Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (TheRaDR) wrote about the counting of the Omer, and drawing a powerful analogy to waiting to get to normal times again once the current pandemic is over. Excerpts don't really do it justice, so consider todays QotD less a quotation than a teaser, and go spend a couple minutes reading (and longer thinking about) what she posted 2021-04-11:

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William Bridges wrote a book about transitions, talking about how every transition has three parts-ending, neutral zone, and beginning.

In the Passover story, crossing the Red Sea was the ending. We let go of that chapter (mostly), quit that job, severed those ties. Got free.

Getting Torah in our story is the beginning-a new life in covenant, obligation, commandment, relationship with the divine.

The neutral zone? That's a time of unknowns. A time of possibility. A time when you've left the one thing and you don't know what will happen next. A time of terror, of possibility, of creativity, of openness, of uncertainty. Of wilderness.

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So we're not quite at the ending of this pandemic. People are still getting sick. People are still at risk, dying.

But we're starting to see what this neutral zone might look like.

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We don't yet know what a new, post-pandemic chapter could look like. And there is, rightfully, a lot of anxiety about how to do this, how to do it right and well and safety.

But this is also a time of possibility. A time of ripeness. A time when a lot of doors are open.

We have some opportunities to create some new social structures, some new ways of being. We don't have to accept what has been before. That chance doesn't come around very often. This is a moment when creativity and new thinking can help serve us, make the new chapter better.

How can we use the pandemic neutral zone as a chance to create more justice, more equity, more wholeness, more hope, more truth, in our society?

Things will be different.

How can we get out of the wilderness with them not just different, but better?