Does anyone else find this time of year totally overwhelming? Don't get me wrong--I think there's a lot of beauty in the chaggim. But (and I'm not sure if this will make sense)...to me, the sheer magnitude of what these days represent actually precludes me from being completely present to experience them. The idea that these ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the days in which Hashem will decide, based on our merit, whether we will live or die in the coming year is simply too vast and profound for me to digest. So, I don't go it alone--I try to dedicate time each day to read the works of other people who are, to put it plainly, more spiritually erudite than I. And one of my favorite books for this time of year is Erica Brown's Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe.
In chapter 1 of her book, Brown explores the significance of the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah: the story of Hagar. At first glance, it seems odd that this would be the story chosen for one of the holiest days of the year. But actually, it comes to teach us an important lesson about faith, especially when juxtaposed against the Torah reading for Day 2: the Akeida.
Abraham and Hagar both receive the same blessing from Hashem: that they will give birth to nations. Hagar's promise of multitudes will be realized through her son, Ishmael; Abraham's will come through his second son, Isaac. But when Hagar comes up against a significant obstacle--she and Ishmael run out of water while lost in the desert--she gives up too quickly. She places Ishmael under a bush so she doesn't have to watch him die, and then she bursts into tears. Despite what Hashem had promised her, Hagar can't manage to find a way out of her situation or wait until one becomes apparent. Only when an angel comes and opens Hagar's eyes does she notice the well of water right near where she sits.
On the other hand is Abraham. G-d promised Abraham a nation through Isaac, but then commands Abraham to slaughter Isaac as an offering on an altar. The stark contradiction must have been confusing for Abraham, but he didn't waver in his faith. He made all the preparations for the sacrifice but at the same time believed that, "G-d will provide the lamb for the burnt offering." Indeed, as Abraham raised his knife to kill his son, an angel stopped him and at that moment Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket. Abraham's situation paralleled that of Hagar: both were given promises but came up against serious obstacles. The difference is that Hagar lost her faith and didn't have the patience to see her situation through, while Abraham patiently hunted for a solution with his faith intact.
Regarding the differences in the faith of Hagar and Abraham, Erica Brown writes:
"Faith demands patience in the face of a future that we cannot see and the determination to make good things happen. If we could know the future with certainty, we would not need faith. But because we cannot know, we have to trust in powers greater than ours to guide us. Our faith is not the passive faith of Hagar's tears but the active joy of Abraham's laugh. We admire his propulsion forward, his drive to create an ambitious, dream-worthy vision even if all of the particulars comprising that future were beyond his immediate understanding. Faith demands that we engage in a delicate balance of both relinquishing control to an authority above us and acting within our full human capacity to realize our dreams."
In other words, what is needed is a balance of patience and impatience. Patience to trust that a path toward our dreams will become apparent; impatience to force ourselves to shape our own futures.
During my first few years in recovery, I fully believed that I would be completely recovered "one day," but did not take the steps necessary to make it actually happen. It is no surprise, then, that many years went by in which I made only the teensiest bit of incremental progress toward this goal. I was content to drift along and keep wishing, but I wasn't impatient enough to push myself. And then, of course, I felt incredibly guilty and ashamed of "wasting" all those years. I developed a concept of myself as someone who says she has goals, but doesn't actually do anything to reach them. It wasn't until relatively recently that I understood that although patience is supremely important in recovery, impatience also has its place. If I want something in my life, I have to both actively seek it out and have faith that I will be shown the way to reach my goals.
I think this lesson from Abraham and Hagar is a critical one to carry into the new year. It is so easy to let a whole year go by without doing much to move toward our goals, and then we end up back at Rosh Hashanah wondering how it is that we are in exactly the same place as we were last year. In the coming year, may we have Abraham's faith that we can realize our dreams for our best life, and may we have the balance of patience and impatience needed to make those dreams become reality.
!גמר חתימה טובה
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