Blogging the Exodus: The Narrow Places

"Mitzrayim", the Hebrew word for Egypt, means "narrow places". this makes sense geographically, as the country itself snaked along the Nile, a very narrow corridor of civilization surrounded by wasteland. Likewise, that word has been fodder for many commentator, speaking of Egypt as the "birth canal" from which a sacred people emerged (through narrow spaces: the Sea of Reeds), to the idea found in Mishkan T'fillah (and a hallmark of community organizing): 

“Standing on the parted shores of history, we still believe what we were taught before ever we stood at Sinai: that where ever we are, it is eternally Egypt that there is a better place a promised land; that the winding way to that promise passes thru the wilderness, that there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands marching together.” 

All appropriate ideas about Mitzrayim: the allegorical, the midrashic, the metaphorical, the 'pshat' (plain meaning). But none of them are personal. Art Green, in speaking to the CCAR this past week, talked about personal theology and that part of it is the idea that we all have our own particular narrow places, our own mitzrayim. Part of personal theology or spirituality is having someone you can talk to about that narrowness, someone you can cry out to, in the same way Israel cried out to God.

So, what are your narrow places? Where do the walls close in on you? Is it in a relationship with another, or a set of expectations, a personal limitation or setback, or a memory that hems you in? What is your mitzrayim and who can you talk to about it?