Receiving Freedom

We've just moved through the eight days of our Passover celebration, a commemoration of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, a painful, necessary birthing that releases a whole people from the painful constrictions of slavery, leading them (and us) toward new, open spaces--the possibility of a new story. 

Freedom…what is it really?

Does freedom from enslavement mean we are free from pain and suffering? Surely this is an impossibility, given the nature of this world. We all experience pain, we all suffer.

Perhaps true freedom is not the eradication of pain, anguish, loss, disappointment, or bad circumstances, but our quality of response to those inevitable parts of human experience.  Is this not true freedom the freedom to respond to whatever life hands us--to the uncertainty of life—with clear-sightedness, compassion, and a willingness to serve the moment?

Imagine how an internal tectonic shift—an increased willingness to free ourselves from the shackles of sureness that hold our pain in place—could help create the real conditions to lessen the quotient of pain and suffering in the world? More and more individuals choosing not to be bound up in fear; not grasping what we have with all our might, like Pharaoh; not holding tight to the tatters of our outworn identities—how much more collective power we could gather to bring equity and justice into this world—the mashiach consciousness that will create the world of peace and wholeness we hope and long and work for. 

In her poignant poem, "Miriam: The Red Sea," Muriel Rukeyser expresses this longing for peace, for healing, for oneness, that persists in that liminal seashore place, even when we think we have passed on to greater things. Let's hold the seas crossing in our hearts, even as we move toward the Mountain of G~d, Sinai, and all that we know is to follow.


Miriam: The Red Sea

by Muriel Rukeyser

High above shores and times,

I on the shore

forever and ever.

Moses my brother

has crossed over

to milk, honey,

that holy land.

Building Jerusalem

I sing forever

on the seashore.

I do remember 

horseman and horses,

waves of passage

poured into war,

all poured into journey.

My unseen brothers

have gone over,

chariots

deep seas under.

I alone stand here

ankle-deep

and I sing, I sing,

until the lands

sing to each other.