44\u00a0 bar rises 29.89 2mph N dewpoint 40\u00a0 Spring<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Full Moon of Growing<\/p>\n
Have a good weekend!\u00a0 This cheery greeting, usually delivered on Friday to departing co-workers or customers, has a bittersweet undertone.\u00a0 It might mean, have a good week-end, because how could you have a good work week.\u00a0 Week-ends in American culture, at least since the 50’s, have been a time of personal autonomy sandwiched in between the days spent workin’ for da man.\u00a0 We might go up to the cabin or\u00a0 hop on our John Deere and mow that suburban lawn.\u00a0 It might be the time for a brew and a game.\u00a0 Church on Sunday morning.\u00a0 A picnic.\u00a0 Play time with the kids.\u00a0 Whatever.\u00a0 The essence of weekend is whatever.\u00a0 Whatever you choose to do.<\/p>\n
It is this last that always captures me.\u00a0 Each day, not just on weekends, we have choices about what to do.\u00a0 We might perceive our\u00a0week as so packed with duty, so loaded with responsibilities and obligations that there remains no room for choice, for the exercise of free will.\u00a0 No escape.<\/p>\n
It is not so, however, not ever.\u00a0 As humans, we have not only the freedom, but the responsibility to scan our lives and decide whether the choices we make match up with our own deepest values.\u00a0 If they don’t, something needs to give and it might be all those duties and obligations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Too hard, you say?\u00a0 The downsides too great?\u00a0 I can see how you might say that, but let me reverse those questions.\u00a0 What is the price of continuing on your present course?\u00a0 What downside do you face from chewing up your soul each day, then trying to patch it back together at night or, on the weekend?<\/p>\n
We celebrate this weekend such a crisis moment for the Jews of Ramses II’s Egypt.\u00a0 In those\u00a0days the Jews, according to the Torah, had traded their rescue from starvation for the life of slaves.\u00a0 They spent their days working in the fields, on construction gangs, making bricks.\u00a0 It seemed, to any objective observer, that they had no freedom, no choice in the matter.\u00a0 After all, they were a poor, subject people ruled by the mightiest land in all the known world.\u00a0 They lived out back in the slave quarters, while the Egyptians lived in the big house.<\/p>\n
What could they do?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moses, a child of the slaves, had grown up in the pharaoh’s court through circumstances which you know.\u00a0 God spoke to him.\u00a0 Tell pharaoh to let my people go.\u00a0 This frightened Moses and frightened many of the Jews.\u00a0 Freedom scares us.\u00a0 Something bad might happen.\u00a0 Yes, things are bad, but they could be worse.\u00a0 Just imagine.<\/p>\n
God was insistent.\u00a0 Moses came back from Canaan and confronted Ramses.\u00a0 He would not let the Jews go.\u00a0 They were his slaves, why should he?\u00a0 Let the Jews go.\u00a0 Ten times Moses insisted, ten time Ramses said no.\u00a0 After the tenth plague–one followed each of Ramses’ refusals–Ramses’ relented.\u00a0 The death of the first born proved too much.\u00a0 The angel of death had been thwarted in the slave quarters by lamb’s blood smeared on door frames, so death passed over the homes of the Jews.\u00a0 Thus was born this celebration of liberation we know today as Passover.<\/p>\n
There is more to the story.\u00a0 The Jews leave Egypt and set out on the Exodus, one of the great emigration stories of world literature.\u00a0 What happens along the way?\u00a0 Many of the Jews don’t like the sudden freedom, the necessity to fend for themselves, the lack of certainty about where they will find\u00a0next week’s and next month’s food.\u00a0 Some want to go back to Egypt.\u00a0 Even Aaron, the brother of Moses, helps the people melt down their gold to create a golden calf, an object toward which they could send their pleas.\u00a0 There is a lot of backsliding, a desire to return to that old, familiar world where freedom didn’t exist, where choice was not a possibility.\u00a0A world known.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every day we\u00a0face the same questions the Jews faced in Egypt.\u00a0\u00a0Every day we\u00a0face the same questions Ramses faced.\u00a0 Our frightened inner self, fearful of the consequences of autonomy kneels in front of the cultural Ramses we have each inherited as we grew up.\u00a0 A brave, hopeful aspect of our self, perhaps the dreamer or the rebel or the advocate rises up every now and then against our inner Ramses, but all too often all he has to say is, no.\u00a0 Think of the cost.\u00a0 Think of the choices you will have to make on your own.\u00a0 No, better to not quit your day job.\u00a0 No, better to not take the risk with the significant people in your life.\u00a0 No, let’s just leave things as they are.\u00a0 At least we know what happens.<\/p>\n
Some day though, on some great wakin’ up\u00a0 mornin’, the dreamer within us decides that pharaoh must let his people go.\u00a0 That no matter what the risks, the desert of an unknown future is better than continued subjugation.\u00a0 Then, we step off the plantation, turn our back on the south and head north, toward the drinking gourd.<\/p>\n
Is life easy then?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Do we build our golden calves, false idols that try to subjugate us once again?\u00a0 Of course we do. We are, after all, only human.\u00a0 Yet now we have tasted freedom.\u00a0 We know how to say no to pharaoh; and that lesson, once learned, cannot be unlearned.\u00a0 It will always prod us forward, keep our legs moving toward the promised land.<\/p>\n
So, over this weekend, this passover weekend, I hope you’ll take a moment in private and consider a confrontation with your inner pharaoh.\u00a0 Send him ten plagues, hell, send him twenty, but don’t give up.\u00a0 Tell him he has to let\u00a0 your whole Self go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
44\u00a0 bar rises 29.89 2mph N dewpoint 40\u00a0 Spring \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Full Moon of Growing Have a good weekend!\u00a0 This cheery greeting, usually delivered on Friday to departing co-workers or customers, has a bittersweet undertone.\u00a0 It might mean, have a good week-end, because how could you have a good work week.\u00a0 Week-ends in American culture, at … Continue reading Tell Your Inner Pharaoh: Let My Whole Self Go!<\/span>