“Eikev,” Pilot Lights and Firecrackers: Spiritual Lessons for living in what seem like hopeless times

A year ago at this time, I supported a bas mitzvah student of mine, a certain Rebecca who is not mine but has the same curly hair and name as my own younger daughter, as she stood in front of our congregation and spoke prophetically about the urgency of the climate and Greta Thunberg; if we live in the ways of God, take care of each other and the earth, then we will make it into the Land of Milk and Honey. 

Continuing from her message: We can help the earth, and all that lives on earth, find its balance again if we remove the layers we have protecting our hearts. 

I suppose we are all afraid to feel too much; if we allow ourselves to start crying, maybe we’ll never stop. Right? 

This morning, after a week of excruciating pain in my head, I may have reached a new level of acceptance--not about the climate, no, but about my challenges...

...Acceptance that I will not be “balanced” or find any kind of complete balance during this time...that I will continue to have migraines that will incapacitate me for periods of time...that I will continue to feel stuck, just like everyone else...that I will continue to struggle find balance and to counter this feeling of stuckness with positive messages.

You get the idea. I know you have your own list of “shoulds” that could be turned into a kind of acceptance or surrender.

And so it should be--this continued struggle. If I didn’t continue to struggle, it would mean I was giving up. Instead, I choose hope, as I said last week in my blog post, No Room for Despair; there is no room for despair. 

Following is another hopeful message, this time from the late congressman John Lewis’s words in an old interview with Krista Tippet on NPR’s On Being. He talked about pilot lights (as in the little constant flame in the old gas stoves) as opposed to firecrackers.

I paraphrase: “You tell us to wait. You tell us to be patient. We can not wait. We can not be patient. We want our freedom now...But that has to be balanced. Pace yourself. You don’t change the world and society in a few days. It’s better to be a pilot light than a firecracker.” 

In other words, be an “Aish Tamid”--a continuous flame that is never allowed to go out. 

But what about the environment, you say--I say! We’re running out of time! Haven’t you heard?? The arctic is not just warming, it’s burning up!!

True. Yet, I must choose hope. I have no choice. 

Some of you may believe in people who get messages from the spirit world, some may not. No matter. Again, I think of this as a choice, like believing in God. (There’s no proof either way, so why not believe in the thing that makes you happier and live longer and healthier? I quote from Dr. Mario Martinez in his book, The MindBody Code, 2014—I read it a few years ago and consider it an important part of my spiritual journey.)

I have a friend who forwards me monthly messages and predictions from a certain Sara Wiseman. Sara is not the only one carrying messages that humanity is waking up, and that we’re close--really close--to things changing for the better, including the earth healing itself. 

The message is that the pain we are experiencing, if we allow ourselves to, physical or emotional, is that of humanity “burning karma,” not just for our own families, not just for recent generations but for the whole world. It says that we are past the worst. After all, how much more “worst” can we take? The spirit world asks that we live with our eyes wide open, allowing ourselves to feel the pain, for with this kind of living, we will achieve the healing the world needs. 

In this week’s Torah reading, Eikev, we are asked to cut away, or circumcise, the foreskin of our hearts, the extra layer that we use to protect ourselves from feeling the pain, and live in God’s ways. 

I want--I have to believe that humanity as a whole is waking up, that real change (revolution?) is around the corner, and that this pain, this personal pain I experience each time I struggle with migraines, each time there is nothing, I mean nothing, I can take that “works,” is giving birth to something truly new. 

There is really nothing we can take that will cover up the pain we are all feeling right now as a collective. I mean nothing. 

So let’s be like pilot lights, take care of ourselves, keep seeking balance, for our bodies and our activism, and live with our hearts and eyes wide open.

Let’s strip away any extra layers that make us blind or unfeeling. 

Yes, protect ourselves from overload, but also allow ourselves to feel and see. The more we do this, the more we are helping our own selves and the world.