Exodus Begins. Whose Cries Do we Listen to? | Roberta Wall

 Sometimes you have to sit exactly where other folk sit in buy to truly feel what they experience.

—Senator-elect Raphael Warnock, Atlanta, Ga, Usa

וַיָּ֥קָם מֶֽלֶךְ־חָדָ֖שׁ עַל־מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יָדַ֖ע אֶת־יוֹסֵֽף׃

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.  — Exodus 1:8

כִּ֥י יָדַ֖עְתִּי אֶת־מַכְאֹבָֽיו…וָאֵרֵ֞ד לְהַצִּיל֣וֹ׃

I have regarded their sufferings…So I have appear down — Exodus. 3:7-8

(—Tr. Fox)

The e-book of Exodus commences by showing us Pharoah-nature, the mother nature that cannot sit the place other folks sit in get to feel what they really feel, the mother nature that closes its coronary heart to others’ suffering.  Torah presents us with a person of the burning issues of our time, of all time:  How does transformation of struggling manifest? How do we humans have an impact on the formless Creator of Genesis, the Flow of Existence that is Eternally Current, so that there is sitting down “where other folks sit in get to come to feel what they sense.“

About and about we are introduced with the choice and opportunity  to evolve from Pharoah-mother nature to freedom, to liberation.  Torah takes us on a journey out of areas of shut hearts, closed lips and closed ears. This is a journey to hear and react to every single others’ cries.

And as I create this, I am deeply humbled due to the fact I know how straightforward it is for me to select whose cries I listen to, whose cries influence me. Do I even want to listen to the cries of persons carrying guns and signs for Trump, signing up for crowds waving Accomplice and Nazi  flags ?  Do I want to shatter any remaining illusions that our country isn’t vulnerable to succumbing to it’s individual historic sicknesses.

I am humbled to understand that I am scared to hear their cries, worried to acquire in their humanity, since I am afraid that just opening  myself to see their humanity  makes me complicit in what they espouse. I fear  I would be justifying or condoning values and steps that I believe that to be unsafe. Consequently I am unwilling to hear their cries as cries of suffering from the heart.

And I know that closing my coronary heart to the struggling of these I watch as “other” is the character of Pharaoh. It is a renunciation of adore. I have witnessed this above and about in myself and in many others.

The e-book of Exodus, which we start this week, tells the story of individual and collective spiritual journey. A journey  to realization that nothing at all is separate from divine mother nature, which is enjoy. It maps this journey as circuitous, lengthier and farther than the easy geographic journey. A journey that reflects all of lifestyle, distressing and jubilant, confusing and apparent,  and continue to loaded with wonderful probability and imagery that conjures up liberation actions everywhere you go.

In this week’s parasha, Moses,  a wandering shepherd, encounters God. At the burning bush, God instructs him, “take off your shoes, for the location where by you are standing is holy.”

This is how I acquire this message. That it is up to us. We should just take off our shoes, our protections that block us from experience what many others feel. We should get close and proximate to ourselves and to other individuals, as Bryan Stevenson suggests, so that the cries from the heart affect the stream of lifetime.

Dear God, Excellent Spirit, expensive buddy, neighbor, husband or wife, child…. How do we communicate with you so that you, the Movement of Existence in me, in you, all around us, listen to our cry, so that you are impacted?

Slaving underneath Pharoah, Torah recounts, the Hebrews cried out and  Eternally Current took observe and was afflicted.  Their cries transmitted the deepest inner practical experience of suffering and the yearning for liberty. The cries arose out of the sparks of life that had not been extinguished or crushed by centuries of oppression, of not getting needs read or valued. It is a cry that states, stop using me as a source of prosperity and electricity for other people. A cry so effective that , in some way, daily life force alone, formless and timeless, was affected.

We noticed and read this cry in Ga this week, the cry of folks huddled in strains, masked, matter to taunts and threats. The cry that endangers. The cry that arrives from a eyesight of the mountaintop without fear. The cry that will come out of dread, and will come in any case. And dare I say, also, when I acquire off my sneakers, and listen deeply, I listen to these cries in the persons marching in the streets of DC?

When the cries are heard the journey starts. 

Can we, in our human form, listen to all the cries? Is it a betrayal or a doorway to bigger liberty?

And so, when I read Rayshard’s tale, I recognized. He was on probation in a state that, in spite of its reforms, is ground zero for holding persons on probation for prolonged durations of time. 1 in 18 Georgians on probation or parole. Somebody reported, “Well why did he operate? Did not he know…” Properly, sometimes you have to sit exactly where other folks sit in get to really feel what they sense.

—Senator-elect Raphael Warnock of Ga, Usa

In Israel currently, Nonviolent Interaction is identified as תקשורת מקרבת , Tikshoret Mekarevet, the Communication that brings us close. The Israelites’ cry, the cry that caused Eternally Present “to appear down” was the interaction that delivers us shut. It was not a cry of blame or disgrace. It wasn’t the cry of a target or a perpetrator. It was a cry from the heart of struggling. It was a revelation of the nature of the discomfort inside of of me.

As Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Interaction, and Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh taught, when we listen to the others’ expressions as their attempts to minimize their suffering, our hearts open and we join to their humanity. Then we start out to know each other. We have an impact on the incredibly movement of daily life when we cry out and get the cries of other individuals.

You do not have to be fantastic.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles via the desert repenting.
You only have to enable the delicate animal of your system
love what it enjoys.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will notify you mine.
Meanwhile the globe goes on.
In the meantime the sunshine and the apparent pebbles of the rain
are shifting across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
In the meantime the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading property once more.
Whoever you are, no make any difference how lonely,
the entire world delivers itself to your creativeness,
calls to you like the wild geese, severe and thrilling –
over and about announcing your spot
in the family members of matters.

— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese