The Wilderness of Preparation

Abraham our father,
Was simply told to leave.
Go forth from your land and from your kindred
and even from your father's house.
To the land that I will show you.

This is the setting out.
The leaving of everything behind.
Leaving the social milieu. The preconceptions.
The definitions. The language. The narrowed field
of vision. The expectations.
No longer expecting relationships, memories, words, or
letters to mean what they used to mean. To be, in a
word: Open.

If you think you know what you will find,
Then you will find nothing.
If you expect nothing,
Then you will always be surprised.
And able to bless the One who creates the world anew
each morning.
So it is with setting out on the path of liberation, leaving
everything.

He would even have to discover
The way he would discover
While he was on the way.
Of him it was said, A man who set out and did not know
for which place he was destined. . .

Then there is being alone.
In the most God forsaken place.
Where God visits after all.
Leaving one's house and one's parents and one's family,
And finally the slave pits themselves
For a wilderness of no expectations.
Somewhere where I will learn what I will learn.
Where I can "see" what I will be.

-- Lawrence Kushner

Thanks M.

I am always so floored by professors who listen, as though I actually could tell them something new. Man, good profs make all the difference. I'm looking very forward to more work with Calichman, Levin, Mittelman, Staloff. How did it take so long to find these guys...??

FINALLY found an apartment today. I can actually have 24-hour days again! Without the 2-hour commute cap at the top and bottom of each day.
FINALLY excited about any remaining time at this school.

Shiggity shiggity schwaa.

Today, I learned that
An upside down lowercase
E is called a schwa.