A Foundation I Didn’t Know I Was Building

I pulled two cards the other day, asking what I most needed to know. They seemed to contradict one another: Desolation and The Star.

Then I realized they perfectly described the threshold I have been crossing.

Desolation speaks of endings. For me, it marks the recognition that it was finally time to leave Israel and the beginning of trusting that returning may turn out all right.

Now, ten days after returning to the United States, I feel hope. I have come back stronger than I expected, less afraid of people, less afraid of life, and quietly grateful for the confidence that comes from once again living in a culture I understand.

The two cards share several symbols, including the Egyptian hieroglyph for a gate, the Hebrew letter Peh, and Saturn. Yet they tell very different stories. In Desolation, which Vieira associates with the Two of Wands, the gate marks an ending. In The Star, it opens toward possibility. The same symbols accompany two different moments in a single journey.

I once imagined that leaving Israel would make me cling more tightly to Jewish observance. Instead, something quieter happened. During those difficult years, I had absorbed an Israeli way of being Jewish, something lived rather than performed. I hadn't realized I was building a foundation while I was there. Only after leaving did I discover it was strong enough to carry with me.

Perhaps that's what these two cards are trying to tell me. One life had ended, but the life that followed would not begin from nothing. The foundation remained.

This isn't exile.

It's integration.