FOUR OTHER QUESTIONS

I love Passover and I love the idea of the four questions but those particular four questions have never done much for me.

So this year I am working on my own four questions.

Does it make me a bad Jew if instead of looking for answers about why this night is different from every other night I ask how this night might be the same as every other night? Why all this focus on separation and difference? Isn't every night a good night to remember that we are free – if we are? And are we?

Why does the leavening in bread represent only the rising of pride and ego? Rising certainly in its worst light. Isn't rising also a great thing? Don't we want to rise and shine? Don't we want our spirits to rise? Especially in spring. Isn't spring all about the sap rising? When we unbound ourselves from slavery wasn't that a kind of up-rising?

Why do we not get to recline a lot more in life? Bed is so good! We are a nation of sleep deprived people! Isn't sleep the key to being truly awake? And isn't being awake what you need to dream? So, aren't dreaming and waking and sleeping all part of the same undifferentiated enlightened whole?! And when you do get a good nights sleep aren't you finally able to arise with grace?

Isn't it possible that Moses really did part the Red Sea? I always thought it was a metaphor but lately I've been thinking that we've turned everything magical into only the vaguely possible and now that I've learned about Dr. Emoto and his experiments with water's consciousness I am wondering if maybe Moses loved the Red Sea into parting? Apparently if you thank your water and love your water (two parts thank to one part love it's very scientific) the water forms beautiful crystals. But when you say Hitler to water it forms very ugly crystals so isn't it possible that water, being smart enough not to like Hitler, might have been smart enough to open itself up to freedom? And isn't it possible that the Age of Aquarius which has to do with unity consciousness is a time when asking what makes this night different is maybe not the best approach? And at this point isn't what makes us us and them maybe not be as important as that there is no us and them. And that water dividing itself into two halves seems so astounding because it should exist as one? And that we should come to see that the separation is dramatic and an absolute last resort?

OK. I know this is more than four questions, but things have gotten much more complicated!