I picked up my mother from the airport and headed back to my apartment. I have always been directionally challenged, and my gratitude for those who invented car GPS devices and made them affordable knows no bounds. Back then, there were no such devices. As we drove back to my apartment, I knew I was in a wee bit of trouble. I was hoping my mother hadn’t noticed, and I kept her distracted with conversation.
After 45 minutes of driving what should’ve taken about 25 minutes, and still being nowhere near my apartment, my mother quietly says to me, “What a huge airport this city has! That’s the third control tower I’ve seen, and they all look exactly alike!” We laughed, and I had to ‘fess up that I was lost, and yes, it was the same tower we had passed three times.
Life is like that. There are no GPS devices for life. All of us are consigned to the same one day at a time everyone else is, Sometimes the day to day isn’t bad, and sometimes the same ol’ same ol’ can feel worse than anything. And sometimes, it’s the other things that can throw us for a loop: unexpected illness, deaths, endings, beginnings, even the good things—when we enter unmapped territory, it can feel overwhelming, like we are in over our heads, and abysmally lost. Sometimes, our only landmark is that same air control tower we’ve already passed half a dozen times, a sign that we are no closer to our goal than we were hours or days or weeks or even months ago.
Frequently, I write and refer to liminality, and to b’midbar–– wilderness. The wilderness wanderings are perhaps one of the stories most often connected to the Jewish people, because that part of our story takes a lot of space in our Torah. And, as frequently happens, the very real Torah of life unfolds in this space we call wilderness.
What is wilderness? It is the wild, open, unscripted areas of our lives. The spaces for which we can’t plan ahead. While we might be able to board up windows and stockpile food in preparation for a natural disaster, we can’t really prepare for what unfolds in the aftermath. Death, illness, disability, the loss of family or friends or an entire community, employment, a companion pet…. and less devastating things like an end of schooling or a new job maze to figure our way through, turning 50 or 60 or 70 or even 80 and how each decade is so radically different from the one which preceded, and so many more life events and situations…. all of these things are completely unmapped, and usually, we are under-prepared for that wilderness. Sometimes, all we can feel is lost, without so much as a compass.
For most of us, our lives are filled with our greatest joys bumping into our times of greatest challenges and deepest losses. We live in the wilderness in the middle of the big city all the time. The one thing I do know is this: wherever we are in b’midbar, in wilderness, whether our current unknowns, lost-nesses, or feelings of overwhelm stem from good reasons or less than good reasons, it all comes down to finding our way through.
The best way, of course, is to find our anchors and lean in for support and encouragement, or to at the very least feel we are not alone in our lost-ness, in our wilderness. Whether our anchors are a family member, spouse, friends, social or church group, we hang on and muddle through, and eventually, feel ourselves on firm ground again and find our new normal. We script a life in the unscripted area of enormous overwhelm, challenge, feeling lost or alone, or all of them at once. We are beyond our comfort zone. Resolution comes in being able to expand our comfort zone. While that’s far easier said than done, it’s a bit easier if we have anchors.
What if we find ourselves without anchors? What if the people to whom we reach out simply cannot be available to us for the emotional support we need? It’s easy to say “I’m here for you” or “I’ve got your back”, but, like saying, “I love you,” they are empty words if they are not followed up by real, solid actions.
While acquaintances and social groups are good, what about a much-needed deeper connection? Or what if what what we’ve lost is the deep connection with someone who had once been so helpful and supportive? How do we make our way through that wilderness?
That space feels so completely untethered and rudderless. We want to move forward but aren’t even sure which direction IS forward. How do we find our way? How many times do we pass that same control tower at the airport before we realize we are so terribly lost and yet can’t find anyone with a map or a compass or a lantern, or even just a hand to hold who will accompany us through the unmapped territory? How do we find our way?
We will explore answers to this in our next post.....
p.s. I am hoping I have now fixed the FeedBurner issues. Hopefully, this will go out via email, and you will also be able to reply to me in email by simply clicking on "reply" in your email app. Fingers crossed!!!
As a Community Rabbi, I am available to the entire community--Jewish, not Jewish, and everyone in-between. My work is to connect people to one another, to support and encourage, and to explore the possibility of deeper spiritual meaning in daily life. This is my personal charge as an ordained Modern Rabbi.
No comments:
Post a Comment