It’s a quiet Sunday. My girls aren’t home yet from the weekend with their dad. I’ve had 3 cups of coffee, computed my 2009 taxes, and poured myself a lovely flute of champagne and grapefruit juice. The cat is asleep on my chair. I’m peacefully reading more of Dani Shapiro’s Devotion. And now, taken by a particular scene, a few poignant paragraphs, my laptop is in place and I’m doing one of my very favorite things: writing / musing / questioning / feeling out my own faith…
The context: the author is attending a Torah (Hebrew scripture) class in an effort to understand her own faith heritage, her deep and inescapable questions.
I wasn’t the only frustrated person in the room that night. Burt read aloud from Genesis 30, in which two sisters, Rachel and Leah, use surrogate handmaidens to compete for the status of having produced the most children for Jacob. This prompted one woman in the group to ask why we read these stories. What are we supposed to get out of them? I had often wondered the same thing. “I mean,” she said, “these people do terrible things to each other.” Burt smiled in agreement. It was true–there was no question, really–that these biblical characters were not exactly exemplars of ethical behavior. But there was something more. I had become friends with Burt over these many months, and could feel the intensity of what he was about to say before he even said it. “Because they’re ours to grapple with. Their human frailties allow us to see our own. We doubt and question them, generation after generation. It’s our text.”
…I kept thinking about the whole idea of human frailty and how–paradoxically–the recognition of frailty contained within it a kind of strength…the questioning was the true work of engagement. To question, to doubt, to rail against, even to reject–these were our prerogative. As a child I had been taught not to question. But as Paul Tillich once wrote, doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it’s an element of faith. If only I could hold close to that idea. If only I could gently, simply–like a child learning to walk–begin again, and again, and again, whether returning to the Torah, to the meditation cushion, or simply to myself.
Frailty = Strength
Questioning = Engagement
Doubt = Faith
I love these truths. And I love that they are grounded in, illustrated, and told in my own sacred texts; collections of flawed and honest stories that are just like my own. “It’s our text.” Perhaps that’s why I keep returning to them: I find myself. My own frailty feels less foreign. My own questions feel normalized. My own doubts are acknowledged. And my faith? It expands, it stretches, it envelops–even if only for a while. Sometimes that’s enough.
Stories matter, regardless of the “text” we read. They remind us that we’re not alone. They help us understand who we are in the larger scheme of life and humanity. They comfort us by raising our awareness of grace. They illustrate the illusion of perfection. They invite the gracious, endless, forming, shifting, breathing reality of faith.
Yesterday, Conversation = Faith. Today, Story = Faith. Dani Shapiro’s, Rachel and Leah’s, Alanis Morissette’s, and my own: embedded, embodied faith.
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Your writing has the same beautiful flow that the quoted text does. You are a published author. I’m sure of it.
Coach Cassandra Rae´s last blog ..Video: come see me live!
Such a gift to me, Cassandra: your words and the possibility that such could be true. Thank you, my friend.
Hi Ronna,
This was beautiful. I was especially touched by the idea of doubt being an element of faith. I have encountered that many times with myself and the people I love. My 18 year old son is now questioning, doubting, angry, rebelling. It’s healthy, and it means he is still engaged in a dialogue between himself and Gd. When he is complacent, I will begin to be worried and sad that he has lost interest. The struggle is where it’s at!
Sandy
Sandy´s last blog ..Something Lost, Something Gained
The struggle is where it’s at. Later in Devotion, the author says this: Life is suffering. There is no way around it. The human condition–the knowledge of this–drives many of us to drink, to drugs, to denial, to running as fast as we can away from the truth of life’s fragility. We think we can shore ourselves up. if only we work hard enough, make lots of money, are good and kind enough, pray hard enough, we will somehow be exempt. Then we discover that no one is exempt. What is to be done?
These words can be read with an experience of resignation…or, as an invitation to the hope and faith inherent in the midst of our common experiences.
I choose the latter (most of the time).
Thanks, Sandy.
Hi Ronna,
I just read your post on the mystery of Genesis 30 with the powerful story of Rachel and Leah, Jacob and Laban. I always loved and hated that story in its complexity and puzzlement for me as I grapple with the meaning it has for me and all women today. Your thoughts on frailty ~ questioning ~ doubt, offer hope in the journey~pilgrimage of my own life through circumstances that also contain much heartache and no clear solutions. Thank you.
As I read your words, I also thought to myself, “Has Ronna written a book I don’t know about?” If you have not…it seems like the time might have arrived for you to consider it seriously. You have many things to say that are wise, strong and tender ~ spoken with a voice that reaches the heart.
Renie
Thanks so much, Renie. Your words mean much to me and yes…the book is in-process! ‘Love that you’ve spoken such out-loud to me. It reminds me and confirms (again and again) that I need to and can press forward, that my thoughts matters, that my doubts, questions, and frailty (especially in this regard) are all part of the process! And yes…Rachel & Leah, Jacob and Laban – tough stuff and right in the mix of our every-day story. Maybe that should be my next blog, huh?
Yes…next blog…the tough stuff of Laban! ….Jacob!…Leah!…I love her..and Rachel!..love her too. What a family.
So very happy to hear the book is in process. You MATTER !!!
Renie
Again, thanks Renie!
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