PREPENT Day 17 // Pashanu: We are Quiet Instead of Questioning
A reflection on "Pashanu: We are Quiet Instead of Questioning" by Christy Lee-Engel
It’s always been my nature to be quiet. A lot of the time, I even crave and seek out quiet. But of course, being quiet -- not speaking out, not questioning -- in the face of harm being perpetrated is the very definition of “complicity,” of participating in that harm.
So it’s in my very nature to harm. To transgress, to be guilty of distancing myself from You. And there are oh so many ways to commit this sin, every day. We neglect to offer a kind word to someone who could really use one. We withhold our true thoughts and feelings, fearing a hurt or angry response. We shrink from confronting wrongs in the world and turn away from suffering, out of hopelessness, fatigue, lack of courage. We don’t question the way things are, out of fear (again with the fear), poverty of imagination, or an arrogant belief that we already know the answers.
Yet it’s also in my/our very nature to want to come back to You, and to care. Along with speaking out, and speaking truth, and elevating others’ voices, maybe a healing, transformative, Teshuva, move could be to ask more questions, out loud? Questions like “what is it like, to be you?” and “what’s getting in the way of us feeling how deeply connected we really are?” and “what shall we do together right now, to live the better world we long for into being?”
Christy Lee-Engel (she/her) is a mother of two adult sons and one baby boy of blessed memory, a wife, sister, auntie, cousin, friend, aspiring altar to the ancestors, and a Japanese Chinese Jewish west coast American. She is a longtime student and practitioner of naturopathic, homeopathic, and East Asian medicines, Chan/Zen koan meditation, and is a grateful apprentice in the arts of prayer and blessing.
She loves to cook and bake, cultivate and harvest. She feels most comfortable either in the front row or close to the back exit, and most at home surrounded by flowering plants in the sun, or where she can see the water, very tall trees, and fog.
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