Ruminations on Highway 61 (Shabbat Vayeira 2021)

(adapted from earlier versions)

Highway 61 runs down from the city of Wyoming in Minnesota, and down to New Orleans. It also runs through a desolate region alongside where the rivers of dread and destiny merge.

It is the road where, according to Bob Dylan, God wanted the killing of Abe’s son done, a road from which there was nowhere to run.  Those lyrics were planted in my unconscious when I was a kid. Hearing the song, I could imagine a father on a bleak road confronted by a bent God coming out of rainstorm, a God bent on murder. I could not see the son. I could not see the father’s face, either. Something terrible was going to happen that no one wanted, maybe not even the God who demanded it. The archetypal idea of “Highway 61” took root.

I found myself using this idea of “Highway 61” to describe events where something deep was happening, from the tragic to the surreal, and unknown parts of us would be called up to handle this surreal reality.

I have officiated at many funerals, some gut wrenching and awful. Good people gone way before their time or at exactly the wrong time. Cancer, accidents, murders, suicides. I taught my students training to be clergy that we have to hold it together. Especially when you find yourself screaming inside that ‘this just can’t be happening’ because you’ve soaked up so much of the grieving family’s pain, so much pain that for a moment you have become one of them.

I taught them:  you have to steel yourself just enough to do what you went there to do. – your duty to the family. Help the family lay their loved one into the ground and guide them in lifting that torn and stunned departed soul up into the embrace of a healing and loving Presence. And stay with them a while on a wretched stretch of Highway 61.

I feel Highway 61 when I help a person who I am counseling see that they have to make the decision – what kind of person do they want to become? It is no longer about the argument, or the past, or who is to blame – there is an existential moment right now, “Who are you to become?” There is no more guidance. One is alone in determing the future of our life’s meaning. In the deep, tortured and reflective moment that follows, I can almost hear the wind whistle on Highway 61. Turn back, or go forward.

I think of the God of the Bible, realizing again that he has gone too far. Staring speechless at what Abraham is about to do. Abraham is having an out of body experience – “am I really going to do this?”  Isaac, both bewildered but somehow knowing the truth – “If this is who my father is and this is what my father’s God is, I want out of here. Go ahead.”

A dreadful silence on Highway 61. An angel shows up, just in time. Snaps them all out of the trauma that has frozen them in time. Brings them to their senses. The knife clatters to the ground. Abraham cannot speak. God turns away, in shame. The angel unties Isaac, who asks, “What just happened?” and the angel says, “I’ll explain later, but it’s not over.” They all walk their different ways down roads that turn off from Highway 61, fairly sure that they, or someone they know, will be back soon.

The angel turns to us the readers and says, “We’re not done with Highway 61.”