateful, away from the land of Pharaohs and pyramids and crocodiles and slavery--- ran into freedom.

And then he got to the sea. He and 600,000 other un-slaved people. Stopped cold by the Red Sea. It was huge, and liquid and deep. You couldn't see the other side. It was so big you couldn't see any sides. Just wet from here to... forever.

And behind him, when he (and 600,000 others) dared to peek: Pharaoh and his army of men and horses and chariots. And spears and swords and assorted sharp pointy things. We really can't forget the sharp pointy things. Even at a distance, the sharp pointy things loomed quite large in the eyes of Nachshon and his recently-freed landsmen. Caught between the original rock and a hard place. Well, ok: between water and pointy metal stuff. At this point, I don't think anyone involved cared much about getting the metaphor exactly right. What they cared about was getting out from that perilous middle. Fast.

So Moses, because it was his job, went to have a chat with God. And just like that, Moses got an answer--- a Divine Instant Message. All that the Children of Israel needed to do: walk forward, into the Sea, that big, wet, deep forever sea. God would provide a way. "Trust Me," God seemed to say. "I got you this far, didn't I? I wouldn't let you fall now!"

And Nachshon and the 600,000 stood at the shivery edge of that Sea, staring at that infinite horizon in front and the pointy, roiling chaos of death and slavery behind them. And they stood. Planted. And let's face it: not just planted, but rooted in their fear and mistrust and doubt. They may have felt reassured by the image of God as a pillar of smoke or fire--- impressive pyrotechnics to be sure--- but the soldiers and the Sea were so there, so present, so much more real.

And then, in the midst of that fear and doubt, something changed. Nachshon, lately freed, trapped between death by water and death by bleeding, Nachshon did the miraculous-- he put one foot in front of the other and walked into the sea.  And the 600,000 held their collective breath, watching the scene unfold before them. Nachshon did what 600,000 could not: he decided to believe, to have faith. To leap. And tho the water covered first his ankles, then knees, then chest, then kept rising, until he was almost swallowed whole, he kept walking, kept believing. And just when it seemed that Nachshon was a fool for his faith, would surely drown in that infinite forever sea, another miracle:

The waters parted.

The Sea split and Nachshon, so recently in over his head, he walked on dry land. And the 600,000 breathed again, in one relieved whoosh of air, and they found their own faith and followed Nachshon into and across the dry Sea to the other side.  And then the journey truly began...

I pray to have faith enough to walk into my own Sea--- of doubt and fear and darkness. I want to walk and feel the waters part, to be released from the tangled web of thought that holds me immobile and disconnected. I have learned, again and again, without fail: when I take that step, when I find the grace and the faith to put one foot in front of the other, to trust, as Nachshon did, I am carried forward, I am freed from my self-imposed bondage. I am enough, and I can walk again on dry land to freedom.

I think I am finally learning to let go, finally leaving the desert, stumbling at last along a narrow bridge to light and hope.  There is fear; yes.  But there is also faith and grace and redemption.  Even for me, there is redemption. 

Once we were slaves, now we are free.

Chag Pesach Sameach.
Happy Passover
2013/5773