Exodus: A Journey for Freedom: Weekly Summary
Sunday
The journey of Exodus, the journey that ancient Israel walked, is an image of the journey made by every person who sets out to seek the Divine Presence.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
God offers a promise of personal Presence and an ever-sustaining glimpse into who God is—Being Itself, Existence Itself, a nameless God beyond all names, a formless God previous to all forms, a liberator God who is utterly liberated.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Instead of seeking the answers that might put their questions to rest, the manna taught the Israelites to continually live the questions, to understand that the journey to freedom is about remaining awake and curious and not going into sleep mode.
—Estelle Frankel
Wednesday
Most of us spend a lot of our lives trying to get out of something old and confining and into something new and free. That’s why we so easily identify with Moses and the freed Hebrew slaves on their journey through the wild wasteland known as the wilderness.
—Brian McLaren
Thursday
Wildernesses are crucibles where we become the people who can live into new lands of promise and liberation.
—Liza Rankow
Friday
We are all called to a way of faith. At each step God asks us to trust, to say yes, to put our lives in God’s hands.
—Richard Rohr
Week Seven Practice
What Is Worth Carrying?
Rabbi Sharon Brous recounts an experience of learning how to travel light:
Navigating hunger and thirst, desert heat, and attacking armies, [the Israelites] carried the holy ark containing the tablets Moses had received on the mountain, inscribed by the hand of God. But those tablets were actually the second set that Moses received. Right beside them in the ark sat the broken shards of the first set, which Moses had smashed in his rage when he witnessed the people dancing mindlessly around the golden calf. The tablets and the broken tablets—both holy—rested together in the ark.
[My husband] David and I once braved a three-week backpacking trip, and we learned what it means to carry a heavy load on your back. Before the trip, we laughed when his sister, Paulette, advised us to tear pages from our novels as we read them to avoid carrying unnecessary weight. But by day three, the pack straps had torn into my shoulders, and I happily tossed every nonessential.
So carrying heavy, broken stone tablets on their backs through the desert … for forty years? There’s nothing trivial about that.
The lesson here is not only that those shards retained their holiness. It’s that they may have been even more precious than the intact tablets. It’s the broken pieces that tell a story of loss and failure, rage and redemption. They remind us how much we can hurt those we love, and they represent the possibility of forgiveness. They are imperfect, just as we are. An eternal reminder of how fragile it all is….
The holy ark is the model for the hearts we strive to cultivate: capacious enough to hold the whole and the broken, all at once. There is simply no way to disentangle the two. Life is a sacred fusion of sorrow and celebration. And all of it is holy.
Reference:
Sharon Brous, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World (Avery, 2024), 98–99.
Image credit and inspiration: Clay Banks, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, USA, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Walking into the wild becomes a mirror of the Exodus itself—risking the unknown so that, in the wandering, we discover the quiet, faithful presence that leads us toward freedom and deeper communion with God.
