Most of us, at one time or another, come to know the truth of our lives.  For the mystics and the poets, such moments may arrive in a glimpse of the numinous, a merging with the Divine oneness of reality (knowledge in its deeper sense), or in the abiding certainty that in this moment is nothing but God.  For others of us, such moments of Being may come in the cycle of life: when our children are born or come of age, or when we ourselves pass a milestone and come into our own as adults.  For others still, the path is rockier, and leads through wildernesses of doubt or insecurity (and for some, that path is the truth itself).  And some, finally, may know the truth of themselves – the verse they are to contribute to the play of life, their Torah – only at death, or in rough hints around the edges of their carefully manicured lives.  Yet no matter how assiduously we distract ourselves with the ephemera of achievement, entertainment, or dissolution – our truths endure, and we can open ourselves to hear them.

When we speak in our true voice for the first time, or see with our eyes opened like that of Balaam, we are transformed.  We are touched in a way that, we suppose, will last forever.  And we imagine that, once enlightened, we will never again suffer – as if life is a movie, in which after the big game is won, we can bask in the glory forever.

But that is seldom the case.  Even in tales of enlightenment, the monk or tzaddik continues his devotional practice – or returns to the world, with its traps and difficulties.  The glow of first parenthood, the achievement of a masterpiece of art, the joy of winning – all of these fade.  No stories in our and other traditions end with an enlightenment that never fades.  Jacob wrestled with the angel, and transformed into Israel – but as we saw in last week’s parsha, he continues to suffer, and to be called by his former as well as his newer name.

There is always a return – and thus a forgetting of a truth that was once so dear we thought it could never be erased.

The second book of the Torah begins, this week, with motifs of memory and forgetting.  It records the names of those who went down to Egypt, but only a few verses later, it says that a new king arose – one who did not know Joseph – and Egypt forgot.  Their ignorance gave birth to fear (“the Israelites will join our enemies”) and their fear gave birth to great suffering inflicted on our ancestors.

God, in contrast, is said to remember the covenant with the patriarchs and hear the suffering of the children.  Divine remembering, which we are asked to emulate, is not mere recollection; it means transforming the present.  We remember the Exodus by reenacting it, remember Amalek by opposing it.  It’s not that there is no time like the present – there is no time _but_ the present.  Now is the moment in which our lives transpire, and when we remember, we remember now.

Is it an exaggeration to call religious practice an act, first and foremost, of remembering? 

If we think about it, our core truths are simple.  Take the Shema, which takes one sentence to elucidate its core principle – a sentence that includes the introductory phrase of, essentially, “Now, pay attention” – and then spends three paragraphs instructing us how to remember that principle; what will happen if we forget; how to teach, repeat, and inscribe the principle so that we say or see it dozens of times a day; even how to tie strings to our garments to... remember.

And the core principle?  Is it so hard to remember?  Really, is very simple: God is One.  Or, in the expanded mind of the Hasidic masters, All is One – all is God -- in this moment, you are a breathing manifestation of nothing but God.  These words that arise in your consciousness, the sensations of your body, that which you call your ‘self’ – none of these have any independent existence.  The atoms in your hand and in your computer, which once resided in a star, are energy in the form of matter, emptiness in the shape of form.  Simple truths, easy to read (too easy), although difficult to fully experience with a mind clouded by ideas.  And yet even if we are not “saints and poets” (in Thornton Wilder’s words), we do glimpse the meaningfulness of life, in the various forms it takes for each of us.  We know the holiness of our lives, and at times, we are so confronted by it that we feel certain we will not forget, this time.

But we do.  We go about our lives, forgetting what matters to our deepest selves, forgetting our true nature and the true nature of reality, filling ourselves with thoughts and desires.  We have to do this; without this self-centered inclination, the Talmud says, no houses would be built and no families would be created.  We seem to have no choice.  And yet, the tragedy of all that self-orientation... 

Rabbi Nachman says: “Woe is us!  The world is full of light and mysteries both wonderful and awesome, but our tiny little hand shades our eyes and prevents them from seeing.”

And yet the fringes on my tzitzit, the kind words from a friend – these bring me back to remember that there is only the One that Is, full of compassion and grace, patient, with an abundance of lovingkindness and truth.  This is how we are, naturally, before our fences go up.  Is there no end to this predicament?  Separation almost to the point of despair, then a reminder, then the wearing out of the meaning of the reminder, and more separation – when does it end?

This week’s parsha proposes a possibility: that even if our life stories make it impossible to _remember_, we can cultivate authentic, total openness to what is happening at this very moment.  And, if we let God in, God will cause us to remember.

Within a few verses of being born, Moshe is wandering aimlessly in Midian as a shepherd, having committed one fatal error that led to his self-imposed exile.  Imagine how disappointed his Jewish mother must have been: where did his life go off the rails?  One mistake, and everything went wrong.  Now, forty years have gone by.  We would forgive him for forgetting the noble possibilities of his youth, and even of despair.

But – and this detail of the story is something I noticed for the first time today – Moshe hasn’t closed himself to wonder.  When Moshe notices the burning bush, his curiosity is (pardon the pun) ignited.  Like a Romantic poet open to, and struck by, a beauty of nature, or like Heschel's figure of "radical amazement," he turns to look.

Now, if Moshe were truly in despair, he wouldn’t turn to look.  However noble our notions of aesthetic sensitivity might be, he wouldn’t really care.  He might be downcast, or dismissive, or callous.  He might look the other way, as we do on the subway when there is something we don’t want to see.  Or he might have just been oblivious.  How many of us miss synchronicities or moments of beauty and terror in our own lives, because we are too busy tending our sheep to notice?

But Moshe does notice, and, the parsha says, he felt he had to look.  Then, the passage continues: “And YHVH saw that he had turned to look... and God called to him from the midst of the bush.”  It is as if Moshe has passed a test.  Maybe has forgotten the truth of his life, but he has not forgotten that he has forgotten.  He remains open.  All is not lost.

There is a third choice, then, between remembering and forgetting.  What Moshe discovers is that the Timeless One, that which Will Be What I Will Be, is always present.  We’re not, but God always is.  We might say this: True openness is remembering the possibility that every moment is pregnant with Divinity.

 So Moshe is able to be a vessel for revelation.  And, we know from our tradition, this is not despite his wandering ways, his humility, his stutter – but because of all these things. When we forget Who we really are, what we perceive to be our flaws give us great sorrow.  If only I hadn’t lost my temper... if only I were more beautiful, or could speak better... if only I had more self-esteem.  In our “small minds,” our minds which think they are separate from the One, we feel inadequate.  But we are not inadequate; we are perfect in our imperfections; each of Moshe’s “flaws” enables him to complete his task.  At one end of our self-awareness, we may not grasp the ‘meaning’ of why we suffer, or why we feel ourselves to be broken.  At another end, there is no self at all.  But in between, there is the full living of our unique Torahs.  As one contemporary teacher says, “depression is replaceability.”

Of course, Moshe’s remembering in the “now” is only the beginning of his quest, and only the beginning of a stunning conversation that proceeds to take place between Moshe’s doubt (who am I, who are You, how will I convince anyone) and God’s reassurance.  There are many more Divrei Torah to be written on that exchange.  But one aspect of that conversation with which we can conclude is the "name" which God provides when Moshe requests one: “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” – I will be as I will be, I am as I am.  Or, speaking psychologically: trust that I will be with you, whatever comes to pass.  Pharoah will refuse, you will suffer, but I will be with you. 

“God is always with us” – not only in a dualistic sense of the Friend in whose arms we derive comfort, but also in the non-dualistic presence of the Presence.  “This is It,” one of my teachers says.  You’re looking for God, and This is It.  If we cultivate ourselves to be fully here now, fully accepting of what is unfolding at this moment, there is indeed the realization of our fondest wishes – not through their fulfillment but in the deep knowing that, whether they are fulfilled or not, we sit in the presence and embodiment of God.  And so there is a great trust which Moshe can learn to cultivate: hinei el yeshuati, eftach v'lo efchad.

To be named, confined, limited -- this would render God into a thing that could be trapped in the past.  'I remember feeling close to God, when I visited Israel/met a holy person/gave of my time at the hospital.'  And so it would be natural to fear -- because we will, definitely, forget.  In contrast, God’s namelessness (here, and also in the ineffability of the tetragrammaton, and also in the universal claim of every mystical writer, from Lao Tzu to Moshe de Leon that the One that can be named is not the true One) invites an openness -- the same openness that Moshe manifested in his initial curiosity.  And then, fear can be replaced by trust, because God is always here.  In fact, God is here right now.  Are you?

“Be faithful to me, and I will show you love,” God seems to say, not as a lover apart from her beloved, but in this sense of deep remembering:  Remember that I am All There Is.  This is not a dwelling in the past, but a Jewish way of making it new now.  Don’t make an idol out of the past, out of that time when everything seemed perfect and God ineluctably present.  Be open now to experiencing God anew, in whatever form It is hiding.

And then, as all our Jewish love-language says (Ahavat olam, v’ahavta et adonai elohecha, ahavah raba ahavtanu), we can see the abundant love inherent in every paper clip. 

Rav Kook says: What is God’s voice?  The sound you are hearing right now.