Get You Going

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." - Genesis 12:1

I learned recently (or maybe I re-learned, since I'm sure I must have heard this in Hebrew class during seminary) that the Hebrew of God's "Go" to Abram is a bit more complicated than the one word suggests. Lech-lecha, the Hebrew phrase, is a bit more like "get you going." It is the name of the Torah portion - Parshah Lech-Lecha - read at an assigned time during the Jewish year. The name of Abram's story is this: "get you going." "Go."

And so going, getting us going, is now the name of our story too. This portion of our lives, perhaps assigned, perhaps chosen, or somewhere in-between. Get up, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. Get you going, children. Go.

I imagine Abram and Sarai were considerably more surprised than Beloved and I when our own lech-lecha came upon us: we, after all, signed up for a life of some possible transitory-ness, while Abram and Sarai had not yet made that commitment. Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch writes this about the Torah portion:

From the time that G-d said to our father Abraham "Go from your land..." and "Abraham went on, journeying southward", began the process of birurim -- of extracting the sparks of holiness that are scattered throughout creation, buried within the material existence.

By the decree of Divine providence, a person wanders about in his travels, as the Cause of All Causes brings about the many circumstances and pretexts that bring a person to those places where the sparks that belong to his or her soul await their redemption.

I have always thought of Sarai and Abram's going, lech-lecha-ing, as the leaving of their home. And certainly it was. They left their land; the land they knew like the backs of their hands. The shortcuts from one place to another. The colors of the sunsets and the dawns. The times of year it was likely to rain, or blow a bitter cold wind, or beat onto them a parching heat. The horizons they watched and the smells of food they knew how to cook and chatter from mother tongues. They left all this, I thought, and certainly they did. They left their home because God told them to get going.

I cannot be so sure that it is God telling us to get going, though I have no reason to think otherwise. Part of me suspects that the rather inconsiderate timing of it all - new staff member, Christmas coming, fairly new house, baby quest in limbo - is, actually, proof of God's peculiar and marvelous providence. God, after all, seems profoundly disinterested in my schedule (or, if not disinterested, at least fonder of another option). The fact that we would not have chosen this time, this place, from which to get going is not sheer coincidence to me. I doubt Abram and Sarai had raised their hands and volunteered for lech-lecha-ing about anything when God cleared the divine throat and made the command.

I do believe we could have chosen either place - here or there, familiar or new, known or unknown - and God would have remained faithful. ("After all," said a pastor friend of mine when we were talking about whether she should leave her congregation some years ago, "who do I think I am that I'm never going to make the wrong choice? God didn't say to Moses, 'okay, you said no the first time, never mind then,' or to Jonah, 'well, your idiocy is just pissing me off so forget you.' Of course I will make the wrong choice at some point. The real hope is not my abilities to choose but God's choice to be faithful.")

But we have decided to go. And suddenly the story of Abram and Sarai has taken on new meaning for me. I never wondered, before, who was hurt by their decision to go. Their friends and neighbors, their - did they have colleagues? - family. Their servants, perhaps. Everyone who said, "But why? Why are you going?"

Did Abram and Sarai ever argue with each other about it? Did Sarai wonder why on earth God would make such a suggestion when their current home was perfectly good? Did Abram ever accuse her of being unfaithful when, in fact, his real fear was whether his faith was strong enough to take the change?

And how hard was it that last day, when they turned around for the last time and knew they might never return? We, at least, live in the days of easy travel, when the only impediment to returning is the price of gas or the condition of the roads in winter. There is no permanent leaving anymore, at least not that you can know in advance. I think of my grandmother who, leaving Sweden at age nine, remembered until she died the image of her own grandmother, waving from the front porch of the farm, crying and wiping her eyes with her apron. She would not see her children again.

Get you going. So much easier said than done, no? And yet the rabbinical comment above has real truth to it, I think: that you do not just leave your home, you leave in order to find your home. We leave in search of those sparks belonging to us, which await redemption. Because as much as Abram and Sarai had to go from one place, they also had to go to another.

For some time to come, I suspect our focus will be on the place and people we are leaving. There is no way around this; or, at least not one very compelling.

The trick, I suppose, is to balance the "from" and the "to." Lech-lecha-ing for both, away from one and toward another. Don't think that I've forgotten one of the things that finally does happen for Abram and Sarai when they go: their son finally arrives, so much later than anticipated. And no, not as a reward, for that part is clear. But somehow their going made way for him in a manner that staying would perhaps not.

So we enter Portion Lech-Lecha of our lives, Beloved's and mine. And not simply as a description, but as a prayer. Get us going, O Lord. Get us going safely, and with compassion for one another. Get us going, and may we be a blessing along the way.