The Journey

...little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver


First let me thank my meshuggenuh cousin Carolyn for popping up in G-chat or whatever it is called asking me:

Sat, Apr 19, 2008:

3:01 AM Carolyn: It's the middle of the night HERE -- what are YOU doing up?

And -- when are you going to Chicago again?

And -- How the heck are you?

3:05 AM me: You know the muse keeps her own hours. Gotta do some writing about the relationship between the global concept of tikkun olam and the only thing that counts--my personal struggle with tikkun Yeshaya. The rabbis say if you save one life it is as if you have saved the world. Mary Oliver says "save the only life you can--yours."

Then I have to ask Carolyn's forgiveness for not responding to her further conversation. Here it is, the middle of the night before seder, Shabbat, a good time to be resting--and being a Son of Israel instead of resting, I'm wrestling. That should be a fairly all-consuming matter in itself and yet so many distractions even at 3:29 a.m. It's all part of the same fabric. When intention meets Yeshaya there is struggle with all the parts of myself that do not want to be mended.

Let's step back.

A few weeks ago I sent a message to the clan who will be gathering at our home later this day. It was the day after the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament had ended. Last year I had used that as the theme for our seder since the final game coincided with the first night of Pesach. The focus was a 64-bracket "contest" between all the aspects of Passover. Match ups such as Matzah Brei vs. The Wise Son or The Afikomen vs. The Plague of Locusts. We spent the evening debating the pairings until we got to our Final Four Questions. I had picked some foods to win it all, like Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls over Chopped Liver in the final, but my enlightened guests led us to a loftier winner--"Feeling personally redeemed by G-d from Egypt".

My message to the troops this year:

Well, we had one shining moment...that was the night of last year's NCAA final when Annette was the big winner of Nisan Insanity.

So this year we will do something entirely different. (Mah nishtana..)

Nothing will match the combination of sports and deep intellectual and spiritual probing that we achieved at seder a year ago.

As it says on the shield of the University of Rochester--Meliora!

The inescapable theme for this year is Green. Sustainability. It's the Environment, Stupid!

How we will connect that to freedom from 400 years of slavery, burning bushes that are not consumed, ten plagues, crossing the Red Sea and arriving on dry land, receiving the law at Sinai, wandering for forty years in the desert, Four Questions, Four Sons, Four Cups of Wine, the bread of affliction, manna, an only kid, dayenu, etc. is anyone's guess.

WE have 11 days to figure that out.

Do some research.

Come prepared for enlightening discourse.

I have no idea what we will do (when I know you'll know), but I'm sure it will be talked about for generations.

So much can be said about that communication and the flurry of responses it spawned. The salient point here is that at some level I sort of expected that drawing analogies between Exodus and Sustainability would be a simple thing. And on some levels it is.

The fact that Passover and Earth Day coincide this year cannot be overlooked. The fact that we begin the seder with a blessing and then quickly move to celebrating what is green is most evident. Debbie took that idea and created the most magnificent centerpiece--literally and metaphorically. She arranged 18 2-inch pots on a large planter saucer. In each pot she planted a herb or lettuce variety. In the week since she put it together it has grown into a beautiful arrangement of greens which we will snip for the Karpas segment of the seder and then at evening's end each guest will depart with one of the pots to plant in their own garden!

Wow! One single act that encompasses the full meaning of the holiday and the discourse that I initiated--an artistic, generative, wordless summary of everything I would hope to say and in hundreds of words so far in this blog am still waiting to capture.

Then again, at another level the personal meaning of seder and sustainability has been hard for me to grasp--at least until I sprang from bed minutes ago.

My mind is teeming with so many aspects of the metaphor that I am grateful that Carolyn caused me to capture the gist of it in three sentences. I am also grateful and amazed that in my quick response to Carolyn, Mary Oliver's words came to me--words that also capture in a snapshot what ultimately may be chapters of introspection in my prolix vocabulary.

The outline that runs through my head is the Maggid--the telling of the story of the birth, journey and maturation of a people--as metaphor of any single person's journey, particularly my own. So many parts of the story align--some of which I began revealing to myself and others in my adult Bar Mitzvah d'var Torah last year--how I cast myself into a pit and sold myself into slavery, and so on.

Now I look at those 400 years of proliferation as the unbridled, unburdened years of childhood. I look at Pharaoh casting a dubious eye as that divine discontent that causes struggle, growth and maturation. I look at the plagues as evidence and encouragement to initiate change, to cast out the past, to move on. And I look at the many times Pharaoh reneges on the promise to move on as the natural tendency for me to lapse, and relapse into old behaviors.

The metaphor as it extends to the Earth is blatant. How many environmental plagues will we endure before we make a fundamental irreversible change? The fact that this is so hard for society reduces to the fact that while many if not most of us can see what we must do collectively, it is our individual actions which count. Mending the world would be easy if we were truly amenable to mending ourselves.

For a person, such as myself, espousing a commitment to Tikkun Yeshaya, the truth lies in the many small errors of omission or commission. It is in those moments when I as God-wrestler and as Yeshaya-wrestler win and lose. Every heavy rotation of my pedals up a steep slope is a victory. Every sneaky bite of something I just know my body doesn't need is a loss.

The journey took our people generations. The first to leave slavery found the transformation unbearable. They wanted to return to the "comfort" of slavery rather than face the challenges of freedom. God and Moses had to summon all their power to guide a reluctant people across the Red Sea, to Sinai where recidivism was worshipped in the golden calf, through the desert where manna and the promise of milk and honey did not provide contentment. And when at last the Promised Land was reached, Moses never quite crossed the finish line, suggesting that the work is never done.

So my quests--physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual are a never ending journey.

The rabbi's also said, "The day is short, the task is great, the laborers are sluggish, the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent. It is not thy duty to complete the work, but neither art thou free to desist from it."