​EXISTENTIAL GPS

​Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.     Václav Havel
 
This is the time of the year when lots of faith traditions have significant observances. We have just passed Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and anchor holiday for a number of traditions. This year (2023), Ramadan occurs during this month and next, sacred time to Muslims. The essential holiday to Christian faiths of all stripes is Easter. And for Jews like me, there is Passover, known indigenously as Pesach.
 
Ask an outside observer about the common thread for each of them and the answer is likely to point to the vernal equinox. It is true enough, but not entirely true. While all these holy seasons connect to some astronomical and/or agricultural phenomena, too much effort has been put into crafting these observances when a simple bonfire or festive meal would have sufficed. Like most religious observances, no matter the label, all these springtime devotions are about finding a sense of place in the world.
 
I learned a long time ago neither to speak for nor interpret religions that are not my own. (I barely get away with presenting the one I allegedly know first-hand!) Looking at the Passover story, I am surprised to discover that the notion of being lost is not more prominent. The exodus from Egypt begins with a story of a lost home in Canaan, continues with lost freedom, proceeds to lost children (and one particular lost child), emphasizes the lost reliability of nature through the plagues, descends into the lost first-born on the night of departure and leaves us lost in the wilderness for forty years. So much is lost!
 
I encourage you to imagine what it is that “lost” means in the defining stories of the other traditions that celebrate now (and at other times). The back-stories may conveniently place themselves in the context of natural phenomena – spring renewal, phases of the moon, harvest of the winter – but more profound is their teaching about what it takes to be oriented in this world, how I once was lost, but now I’m found.
 
Václav Havel introduced the notion of being lost in his poem entitled “It is I Who Must Begin.” It is this last verse that carries the burden of meditation this poet/politician expresses: how do I know the path ahead. It is not just the famous and powerful who must contend with the need for orientation and direction. As faith communities also know, it is a challenge that faces each and all of us as well.
 
The absence of direction, that is, the sense of being lost, is probably one of most usual and inescapable fears in human life. For something so common, it is surprising that it has the power to persuade each of us that we are alone in our struggle with it. Along come the religions we embrace – those human constructs to communicate spiritual values – to let us know that there are directions, external and internal, to point the way. Whether it is Haft-Seen, five pillars, a miraculous resurrection, or a tower of fire by night and smoke by day, the voices and experiences of our ancestors resound in the rituals of the season to let us know that all the direction we need is embedded within. The road ahead may sometimes lead to nowhere known, but it never leads to nowhere.
 
Let me add that a close reading of Havel’s wisdom is important. He talks about whether all is lost, and even in translation, the play on the word “lost” and the nuance of what it can mean is important. Of course a person can be lost. Try driving in Boston, finding your way around the Phoenix airport, or figuring out the quadrants of Washington, DC. Try sitting through unfamiliar religious services. Try raising a child. Like Waze, crowdsourcing can help.
 
But the direction that comes from the faith and cultural traditions that inform our lives is the data that activates our existential GPS, giving us (I hope!) confidence that all is not lost because others have been here already.
 
At the beginning of Passover, I sit with family and friends for hours at a table. Yes, we eat and drink and chat and sing, but we are really there to figure out where we are going by rehearsing where we have been and how we got to where we are. You will do it, too, whichever sacred season you embrace, even if it is March Madness. If I am not lost, then all is not lost, and if all is not lost, then neither am I. And all is not lost.