Aviva Zornberg, Bewilderments, xii
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This landscape [the wilderness] does not yield to human demands: it frustrates the need for food and drink, but also the basic demand for direction, for markings to indicate a human mapping of blank space. No human steps have trod this sand, it stares back at the traveler indifferently– pathless, bewildering to the human imagination. Already traumatized by their Egyptian past, the Israelites, one by one, must be swallowed up into this senseless space… |
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How does this description of the wilderness resonate (or not) with your current experience?
Exodus 13:21
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[When the Israelites left Egypt] God went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, to guide them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, that they might travel day and night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. |
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In thinking about the "bewildering” path(s) that you may be currently walking, how do the images of the divine in the cloud and fire resonate (or not) with you?
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In addition to providing guidance/ illumination, what might be the unique role of each symbol (ie, protection of cloud, warmth of fire)?
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In this moment, what provides guidance, light, protection, comfort, warmth for you? Which of these (or other forms of support) do you most yearn for?