Faith, Trust, and Liberation: Shabbat & the Passover Journey

In my Monday evening Deep Living practice group this spring, as Passover approaches, we've been thinking about the relationships between slavery and freedom, liberation and redemption, Passover and Shabbat. In the Exodus story the people are suddenly sprung into freedom in body, but even the most awesome miracles can’t immediately liberate their consciousnesses. Redemption, from the verb “redeem,” (late Middle English: “to buy back”) implies a revaluing, a fundamental rearranging of consciousness on a DNA level. Over and over again, G~d and Moses try to “lift” the people from their slave states of being, but the cellular imprint of “slavery,” the pervasive hopelessness of not having any choices, of having one’s strings always pulled by others, as one class member described it, is too great for them. 

Soon after the miraculous splitting of the Sea of Reeds, when fear and resistance have already grabbed at the peoples hearts, comes another, perhaps less spectacular miracle--the miracle of manna, the gift of daily sustenance that descends like dew upon the ground (see Exodus, Chapter 16). And along with the manna, even they stand at Sinai, the people receive the mandate to rest on the seventh day. What you gather on the sixth day, G~d assures them, will be enough for two days; you'll be provided for, even when you stay in your place, not reaching out for sustenance.

Manna—this reminder of a benevolent cosmos that hears human pain, nurtures, and assuages fear—comes with dependable regularity to reassure frightened minds and traumatized bodies. It is not a one-time Cecil B. deMille-worthy miracle, but a reliable, daily gift that, slowly, over time, works to soften fisted hearts and soothe shattered nerves. And in this context, Shabbat, the day for which a double portion is received, when one is exhorted to stay home and to be fed without having to “gather,” can be seen as Torah’s spiritual curriculum for undoing the inner bonds of slavery—a G~d-given day of spiritual retreat, a day for each person to remember being “b’tzelem elohim,” divine in nature, and a member of a community that together honors its G~d-likeness through acts of justice, sanctity, and beauty. 

Each week we, too, have this “day,” this possibility of dedicated time to experience freedom through every sense gate—to taste, smell, touch, sing, and dance freedom. Each week Jewish tradition mandates a day of retreat, a day of sensuous mindfulness in which to cultivate faith and trust, to set aside the urgency of self-importance and the fear of not-enoughness, and to rest in the great sea of Being. Each week I have a chance to allow the container of Shabbat to move me from a superficial appreciation of my own freedoms to the expansive connectedness of a truly liberated consciousness that, eventually, might permeate every day, every breath.

Here's my poetic musing on freedom, written following an embodied exercise in which we focused on our breathing and dropped into the "empty" space, the stillness between each full exhale and the receiving of the next in-breath  Of course, I'm aware of how many political and physical freedoms I have, as contrasted with my fellow beings in many parts of the world, including right here in my own country, my own town. Yet, how much my consciousness is still enslaved by the toxic cultural "brine" in which I soak (see Kevin Anderson's piece "How to Soak in Divine Brine" in the March/April issue of Spirituality and Health)! How essential to steep regularly in an atmosphere  of faith and trust that reconnect me to the holiness of life. 

Freedom is...
unrushed
softness
opening up
spaces
between
what seems
so important
necessary, urgent
freedom
emerges
from the spaces
inside
me
not bestowed
from without
nor wrested
from anyone
or anything--
it is
God-given truly
a divine ordinance
to be accessed
anyplace, anytime
freedom
“over me”
spreading
like a quilt of
comfort
the yearning
of the soul
to attain its
unity with
the All--
this is freedom