Bo | Finding Courage to Touch Darkness on the Road to Freedom

 

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה בֹּ֖א אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה כִּֽי־אֲנִ֞י הִכְבַּ֤דְתִּי אֶת־לִבּוֹ֙ וְאֶת־לֵ֣ב עֲבָדָ֔יו לְמַ֗עַן שִׁתִ֛י אֹתֹתַ֥י אֵ֖לֶּה בְּקִרְבּֽוֹ׃

Then Eternally Present said to Moses, “Enter into Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may put my signs among them,

 

וּלְמַ֡עַן תְּסַפֵּר֩ בְּאָזְנֵ֨י בִנְךָ֜ וּבֶן־בִּנְךָ֗ אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁ֤ר הִתְעַלַּ֙לְתִּי֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם וְאֶת־אֹתֹתַ֖י אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֣מְתִּי בָ֑ם וִֽידַעְתֶּ֖ם כִּי־אֲנִ֥י יְהוָֽה׃

and that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child's child how I have shown my powers  to the ones stuck in the narrow place and how I displayed my signs among them—in order that you may know that I am Eternally Present.”

 

וַיָּבֹ֨א מֹשֶׁ֣ה וְאַהֲרֹן֮ אֶל־פַּרְעֹה֒ וַיֹּאמְר֣וּ אֵלָ֗יו כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר יְהוָה֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י הָֽעִבְרִ֔ים עַד־מָתַ֣י מֵאַ֔נְתָּ לֵעָנֹ֖ת מִפָּנָ֑י שַׁלַּ֥ח עַמִּ֖י וְיַֽעַבְדֻֽנִי׃

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says Eternally Present, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go that they may serve me.

Exodus 10:1-3, Tr. Roberta Wall, drawing on Fox

Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman stood before the world at the Washington DC Presidential inauguration of Joe Biden and proclaimed:

There is always light
If only we are brave enough to see it

In this week's Torah portion, God gives a deep instruction to Moses about the road to freedom. God tells Moses, "Bo בֹּ֖א ,enter, Pharaoh." Enter the place that is stuck, closed, frozen, from where violence is sourced. Enter it, enter the place where the heart is hardened. That is where the light must be seen.

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, perhaps reflecting on the spilling of blood in his own country for 25 years, teaches that the ones who need our love the most are the hardest to love. We know from our own individual and collective struggles that the places that need love the most are the hardest to love.

Thus, says the young poet of the hour, Amanda Gorman, it takes courage to see the light in the hardened places. Courage to get close. Courage to look into the hardened heart. Courage to enter, as God instructs Moses to do.

And yet, if we are to transform the fear, violence and hatred, we must go to their source. We must find them and somehow bring a different energy to them. That is transformation.

The tragedy of the Exodus story is how close the Egyptians and the Hebrews come to being crushed, swallowed alive, by the afflictions of dark stuck places. Just as we saw in the US one week ago. How close did our Congress People have to get to see the continuing karma of white nationalism, violence, antisemitism and elitism? How shaken do we need to be, before we diligently educate our children about the costs of hardened hearts. "I have hardened Pharaoh's heart...so that you may recount to your children and your children's children."

During these weeks, I have been reading the novel Apeirogon by Colum McCann. It circles around the story of ten-year-old Abir Aramin, out to buy candy, assassinated by a "trigger-happy member of the Israeli army," and 13-year-old Smadar Elhanan, out with her friends, turned into “a scattered human jigsaw” by a suicide bomber. In the aftermath, their fathers discover that their pain is their strength. Palestinian, Bassam Aramin, and Israeli, Rami Elhanan, describe themselves as “an Israeli, against the occupation. A Palestinian, studying the Holocaust.”

How close to the darkness do we have to get to see the light?

The ancient Rabbis, in commentary on this week's Torah portion, contemplate the ninth plague of darkness which God afflicts upon the Egyptians. It is a darkness so thick, it can be touched, it has substance. How thick was this darkness? Our Rabbis said: “It was as thick as a dinar [a gold coin], as Scripture states, ‘A darkness that can be touched’: There was substance to it.” (Exodus Rabbah 14:1)

What is the substance of this darkness? The darkness, like the light, emanates from the One Source. Both, like all form, are of the substance of the creating generative universal life energy. Like all life form, it longs to be touched and known. When it surrounds us, we touch it and it longs for us to know it as it is.

We in human form are of it, we have the capacity to know it, to let life and form live fully through us. How do we do this? How do we step out of the duality of fearing the dark and wanting the impossible-only the light?

How do we generate the courage to find strength in the pain? To find and harvest the meaning and connection that will penetrate the darkness? This is the road to freedom because when courage, compassion, meaning, and connection touch the stuck places, healing and transformation take place.

 A Nonviolent Communication Practice: Holding your Stuckness with Compassion

• Think of someone about whom you have a stuck view or image (a judgment).
• Write down one thing they do that supports that image.
• When you visualize them doing that, what thoughts about them or what's going on  come up in you.
• Write down two or three of the thoughts.
• When you think that thought...what sensations arise in your body? What emotions and feeling senses arise?
• (How do you feel)?
• Allow your presence to penetrate the feelings, Be with them. Give them space.
• What are these feelings telling you?
• What is so important to you that when you think about what was done, you feel this way.(What is the need/value you are longing for?)

This is the life energy that cries out when this happens.

This is the light in the darkness.

If you have the capacity, you can switch and ask yourself, “What do I imagine they are feeling and needing when they do what they do?”

I ask, “What is so important to them, that they do this?” The invitation is to find what is buried in the darkness of their hardened heart? The invitation is to ask myself, “What can I find there that softens and opens my heart?” Whatever I find that resists me doing this, I go there and soften my heart to accept that. I find shame, fear of betrayal, anger … all of that resists me softening toward the "other." I do this practice to soften to my own inner "others."

I keep going on the journey, round and round, as the Hebrews soon will do, until my heart is opened. We will see that when the next generation of Hebrews stand ready to enter the Promised Land, at the end of the Torah, it is because God recognizes that their hearts have opened.

 

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The Hill We Climb
— Amanda Gorman

One day comes we ask ourselves "where can we find light in this never ending shade?"
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade
We braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions of "what just is" isn't always "just is."
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished.
We the successors of a country in a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president
Only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes we are far from polished, far from pristine
But that doesn't mean we aren't striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed
To all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
But what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first
We must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
So we can reach our arms to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the glow if nothing else say, "this is true."
That even as we grieved we grew
That even as we hurt we hoped,
That even as we tired we tried
That we'll be forever tied together victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat,
But because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree,
And no one should make them afraid.
If we're to live up to our own time,
Then victory won't lighten the blade but in all the bridges we made,
That is the promise to glade,
The hill we climb.
If only we dare it because being American is more than a pride we inherit
It's the past we step into and how we repair it.
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
It can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
History has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption we feared it at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour
But within it we found the power to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laugh or to ourselves,
So while once we ask "how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe"
Now we assert,
"How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?"
We will not march back to what was
But move to what shall be a country that is bruised but whole,
Benevolent but bold,
Fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation
Because know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blenders because their burdens
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might,
And might with right,
Then love becomes our legacy in change
Our children's birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left
With every breath from our bronze-pounded chest
We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limb hills of the west
We will rise from the wind-swept northeast
Where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states
We will rise from the sun-baked South
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
And every known nook of our nation
And every corner called our country
Our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light if only we are brave enough to see it.
If only we are brave enough to be it.