How to Get Unstuck

We are uncomfortably stuck in a wilderness, a place of not knowing. Perhaps a good analogy is that I feel like we are in the Sinai desert. While we are most definitely not physically wandering, we have mobility in our personal journeys. I am comforted by the knowledge that growth often follows the wilderness experience.

In Hebrew, BaMidbar means “in the wilderness,” or “in the desert.” It is the name for the fourth book of the Torah which we begin reading this week.  The Israelite people were encamped in the wilderness by Mount Sinai for a year before traveling further.

At first the Hebrews were afraid of the unknown. Then they were awed by God’s magnificence. The Hebrews stumbled when they were sinful in creating the golden calf. Eventually, they were obedient in honoring and learning Torah. The journey from being slaves to being free is not a straight path. It requires a deep dive into the wilderness of your self to reassert your humanity. And we humans are not so easy to navigate!

I turn to an inspiring rabbi, Lawrence Kushner who wrote: “The wilderness is not just a desert through which we wandered for forty years.  It is a way of being. A place that demands being honest with yourself without regard to the cost in personal anxiety.  A place that demands being present with all of yourself. In the wilderness your possessions cannot surround you. Your preconceptions cannot protect you… You see the world as if for the first time.” (Honey from the Rock, 1990)

In this Covid 19 wilderness, we are afraid of the pandemic. Physical sequestration can remind us to be in awe of the beauty of this world. We have sinfully worshipped our pot of gold. Some are learning a new Torah, to obediently shelter and to care for others in our community.

Zohar Va’era, 2:25b asserts that when we were in Egypt, we lost the ability to express our own stories. During that time, we were literally slaves to another person’s narrative.  When we left Egypt, we spent forty years in the midbar – the wilderness.  It was there that we began our national story telling and created our own identity. The midbar is a wilderness, but there is also a second meaning from the same word root — to speak — דבר. We went into the midbar to find our own voice and to write a new narrative as a people.

Our opportunity is to emerge from the Covid 19 wilderness with a new story. Here’s the story I’d like to tell. We learned to refocus on the precious nature of community. We began to elevate our neighbor’s needs over our individual privilege. Our compassion grew as we understood that minimum wage workers are essential to our sustenance and health care workers are warriors for saving lives. The story I’d like to tell is that we became a nation with a story that identifies us as patrons of humanity and protectors of our planet.

I am learning to unlock new truths in this wilderness of social distancing and staying at home. As if for the first time, I feel increasingly called to be an advocate for sustaining all of God’s creations. I hope we will all be guided by these principles: our nation should be a safe haven for everyone, a community of compassion, and a beacon of hope.

Not everyone will make it out of the wilderness. Some will not learn the new Torah. For those who get unstuck, let’s leave this wilderness together, better, stronger and spiritually realigned.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame