For your information, I just finished this treasured source of reflection! Therefore, this will be the last time that I am able to hang onto Rachel's apron and cling to her eloquent thoughts.
Some of you may know that I have been launched into a huge life transition. It wasn't my choice; it was my husband's. Since it's football season, I guess I'll say that I feel like the punter has just kicked this leather bound ball. I am just starting my flight, wondering how long it will take me to glide over those goal posts. This leather bound ball is battling some wind, some friction. This flight is going to be pretty darn wobbly for a while.
Then I read the last chapter of "My Grandfather's Blessing". It focuses on the Passover story.
Rachel Naomi's parents did not raise her in the Jewish tradition. This book shares her memories with her grandfather, who was a Rabbi. She was around 8 when he passed on. She shares this story, when she went to Seder as a young adult:
"My Grandfather's Blessings" by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
Section VI. Restoring the World --The Real Story
We all participated by reading parts of the Seder ritual assigned to us by our host. The part I was asked to read contained an obscure command from God. It states that in each generation it is a parent's obligation to tell their children the Passover story and specifies how this is to be done. "And thou shall relate it to thy children in that day, saying, 'This is done on account of that which the Lord did unto me, when I came forth out of Egypt.'"
This phrase is repeated two or three times over in the ritual. Each time I read it aloud, I wondered what it could mean...I suddenly realized the truth in it. The story my grandfather had told me did not happen thousands of years in the past. It is happening now...
The slavery that keeps us from following our goodness is an inner slavery. We are trapped by ideas of worthlessness and lack of self-esteem, by desire or greed or ignorance. Enslaved by notions of victim hood or entitlement. It is a story about the fear of change, about clinging to places and behaviors that are small and hurtful because letting go of them will mean facing something unknown. I heard again my grandfather's words: "The choice is never between slavery and freedom; we must always choose between slavery and the unknown."
Freedom is as frightening now as it was thousands of years ago. It will always require a willingness to sacrifice what is most familiar for what is most true. To be free, we may need to act from integrity, on trust, sometimes for a long time...
It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. For generation after generation in the ritual of Seder, first the soul is fed by this story. Then we eat the chicken soup.
Few of us are truly free. Money, fame, power, sexuality, admiration, youth; whatever we are attached to will enslave us, and often we serve these masters unaware. Many of the things that enslave us will limit our ability to live fully and deeply. They will cause us to suffer needlessly. The promised land may be many things to many people. For some it is perfect health and for others freedom from hunger or fear, or discrimination, or injustice. But perhaps on the deepest level the promised land is the same for us all, the capacity to know and live by the innate goodness in us, to serve and belong to one another and to life.
Yes, I know, Chanukkah just started yesterday. And here I am, talking about Passover. Besides, I'm not even Jewish.
It's all in the timing. With the last couple of months of flailing through the air, I finally uncovered my precious book of reflections, gently peeling layers of packing paper and grasping onto it lovingly.
I trust that my leather bound flight will send me to a place where I will be able to grow and to love with deeper meaning.
Dark, cold winter has set in. I write bundled, keeping warm and nursing my pain. I do know that spring will come again, however.