Parshat Lech Lecha - A Hitchiker's Guide to Eternity

many years ago in a more naive and certainly safer world I once hitchhiked from Amsterdam in Holland to Pisa in Italy not only The Young and the reckless and I was certainly both would climb aboard the rear seat of a BMW 900 motorcycle on a night of driving rain with a 50 pound pack strapped to your back and this placed my center of gravity some more past the outer extremity of the rear wheel and every time the rider accelerated the backpack dragged me backward off the bike the Autobahn was a sea of rain that night it was King David who taught us that God protects fools and that night I certainly qualified for protection but hitchhiking taught me something other than that God protects the food hitchhiking taught me what we call in Hebrew minakata nefesh literally the repose of the Spirit we live in the world where stress will literally eat us up if we let it how do you combat this killer when you stand by the side of a road waiting for a ride you've no idea whether someone will pick you up in the next minute the next hour or the next week you're not in control it's wonderfully relaxed no one in his right mind hitches to an important businessman or to catch an airplane the very act of hitchhiking says I'm prepared to be where I am and I don't need to be anywhere else a Jew's job is to live in the present but not for the present much of our lives are spent thinking about what might happen or what might not happen where I could be now I should be now what went wrong what went right wait this moment is unique it will never be here again sometimes I just like to close my eyes you think I'm alive that little agenda pilot that lives in our heads can steal our lives away without us even noticing unless we heed our little Hitchhiker's Guide to Eternity that says God gave you this man live it to the full at the beginning of this week's Pasha Pasha is left my heart God said to Abraham go for yourself now literally the Hebrew translation is go to you see Abraham had the ability to go to himself to connect every god-given second in his life