Deuteronomy 30:2 · World English Bible
and return to Yahweh your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul,
A traveler who has strayed is not asked to have never left, only to turn around and start walking home. So many returns are half-returns, one foot kept in the old country while the mouth says the words.
From the Sufism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SUFISM
A traveler who has strayed is not asked to have never left, only to turn around and start walking home. So many returns are half-returns, one foot kept in the old country while the mouth says the words. Turning today with the whole heart, where even the children can see the direction change, is the thing itself.
The voice being obeyed is not shouted from far away. It is the nearness that made the turning possible at all, whose call is already the first step of the road back.
Sufism lens
Where am I still keeping one foot in something I have already said I was leaving?
Turning back is the way the Tao moves. Return is not failure in the system, it is the system.
He wrote that turning is complete when the person facing the same situation again chooses differently. Not regret alone, a changed direction you can point at.
A murderer met the Buddha, turned completely, and was received. The past was long and the turn still counted.
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Sufism