There is a feeling that provokes the building of the Golden Calf, the feeling of uncertainty and unease around Moshe’s delayed return –“we don’t know what happened to him”. What if the Israelites could have stayed with their unease, leaned into the discomfort, allowed the feeling, but not acted on it? What if we could do that, get under the urge to solve the feeling, to fix the uncertainty by acting in the world, making something concrete to hold on to, get under that movement, and learn to stay with the unease, with the questions, with the not knowing? It is here, in the not knowing, that God resides, in our letting go of this type of knowing and opening to another, less concrete, type of knowing, the sensing of God’s goodness passing over us. In this meditation, we explore this possibility in ourselves, also touching on the kesher tefillin, “the knot of tefillin (phylacteries)” that God showed Moshe as a sign of the connectedness that can hold us in our moments of greatest uncertainty.
Sources for the Meditation:
Exodus 32-34
Talmud Brachot 7a
“Anim Zemiort” prayer, Shabbat Mussaf
Concept of “living with questions” influenced by Mary O’Malley, “The Healing Power of Questions”
Photo by Susanne Jutzeler at Pexels
I love the meditation. It’s so hard to have with anxiety and sit with uncertainty. This is a new way of thinking,