Devarim: Shaking Up Routines

וַנֵּפֶן וַנִּסַּע הַמִּדְבָּרָה
"And we turned and journeyed to the wilderness"
(Deut. 2:1)

This morning I parked in a different place, took the wrong elevator up, then a different (but right) elevator down, got off at the wrong floor, walked back up, used a different restroom, then missed my usual turn. All of which led me to a hug from my dad. And in the end I needed to sit and process, so I stopped at a favorite coffee house I don't ordinarily pass.

In this week's Parashah, Devarim, Moses begins to recount for the Israelites where they have been and what they have done. They have arrived at the border of the Promised Land a second time, nearly 40 years after the first time, and in truth the people who were there, and the actions Moses is referring to, all occurred when those present were either children or not yet born - all except Caleb, Joshua, and Moses himself.

What strikes me here is not so much the place or the people, or even the history lecture from Moses, but the quick recount of the wandering itself. A map of the wandering looks a little like a maze that crosses in and over itself. And the return to the edge of promise comes not after a relatively direct journey from Mitzrayim by way of Sinai, but rather from this loopy roundabout journey.

Just as I have seen my day differently, my mind jogged by my unusual morning route, I am sure this new generation of Israelite adults must have seen their approach to the promise of what lay beyond the Jordan differently than their parents and grandparents had.

Being fully aware sometimes requires a little interruption of routine. My routine this one morning a week has been quite comfortable, in its way, for nearly a year, now - I leave the house early, drive in usually quiet traffic, park in the garage, have breakfast with my mother, read out loud to her, then leave to go to work. Never mind that I have changed jobs, and maybe twice have had to skip a breakfast, it has been very regular routine. This morning, I got a hug from my dad, whom I don't ordinarily see on these early mornings. This morning, I learned a couple of things I didn't know, and I am now thinking of possible support for something. This morning, my transition from breakfast to work was more mindful.

Whether or not the Israelites that stood on the precipice in Deuteronomy were literally a new generation, I can only imagine that they stood there with new eyes, with a new perspective, because of their circuitous journey through the wilderness. Perhaps more than that they would no longer remember slavery personally, which might be a valuable difference, their journey had given them something valuable - had set them up for positive interactions with their neighbors by giving them a tour of the area as a free people.

I am grateful for the periodic diversion from the direct route, for the jog to my mindfulness that comes from shaking up--or being shaken from--my routines. Although I admit - forty years of such diversions might have me throwing up my hands and begging to set down roots. Indeed, while I have traveled across our country, lived in many states, and journeyed internationally - I am so very ready to stay in one place for a very long time. And the timing of this could not be more apt, as we near the first anniversary of my having returned to my "homeland," the city in which I was born and raised, after 24 years of wandering.

Encountering the Divine

Last night I watched an old episode of 7th Heaven, a 90s tv show focused on the family of Reverend Camden, a suburban minister, in which the middle school leadership is concerned that the custodian is crazy and needs to be forced into retirement.  Why?  Because he hears the voice of God.  God tells him to go speak to Reverend Camden, who becomes his advocate, announcing to the school board, "I speak to God every day, [don't you?]....  Do you not even expect an answer?"

How do we listen for answers or connection from the Divine?  The biblical prophets experienced visions, dreams, even the voice of God directly or through Mal'achim - angels (literally messengers).  Were the prophets crazy?

This week the Torah reading cycle enters the Moses story and his first encounters with the Divine.   Song and lore tells us that "none has yet risen in Israel like Moses," no other prophet has, to jump ahead in the story, seen God face-to-face (Exod. 33:11) and lived to tell about it.

When God recruits Moses for the work of bringing the people to freedom, Moses asks a valuable question, "What shall I tell them is Your name?"  God's cryptic answer, Ehyeh asher ehyeh - I will be that which I will be (some translate present tense, "I'm am what I am").

The openness of the answer is brilliant - each encounter may be different.  Not only is each individual's relationship to the Divine unique, but one individual may experience God in myriads of ways.

Admittedly, when someone says they hear God speaking to them I get nervous.  This is not necessarily a bad response.  I think of such God-voices as those described in Under the Banner of Heaven, contemporary prophecy that leads one to take the life of another.

So how do I describe my own encounters with the Divine?  I have said that I believe in the God of coincidences - that there are times that I should have been one place or done one thing and instead have chosen another, and as a result I am saved some horrific experience.  An example?  When I was sixteen I was supposed to meet a girlfriend after school to bring her something of hers.  Instead, I went home, and that is where my mother, who was supposed to be at work but came home because she thought she had left the oven on, answered the phone call with the news that my friend had shot herself.  I cannot be sure what I might have done had I gone to meet my friend as planned and found her lying there with the still-loaded gun - but through what might seem like chance I had my mother's support.

No, I didn't hear a voice telling me to go home instead of meeting my friend - not in the conventional sense of spoken words anyway.  Call it more gut instinct.  And it's not that the outcome of such moments is joyful, as I sometimes imagine all Divine encounter ought to be.  Sometimes it's downright miserable - involving things like losing a friend to suicide.

But this is the marvelous thing about Ehyeh - God can be the connector in the moment when one needs support from family, friends, colleagues; but God can be other things in other moments, like the indescribable moment when the world simply seems beautiful, right, amazing, awesome, or the flame that doesn't consume but catches our attention, or the invisible but tangible outstretched arm guiding us away from narrow places and into freedom.  And maybe sometimes it is the still, small voice - a voice from within and beyond, that calls us by name and tells us:

"Ehyeh asher ehyeh - I will be that which I will be." (Exodus 3:14)

Ehyeh - I will be
I will be with you
I will be what you need
Don't look
   I am not what you think you need
Don't expect me
   I am already here
I will breathe you
I will carry you
I will dance you
I will sing you
I will hold you
I will nudge you
I will guide you
I will support you
Ehyeh - I am