My Tummy Hurts & Va-yera
I couldn’t stomach going out into the “gorgeous weather” yet again yesterday.
While it seems so many people are enjoying it, I find it hard not to think of when the next devastating hurricane will hit.
The temperature went to a humid upper 70’s on Sunday for the New York City Marathon—in November!
I stayed inside as a protest—what a lot of difference that made in the world!
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories abound in the political arena. Day after day, what fills the news is how crucial this time of mid-term elections is, and the “threat to our democracy.”
Many boundaries are crossed as “volunteers” would like to “help count votes,” interfering in the election process—some of the same people, I suspect, who would do something like, say, storm the Capitol and cause chaos and destruction.
Our country is one big hot mess.
The world is one big hot mess.
And since the world is One, I am also One Big Hot Mess.
I could go on. Are you sure you want me to? It’s hard to stomach.
But this week’s Torah portion is also hard to stomach, with its own chaos, destruction, and crossing of boundaries.
For instance:
A mob of townsmen in Sodom breaking down a door and invading Lot’s house in the effort to rape two male visitors/angels in human form (terrifying and curious);
Lot’s offering of his virgin daughters in their stead—to do with whatever they want (outrageous);
Lot’s family fleeing from the fire and brimstone that God sets upon Sodom, and his wife turning into a pillar of salt when she looks back (all horrifying);
Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and “lying with him” in order to get pregnant and continue the species (gross);
Sarah—again—posing as Abraham’s sister with yet another king in another palace (outrageous);
Sarah giving birth at ninety (don’t want to imagine that one);
God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son as a test (outrageous);
Abraham tying his son to an altar and raising a knife to him until God/angels tell him to stop (again…).
All contain boundaries that should never be crossed, and violence and destruction that doesn’t need to happen.
It’s One Big Hot Mess.
What do we do with it all? How to protect our personal boundaries so we can participate in healing the world while also staying active and abreast of what’s happening?
It comforts me to hear life-long meditation teacher, Tara Brach, talk about sleepless nights of panic and anxiety over the mid-term elections and the state of the world.
Over so many decades of teaching spiritual practice, she says that what she’s learned is that the more trust or hope a person has, the more a person gets engaged—and the more change actually happens.
“Wise hope," is what she calls it: to trust in possibility.
Which extends beyond the personal to the entire world.
As she says, the spiritual leaders that have inspired transformational movements, all had a revolutionary vision that included a sense of possibility for our collective potential.
And they all believed in rooting activism in love and compassion.
The more each of us has a vision, she says, the more we energize that unfolding.
In the words of her friend, poet Dana Faulds:
Where there’s love, there’s possibility.
And where there’s possibility, there’s energy.
And where there’s energy, anything at all can happen.
And where anything can happen, surely something good will come of it.
If at any point things seem to be going awry, that’s when I begin again with love.
Tara Brach beseeches us: rekindle Wise Hope. It connects us with all others who have love for life and want to serve life—with all those alive feeling our great concern, wanting to be part of the healing.
This week, I read something beautiful and inspiring in the book, A River Flows From Eden, by Melila Hellner-Eshed, a book about the Zohar, which belongs to the mystical teachings of Judaism.
Hellner-Eshed explains that, according to the Zohar, mystics are those who taste the sweet amid the bitter. The mystic “knows that an envelope of bitterness encases the divine sweetness, yet knows how to reach the sweet, divine essence hidden within the layers of the world’s bitterness (p.83).”
In addition, the mystic is one who turns darkness into light, subdues evil, and transforms evil into good: “There is no light except that which emerges from darkness…and there is no good except that which comes from evil. (Zohar 2:184a, p.82).”
She explains further, “In the Zohar, the light of (the) moments of love is the light of dawn, prior to the world’s inundation with the strong light of the sun.
I will end with a story from a friend of her experience watching the lunar eclipse a couple of nights ago.
It was the middle of the night, she couldn’t sleep, and she saw the full moon shining bright in the sky.
Over the next couple of hours, each time she checked, the moon was slowly entering into darkness, until it was but a sliver.
Finally, all she could see was a murky blackness.
This created terrible anxiety in her. She wanted to see the moon revealed again, but it was setting.
But just as that was happening, the sky was beginning to brighten as the day dawned.
In that moment, what was revealed to her is that the light is always there, even in the murkiest moments.
May we all be like mystics, seeing the light in the darkness, tasting the sweet in the bitter, and transforming evil into good through our love.