Shabbat Experiment, Week 3 - Journey of Our Lives

Shabbat Experiment Week 3 – The Journey of Our Lives

This third week of our experiment with Shabbat services is particularly shaped by the Torah portion---Lekh Lekha (Genesis 12:1-17:27). Abraham is told to go forth on a journey to a place unknown. This story is the tale of all human beings. We are to grow up and leave our parent's home behind as we set out on life's journey. This experiment continues during the first part of our Shabbat Service at 10:00AM.

Derakhekha Adonai hode'ayni orhotekha lamdeini (Ps. 25:4)
Let me know Your paths, O God; teach me Your ways.

Often we look for directions or advice on which way to go. But life is a journey without signposts. We can only try our best to choose the way at every fork in the road. The spiritual practice of the journey is to understand we are constantly entering the unknown of the future. We need to embrace the reality of change.

Henri Bergson said: To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

That is the ongoing challenge of the journey. Or as John Lennon said: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. We can not know or even plan for what will be. We can only strive to see clearly what is unfolding in the moment and try to respond with wisdom and compassion.

"Let me know Your paths"---let me find the way that nourishes my soul and helps me be who I hope to be.

This Shabbat we begin the story of the Jewish people's journey through time and space as Abraham is told to go forth into the unknown. It is also a metaphor for every person's life journey.
Journeying is about choice and change. Choice in the many crossroads we will face---

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost recognizes that life's journey goes on and that it is unlikely we will be able to return to the road not taken. Life goes on and so do we. Some choices will make all the difference as stated in the poem's last line.

Journeying is also about change--about entering unfamiliar places or situations. There is a newness in the day even when walking on well trodden paths. How well do we embrace change or at least not recoil from it?

Some quotations on change:

Andy Warhol
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Mary Antin
We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.

Georg C. Lichtenberg
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

Finally, each week on Shabbat, there is a handout with many readings on the week's theme. If you would like to get an email copy, please contact the office at the.saj@verizon.net

Next week, we will focus on openheartedness. May you go in peace and return home in peace.

Shabbat Shalom
-- Rabbi Michael Strassfeld