Weekly Wisdom - Lech Lecha
by Or HaLev Teacher Naomi Shifrin
This week's Parsha, Lech Lecha, opens with the famous words:
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃
“God says to Avram: Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you." (Genesis 12:1)
Avram isn't told where he's going. But he's told to go on a journey, out beyond what is familiar.
This is something we do every time we come into practice. We rest, we sit, we venture out, or in. We don't know where we're going. This world and our very being are in a state of change. We never know what we are going to meet, and we never meet the same thing.
The practice is the venturing itself: trusting the way, coming to meet our being with greater and greater love, curiosity, willingness and bravery to be with what is, as it is. We are carving new neural networks and pathways every time we return to our anchor or cultivate loving-kindness or compassion. We're carving new neural pathways in our being. We're going out from the familiar, from our birthplace, from the house of our father.
Heading into the mystery of experience, doing that again and again, requires trust (bitachon) and faith (emunah). As we do that, the way becomes the way: the movement itself of venturing out and not knowing where we're going is our becoming. We become, we grow, we develop into the next beautiful iteration of ourselves as we practice in this way, venturing again and again.
Lindsey Scott wrote a song called The Way: "You don't have to know the way. The way knows the way. You don't have to plan the way. Trust the way, feel your way. The way knows, the way knows the way."
And so it is with Avram's journey. The way knows the way. Though he’s not told where he's going, he is told that the way is blessed. God says, "I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing." (Genesis 12:2)
May you be empowered to venture into yourself: to trust the way, and to come to know that all of your becoming on that way is itself a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom