Who among us have not at some point had to make a painful break with our pasts, with our native soil, with our father's houses? Surely Avraham is our archetype in this. His story of leaving for the Land of Israel models for us our own journey of listening to God's call and setting out on an unmapped course. His story is a compass for our own travels and travails. For how do we decipher God's voice in our lives? How do we extract a coherent command from the vast amount of 'life material' that fills our days? This weeks parsha is a stirring example of how to do just that. Here we have the story of Avraham acting on his calling. One essential hint offered by the text on how to do that is in the enigmatic first lines and title of the parsha itself – lech lecha. Though it is commonly translated as, “You shall go”, such a translation flattens out the poetry of the Hebrew. For this terse 2-word mantra Lech Lecha can be literally read as - “Go to yourself!” And hence the biggest hint for the spiritual journeyor. How to hear and follow God's command? By pursuing our own deepest selves. That is the secret gift of the parsha – to point us in the direction of the divine. And to show how that finger points back to ourselves.
The poem below is Avraham's letter to his father upon leaving, attempting to explain the inexplicable voice of God in his life.
A letter
Father, I leave you a letter
beyond what letters can leave
with a prayer that this crowd
of words might speak
of an experience
that is utterly ineffible
elusive yet indelible
exclusive and impossible
to prove or tell,
untraceable and pale.
I leave you a letter
about leaving you
as sure as an outbreath
must leave the chest
that heaves the next inhale
- for we all have to breathe.
With pain and precision I have made my decision
- To listen.
As if listening were an art
an occupation and compulsion
to carefully record divine diction
with all the weight of my limbs
and my firm-footed action.
With a commitment to sift out God's vision
from the vast inheritance of your vision.
For your two voices were once so fused.
You and the Almighty, once confused my senses.
When, in my youth, you were like a god to me.
But now I have come to cleave
Your voice from God's voice
To harken higher than
even a father's most loving decree.
How can I relay such an ineffible whisper
when your voice is so concrete,
so clear and level, so super-rational
while the voice of God
- well, its fluid & fantastic
and yet demanding.
Unpredictable, poetic and astounding
- pounding proof into sounds which make no sound
and yet deafen the ears of all around
who would listen well to their own
silence.
A still small voice with an unsettling lisp.
A voice that to be heard, it must be lived.
If belief is knowing that there stands a wall
then faith is leaning on it -
- And so I fall
for the sake of a flight of grace
- for the sake of a lean
into the unflagging strength
of a wall that stands unseen.
I lunge in to this mystery
unhinged into the glory
of a new beginning.
The culmination of so many scant callings.
All come together now to say,
“Go to yourself”
and insistently,
they point the way.
To go to myself and no one else
for to put another upon a pedestal
- is to put myself on a shelf.
And I want no more shelving
no stallings, no ceilings
I just want to be called
and to answer with feeling.
So title me much more than me
but one who follows
the One who leads.
Going to self - a divine decree.
To seek out my depths
to plant my seed
into the soil that God
- and God alone -
bequethes to me.
If God is a wall
then let me lean.
If God is a journey
then let me leave.
And father, forgive me,
for my extremes
and give me your blessing
that we may meet
on some distant dream-spun street
to marvel together
at the lives weve followed
and the lives we lead
and the wisdom to know
the difference between.
The poem below is Avraham's letter to his father upon leaving, attempting to explain the inexplicable voice of God in his life.
A letter
Father, I leave you a letter
beyond what letters can leave
with a prayer that this crowd
of words might speak
of an experience
that is utterly ineffible
elusive yet indelible
exclusive and impossible
to prove or tell,
untraceable and pale.
I leave you a letter
about leaving you
as sure as an outbreath
must leave the chest
that heaves the next inhale
- for we all have to breathe.
With pain and precision I have made my decision
- To listen.
As if listening were an art
an occupation and compulsion
to carefully record divine diction
with all the weight of my limbs
and my firm-footed action.
With a commitment to sift out God's vision
from the vast inheritance of your vision.
For your two voices were once so fused.
You and the Almighty, once confused my senses.
When, in my youth, you were like a god to me.
But now I have come to cleave
Your voice from God's voice
To harken higher than
even a father's most loving decree.
How can I relay such an ineffible whisper
when your voice is so concrete,
so clear and level, so super-rational
while the voice of God
- well, its fluid & fantastic
and yet demanding.
Unpredictable, poetic and astounding
- pounding proof into sounds which make no sound
and yet deafen the ears of all around
who would listen well to their own
silence.
A still small voice with an unsettling lisp.
A voice that to be heard, it must be lived.
If belief is knowing that there stands a wall
then faith is leaning on it -
- And so I fall
for the sake of a flight of grace
- for the sake of a lean
into the unflagging strength
of a wall that stands unseen.
I lunge in to this mystery
unhinged into the glory
of a new beginning.
The culmination of so many scant callings.
All come together now to say,
“Go to yourself”
and insistently,
they point the way.
To go to myself and no one else
for to put another upon a pedestal
- is to put myself on a shelf.
And I want no more shelving
no stallings, no ceilings
I just want to be called
and to answer with feeling.
So title me much more than me
but one who follows
the One who leads.
Going to self - a divine decree.
To seek out my depths
to plant my seed
into the soil that God
- and God alone -
bequethes to me.
If God is a wall
then let me lean.
If God is a journey
then let me leave.
And father, forgive me,
for my extremes
and give me your blessing
that we may meet
on some distant dream-spun street
to marvel together
at the lives weve followed
and the lives we lead
and the wisdom to know
the difference between.
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