Born Again and Again

Many of us remember the first academic paper we got back from a college professor.  Accustomed to a more glowing reaction from our high school teachers, we may well have sadly surveyed a sea of corrections and a grade that we didn’t rush to share with our parents.   

There are times in our lives when we need to “kick it up a notch.”  Personally and professionally, we are challenged today in ways that defy yesterday’s solutions.  It sometimes feels like we’re in a giant video game.  The moment we think we’ve mastered one level, we find ourselves adrift in the next.

The Torah’s description of the Exodus from Egypt is replete with birth and birthing.  The midwives defy Pharaoh’s orders and save the male children whom they deliver.   The Hebrew word for Egypt, mitzrayim, implies a narrow place.  The Israelites’ departure from Egypt through the Sea of Reeds depicts the birth of a nation.

I don’t think that birthing is a one-time event.  Various life changes require us to reinvent ourselves.  When young children reach physical maturity, when high school students get a rude awakening in college, when a person experiences a change in personal status, when one’s work environment changes drastically, it can call for a kind of reinvention.

Reinvention often means finding a path to move forward when initially it appeared that no such path existed.  The individual who suffers the loss of a longtime mate discovers that life without the mate is possible, if painful.  The family that faces a tumultuous transition realizes they can, and will, adjust to a new reality.  The 60-year old body is different than its 30-year old version, but the differences can often be managed with a combination of self-care and good humor.

We left Egypt.  We crossed the Sea.  We faced new adventures as individuals and as a people.  Birth is hard but also hardwired into the human experience and it happens again and again.  Remarkably, we tend to find the strength and the resources we need to be birthed into the next phase that life throws our way.

As we continue to face our inevitable challenges, I’d like to offer the opening of the Jewish Travelers’ Prayer, T’efillat haDerekh: 

May it be Your will, Eternal One, our God and the God of our ancestors, 

that You lead us toward peace, emplace our footsteps towards peace, 
guide us toward peace, and make us reach our desired destination for life, gladness, and peace.

We are the children of Israel.  We struggle with God, with others, and with ourselves.  And somehow we prevail.

Originally written for the Temple Israel Voice, February, 2012