In the early 1970s, when I was at L’Abri in Huemoz, Switzerland, living in an Evangelical community that followed the monastic pattern of work, study, and prayer, I met two young men from Malaysia. A group of us were sitting on the floor of a chalet perched high in the Alps, the sun streaming in. We were sharing our journeys--from agnosticism or atheism or existentialism to faith, from Hinduism or Islam or secularism or Satanism to Christianity. The two recently arrived Malaysians both taught me something that afternoon that was essential to my life. The first teaching I thought I understood,and I put it into practice immediately; the second haunted me for years.
When your mouth is burning from hot peppers, taught the first man, you time the fire by placing something sweet on your tongue. I’ve been doing this ever since. It occurs to me now that there is a deeper, mystical meaning to his teaching as well—something to pursue another day.
The second man, born a Hindu, told the story of how he became a Christian. He was floating free in the sky, he said, like a kite. He was blown here and there at random, at times spiraling out of control, at times tangled in wires, at times crashing to earth. Then he found Christ. Now he could soar freely, soar higher, fly faster and farther, because he was tethered to this rock.
When I heard this I was twenty and a hippie to boot, more interested in rebelling against all limits and chasing the illusion of absolute freedom than listening to any talk about being tethered. The word tether called up images of playing tether ball on our three-room Christian school playground. It was bad enough being a player, playing against bullies who sent the ball flying so that it knocked with full force on your head and landed you in the gravel with a headache and bleeding knees. Now I was supposed to be that ball, bandied about by anyone’s whim, being spun around endlessly in circles of absurdity? Somehow the beauty and truth of this young man’s image pierced my heart. Whether he meant Jesus the Christ or the cosmic Christ of the logos open to all I did not know. But I heard the truth of his words: that we crazy creatures, we highly unstable combinations of earth and spirit, need to be tied to that which is ultimate to live in true freedom.
I heard, but I did not understand. For decades my ego, my allergy to authority, my contrary temperament, and my suspicion of patriarchy and hierarchical religions kept me from understanding. Not until my fifties, after undergoing a long series of family traumas that crushed my spirit, did I begin to see. Through a combination of hitbodedut, silent retreats, Sufi breathing and dhikr, and laying tefillin when I davened in the morning, I slowly awakened to the truth that we must tie ourselves tightly to the eternal to fly on earth. My rabbi, a woman, had counseled me to try laying tefillin as a way of navigating a difficult transition in my life. I found to my surprise that when I laid tefillin, I felt safe, calm, alive, whole--for I was bound to that which is constant. Feeling the leather straps, the skin of another animal like me, tightened against my skin was a liberating experience. Their pressure against my flesh reminded me who I truly was: I was not a slave to anyone or anything, any circumstance or any theory. I was a free servant freely choosing to bind myself to the One, the One Beyond Who is the One Who Dwells Among Us. As I stood wrapped in my tallit, my head, arm, and hand wound round with darkened strips of skin containing and forming holy words of light, it seemed to me I was rooting my being, my whole being, in the only soil where it could grow. And being so firmly planted, I could move with greater freedom, unencumbered. When I touched the root of all being and was touched by it, I was not shaken by fear, I was not compelled by desires, I was not distracted by the noise and things and frenetic activity within and around me, I did not get lost in possibilities, I did not lose my mind in the giddiness of the spirit, I did not lose my way in meditation and forget how to return to the beautiful world we call human being. I was present. From this place I could live free, I could fly on earth.
And I remembered the young man from Malaysia tethered to Christ and smiled in recognition.
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