The book of Ruth can be read as a process of personal redemption, the redemption of the person of Naomi. Naomi begins by calling herself Mara, “Bitter One” (Ruth 1:20), and over the course of the story, she gradually returns to her true Naomi,“Pleasant One,” Self. She begins the book bereft and alone, and she ends up with a newborn child who is a link in the national redemptive process, a symbol of her own rebirth and redemption.
Going Home
We meet Naomi on her way home to Bet Lehem after a ten year sojourn in Moav. Having suffered the tragic loss of her husband and two sons, she is now turning back towards home, to Bet Lehem, which literally means the “house of bread.” She is now turning towards this place of nourishment again, her home, herself. This is often the way – we may be exiled from our true (inner) home and live functionally in that state for a long time until a crisis awakens us, bringing it all to the surface and turning us back on the road home, to return to ourselves.
Low Self Value
At the start of this journey, Naomi is in a very low emotional state. She feels empty, reik, she says (Ruth 1:21), and this emptiness is not just a matter of losing those close to her. She also feels internally empty, like she has nothing left to offer. Her daughters in law walk by her side and she says to them – why are you here, I am a dried up old shell, I can’t provide you with any more sons to marry, I have nothing left to offer (Ruth 1:12-13). This is important, what she says here. It shows how she views herself. This crisis of losing her family brings up not only the normal grief, but also uncovers in her a core false belief about her own value – that it is not intrinsic, but conditional upon what she can provide. I am not worth staying for, not worth redeeming, she is saying.
Maybe you can picture her there on the side of the road, crumpled and fallen, and bring to mind times when you have felt that way, when something in life has triggered this core emptiness in you, this sense of not being worthy of redeeming, not being worthy of care or attention or accompaniment, as if you are hiding away and saying to the world – just leave me here, I don’t deserve to be seen or attended to anyway.
But Naomi and we are on the road back home to ourselves, back to Bet Lehem, to the source of nourishment and wholeness. And this lowness is itself part of the journey home. It is asking for something. It is asking for ge’ulah, for redemption, a theme throughout the book of Ruth. It is asking for us to redeem ourselves, to bring ourselves back into true valuation of our own worth.
Like Rut or Like Orpah?
And the first step in that redemptive process happens right here, on the road, during our lowest moments. Here is the question that Naomi and we are asked each time we are in that low place: Will we be a Rut towards ourselves or an Orpah? Will we turn towards ourselves or away from ourselves? Will we abandon ourselves in our lowest moments or stay fiercely loyal?
For most of us, our habitual tendency is to be like Orpah towards ourselves. The name Orpah has the word oref, meaning the back of the neck, signifying this tendency to turn our backs. We see ourselves feeling low and worthless, and we abandon ourselves. We do not tend to this suffering part of us, but like Orpah, turn around on our heels and go elsewhere. We suffer, and instead of staying with that suffering part, we minimize, judge, criticize, distract, try to make it go away – so many ways to self abandon – leaving that suffering part alone, not standing by it, not staying with ourselves when we need it most.
Like Rut
But we are on the road to self redemption now with Naomi, on the road home, on the road to claiming ourselves. So maybe, just for this moment, we can try a different way – the Rut way. Some suggest that the name Rut is related to re’ut, meaning friendship. We can be our own friends, our own allies, on our own team. We can see the suffering Naomi part of us and not turn away but stay right there, with the suffering. VeRut davka bah. “But Rut clung to her” (Ruth 1:14). We can be that steadfast with ourselves, that loyal. Wherever you go, we can say to our suffering parts, I will be right there with you. I will not abandon you when you are low. See if you can say that to yourself and to your own suffering parts: Here I am. I will stay with you. I know you are suffering, and this time, I will not abandon you.
It’s like we are standing on a road, like Naomi, with two different angels on each of our shoulders. The Orpah angel generally has more power in our system and it sounds rational as it tells us – turn away, abandon yourself, it’s wrong to be kind to yourself. We hear this Orpah angel loudly – it shouts in our ears – but if we pause and listen, we can also pick up the whispering call of the other angel, the Rut angel, the angel of self friendship, on the other shoulder: stay steadfast, it calls, cling to yourself, love yourself, don’t abandon the suffering Naomi part of you there on the road. Claim it, redeem it.
Being Loyal Like God
I believe this barely audible Rut voice inside us is divine. As Naomi proclaims later in the story: God has not abandoned us, lo azav hasdo (Ruth 2:20). We may abandon ourselves, but God never abandons us. To listen to the Rut angel is to align with the fierce loyalty of the divine force that stays true and steady always. Ki le’olam hasdo. God’s hesed, God’s loyal steady love, is enduring, forever. To learn to stay and not abandon yourself is a divine trait, a way that we imitate God’s own stance towards us.
Being Loyal to the God in Us
Yes, God is loyal to us, but what of the opposite direction, our loyal devotion – our devykut – to God? Indeed, we are commanded, using that same davak clinging verb, ledavkah bo, to cling to God. But what does God really want from us? What if the devotion God most wants from us is to cling to that piece of the divine that is our very selves, to stay loyal and true to ourselves as a manifestation of God? What if the highest honor we could offer God is to claim and stay steadfastly loyal to the God in us, to the way that God is manifesting in our particular way of being in the world, to this, ourselves, this human being that God put on earth? Maybe we ourselves are the way. The way towards God is not to step over the suffering figure of Naomi on the road, to step around and over our own suffering and our own selves, but to lift her up to the light and redeem her, to remember and remind her of her own infinite divine value.
Redemption
Because her true value, our own true value, is intrinsic and unconditional and endless. We are not valuable because of the children we bear or the projects we accomplish or produce. When we stop to stay with ourselves at our lowest point – when all else is gone and we are left totally empty and alone – when we can stop in those moments and still claim ourselves, then we have begun the process of truly being our own go’el, our own redeemer. This is the redemption we, like Naomi, need, to be told in our lowest moments: I am staying with you, and it’s not for your future babies or performances, but just because you are you. That is what it means to re-deem a person, to bring them back into their divine wholeness.
Maybe you can feel a little of this redemption right now, as if you were a tarnished piece of metal cast to the side of the road and now you have been picked up, dusted off and shined afresh, so that all can see that you are a coin of great value. Let your whole body inhabit this re-deeming, this revaluing. Feel yourself shining. It is a rebirth, like the birth of the new baby at the end of Naomi’s story, your own rebirth. Perhaps you have birthed others in your lifetime, perhaps not. Either way, at this moment, you are finally birthing yourself in all your glory, reclaiming your own inherent sparkling value, picking up that Naomi collapsed on the side of the road and staying with her until she gets up and inhabits her own full stature.
Boaz and Our Fierce Strength
We need great strength to do this work. Others, both internal and external, will often say no, don’t redeem yourself, you don’t deserve that. That’s where Boaz the go’el, the redeemer, comes in. Boaz means “strength in him.” We have that oz, that strength, that Boaz, in us, too. It is a fierce defiant power that asserts the truth of our own value, that stands up for us and stays with us even when we are low. There are voices in the world and inside us like those of ploni almoni in the story who refused to redeem (Ruth chapter 4), voices who will continually object to our redemption, but we also have this fierce Boaz go’el energy that stands up for us and insists on our redemption.
Outside and Inside, Other and Self
I know that in the story it is an outside person who does this work, that Rut and Boaz are involved in redeeming others, not themselves. And indeed that is often how it works in our lives– we often do need another human to help redeem us from our despair and our sense of unworthiness. But ultimately it is only we who can truly redeem ourselves, ultimately we need to learn to cultivate that Rut angel inside us to stay with ourselves, to not abandon ourselves. And I believe that as we learn to inhabit that self redemptive stance more for ourselves, we are also able to help others, through example as well as support, to claim and redeem themselves. This is the work of self and other and ultimately world redemption to which we are called. The story of Rut ends with the birth of a baby who is in the Davidic line that will one day bring that world redemption. Our personal and collective redemptions are linked. As we grow in our capacity to stay steadfast with ourselves and each other, we send currents of this redemptive healing through the world.
Photo by James Wheeler at Pexels
