Shabbat during Passover: what is possible

Poet Rabbi

Exodus 34:4-10

4/7/12

Ki tissa

Shabbat during Passover: what is possible

How do we heal our hurts of the past? Our wrongdoings? Our overt and covert inconsideration of those we love? Our moments of rage and disdain, or hurtful words and actions?

“God will visit the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generation.”

Ouch. That’s a big deal – what we do now reaches into a future we will not see. We are affected by a past we do not know. So what do we do?

Seriously. How my great-great grandparents were in the world affects how I parent my children. I am touching the lives of my children’s grandchildren – and here’s the thing: I am SO not perfect.

So I put perfect aside and I take comfort in two things. 1. What I do, how I am, matters. 2. I can be an agent of change.

Agent of change, the past ripples, the present ripples, the future is happening now (we just haven’t gotten there yet) and it ripples.

So how do we heal? How do we deal with our own iniquities and those visited upon us?

Two ideas: 1. We pray. We acknowledge who we are, who we have been, who we hope to become, and we ask for forgiveness in the fullness of our knowing. Forgiveness of G-d, of our children, of our parents, of the ancestors we don’t know and the future we will never see. But if we close our eyes, let ourselves go a little, draw closer to G-d, we can feel them. Which leads to #2…

2. It is never too late to love. To show it backwards and forwards. This makes us agents of change, it makes us humble, it allows us to be in the eternal company of all that is, was, and will be, the imperfect past-present-future-God who is ever evolving as we change too; and we make a commitment to awareness, to search the corners of our souls. Not with guilt and heavy hearts alone, but with hope – that we will not go one step further unaware, that we will not go one step further in the old way, the way of hardened hearts, the way of slavery, the way of believing that we DO NOT matter.

We matter. We heal with G-d and love and hard truth. We heal by acknowledging our screw-ups, sometimes a lifetime of them, and working inside to say NO MORE. I won’t keep doing that.

And then we ripple – past, present, future – into our freer selves. Not perfect, not without relapse or complaint, but in knowing that LOVE matters, that all is not lost, that if our iniquities ripple, so too must our hope, our love and our awareness.

So go forth and know we all do it. But not one step further that way, it’s time for anything we can do to serve that unseen past and future. This is how we heal. This is how we see and know and serve God.

– Samantha Libby

Bring Ourselves Open (to make a place for God to dwell)

(end of Feb)

Everything in you that is beautiful, valuable, a gift, bring it to this community and offer it up, for this is how God will dwell within and amongst us.

Make space, face each other, face toward the center of the ring and look up, raise your voice in song, your actions, your deeds, infuse them with all that is beautiful and know that when we are overflowing AND when we are in dark times, the downswing of grief, depression, regret, shame, we can still face forward and make space for the in-dwelling of holiness.

We, together, as a people, as a community, must remember and search and see the gifts that dwell within all of us, and not place ourselves above or below each other, for our humanity, our piece of God, our sanctuary, cycles through us, individually and communally, we all lean forward to learn compassion and forgiveness, holiness and love, weakness and strength; we all face our own capacity for brokenness and beauty, for being less and more, for being down and out and then lifted up.

It cycles through us all and still, each day, each moment, still we must face the center and look up, look around, and bring our holy, beautiful, broken, strong, and healing lives forward; as individuals, as a community, as souls bringing their beauty and service forward, opening our hearts and our gifts, orienting all pieces of ourselves to the larger holiness we hold and share, the treasure of every single person offered to God.

With Gratitude

I want to thank everyone for your kind wishes at the death of my 20+ year old cat. Malik, king of cats, the Malachite kitty, lives on in my heart. He's been a living presence in my life and my dreams for half of my life. He will be missed.

Imagine

Bo: Exodus 10:1-3
The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart
(written 1/28/12)

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..." -- John Lennon

It's supposed to be hard.

Really. I'm sorry.

Sometimes it seems like we are going to make it through by the third plague, be able to let that last hurdle be the hardest -- not the one we know still lies ahead, just over there, the one we dread facing but know we must. That's when we truly turn to God, dream to God, call to God, pray to God, rely on God to help us over the fence or across the sea or into the great unknown that holds for us the fear of alone and unworthy; but also the promise of free and brave, holy and beautiful, complex and sweet and actually free.

Imagine.

We always try the easier way first. We're human. Slowly, we learn.

As we learn we believe, we doubt, we waver, we grow stronger, we dream.
Inside and out loud.

Sometimes we lament, "God, why so HARD? Why make slavery even MORE difficult to leave? Why do this to us?"

The answer? Today, for me, because freedom is layered and awkward, with phases and stages, and we MUST learn to keep going, brave or not, to imagine, to dream, to merge the dreamer and the do-er, bite back against fear, agony at our backs, we must remember what slavery does to the soul, the collective soul, the past and present and future soul, and we must remember our dreams, our light, our task.

To be a light, a nation of priests and priestesses, to lead through our fear, assert our knowing that there IS something more.

God moves us into action against all Pharaohs and we must find our way into the wholeness of the dream, and the real of freedom.

HaMakom

Exodus 3:1-6; 11-14
(written 1/14/12)

This is the place.

Look down. Look at your feet, then look up. Let's do it again, slowly, look down, look up -- notice we are nodding?

When we awaken, we look down, we look up, we say yes.

Then come the questions -- which are always two-fold -- Who, me? and then, Why ME?

What for? comes later, and the answer, believe it or not, harkens back to the haunting trope of childhood -- for parents and children both: "Because I said so." Or, trust me now. You'll understand later.

We spend the rest our our lives listening and unfolding, saying yes and trust me, trusting and understanding, no matter the doubts, no matter the "Who, Me's?" no matter the whys.

We spend the rest of our lives unfolding. Looking down at HaMakom, the place, taking off our shoes, then looking up to God to see and nod and say yes, no matter how hard this task. This place is sacred. We are sacred, we are unfolding, one into one into one. We and God, God and me and you, you and me and us and God, together, we are all unfolding.

Jacob Wrestling

Genesis 32:23-33

Here is how we learn our true name. We screw up. We do what we do, right and wrong, we flee, we rationalize, we move on, we build, we reflect, we repent, we ready ourselves for retribution, for responsibility, for shame and redemption.

The struggle between good and evil is active; within us all. And just when we get to that spot where we know what the work is, down comes the angel -- that gracious angel, who will beat us up and not "let us win" but test our strength and we will be changed in both body and soul as we learn there is so much more.

We have come so far and we are so grateful, but it is not done yet. It's not done yet.

That can feel overwhelming -- God, why aren't we done yet?
We long for the promised land, for the sweetness of completeness, and yet I go on with the struggle, we all go on with the struggle.

The kicker: Honesty.

We are blessed and beautiful, soulful and luminous, petty and materialistic, overworked and underpaid.

We want fruit -- the fruits of our labor all the time. But we also want to stop laboring. We want rest and abundance. We wrestle with our human soulful desires to wrestle and go on, wrestle and go on.

The task is to find the glory of God in both places -- the self we must leave, the self we flip into that we struggle to rise above, and the transcendent self who knows that all of this struggle is the path to God, the blessing and gift of life, and all of us are able.

The Man Watching, Ranier Maria Rilke

In-Folding

Chayei Sarah
Genesis 23: 7-9 and 25: 7-11
A Cave and a Well

Grief and knowing.

The in-folding of the other into self, the retreat from the world, the nakedness of loss, the infolding of the rock around you to shield you while you grieve. The knowing that you, too, will return here to be folded in, to return to to the source... but not yet. The emergence back into life, into the living world where the other is so much a part of you that it is like she is still here, but she is not, and yet she is.

When we grieve, we mourn that which is lost, but it isn't lost, it is transformed, re-birthed in death, brought to the in-dwelling rather than the external manifestation of body.

Can you believe we will all do this?

Not only were we born, but we, too, will die, will return to the source, and those we have loved, those we have touched, those have loved us will all transform pieces of us into their own folding-in of us into them, the external to the internal, a sheltered cave of hard peace, nakedness, darkness and uncomfortable comfort.

The reassurance of presence invoked, of spirit transcendent, brought forth and remembered, we are all glimmering pieces of memory, shedding light on darkness, in life and in death, in the unfolding and the in-folding, fragments of eternity in our back pockets, in a shiny space of breath in our chests, in a smile and a love we will treasure and hold forever, until we too are folded in to the unfolding yet to come.