Resending. Sorry for the error.
There is light at the end of the tunnel.
These words of affirmation hit a nerve as reality around us hurts on multiple levels, with tunnels and traumas, dark days and nights, wars and suffering and no end in sight.
And yet, 2800 years ago a man who lived among his people’s suffering and watched his community grapple with conflicts and complexities that would lead to tragic consequences -- insisted that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Micah the prophet ends his book today with gloomy projections for Jerusalem and its people but also with a glimmer of hope for what will happen after -- forgiveness is possible, faith matters, and redemption will one day rise like the sun:
אַֽל־תִּשְׂמְחִ֤י אֹיַ֙בְתִּי֙ לִ֔י כִּ֥י נָפַ֖לְתִּי קָ֑מְתִּי כִּֽי־אֵשֵׁ֣ב בַּחֹ֔שֶׁךְ יְהֹוָ֖ה א֥וֹר לִֽי׃
Do not rejoice over me,
O my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I rise again;
Though I sit in darkness, YHWH is my light.
Micah 7:7
Micah is writing about faith in god as the source of light but it may be as powerful to lift up life as the ultimate support within, even for those who do not believe in higher powers. There is agency within us, life forces and internal strength whatever its names or sources that help us deal with despair and repair our way onwards, bit by bit, with help and with working the muscles of hope.
Micah’s powerful metaphor found its way into the prayer book and into countless personal and collective non-religious encounters with despair. Can we hold on to our belief in better days even through our toughest chapters? Can we hold on to hope despite the horrors and the helplessness, the physical and mental challenges we all go through?
Micah gave us the gift of a promise - yes, the sun will shine again and the tunnel will end, and even if what we’ve been wrong, messed up and are now facing consequences -- there is meaning to be made of our path and there will always be a path to forgiveness.
One word from today’s final chapter of Micah made its way into Jewish ritual vocabulary. It’s a word that contains the concept of forgiveness and atonement in a primal embodied way, with the belief that we all deserve to be forgiven and to begin again.
If we can rise above our hurt to forgive those who hurt us and to ask for forgiveness for our own shortcomings -- then the divine essence or life force or whatever -- can forgive us too.
This concept of forgiveness appears in seven different forms in the final verses of today’s chapter.
These are also the verses chanted on the first days of each Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanna, as we conduct the Tashlich ritual, outdoors, standing in front of a body of living waters, shedding our transgressions in the form of breadcrumbs, words, and tears into the waters of life, asking for forgiveness.
The word ‘Tashlich’ which means ‘Discard’ comes from here:
יָשׁ֣וּב יְרַחֲמֵ֔נוּ יִכְבֹּ֖שׁ עֲוֺנֹתֵ֑ינוּ וְתַשְׁלִ֛יךְ בִּמְצֻל֥וֹת יָ֖ם כׇּל־חַטֹּאותָֽם׃
God will take us back in love,
Quashing our iniquities.
You will hurl and discard all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:19
Maybe Micah is winking at Jonah - another prophet who was hurled into the depths of the waters for refusing to step up and help the world repent? The healing power of water may predate many of our known atonement rituals and stem from primal, mythic memories of what it’s like to be close to the essence of nature, the life-force so much greater than us?
The water evoked here is also mentioned a few other times in this chapter - as Micha mentioned the Exodus from Egypt - yet another dark chapter that eventually saw a brighter day. He uses it as an example of patient faith paid off, a model for commitment to the tireless work of liberation. Of course nowadays the ritual of Tashlich is being adapted as we are increasingly aware that one of our greatest collective transgressions is how we’ve been treating the earth and the oceans. Breadcrumbs are often replaced by more sustainable substitutes.
Perhaps we should just focus on shedding our tears.
And there’s another interesting link between the Exodus story and the New Year - the shedding of our sins into the water and the crossing of the sea into freedom.
Yaakov Beasley comments on the link between these narratives:
“Micah makes one significant shift – in Exodus 15, the Egyptians are Israel's enemies that are cast aside as they drown in the sea. In Micah, Israel's worst enemy are their own sins – in other words, themselves. Israel's real enemies, the ones that have led to its downtrodden state, are their sins.
The correspondence between internal failings and external enemies is an apt conclusion to the message that Micah has been preaching from the beginning. If Israel and Judah had built societies modeled on the moral principles outlined in the Torah, had its prosperous practiced compassion and not corruption, had is leadership acted from kindness and not avarice, then no country in the world, even a superpower as strong as Assyria, could have hurt Israel in any manner.”
In other words - it is on each of us to face our demons and our wrongdoings, take on atonement, and discard the past that no longer serves us, with commitment to change and plea for forgiveness. We can blame the others for our hurts and wrongs - and there are plenty of reasons to deal with people’s less than noble intentions - but the inner work towards the light is left to us.
However we begin our year, get ready for Passover, deal with this war or make it through another difficult day — Micah reminds us, as we bid him farewell, that the gift of forgiveness and fresh start is an available source of light with which to navigate even our darkest nights.
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