Calling Us ALL to the Path Ahead, Toward Our Truest Selves

Blessed are You, YHWH, the Breath of Life, the Wind of Change, Who has filled us with life, lifted us up, and carried us to this moment!

The Torah portion that Jews read this coming Shabbat begins:  "YHWH  [Yahh, the Breath of Life] said to Abram [and his wife Sarai], "Go forth, go forward, into your best and deepest self - to a place that I will let you see, that you do not yet know."  (Gen 12: 1)

God said that to America yesterday.

The seeming paradox -- that we can go into our deepest selves only by going beyond ourselves --  is given even more point and pungency by the Hebrew: "Lekh l'kha," says God. In a Hebrew where the vowels must be inserted, these two words have the same consonants. They are the very same word, written twice.  The closest I've ever come to an adequate translation is:

Outward bound,
Unbind inward.

And that is America today. We have taken only the bare first step on that unknown path to an unknown place, the path of hope and change. But that path is the only way to uncover, discover, our truest self. (Please see below for specific next steps on our journey.)
 
Everywhere, our media are saying this truth in regard to racism in America. The souls of Black folk, weeping and dancing at the same moment, tell us that. And there is more. There were two intertwined energies that brought us to this moment. If  Barack Obama had not courageously opposed the Iraq war from the git-go, he would not have brought together the passionate commitment that made the beginning of this journey possible. And if he had not been literally the embodiment of an America - no, a world - beyond racism, he could not have channeled that promise into the Black and white votes that together made yesterday's victory.

Two powerfully symbolic places brought this lesson home for me: places I know in my own soul and body.

In  Grant Park --  where 40+ years ago police charged and beat antiwar demonstrators to prevent their marching to meet with the Blacks of Chicago's South Side and together confront the Democratic National Convention to protest the Vietnam war abroad and racism at home --- in Grant Park, more than 100,00 Americans, Black and brown and pink, joined to celebrate the election to the Presidency of an antiwar Black nominee of the Democratic Convention.

And at 14th and U Streets in Washington, the epicenter of the Black uprising of April 5, 1968  (eight blocks from where I lived), the epicenter of rage against the murder of Martin Luther King the day before, rage against the Pharaoh's age-old regime of racism in this country --  at 14th and U Streets, Blacks and whites danced and cried together.

The tears, the dance, of healing.

But as Philip Roth's great novel about Portnoy says in its very last line: "Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?"

Now at last we can begin to walk that path into a decent future.  And as Obama said last night, addressing all who worked to make this moment happen:

"This is your victory. I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead.  For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime --  two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

"This victory alone is not the change we seek --  it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you."

And as he added, echoing Dr. King's last speech, given the night before his death, the speech that echoed Moses looking toward the Promised Land and promised that we as a people would get there even if he could not :

 "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep.We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America --- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there."

Now perhaps we can begin ---   yes?  On January 23, The Shalom Center and the Workmen's Circle will hold an action gathering in New York City of "Jews Uniting to End the War and Heal America."

For too many years, the American Jewish community has held back from its true vocation to bring peace to America and to the whole region that Abraham and Sarah and Hagar walked, from what is now Iraq to what are now Israel and Palestine and Egypt and Arabia. 

For too many years, even the Jewish desire for social justice in America has been blunted by refusing to connect that hope with the need to end the Iraq War and to work toward peace with Iran and Afghanistan. How can a trillion dollars for destruction NOT be a domestic issue?

November 23 will be another step on the path that we must take. If you live anywhere from Boston to Washington, try to come. And if you can't, please support the work. To come or to help,  click to --
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/602/t/7445/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=3732

And the next step:  Senator Obama will become President at noon on Tuesday, January 20. The day before is Martin Luther King's Birthday! (Still believe that God didn't plan this moment?)  In Washington and all throughout the country, all our religious and ethical communities must honor this miraculous convergence by committing ourselves as a body both politic and spiritual to join in covenant to make King's deepest vision real: to end the destructive "triplets," as he called them, of racism, militarism, and materialism in America. To move forward in a revolution of values toward becoming the Beloved Community.

To see a fuller explanation of this MLK/ Inauguration effort and to join in it, see --
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1432

And a third step into this journey: This spring will mark 40 years since the original Freedom Seder that, on the first anniversary of Dr. King's death, honored the freedom struggles of Blacks in modern America as well as Jews in ancient Egypt. On March 29, in Washington and all around the country, The Shalom Center will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Seder. Once again this Seder will be interfaith, multireligious, multiracial. This time it will focus on the "Ten Plagues" that our modern Pharaohs are bringing on the earth - and on what we can do to bring Ten Blessings on the earth instead.

For fuller information on this 40th anniversary Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth, see --
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1457

For January 19 and March 29, The Shalom Center is working with the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership and The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah. One crucial aspect of the new path to the place that God will let us see is that path in which Jews and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and Wiccans walk together. 

And let me end, for today, on that note:  The path that we have only begun to walk. The path toward healing the earth from the damage we human earthlings have wreaked upon it, and therefore on ourselves. The path toward a just world economy, within America and for all humanity. The path toward not just ending the wars we are already in and the genocidal civil wars already killing people, but toward a compassionate world in which conflicts are addressed without violence and hatred.

No President, no Congress, can walk that path unless there is a community in motion - a movement - demanding and creating those changes in private behavior as well as public policy.  That is our task. Let us begin.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, vriede, shantih ---   PEACE!
Arthur

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