I have been thinking about riptides, those powerful currents in the sea that take you further and further away from the shore and from safety. If you fight them and try to swim against them to get back to the shore, you just exhaust yourself and make things worse. The key apparently is to relax and float along with the current until someone can rescue you or you can swim out of it at an angle on your own, naturally.
Relaxing and floating is also what baby Moshe did in order to survive and not be killed in the Nile River. I’ve been thinking about him and imagining him floating in that river. Not that he was in a riptide per se, but he was in a dangerous situation. That same river his parents placed him in to save him was actually meant to be the means of his death, of the death of all male babies born in Egypt that year, according to the decree of Pharaoh.
Panic
How does Moshe survive that ride and how do we survive our own difficult and sometimes dangerous challenges and transitions? Maybe the key, emotionally and spiritually, as with the riptide, is leaning to relax and float. I imagine little Moshe in his basket and it seems to me that this is his first lesson in emunah, in faith. Cast out from his family, alone on the river with no one to care for his needs, no clear destination, and danger lurking at every corner, he is thrust into a situation which for a grownup would surely elicit great fear and anxiety, maybe even panic. What will happen to me? Where will my next meal come from? How will I survive? Will the Egyptians find me and kill me? So much uncertainty and danger. Maybe imagining yourself in that situation and feeling the fear and panic that would arise, the quickening of the heartbeat, the unease in your belly, the shakiness and trembling in your whole body. What will happen to me?
This isn’t just imaginary. We all have experiences that feel like this. Whether or not the dangers are in fact life threatening as they were for Moshe or for someone in a riptide, they often feel that precarious to us and we can easily go into panic mode. If it feels okay, bringing to mind a recent moment of such anxiety for you, something that affected you in a visceral way, triggering your body to become activated and hypervigilant and panicky.
Wrestling with the Riptide
How do we deal with that anxiety? Often we try to fight it, to wrestle it back into submission as if the anxiety itself is a riptide current inside us, and we are trying desperately to swim out of it by force. We add a second layer of anxiety about the anxiety as we try to get rid of it. Maybe sensing those motions in yourself, the discomfort of the rising current of anxiety, the tendency to swim wildly in the riptide, pushing against it and desperately trying to get out of it, increasing the panic. Arms flailing wildly, heart rate racing, you want to shout – just get me out of this. I can’t take it anymore. Just get me out.
But the more you push and try to fight and get out, the stronger its hold on you. Like the Chinese finger trap, when you put your two fingers in and then try forcefully to pull them out, your fingers become caught; the harder you try to get out, the greater its hold on you. What you need to do, as with a riptide, is to lean in and relax so that the way out emerges on its own and a natural release can take place.
Becoming Like Moshe in the River
In those moments when we are caught in a challenging emotional place like a riptide, we need to be like Moshe in that river, like a baby in a basket floating down a river. Maybe we cry when we want to be fed or held, but we don’t anticipate or worry about the dangers ahead. We don’t fight the situation or try to get out of it or control it or even monitor it. We ride with the current; we ride with the waves of our anxiety. We relax completely into being held by the little basket that encircles us and we allow the river current to take us where it will.
Trusting the Container
I invite you to feel into this possibility in your body. Just for this moment. I’m not saying there isn’t also a place for action and navigation and control. I am inviting you and your body just to taste this experience of total surrender and trust, just for this moment. Imagining yourself held in such a basket, letting your body relax into that holding, letting go of the need to hold yourself up in any way, maybe letting your shoulders drop and your head fall back, sinking your full weight into whatever is holding you, trusting gravity, imagining and feeling the bottom and the sides of the little boat totally embracing your body, every inch of you has support. You can go floppy, let all your muscles unwind and relax. You don’t have to hold yourself up now. God’s got you. As if you are dropping back into a divine net, totally trusting it to hold you.
Letting Go of the Reins
And now sense the movement of the river under you. It takes you where it wants. Notice any parts of you that want to stand up and get some navigation tools, some paddles to push and steer, a map and a definite route to take, a plan, a destination, certainty, control. Notice those parts and thank them for their service. Yes, we need them, too, but for this moment, we are trying it the Moshe way in the river. If we had been there, we probably would have gotten out some maps and purposely steered clear of the king’s palace as the most dangerous possible place to go. And yet it turns out that’s where salvation lay for Moshe. The world is a mystery; the way our lives unfold is a mystery. If we take too much control, we miss out on people like Pharaoh’s daughter; we miss out on our chance at true salvation. We think we know what’s good for us, we plan it all out so carefully, but maybe we are missing the best stuff with all our plans, by not just letting the river take us where it wants. The river knows, our bodies know; sometimes we can let go of the reins and let God steer.
So for this moment, maybe letting those navigating parts take a rest in your little boat, letting them lie down with you and relax and enjoy the ride. They are off duty now. Feeling the river current moving you along and letting yourself float in it and trust it, riding along without resistance or worry, total surrender. Letting the waters calm you. Breathing slowly and deeply in this place, letting the rhythm of your breathing come into sync with the rhythm of the river’s current, the whooshing sound of the water beneath and around you.. This place, this moment, this, too, is part of God’s plan. I can trust this movement, this transition. It may feel as dangerous as a riptide, it may in fact be as dangerous as a riptide, but if I relax and float along with the current, I will be ok. Yes, there is danger here, but I trust the ride. Leaning in to the motion, aligning with it, becoming one with the movement, becoming one with the river, with the current, with the riptide, trusting it, trusting yourself, trusting God.
Guardian Angel Watching Over You
And maybe you can sense as you relax into the river, that you, like Moshe, have a guardian angel watching over you from the side of the river. Vatatetzav Miriam, Miriam, Moshe’s sister, stood like a matzevah, a statue, still and resolute and steady alongside the moving current (Exodus 2:4). She stood as a beacon of stability and steadfastness for Moshe on his journey, like a lighthouse flickering on the night sea, offering a sense of protection and support, a feeling of home even as he drifted away from home. We make the journey alone down that river, each one of us – we have to do it alone in some way – but we do have support from the river banks, loving guides who offer us the steadiness of their love and support as we navigate the currents. No one can go down that river for you, but they can watch over you as you travel, and that helps; it helps a lot. Maybe pausing to take in some of that support right now, sensing the loving guides that have been standing along your riverbank, both divine and human, and taking in their care. Even as you move with the river, they can be your point of steadiness on the horizon, an anchor for your soul.
Not Always in this Riptide
Trusting, too, that you won’t always be in this particular river, in this transition, in this challenge, in this riptide. Maybe you will only be here long enough to learn to let go and float. And then, just as you are beginning to relax, someone or something will come from the side to rescue you, like the daughter of Pharaoh did for Moshe, drawing him out of the water. What a strange unexpected moment that was. Would you have predicted that it would be the daughter of Pharaoh, the enemy himself, who would save Moshe? What a mystery this life is when we let it be. Who and what will move us out of our current challenge is not something we can control or understand. We think we know. We look to certain people and things, but maybe salvation will come to us through the backdoor and we won’t even notice.
What happens to your body when you let go of needing to know who or what will help you emerge from this riptide and when it will happen? Can you let go of that need to know and understand, that constant desperate search outward for a savior and a salvation plan, and just relax into the river and trust that when the time is right, you will get to the bend in the river where the next chapter will begin? And perhaps in that next chapter, you, like Moshe, will get up and be a savior for others. We go back and forth in this life, sometimes even in the same day, back and forth between being the one crying for help in the river and being the one firmly planted on dry land helping the boat come in safely. But right in this moment, let yourself be with Moshe in the little basket, lying back and sinking into the holding and enjoying the ride, surrendering and letting the river lead, trusting its twists and turns to lead you where you need to go.
Prayer for Emunah, Faith
I want to conclude with a prayer for emunah, for faith, for the kind of faith it takes to float down a river and trust in the next step. We say each morning in Modeh Ani, rabbah emunatekha. Your emunah, God, is great. What does it mean to say that God has a lot of emunah, a lot of faith? Here is one reading. This is how God runs the world – with great faith, faith that things will work out, faith in the tree to grow and blossom, faith in each of us to follow our path, faith in injustice to somehow work its slow way towards justice. God does not manipulate or control or manhandle us or anything in the world, but runs the world on great faith, like the faith of little Moshe in the river, trusting that things will work out despite all indications to the contrary. And so I ask of God – if your emunah is rabbah, is great, can you lend some of that to us as well, to each one of us on our own rivers, in our own challenges, in our own riptides, so that we can learn to trust the river and its movements, not to fight or control or misnavigate, but to know when and how to let go of the reins, to relax and float and let the river to take us where it should?
