Passover, 2020.
Weird. It's all weird. And hard.
As I sit here writing, I'm smelling Passover. It's not just the aroma in my mind, it's actual smells wafting up from our kitchen where my husband is hard at work almost 'as if' we'll have everyone here tonight, coming together in person to tell the story of the exodus. But this year, that whole 'exodus thing' has a new meaning for me. Is it an ironic twist of fate for the pandemic to be coinciding w/Passover? Or, rather, the penultimate offering, an opportunity to go in, go deep; to reflect on life as I've created it to be. In the current normal of isolation, perhaps an opportunity to consider my role, my part in a greater good, my personal impact that we now know literally has global ramifications. Is it just about the pandemic, the virus infecting nation after nation? Or could it be other things, too? Could there be other ways-positive ways-that I, personally, could impact civilization today?
But in order to do, perhaps, it is incumbent that we explore our own personal slavery, explore the ties that may keep us bound up and struggling. What if....
What if this is an opportunity to consider our own personal exodus? To consider what holds me back from fleeing? And this: using the analogy of 'bread not having the time to rise,' what if we are being offered an opportunity~this year unlike any other year~to explore: "Have I held myself back from rising?" What is the 'bread' of my life? What would it look like if I gave it time to rise? Perhaps, this extraordinary year of 2020, we can extrapolate 40 years crossing the dry dissonant desert down to 40 days...that would be May 18, 2020. After your personal crossing of the desert, how might you emerge on May 18? It will be full-on Spring around our country. By then, will we be meeting up in person, hugging and holding each other fiercely for having missed the opportunity to do? We shall see.
In the meantime, consider: can it be your personal Spring? Is this the time to reflect, to discard physical, mental and emotional baggage to quickly flee slavery and run toward your own freedom? The freedom of your enslaved body, mind and spirit-in this life free to be who you really wanted to be, free to do what you really wanted to do, free to act in the way that only you can give yourself permission to do? If I've learned nothing else from the march of this pandemic person-to-person across the globe, I've learned that what each and every one of us does, matters. And tonight, during the Passover seder celebrated 'alone and together,' we have the opportunity to tell the story again; and to see ourselves with the opportunity to be personally delivered from our own 'egypt.'
[written with appreciation to Nechama Wasserman Laber for teaching me and for sharing her wisdom, and to Katherine Englebardt for her upcoming book 6 Pathways to Personal Freedom, due out 2020]
Your gift for the asking, a free journaling page for your Jewish soul. Contact me directly at susan@confident-life.com and I’ll email the pdf, with love. Susan
