The Longer Shorter Road. At the end of his new book, Tribe of Mentors, Timothy Ferris,

cites the following poem by Portia Nelson. It's called autobiography in five short chapters.

Chapter 1, I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I'm lost. I'm helpless. It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out. Chapter 2. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the

sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in this same place,

but it isn't my fault and it still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it's there. I still fall in. It's a habit.

But my eyes are open. I know where I am. It's my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5. I walk down another street.

That's probably how life is like for many of us. It certainly was for me.

We sought off confident that we know where we're going only to find that it's rarely that simple.

Life, said John Lennon, is what happens while we're making other plans. We fall into holes.

We make mistakes. Then we make them again.

Eventually we avoid them, but by then we may have the growing suspicion that we took the wrong turning

to begin with, and if we're lucky, we find another road. Hence the opening of this week's Parasha.

When Pharaoh let the people leave,

for He be Shalach Baro, at Aram, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines,

although that was nearby, for God said,

lest the people change their minds when they encounter war and return to Egypt.

So God brought the people by a roundabout route by way of the desert to the Red Sea.

This is actually a difficult text to understand.

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