Seeking God and Losing the Way--Toward Revolution of the Heart

Let Poets Be Our Theologians Now--continued

2011-12-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

As we move past the winter solstice, into the increasing light, and toward the beginning of the secular new year, this poem of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado on the creative power of transformation comes to mind:

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

May we be surprised by the transforming power of life in ourselves and in our world in the coming year.

The Grace of Losing the Way

2011-12-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

I am still and always losing the way, still and always beginning again.

Just this morning, feeling lost, I meditated.

I heard a voice say, “Walk out of the cave.”

And I saw I was hiding in a black cave, looking out through a narrow cleft. Outside was a world of light, blinding light. Inside, looking at the light, its fierce beauty, I was safe.

Again the voice commanded me, “Walk out of the cave.”

I couldn’t move. I was afraid. I wanted to stay hidden away. I didn’t want to step into that light. I would be exposed, burned, annihilated. The silly song I had sung so many times in Sunday School rang in my head:

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine, Hallelujah.
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine,
let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel—No! I’m going to let it shine, Hallelujah.
Hide it under a bushel—No! I’m going to let it shine,
let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

That song had disturbed my heart ever since I was three; I heard it calling me to do something, but what it was I had to do I did not understand. Hearing it as I stood in that dark cave of safety, trembling, looking at the light outside the narrow opening, I realized I had always been afraid of being in the light.

“Walk out of the cave.” The voice was pushing me now. I could feel it pressing me from behind. If I didn’t start moving, it would shove me outside. That would be worse than my walking out freely.
I extended my right foot and leg and set them down outside the entrance. After a moment, I extended my right hand and arm.

“Walk out of the cave.” The voice was more gentle now.

I turned my body to the left and squeezed through the opening. I was outside. But I was resting my backside against the cave behind me. I needed to touch that hardness, that narrow opening my hands and feet could reach in a moment to enter the darkness, my protection, my life.

“Walk out of the cave.”

I had to walk away from the cave. So far away I wouldn’t be able to find it again if I turned around, turned back.

I began walking, straight out from the entrance. After a few steps I realized I was walking on a path of light slowly inclining upwards. I kept walking. As I walked, I thought, This is the ladder of angels that Jacob, that conniving, thieving, ineffectual, and self-pitying father, saw in his dream. He was by no means a pure human being, no perfect body-mind-spirit he, yet he glimpsed this path of light that connects a realm of light to our world. He saw beings ascending to the realm of light and descending to our world. Not angels, but messengers, messengers of light, those who can travel between the two worlds. And these messengers included beings like himself, flawed human beings.

I kept walking up the sloping path. I came to a place where there were many beings walking about, all beings of light. It seemed to me that some lived there and some lived on earth and were visiting there. But they were all beings of light. All were free to come and go on that sloping path connecting the human world to this one. I moved through them, they moved around me, that crowd of beings walking in calmness, in beauty, all beings of light, shining, walking on light, through light, in light.

And suddenly I realized, There were beings of light walking on the earth right now. Walking among the dark crowds, hidden. I hadn’t seen them before. Will I see them now? I wondered. When I return to the ordinary world, will I recognize the beings of light walking about on the earth? Will they recognize me? I had to look for them, keep my eyes and heart open to see them. And I remembered Zora Neale Hurston’s image of human beings, mudballs that glitter. The only difference is that some of those mudballs have switched on their full light, stop covering it with mud, hiding it under a bushel, burying it in a cave. Those people are no longer balls of mud glittering with tiny specks of light here and there, sparkling in the darkness; they are shining with light. And what would our world look like if all those glittering mudballs started uncovering their light and shining.

I imagined walking on earth amidst a darkened crowd of mudballs speckled with reflected light, with a shining being slipping through the crowd now and then. And then, as those shining beings touched other mudballs, they uncovered their light and began to shine. Because the passing of the light, the spirit, is like the passing of a flame: The lit flame ignites the other without extinguishing or diminishing its fire. And slowly, as I watched in the darkness on earth, more and more darkened beings stepped out into the light and began to shine, as if their light had been ignited so they could shine on the world around them. Our darkened world grew lighter and lighter, more and more beautiful. It was glorious. And I realized that no matter how frightened I was I could never return to that cave of darkness and hide away. I had to go back down that sloping path of light and walk among all of us mudballs with my eyes and heart open to the light, everywhere it showed itself, everywhere it was flaming, setting the world on fire.

I needed this meditation to remind me, because I keep forgetting, even though this has been my daily prayer for many years:

O God of Seeing,
In Your light do we see light.
Grant me light.
Light in my heart.
Light in my tongue and lips.
Light in my ears.
Light in my eyes.
Light in my touch.
Light in my body.
You in whom there is no shadow, grant me light.
Light before me.
Light behind me.
Light on my right hand.
Light on my left hand.
Light above me.
Light below me.
Light within.
Light upon light.
Make me burn brighter
With Your wisdom, Your power, Your presence,
Your ever-flowing, ever-renewing life,
Your joy,
Your love.
Illumine me.

Even with this to keep me on course, I still keep turning away. I still keep losing the way. The grace of losing the way. The grace that turns you, again and again, to light, to joy, to the One.

How to Marry Religions?

2011-10-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

What happens when two peoples or two individuals from different religious traditions encounter one another in an intimate setting of prayer or ritual? How does one honor both traditions as they are in in themselves and nurture in each a respectful embracing of the other?

This question arises more and more today for several reasons. One, we live in a much more globally aware world, where our neighbor’s differences from us and ours from our neighbors are much more immediate and harder to escape. We also live in the post-Enlightenment age, where people no longer simply assume the religious traditions of their families or cultures, but must make a more intentional choice to follow those traditions or to depart from them. The sociologist Peter Berger calls this “the heretical imperative” (in his book of that title), from the Greek verb at the root of the word “heresy,” which means “to choose.

In this climate of bumping up against the other and everyone making more conscious choices to belong or not to belong to particular religious traditions or paths, how can we think about this relationship among individuals, peoples, and traditions in a liberating way, a way that opens up to a wider and wider community of respect and love?

This past August I attended a wedding that lived out a model of such a relationship. The bride was Nez Perce, the groom Jewish. The wedding took place on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho, outdoors by a clear, rushing river under an old stand of trees, on a site where Presbyterian missionaries of European descent had built a cabin when they came to evangelize the Nez Perce for Christianity. The very ground we stood on to witness the wedding ceremony was fraught with a history of relationship between these two peoples and religions that was oppressive. This model of oppression and suppression of the other, lower religion is, unfortunately a common model in history. The “true” religion” supersedes the “false’ religion, either swallowing it up and transforming it, including it as an earlier (and lesser) stage on the way to the “true” religion, displacing it, or eradicating it altogether. This was what Christianity did with Judaism for many, many generations. This was what many people who married “outside their faith” had to do: convert to their partner’s faith tradition.

Quite a different model for relating religions has also been common throughout history: syncretism, blending two different practices or beliefs into a third set of practices and beliefs. Certain Brazilian religions (Umbanda and Candomblé) in South America blended ancient African-rooted religious rituals and beliefs with Roman Catholic practices and beliefs. Many Native American tribes in North America did the same with their traditional beliefs and the various forms of Christianity they were forced and urged to take on. Many interfaith couples adopt and adapt this model toward running their households and raising their children.

But back to this remarkable wedding in Idaho and what I saw and learned there. The wedding began with a full Nez Perce ceremony, conducted by an elder, including drumming and songs for food, water, and shelter on the bride and groom’s journey through life, an exchange of feathers, a ritual walk of the bride and groom, and a ritual meeting of the two families who were also to now be joined. When that ceremony ended, there was a brief pause, and the guests shifted to a patch of grass right next to where the Nez Perce ceremony had just taken place. On that neighboring ground, a Jewish chuppah (with a tribal blanket for the covering) was walked into place and under that chuppah the bride and groom participated in a full Jewish ceremony, conducted by a rabbi, including a sanctification over a cup of wine, a ritual walk of the bride and groom, and the seven wedding blessings.

Side by side stood the two traditions, each standing its own ground (literally as well as figuratively). One did not trump the other. One did not stand above the other. One did not displace the other. Nor were the two blended into one ceremony, a third that was neither fully Jewish nor fully Nez Perce. They each stood tall, proud, in their full integrity and beauty, each on its own, yet each side by side. Equals. Beautiful in their equality. Both of them honored in their full individuality and their choice to stand in the world side by side, joined by mutual respect, honor, and love. Beautiful in their equality and mutuality.

The two traditions literally stood back to back, because for the Nez Perce ceremony, the gathered community faced one direction, and for the Jewish ceremony the community faced in the opposite direction. It was if to say, we stand back to back; we each face in a different direction, but we do this not to pull in different directions, but so that we may better look out for and look after each other as we move together through the dangers and joys of life; we join our two limited perspectives into a wider one.

And I thought, this is how we should stand with our neighbors from other traditions and faiths, just like this, two faiths, two traditions, two peoples standing side by side, in all the fullness of who we are confident that we are respected, accepted, and honored, and celebrated in our uniqueness even as we stand in relationship, facing the world together this way and journeying together this way, committed to this journey/adventure we call human existence, needing to rely on one another, support one another, nurture one another, feed and water and shelter and heal one another along the way.

And it occurred to me that this was a model for a liberating marriage of individuals, too. Two human beings standing in their full individuality side by side. Neither one dominant over the other or subsuming the other. Neither one giving up their uniqueness to lose themselves in a third thing, the marriage. Neither converting to the other. Neither becoming the other. Each remaining true to who they were and were called to be. Yet standing side by side, joined by hand, heart, and spirit, on the journey.

It was the most beautiful wedding I have ever witnessed.

Mudballs That Glitter: More on the Body/Spirit

2011-08-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

Near the opening of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston refers to human beings as “mudballs that glitter.” For over thirty years I have carried this image with me as a kind of shorthand for the spirit-flesh embranglement that we call “human being.”

Hurston’s image came afresh to me last week as I was walking along the rocky northern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I looked up out of my reverie and everything was shining. Everything. Even the rocks. I looked more closely. It wasn’t reflected light. The grains of sand, the waves, the seaweed, the skate purses, the rocks weren’t reflecting the light of the sun; they were shining from within, with their “own” light, a light answering the light shining from the sun, a resounding antiphony of light. I looked more closely. It was as if everything was made of light, formed of light—not simply the sentient beings, but every being, even the rocks, and I remembered my Ojibwe friends in Minnesota arguing (against the vocal disbelief of other students) that rocks, too, are alive.

Even the rocks on this beach I was walking through were alive. I could see, feel the light enlivening them. That light, that energy, that creative power, that palpable generativity was one, One shining in and through them all, each separate being. The shapes and colors and density of each individual shining was no more than and no less than a declaration of the infinite variety of the One that was even now bringing it into being, fashioning it, sustaining it, accompanying it faithfully on its journey of coming into being and perishing.

Walking through this riot of light, I thought of the many circles of mystics from all religious traditions—both orthodox and heterodox, both those I am at home with and those whose dualistic or other doctrines are far from my experience of the world—who have witnessed to the light in the creation. The Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 97:12) say “Light is sown for the righteous,” leading many who came after to cultivate and reap that light. Gnostics of many sorts speak of light/spirit trapped in the matter of our created world. The Zoroastrians focused on the path to a world all of light through purity and righteousness. Augustine reports that the Manichees ate cucumbers and melons to imbibe the great amounts of light trapped in these foods. Lurianic Kabbalists speak of the breaking of the vessels at creation, which scattered sparks of light throughout the created universe, and of repairing the world (tikkun olam) by gathering up these scattered sparks. The Hasids, too, speak of our task as human beings as finding the One everywhere one looks and gathering the light shining in all that exists.

Whatever the differences in their worldview—dualistic, non-dualistic, theistic, nontheistic, atheistic—these mystics have seen something, something real in our world, a vision that often bears fruit in a moral life that recognizes the connection among all things and all peoples, and that draws one away from forgetfulness and self-absorption and cruelty and toward humility, justice, and compassion. This insight, whatever its (sometimes wild) accompanying imagery or concepts, invites human beings, beings of flesh, mudballs, to live in such a way that we, too, shine. It invites us to remove the veils that cover that light in us, to stop hiding the light in us from others, to stop trying to extinguish the light shining in us because we cannot bear it, or cannot bear its often confusing and disturbing coexistence with our fleshly selves, to become more and more transparent so that it shines through us the way it shines through the rocks on the ocean shore, through all being, gracefully, naturally, joyfully, for anyone walking by with eyes to see. To become not simply mudballs that glitter, but mudballs that shine.

Even the rocks are shining
Shining with the glory of you

Passing through
from this angle and this one and
this
lost in ourselves
we miss their offering
speckled, pocked, pooled
scarified with light
alive
declaring the wonder of being

If these, too, can shine,
why not this battered tent of flesh?

Seeking and Being Found

2011-07-08T17:09:00.000-07:00

Last week a friend and I took a long walk through the Washington Arboretum in the early evening. As we descended a path toward a pond, we saw a group of people clustered near the western edge of the pond. Four were standing on the small dock, looking through the lenses of their cameras. A woman and her two small children were watching from the side. “It’s owls!” the woman said as we approached. We slowly and quietly made our way to the dock and looked up. There, directly in front of us, on a tree limb six feet away and only a little higher than our heads were two barred owls. They were sitting side by side, still. I had often heard the owls calling in the arboretum, and once glimpsed one high in a cedar tree, but I had never seen two together and at such close range.

We watched them for about ten minutes then headed on our way. Not far away, as we ascended another path, my friend Kelly put her hand on my arm to stop me. I stopped and followed her eyes. There, on a tree limb, almost within our reach, was a single barred owl. It stared at us with its dark brown eyes. We were transfixed. The markings on its face and the stillness it exuded made it seem as if it were wearing a mask, a thin, symbolic boundary between this world and another, which we could almost feel just on the other side. Or the face/mask was a point of meeting between the two worlds.

Sitka, my Siberian husky, was with us. She walked ahead on the path, and the owl turned its neck to follow her. When she reached the end of her leash and returned, the owl turned its head to follow her back to us.

We stared at the owl and the owl at us in silence, reluctant to leave. A crow flew into the tree and settled itself above the owl, cawing loudly to harass the predator away from its nest. The owl was unmoved. We broke away and continued our walk.

The next day, at about the same time, I took Sitka back to the arboretum, hoping to catch sight of the owls again. As I entered the woodland forest area, I heard two owls calling to each other. Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? That stirred me. I was sure to come across at least one owl. They called several more times. I revisited the dock on the pond. No owls. I climbed the path where Kelly and I had encountered the single owl. No owl there either. Sitka and I began wandering the pathways and byways, going through denser and denser woods, always looking up, ever hopeful. At the end of two hours, I had seen nothing. Tired, disappointed, I headed home.

Walking home I realized that this is often the way it goes when one is seeking. When one sets one’s heart on a goal or destination, that goal or destination eludes one. And when one least expects it, that is when one is given a gift, a gift altogether too wonderful to be anticipated by us of such limited experience. All at once, out of no-where, wonder erupts in our everyday world, interrupts our ordinary perception. In the middle of our busy lives, we are “surprised by joy,” as the famous title of C. S. Lewis’s book has it.

We seek and seek and do not find. Perhaps because when we are seeking it is our ego, our wants, our desires that are leading us, and they narrow our vision so we cannot see the world, only what we hope for. Nevertheless, we must seek. How else prepare ourselves to receive unexpected gifts?

When we are not seeking, when we are being, our eyes open wide to the world, to all that exists beyond the narrow confines of our limited selves. It is then that we are found.

Seeking and not finding. Not seeking and being found.

In that dance the life of the spirit is lived.

Are Mystics Anti-Body? Befriending the Body-Self

2011-06-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

The meaning of the body or the body-self has fascinated me for decades. Perhaps because I am female, and the culture that nurtured me never let me forget that for me, existing in that time in that place, the body meant everything, that I could not escape the limits of my body. Perhaps because I am one of those people born feeling at ease in the body, at peace with it—a lovely genetic inheritance. Perhaps because I experience emotions in my body strongly, so the fundamental integration of body-self and what is not body-self was always apparent to me. Perhaps the body intrigued me because early on I experienced blessing through the natural world, its beauty, its grace, its calm, its unselfconscious joy of being, its vastness, its inclusion of me in a larger whole, its oneness with and in what was beyond. Perhaps because I always wondered what the Paul meant in his first letter to the Corinthians when he wrote, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

No matter the reason, I was intensely interested in the body-self, disposed to like it, and aware of its intimate relationship with the spirit or spirit-self. That’s why many of the metaphors and theories of the body, especially in relation to the spirit, that I encountered did not appeal to me or seem true. For example, I found the Neoplatonic view of the body as the prison house or tomb of the soul insulting. The Gnostic view of the body (and all matter) as evil, a hard shell one must destroy to let the light free, seemed an even greater affront to the beauty and gift of the body and its dearness to the spirit. This put me off mysticism and mystics for a long time: I thought all mystics denigrated the body-self in this way, to elevate the soul or spirit, and I wanted nothing to do with what I felt was a false view of the oneness of being.

Contemporary views of the body among those who are not mystics were no more appealing to me. For many people, often those suffering illness, injury, or the pain of oppressive labor, the body is more a burden to be endured or the intimate companion who has turned traitor and betrayed one. For others, it is a mere hindrance, an obstacle to one’s success, while for others it is but a tool, a vehicle to accomplish one’s desires—nothing more, nothing less. Of course for some, it is the pride and goal of their existence, their riches, their identity, their all—until it fails them. For many human beings, consciously or unconsciously, the body is the enemy one battles every day—that which inexorably drags one toward decay and death.

Recently I came across a metaphor for the body and its relationship to the spirit that surprised me with its freshness and depth. In his book In Search of the Hidden Treasure: A Conference of Sufis, a conversation among Sufi masters of all ages, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan offers to the gathering of mystics this view of the physical body: Think of it as your favorite tunic, he counsels. You put it on, you take it off, you put it on again. You wear it next to your skin. It grows softer and more flowing with age. It absorbs your scent, conforms to your shape. Daily you care for it, nourish it, wash it, mend it, fold it hand it up carefully when you take it off—all lovingly, for without it, there would be no life, no action in this world.

For the first time in many years my heart stood at attention when I heard this original and rich, rich metaphor for the body-self. It says, we do not denigrate or try to escape the body. We do not mourn it as a burden or treat it as a mere tool. Nor do we identify with it. We care for it lovingly, delighting in it and grateful for it as a gift from our Beloved (my interpretation).

For me, the body-self is a gift to treasure, the dearest of friends. Friendships are complex—they encompass many ways of relating, all grounded in love, care, and respect, and they elicit constant gratitude for the joy and support they bring to our lives. For many years I have said that when I come to the end of my life, I hope that I have a chance to thank my body, my friend, properly, with love, before we part. Thank it for carrying me through crises, for supporting me every moment, for opening me to possibilities otherwise closed to me, for its faithfulness to me, its forgiveness of my neglect and abuse of it, its acceptance of me, its refusal to let go of its embrace of my spirit even when I tried to cut it away completely and finally in some vain attempt at transcendence, for delivering to me a son and a daughter, for enabling me to experience so much joy. One day before then I will write an ode to my body, this unsung wonder of a companion that I so often take for granted.

Perhaps this metaphor of body-self as friend is close to what Paul meant when he reminded the gathered community in Corinth that the body was a temple of the spirit. It is a dwelling place one enters for a time, a sacred space in which spirit encounters spirit. We must care for it lovingly and inhabit it in gratitude.

Some mystics (and non-mystics)are anti-body. Certainly not all. And some know the love the body-self as friend.

Do Mystics Belong to a Spiritual Elite?

2011-05-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

Are mystics by definition better, more evolved, than ordinary spiritual people? Do their visions, saintly acts, unceasing prayer, fasting, charitable acts, or constant remembrance of the One bring them nearer to the One in this life or any other?

Not necessarily, says Ghazali. He recounts a story in The Path of the Worshipful Servants to the Garden of the Lord of All the Worlds of a series of servants who performed some or all these acts during their lifetimes and are turned back at the garden gate by the angels. Why? One engaged in backbiting, another was motivated by worldly gain, another treated those "beneath" him with arrogance, one was conceited about his spiritual prowess, one was not merciful and gloated over others' misfortunes, and another was guilty of spiritual ostentation. The last of the servants the angels let pass through the gate, for that one seems beautiful, inside as well as out, a true mystic. But the One bars that servant from the garden too, for the One who sees what is hidden sees that this servant's devotion was not absolutely sincere, that every act was intended for someone or something not the One.

The poor person watching all this, Mu'adh, then trembles and asks, "O Messenger of God, who is capable of these virtues?"

And he replied: "O Mu'adh, what I have described fro you is easy for someone, if God makes it easy for him. All that you need is to like for other people what you like for yourself, and to dislike for them what you dislike for yourself, for then you will have been saved and delivered." (106)

Sound familiar? It is very much like the summary of the law and the prophets that the prophet Mcah gave, that Jesus gave, and that Hillel and Akiva gave. We'll look at all their summaries side by side in a later post. But for now, listening to this distillation of the life of true devotion to the One tells me this: the task of a mystic is simply the task of every other human being--to become truly human, that is to say, to become a reflection of the divine in the world. And what does the divine look like that we should reflect? Someone who desires for others all that she desires for herself or himself, someone who does not desire harm or any ill for others that he or she would not want for themselves. That's all.

That's all and that is the most difficult for our conflicted, ego-driven, constricting hearts. Who has been given the grace of this purity of heart? It is a long and strenuous journey to reach that gift, to be able to receive it. And to whomever enjoys that gift of living as a truly human being all things are added. This is the fountain out of which all other acts of prayer, fasting, charity, visioning, and remembering God, flow--pure water from a pure well.

And in this a "great mystic"--whatever that might mean--is no different from an ordinary believer: It is the purity of the heart that determines whether they are truly human and near to the divine, whether they will enjoy the presence of the Lord walking together in the garden.

"Purify our hearts to serve you in truth," the Psalmist writes. That is the goal not only of mystics but every person of faith--for every thought and act to flow out of a purified heart.

What is a mystic anyway?

2011-05-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Like many people, I absorbed many cultural and religious prejudices against mystics and mysticism. I thought mystics were irrational, soft-headed, escapist, concerned more with their individual souls than the body and the world we share with others, fanatical--even to the point of crossing the boundaries of morality. But over the years, each one of these lies about mystics and mysticism was worn away by my encounter with mystics' writing and my own experiences and encounters. From Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, nature, and other mystics, I discovered the incredible variety and depth of mystic experiences. And I discovered how close their way of being in the world is to all passionate people of faith, regardless of which tradition they stand in or whether or not they think of themselves as "mystics."

Because "mysticism" is such a "weasel word" (to crib from William James on the word "experience," you can find more definitions of it than there are flowers that bloom. Not all are accurate, not all are useful. In the coming weeks, I will explore definitions of mysticism, on the way to forming my own.

For now, this is my working definition: A mystic is any person who trusts radically in the One, who keeps turning toward the One, and who therefore experiences ongoing revolution of the heart.

Who are we? What are we carrying?

2011-04-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Waiting for the bus in downtown Seattle earlier this month, I witnessed a scene that I can’t forget. Two police officers on bicycles rode up to an African-American man standing on the street corner. As they dismounted they greeted him cheerfully, saying, “Hi, David.” “David” greeted them back. They calmly explained something to him about his being in the wrong place or having been in the wrong place. He did not argue with them.

Then began a long methodical dance among the three, one they seemed to have danced before. One police officer asked David to show him what was in his pockets. David removed items from one of his coat pockets, held them out in his open palm to one officer, who would examine them and hand them to the other officer to hold while the first officer prompted David to dig again and David dug in another pocket. The three repeated these steps many times, with the pile of belongings growing to an unmanageable mound in the second officer’s cupped hands. For David was dressed in many layers, each layer seemingly full of pockets. As he emptied his pockets, displayed his necessities, treasures, and secrets, and handed them over to the officers, the three talked calmly, all of them good-natured, no sarcasm, no whiff of aggression.

As I stood to the side watching and listening, my heart went out to this man emptying his pockets on the street corner. He was so vulnerable, so exposed, to sudden searches, to indignities of the spirit. Part of me was angry that police officers, however polite they may be, are free to stop anyone and search them, force them to expose their intimate belongings. And yet there was something more. This man was not afraid, and he seemed to meet their intrusive searching with dignity, as if to say, “Be my guest. Look at everything in my pockets. That will tell you nothing about me, what I have done, where I have been, where I belong, nothing about what of me is truly hidden from you and you can never see. Look, but you won’t see me. I know who I am.”

My bus arrived and I got on.

Over the next weeks this man David stayed with me. He walked through the world carrying with him all that mattered to him, and he was required to display it—at any moment, without warning—to strangers, for their scrutiny and approval or punishment. And, to me at least, it seemed that in the midst of this transitory, fragile, and exposed way of living, he possessed a grace and dignity.

His presence and interactions with the officers reminded me of the Hasidic story of the man who wakes up in the morning and does not know who he is, what belongs to him. There are clothes lying on a chair. Whose are they? Shoes on the floor. To whom do they belong? To make it through the next days, he must put notes on his clothes, his shoes, in his pockets: “This is my shirt. These are my pants. These are my shoes.” That way he will know who he is, what belongs to him, as he travels through this world. He, too, in spite of having a room to live in, is vulnerable to a fundamental questioning of his self. Who is he, really? What makes him who he is?

We think we know who we are, but do we? Who are we, truly? What makes us who we are? The clothes we wear? What is in our pockets? Where we stand? Live? Belong? How protected we are from random searches by "the authorities"? We are all transitory, fragile, vulnerable, and exposed creatures living in this world that is continually perishing. When we are required to display all we are carrying, do we have the grace and dignity of knowing who we are?

So Beautiful in Hindsight, So Terrfying Now

2011-04-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

Almost ten years ago, just before my life descended into seven years of chaos and loss, I had a dream:

I was in a four-person tour boat riding through a wild, turbulent, rushing rocky river in a remote jungle. We rocked though rapids, swirled in eddies, spun through hairpin turns, floated peacefully for a brief moment, then fell hundreds of feet down a waterfall, surfaced, gasped, and were on our way again--a terrifying roller coaster ride that seemed it would never end. At last the boat came to rest on the top of a cliff. We sat there, soaking wet, and looked down, looked back, on where we had traveled. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of what I saw, every part of it. All I could say was, "It is so, so beautiful. I had no idea how beautiful it was. So beautiful."

This dream--on the days I had the calm and grace to remember it--brought me comfort. It showed me, in the midst of my fears of death and other losses, when I was sick to my stomach from emotional plunges and spiritual challenges, when all my attention was concentrated on staying afloat, when I couldn't breathe for terror, that I would survive this journey. Not only would I survive, but I would come, one day, to be grateful for it, every moment of it--grateful to that journey for bringing me to such a place of beauty and calm, for opening my eyes to how precious life is, in all its turbulent and ever-changing glory, for opening my heart to experience that beauty--so intense it hurt. And that once I experienced this, I would know, in my heart and lips and mouth, that it would be impossible to ever convey that beauty in words--mute wonder the only response.

If anyone had come to me with palliatives during those years and offered me third- or fourth- or fifth-hand theories of how God never gives us more than we can bear, or how God tests our faith, or how God teaches our souls to grow by challenging them, or how without the dark, the violence, we would never know the light, the thrill of peace, I would have spat their words back at them as so much filth or sawdust. Only the experience of trust I tasted through the story of the dream fed my hungry soul.

Today I taste this truth more clearly than ever, and it is even more delicious. How precious is each moment, each now.How beautiful all the moments strung together into a river of life running to the sea, the Infinite, the One. So beautiful. Mute wonder the only response.

Graffito, Graffiti--What Little Scratches Can Do

2011-03-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

When the words "mene mene tekel upharsin" mysteriously appeared on the wall of a banquet hall where a drunken King Belshazzar of Babylon was feasting with his drunken friends, only the prophet Daniel could interpret them. (They were in Aramaic, not Persian). They foretold, Daniel said, the downfall of the Babylonian empire and its oppressive, greedy,and robbing ways.

Not all revelations are dramatic. But sometimes the writing is on the wall, in a language anyone can read, and it carries a message of hope, not doom.

On a drizzly gray afternoon in winter-gray Seattle, walking my gray Husky past an eight-foot high gray retaining wall, thinking gray thoughts about a gray set of years in my life, I suddenly came upon twelve words spray-painted a bright yellow. They were arranged in two lines, each line a foot high and twelve feet long, and underscored with a flourish:

You are a beautiful
person and I want you to be happy.

No need to explain why I smiled and kept smiling, and why I now walk by that message every day and tell everyone I know about it.

To the artist who tagged the world with joy and comfort and surprise,
Thank you!

UPDATE ON GRAFFITI AND REVELATION: Several days after this post was published, the City of Seattle covered this yellow message in a mottled gray paint, so the concrete wall looks pristine, innocent of meaning, as if it had never been the carrier of a message of hope. How like revelation this is--something appears, grabs hold of you, shakes you awake, and then disappears, as if nothing had changed in the world. But it has: What changed was you. And whether the change that resulted will last or disappear like the moment of revelation is up to you.

Cars, Bodies, and God

2011-03-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

My 1994 stick shift is not as reliable as I'd like. About three years ago, it just quit in the middle of the street. No warning, no noise. Just quit. Turned out it needed a new engine. My mechanic put one in. Last year it often wouldn't start, even with a new battery. This year it started stalling at the most inopportune times. You might say, Get rid of that beast already! If I could, I might. But right now I can't, and since I prefer walking to driving, and I don't drive much, I've developed a driving practice: I am grateful every time I arrive somewhere I need to be safely and without incident, and every time I arrive back home safely and without incident. I actually lean forward, pat the dashboard and say, "Thank you!" or "Alhamdulillah" or something similar. Every time. My car--with its litany of problems--has taught me how to not take things for granted.

I try to apply this practice to everything in my life, especially my body. I had whooping cough as a child, was anorexic in high school, and had chronic bronchitis and colitis in college and graduate school--all of which have left. They taught me to remember to be grateful every morning I awake and every evening when I go to sleep that this complex vehicle gets me safely where I need to go and then home again, that this loyal friend has carried me through the day. One of my favorite morning prayers in the siddur (Jewish prayer book) helps me give voice to this gratitude:

Praised are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who with wisdom fashioned the human body, creating openings, arteries, glands, and organs, marvelous in structure, intricate in design. Should but one of them, by being blocked or opened, fail to function, it would be impossible to exist. Praised are You, Lord, healer of all flesh, who sustains our bodies in wondrous ways.

Would I be so thankful for arriving safely if I had a brand new car? Would I be so grateful for my body if I had not experienced illness and pain? Would I remember God now and be so grateful for that presence, if I had not felt God's absence and abandonment in my life before? I'd like to say yes to all these questions. I wish I weren't the kind of human being who has to learn to recognize the good by experiencing the absence of good. But I am.

I was reminded of this the other when I went to buy groceries. I said "Isn't it a beautiful day?" to my friend David, who sells Real Change outside my neighborhood Trader Joe's. I was thinking, How great that it's sunny and not raining, What a day to rejoice in and be thankful for. It's true--any day in Seattle that the sun shines is cause for dancing in the streets. But David's reply reminded me of a larger truth. "Any day I wake up alive is a good day!" he said with a smile. Rain or cloud or storm or shine, gratitude is the response.

For Jews, as well as for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists one of the central spiritual virtues is gratitude. The ancient rabbis define gratitude as hikarat ha tov, recognizing the good. If we can't see the good beneath us, standing in front of us, all around us, how can we be grateful for it?

I want to learn to recognize the presence of good, more and more--with fewer and fewer, and smaller and smaller reminders of it through its absence.

Joy--The Last Frontier

2011-02-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

We are more comfortable with pain, grief, anger, anxiety, fear, resignation, frustration, irritation, worthlessness, alienation, loneliness, boredom--almost any state--than with joy. Why?

I once had a theology student who had been severely abused as a child and young adult. She told me this was her prayer: "God grant me greater and greater tolerance for joy." The most difficult part of her spiritual journey was welcoming and trusting joy. She knew her way around and finally through the other feelings. But allowing herself to experience joy was a challenge.

For many years I have carried her teaching with me. And several times over the last decades I have experienced the truth that she had come to know. How joy hides under layers of anger and grief. How if you dive below those layers,deep, deep, deeper, it is there, a fundament of joy. I have felt it, touched it. It always comes as a surprise. A calm rejoicing in the beauty of the world, as it is, in this moment. An experience in which you feel profoundly at home in the world and grateful for all that is, overflowing with gratitude for the beautiful garden in which you live. A moment that changes your way of being in the world, chasing out all anxiety, shame, grief, care and catching you up in wonder and oneness. This is joy.

I know that fundament of joy is always there, supporting my existence at every moment, making it possible. I know how enlivening, transforming it is to touch it. And yet I still hesitate to touch it. I am not sure why. Perhaps I fear its intensity? No. Does it make me uncomfortable because I feel I am not worthy of it? Not any longer. Maybe I fear the loss of joy, once that glorious moment of peace and oneness has worn off and I am once again left in my familiar and dull world drained of joy--better not to know what is possible, or to forget. Maybe. It is hard to remember joy. For in remembering our experiences of joy--with other people, in nature, with the One--we become acutely aware that that experience has passed, and we grieve its absence. Yet I would rather the pain of remembering. No. None of these.

   Remembering Joy

Once, undressing for bed, I found
my thighs—knees to hips—blooming with bruises,
smoky purples, brilliant reds, patches of dull yellow
washed with green, and blackened paths wandering
through the twin gardens.
A sudden shock of beauty.
Tender to the touch.

Had I fallen? Bumped a countertop?
And forgotten as one forgets the last breath?
Had a steel bar fallen from the roof and struck me?
Had someone truncheoned me for secrets?
But why?  And when?  Surely I would remember.
Was it disease then?  Hidden in my flesh for years,
surfacing now to announce my death?

I laid my palms on each warm thigh to hear
what they would tell me.
It was you, they said. This morning.
To learn the drumbeat of the songs, so you would not forget,
your hands were beating out the rhythms
on live animal skin stretched over a frame of bone.
You were dancing and drumming. You would not stop. It was you. It was joy.

It took me over ten years to remember how surprised I was by this experience of joy. It took the hard evidence of my bruised body to show it to me, then and now. And what it showed me was not only the surprise of joy, but my fear of it and resistance to it.

Here is what I realized: I fear joy itself. Being truly alive. If I touch that living reality, what will happen? What waves of change will sweep my life, my world out from under me? For nothing can remain the same afterwards. Something will be bruised. And what will be required of me? For something will be required. Not as payment but as gift.

This memory of the joy I experienced drumming and the teaching of the remarkable student I once knew have urged me forward. My prayer is this: Wellspring of Joy, turn my fear into trust and open my heart to the fundament of joy. Let me peel away the habits of fear, anger, and grief and learn the habit of recognizing and welcoming the joy at the heart of existence, the life-giving joy that is constantly present around, among, and within us, in our reach.

May our trust and joy increase.

A Simple Practice: Eat Your (Spiritual) Vegetables and...

2011-02-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

Ghazali often quoted this Persian proverb:
"Eat the vegetable wherever it comes from, and do not ask where the garden is."

He quoted this, for example, when counseling people how to fight demons (The Marvels of the Heart). Why get caught up in origins, ontology, and metaphysics, asking what world demons come from, what level of being they occupy? The main thing is to conquer their temptations in your heart, with your heart so you can walk uprightly in this world, with love, justice, and humility.

But this proverb also expresses Ghazali's view of truth. He pulled his writings and teachings (which influenced many Jewish and Christian theologians) from many different sources, the Qur'an, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, colloquial sayings, Greek philosophy, and much more.

This practice and understanding of wisdom is a welcome one in our current situation, in which fundamentalists (among all religions) and militant secularists (from among all religions) have crowded the stage, pushing all people of faith seeking understanding off the stage, calling us "rebels" or "infidels" for holding a view of God with which they do not agree, or "idiots" for trusting in God at all. Both these dogmas, as different as they seem to be, share a belief: that the origin of an idea contaminates or purifies it. For religious fundamentalists, any idea or image of God that does not come from the one true source that their group identifies (the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian scriptures, the Qur'an, or others), as interpreted by them is not only suspect but false. For the materialist or secular fundamentalists, those who reject any possibility of the reality of God, any idea or image of God, especially if it comes from an organized religion, is false because it is nonsense, meaningless. For them, any statement that is not objectively verifiable, that does not originate in scientific thinking, must be false.

For both these varieties of fundamentalism, faith and reason are mutually exclusive. For the religious dogmatists, whatever does not come from (their) faith comes from human reason and is therefore deception (because human reason is clouded by sin and it is only pure revelation that can be trusted). For the secular dogmatists, whatever does not come from (their notion of modern scientific) reason comes from faith and is therefore self-deception (because human beings are weak and childish and want an illusion of something greater than they are to depend on).

I am reminded here of the logical fallacy called "poisoning the wells." One identifies the one pure source of truth as the well one drinks from, and claims that all other wells, and everything springing forth from them, every word, thought, idea, practice, is, by necessity, contaminated. Thus, they drink only from their wells. They eat vegetables only from their gardens.

Ghazali's proverb can show us another way. "Eat the vegetable wherever it comes from, and do not ask where the garden is."

Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. Throughout history, in all religious traditions, western and eastern, there have been thinkers and communities who have not been afraid to recognize truth no matter what its source. Not just mystics and radicals, but people at the heart of religious traditions have recognized and absorbed truths that came to them from outside their tradition or culture. Philo, Jews returning from captivity in Babylonia, Augustine, Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Maimonides, John Calvin--the list could go on and on. It was the medieval Christian theologian Anselm who gave us the common motto for this approach, faith seeking understanding. But the approach knows no historical, cultural, or religious bounds. Trusting in the Oneness and infinite wisdom of God, they strove to recognize truth whenever and wherever it appeared, even if that truth came from Greek philosophy, Persian religion, or the best science of the day. For them, to reject a truth simply because one is unfamiliar with its source is to be ungrateful to the One; it is to reject the Oneness, infinite wisdom, and overflowing abundance of the One and the gifts that flow from God. When one recognizes a truth, one sees that its ultimate origin is in God, not another person or community. That is why one accepts it if one does.

So let's be discriminating, yes. Don't eat cardboard or rancid meat. Know what you're eating. Seek out nourishing vegetables. And when you find them, don't subject them, or their growers or deliverers, to a long inquisition about the garden they came from, the mineral content of the soil, the rain levels, the integrity of the gardeners, and so forth. Did this truth grow in the garden of faith? No matter. No reason to condemn it. Did it grow in the garden of reason? No matter. No reason to reject it out of hand. Let's move beyond the false dichotomy of faith or reason and start talking about what truths nourish us and that we share with others.

We could die of spiritual starvation in this desert of fundamentalism before all the garden questions are raised and answered. The practice is simple and profound: Eat your vegetables; and leave the garden, Pardes, paradise, which is more glorious and abundant and various than we could ever imagine, to The True.

Emptying, Emptying, and Again Emptying Our Vessels

2011-02-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

Mystics often use the metaphor of “polishing the mirror of the heart” to point to the ongoing process of coming into deeper communion with the One. Ghazali speaks of the heart as being made of iron. It inevitably rusts unless we keep polishing away the grime and other impurities in the surrounding atmosphere that build up on it. This work is never ending. Once one has polished that iron into a brilliantly mirror that can reflect the beauty, love, and glory of the One, one still must work daily to keep that surface free from blotches, smears, and scratches, or the cloudy mists that settle on it and darken it. This is the work of the heart. Part of this work is forgiving oneself for the spots and layers one must polish away and thanking God for the grace to see and remove them, and giving thanks for the times when the mirror remains clear. Here is how he expresses this in On Knowing Yourself and God, or, as he called it in Persian, The Alchemy of Happiness, the summary of spiritual teachings he wrote near the end of his life.

The heart is like a bright mirror; repugnant traits are like smoke and darkness which, when they touch it, darken it so that tomorrow one will not see the Divine Presence and it will become veiled (to one’s view). Good traits are the light which reaches the heart and wipes away the darkness of sin. It is for this that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Follow a bad deed with a good (deed) so that (the bad) may be erased.” At the resurrection, it will be the heart which comes into a desert, either bright or dark. None will be saved except him who comes to God with a sound heart. (Qur’an 26:89)

A person’s heart, at the beginning of creation, is like (raw) iron from which –if a person keeps it as he should—is made a shining mirror that displays the entire universe. If not, it will all rust and become so that nothing will be reflected in it. As God Most High said: Nay, but that which they have earned is rust upon their souls. (Qur’an 83:14) [Al-Ghazali On Knowing Yourself and God, tr. Muhammad Nur Abdus Salam, pp. 18-19]

Recently I had an experience that showed me a different image for this daily work, an image which led me to a deeper understanding of this process of cleansing or emptying the heart and the goal of this daily work. Here is the image that came to me.

This world was God’s storeroom. Lined up on the shelves were billions of clay vessels of all sizes and shapes, each one unique. When God needed a particular vessel, God would reach directly for it. Only if the vessel was completely empty could it be used. If it was not completely empty, it remained on the shelf, for it could not contain what God needed it to contain; it could not be used.

Different religious traditions emphasize different kinds of imagery for experiencing God and pruifying our hearts to serve the One in truth. Roman Catholics often prefer visual metaphors—to see God or have a vision or the truth; “For with Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light do we see light,” as the Psalmist (36:9) sings, and Augustine and others love to chant with him or her. Protestants, picking up on the prophetic tradition of Israel, often prefer audial metaphors—to hear the call or listen for the Word of God, whether it comes in thunder or a still small voice. Mystical traditions vary, too, with some, like Ghazali, using visual images and others audial images. Still others use sensual images—the fragrance of the spirit, the warmth of God’s love. Individuals, too, though formed by traditions, have their preferences.

The visual and tactile image of the clay vessels that came to me helped me understand not only the process of emptying, but the goal of this emptying as well. What fills us up and makes us not useful? Things and desires, distractions and addictions, yes. But also anger, fear, grief, and disappointment. And hope and expectations and longings—even the longing to serve, to be used. These all crowd around us in out vessel, forming a barrier so we cannot feel the true shape of the clay vessel that God has shaped for us at creation. To be present to the One, one must be wholly empty.

And how do we empty ourselves? For many of us, it is God working through out lives who empties us, who batters our hearts until we exhale all we have been clinging to, leaving room for the presence of the One. Some of us do what we can to aid and abet this emptying process: We chant the name of God, Yud-He-Vav-He, the Jesus Prayer (Lord, have mercy), or Al-lah, exhaling all that fill us up, all that is definite, the Yud, the Vav, the have mercy, the Al, and inhaling the Nothingness that is the One, the He, the Lord, the Lah.

This was not all the image that came to me made me see. When I saw the storeroom of clay vessels, I realized that not all the vessels that were empty were used. They had to be ready to be used by God for whatever purpose whenever they and only they were needed, but being ready, empty, was no guarantee that they would be used, ever. Some vessels might wait 80 years to be used, some only a day. Some might empty themselves every day for 50 or more years, only to be full on the one day that the hand of God reached for them. Some might empty themselves every day of their lives and never be used. The goal was not to be used, to be of service. That was a goal of the ego, a hope and expectation and longing that filled the vessel and made it unusable. The goal was simply to be empty, to be usable, to be serviceable, to be ready, if and when God needed one, and to accept that this was up to God, not oneself. If one sat empty on the shelf one’s entire life, then one sat empty on the shelf. One does not guide her own destiny, chart his own path. One surrenders, empty, emptied, emptying, to the One. This is our daily work and our daily spiritual nourishment.

Give us this day our daily bread—empty us. Give us this day our daily work—emptying.

Is Patience Always a Virtue? Protesting in Egypt and Beyond

2011-02-08T16:46:00.001-08:00

Last week my car was in the shop, and the mechanics kept it longer than expected so they could figure out the mystery of its erratic behavior. The last time they worked on it, I told them, “I love this car. It has to go 20 years (it’s 17 now) or 200,000 miles (it’s now at 125,000).” When I picked it up this time, I told the woman at the desk that I didn’t mind being patient while they worked on my car, and I joked about how loyal I was—to people and things.

“Maybe you’re too patient with us,” she said, laughing. She paused, and then added, looking straight at me, “You’re good wife material.”

I laughed with her and then drove home—without stalling once.

But her words stayed with me. “The wise person learns from everyone,” say the Hasids and many other spiritual teachers.

After youthful years of speed and frustration, I have learned to wait patiently, for appointments, traffic, people, God. It’s a peaceful feeling, this surrender, trusting that everything is working together for good, every detour and delay, postponement and cancellation, all nothing put passing outcomes that will be folded into a larger whole in which their meaning or lack of meaning will become clear. I am thankful to experience it at last.

And now my teacher at the auto repair shop asks me to see something new. Patience is a way; it is not THE way. Walking through life requires not only steadiness but rhythm. We walk in a world of seeming opposites—mercy and justice, security and risk, patience and seizing the moment. Our task is not to balance them, but to hear the rhythm so that we will know when we are required to lean to the side of mercy and when to lean toward justice, when to bear all things patiently and when to cry out for change, when to breathe slowly and when to run toward love and forgiveness.

The people of Egypt have waited patiently for change for 30 years. They have trusted God and the destiny God has written for them as individuals and a people. And now they are responding to a new call and a new cry—a call for an end to patience and a crying out for a new beginning for greater justice for all. Should they be “good wives” and bear with a situation they know is harmful to their people? Wait meekly for their autocratic “husband” to change? No. They are responding to the rhythm of abundant life in their country. Their protests have arisen out of their careful discerning that the moment for waiting has passed and the time of acting in creative fidelity has arrived. Who are we, who do not live and breathe their world, to tell them to go on waiting?

Life has taught me patience and acceptance. I have also learned how to speak up for justice, for myself and others What I am still learning is how to dance to the ever-changing rhythm of life so that I make the right move at the right time. I love dancing. I want to be come a better dancer.

In all our lives, as individuals and as peoples, there is a time to be patient and a time to act,a time to hold back and a time to race ahead. Knowing how to hear the rhythm of life and move gracefully with it, listening deeply to discern when it is more life-giving to wait and when it is more life-giving to act decisively—that is a daily spiritual practice, one we can do only for ourselves, not for others, whether they are in our own homes or across the world.

May there be justice, blessing, abundant life, and joy for all the peoples in Egypt, soon.

Is Astrology a Victimless Crime? Do We Need “A Warning Against Astrology”?

2011-01-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

It’s not just astronomers and skeptics who love to bash astrology. Theologians, ethicists, and philosophers do, too. Yet for many people, even those who agree with the criticisms of astrology as unscientific, illogical, a convenient escape from personal responsibility, a silly waste of time, or a scheme to make money selling people something absolutely useless, astrology still holds an irresistible appeal. Consulting their horoscope for fun every day is one of their guilty pleasures.

I want to reflect on three questions:

Why do people read their horoscope?
What are the theological or spiritual objections to astrology?
Is astrology harmless?

What are we looking for when we read a horoscope?
Here’s my confession (and it’s not an easy one to make): I don’t know why most people read horoscopes—for fun? for diversion?; I do know why I have read them. There have been times in my life when I frantically consulted three, four, five or more daily or weekly, monthly or yearly horoscopes. I felt guilty doing it, and stupid. I agreed with all the criticisms of it. Yet I did it.   Why? I was consumed by fear and anxiety. I wanted control over my life. I wanted to know something about what would happen, even to think I knew something, to calm me. I wanted to find a reason to hope, or simply to find reassurance. In certain moments of crises, after a string of difficult years, when I feared in a post-traumatic-stress-syndrome way that my day or week would surely shock me with one more sorrow or catastrophe I could not have imagined, I would read and read—sometimes for an hour or more—until I found a horoscope that “promised” an end to pain or the beginning of something new, or help of any sort. Sometimes I read until I found a warning about something bad happening--a legal run-in or personal conflict or financial challenge. That would calm me down. If something painful or difficult was going to happen, I wanted to know. Knowing about a trauma before hand seemed far better to me than living in uncertaintiy, waiting for the next blow and not knowing when it would come, from what direction, or from whom, or why. If I knew it was coming, I could handle it, I thought. It was those unpredictable assaults, out of nowhere, that I couldn't live with. Reading “predictions” was my anti-anxiety drug of choice. I needed it. I couldn’t get through the day without it.

This is an embarrassing admission on so many levels, but especially on the spiritual level. Yes, it meant that I was experiencing a lot of grief and trauma and was not acting like my normal self. But I don’t want to use this as a dodge. What it really meant was that I was not trusting in the One. I could not live in uncertainty, with seemingly nothing to hang on to. Why didn’t I just pray and read the Psalms, as I otherwise did, for reassurance and comfort and a sense of community? I am not really sure. I think I was desperate for something that seemed more immediate, more concrete, more practical, a secret message meant for me. This lack of radical trust made me flail my way across the Web looking for comfort and hope.

What are the theological responses to astrology?

In the eleventh century the Sufi mystic and theologian Ghazali objected to astrology because it denied the absolute dependence humankind must have on God at every moment in life. God directly causes every occasion, he argues, which is divine providence, and we are to trust absolutely in God, link ourselves directly to the ultimate source and ground of every act or event or situation, and not look to proximate or intermediate causes like stars and planets. In the twelfth century, the Jewish mystic and theologians Moses Maimonides argued similarly, saying that believing in astrology denies the providence of God and also freedom of the will.

In the sixteenth century the Christian mystic and theologian John Calvin wrote a treatise called “A Warning Against Astrology.” He raises many objections to consulting horoscopes, including Ghazali’s and Maiominides's main points—that it displaces our trust in the only trustworthy One and therefore detracts from the glory of God who providentially cares for every detail of creation; and it denies our moral responsibilty.

But the criticism Calvin offers that always surprises me for its practical, modern sensibility, is this: Astrology is anti-community. God, he argues, placed the sun, moon, and stars in creation so that human beings can tell time and seasons and make plans with one another about when to worship together, when to come to courts of law together to settle disputes, when to meet for other social occasions. They are community-building tools. What if one were to consult his or her horoscope on the way to court and find it is not an auspicious day, and turn back? What if one’s personal chart argues against one observing the Sabbath or a festival day? To use God’s creations in this way to deny God and the image of God in our fellow human beings.   It isolates us from others. Trusting in the One, however, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, links us to all other creatures, all the rest of creation—for that is part of our purpose here—to escape the prison of the self and experience communion with others.

Is astrology harmless?
Many people make light of astrology, saying, “Oh, I don’t really believe it! It’s just fun. It’s harmless.”  Our common greeting to one another, Good luck! Mazel tov! suggests how much we have absorbed the idea of astrological influences, even if we reject outright causation.  Mazal means a planet and its influence, so we're wishing for good astrological influences for others.

Maybe it's harmless to wish someone Mazal tov (instead of saying, "Ezrat Hashem, God's Help" or Retzon HaShem or Insha'Allah, God Willing). But I’m not sure astrology is harmless. Just as prostitution is often called a victimless crime, yet often leads to great harm, so astrology can cause harm. It erodes one’s trust in the One. It corrodes one’s sense of relatedness to others and our responsibility, for one’s own actions and for the care of others. It can keep us trapped in fear and anxiety, dependent on remedies that can never assuage our fears but only postpone or mask them. It can prevent us from growing toward deeper trust and faith that bring the peace that passes understanding.

Astrology isn’t “of the devil,” and consulting one’s horoscope isn’t evil--any more than anything else that tempts us away from depending on the One and befriending all that the One creates and embraces. But it’s not harmless.

Christmas and Chanukkah? Or Christmas and Passover?

2010-12-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

This is the text of a d'var Torah entitled Love Your Neighbor that I delivered on Shabbat Sh'mot, Tevet 18, 5771, December 25, 2010, at Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle, WA.

Shabbat shalom!

V’ahavta l’reiakha kamokha. Ani Adonai. “Love your neighbor; for he, she, is like you. I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:18) This text, the basis for the summary of Judaism favored by Rabbi Akiva and many others, is not found in today’s Torah reading. It is the heart of Judaism out of which I am speaking this morning. I’m using Norman Hirsh’s (Emeritus Rabbi, Beth Am) translation, not the common one of “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and I hope by the end of this d’var you will see why.

This Shabbat morning we have a remarkable opportunity. For today, the 18th of Tevet on the Jewish calendar, the Shabbat of Parashat Sh’mot, is also the 25th of December on the secular or shared calendar, also known as Christmas Day. We’re here in shul this morning, all of us—Jews or fellow travelers with Jews or friends or partners of Jews or just curious souls—to observe Shabbat by davening and hearing the Torah portion of Sh’mot read; while all around us, at this very moment, the majority of people are celebrating Christmas, either in their homes or in churches.

So what are we going to do with this opportunity?

Shall we ignore it? Why should we care? Why should we pay attention to what the dominant culture of Christians, our neighbors, are doing right now? This is Shabbat, the "sign forever" (ot hi l’olam) between The Holy One and the Jews. This is our rhythm, our celebration. Let’s not get distracted. We have to deal with this every waking monet---why on Shabbat too, and in shul, our sacred space, free of outside encrouchment? Let’s just go on with our practices and observances without mentioning those “others.” This is a way I, like many of us, have practiced for many years, and it is a good way.

Or how about this? Shall we confront this situation and talk about how difficult it is to be Jews this time of year, how hard it is to keep our heads above water let alone swim gracefully in this cultural tsunami called the Christmas holidays. Talking about “the December dilemma” is also good way, and one many of us have taken over the years.

But here’s another way we can meet this morning’s opportunity: We can step back for a moment and look at what is actually happening in both communities on this very day and reflect on what our actions mean for us as and our relationship to our spiritual neighbors. For we Jews and Christians are spiritual neighbors. Not just strangers, though we are that, too, unfortunately, in our ignorance of each other. Not just enemies, though we have sometimes been that, as we are too well aware. But neighbors. Looking on our communities of faith as spiritual neighbors is the way I want to meet this morning’s challenge.

So let’s take that step back and ask, What is going on in our two faith communities today? This: We Jews begin reading the book of Sh’mot, the story of the Exodus, and Christians begin reading the story of Jesus Christ.

Here’s how I read this remarkable fact: When we neighbors are having a conversation over the fence, it’s not Christmas and Chanukah we should be comparing, but Christmas and Pesach, not Christmas tree cookies and latkes, but Christmas tree cookies and matzot. Hold that thought of Pesach; I promise I will return to it!

Why not Chanukah and Christmas? First of all: when you compare traditions, you can’t compare what is central to one with what is marginal to another. That, in anybody’s book, is a false comparison. To do this is to Christianize Chanukah, elevate it to a status of key story, which it may look like from an outside, Christian point of view, but which it is not, from an inside Jewish point of view. The Chanukah story is not in the Torah, not even in the Tanakh. The story, though based in historical facts, comes from an apocryphal text preserved by Christians. The Christmas story, by contrast, not only is in Christian canon, it forms part of the core of that canon, the gospels. Theologically speaking and religiously speaking, it’s misleading, not to mention inaccurate, to compare one community’s minor holiday with another’s foundational holiday.

Of course it is anthropologically correct to compare Christmas and Chanukah. If we stand outside as ethnographers and look at what different communities of faith are doing at this time of year, the darkest time of the year, near the solstice, we see a lot of similarity. There’s a common emphasis on miracle and focus on light entering the darkness of the world, a season of remembering the power of hope against hope. And of course, eating and singing and merry-making and gift-giving. These two celebrations share something else, too: the degeneration of authentic spiritual traditions into the one de facto universal religion: materialism and consumerism. There’s a lot to be learned by comparing Christmas with Channukkah from the outside.

When we stand inside the Jewish community of faith and inside the Christian community of faith and look around at what is happening, however, a more fruitful comparison of Christmas within Judaism emerges—not Chanukah and Christmas, but Pesach and Christmas. (My many years of living hard and deep within both traditions, first as a Christian and then as a Jew allow me this double-vision privilege.) So let’s take a look together.

What are we and Jews all over the world doing this morning in our synagogues and homes? Opening the book of Sh’mot. Reading the beginning of the story of the Exodus. Our founding story, the story of the origin, ruthless enslavement, and liberation of God’s people. And we’re reading this story on Shabbat, which we call “the first of the holy festivals celebrating our going forth from Egypt.” By the way, it’s interesting that this opening of the story in Sh’mot, Names, begins with listing the names of our eponymous father and his sons—“These are the names of b'nei Yisrael who came to Egypt with Ya’akov”(Ex. 1:1) but does not give the name of father of the central character in this story, Moshe; it simply calls Moshe’s father “a certain man of the house of Levi who went and married a Levite woman” (2:1). We have to wait until the next parashah (Ex. 6:20), when we are already in the thick of the action in Egypt, for the storyteller to give us the father’s name—and the mother’s. Why? I can think of two reasons. One, it is this son, his uniqueness, not his ancestry or his biological or earthly father who is key to this story—similar to what happens in the Jesus story, as we’ll see in a moment; and two, the story wants to highlight Moshe’s special relationship to God.

What are Christians doing all over the world this morning in their churches and homes? Opening the Gospel of Luke or Mark and reading the beginning of their founding story, the story of the birth, horrific death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through him, the liberation of God’s people.

We won’t complete the story of Exodus until the spring, when we finish the book of Sh’mot and move on to Vayyikra, and when we celebrate Pesach and retell the story of our exodus and redemption. And Christians won’t complete the story of Jesus Christ until the spring, when they observe Good Friday and celebrate Easter.

But today, December 25, the 18th of Tevet, we are both at this same moment going back to our source, to our root, that from which we sprang as a people and that which keeps us ever greening; we're returning to our founding narrative, the master story that shapes and guides all that we see and know and do. A master story or founding narrative is the lens through which all other texts are read. We Jews and Christians both have incredible collections of diverse sacred texts that span thousands of years. What unifies them? Our way of reading them: through the lens of our founding narrative. (Read Michael Goldberg’s Jews and Christians: Getting Our Stories Straight if you want to follow up on this, though in a more polemical presentation.)

Listen again to what we pray before every Shabbat eve dinner: We praise and thank you for the gift of Shabbat, “the first of the holy festivals celebrating our going forth from Egypt.” Shabbat was given at creation; no one denies this. But we read it through the lens of the Exodus.

The same is true of our beloved siddur. Exodus is the golden cord that holds all these pearls together. Check it out sometime—I challenge you. For today, turn to page 119 in Siddur Sim Shalom, Al Ha-Nissim, the prayer the rabbis added to the Amidah for Chanukah. The rabbis who wrote and inserted this prayer took no sides in the contemporary debate whether Chanukah was a military miracle of the few against the many like that performed by the Maccabees or a supernatural miracle of oil like that performed by the prophet Elisha. They included them both, in the second paragraph and the last paragraph. The way forward for them, as the guardians of the Jewish way of living with God, was to seal Chanukah in our heart of hearts, and to do that they tied it to the Exodus story. This is what we read in the first sentence, and near the end of the blessing.

We thank Thee for the miraculous victories of liberation and deliverance which Thou didst effect for our ancestors in ancient days, during this season of the year.

In the days of the Hasmoneans, Mattathias ben Yochanan, the High Priest, and his sons, there arose against Thy people Israel a wicked Hellenic empire. It sought to make Israel abandon Thy Torah and violate Thy precepts. But Thou, in Thine abundant mercies, didst come to their defense in a time of trouble. Thou didst champion their cause; Thou didst vindicate their rights; Thou didst avenge the wrongs they endured. Thou didst deliver the strong into the hands of the weak; the many into the hands of the few; the corrupt into the hands of the upright; the wicked into the hands of the just; and the arrogant into the hands of those who were faithful to Thy Torah. Thou didst establish Thy renown throughout the world; and for Thy people Israel Thou didst effect a mighty deliverance. Thereupon did Thy children enter Thy house. They removed the defilements from Thy Temple, and cleansed Thy shrine. They kindled festive lights in Thy holy courts, and they established these eight days of Chanukah in thankfulness and praise to Thy great name.

These are rabbinic allusions to the deliverance and the signs and wonders made public before the Egyptians and the whole world, in the Exodus. Chanukkah, too, is read through Exodus.

Just so the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ serves as the lens through which Christians read all their texts (including what they call the “Old Testament,” our Tanakh) and organize their prayer books and liturgies.

In this way, through this focusing of the lens, the details of the story of Exodus work their way into Jewish bodies and hearts and minds and spirits, as the details of the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Exodus work their way into Christian bodies and hearts and minds and spirits, so that when we are interpreting our own experience, our own lives, we read what happens to us and what we do through these stories. Think of how the Exodus narrative teaches us to exist in relation to our past, present, and future, to eternity—both communally and individually.

Let’s take one more step, one more look together. Granted our founding narratives are different, what can we learn by look at them together on this day, the beginning of the story of the Exodus, the beginning of the story of Jesus? Of course there are differences in these two founding narratives, though not necessarily the ones that spring most easily to our minds: both narratives are grounded in history; and both partake of myth just as much as history, the story of the Exodus and its wonders no less than the story Jesus’ birth and life and death. This is not a fruitful or accurate way to distinguish them from each other. But today I don’t want to rehearse their difference; I want to look at what they share.

Christianity began as a reform movement within Judaism, like Pharisaic or rabbinic Judaism, our Judaism, did. Many of its texts can be interpreted as midrashim on texts in the Torah or Tanakh. Let’s keep this in mind as we look at the elements these two stories share.

In both founding narratives:

1. The Jews are oppressed by a foreign government: Egypt. Rome.

2. A particular ruler fears rebellion by the Jews and thus wants to kill all the male babies born to Jewish women: the pharaoh wants them drowned, Herod wants them slain.

3. A boy is born to his people and survives against great odds: Moshe, Yeshua.

4. Both boys have a humble beginning (symbolized by the lowly grasses of the fields and the waters) that focuses the reader’s attention on their dependence on God alone and their special relationship to God, not father and mother or any human shelter, the signal not only of their great humility but their closeness to God: Moshe a red basket, Yeshua a manger of hay. (I want to argue for a moment with the footnote in our Chumash that claims that this part of the Moshe story differentiates it from other hero stories, because Moshe is born humble and raised to great heights of Egyptian royalty, but then descends to the lowly among his people again, unlike other hero figures who remain elevated to glory. But is this so different from the hero story of Jesus, who goes from humble to royal status to humble as well? Both Moshe and Yeshua are spiritual heroes and guides who combine humility with a close relationship to the One Who Dwells in Glory. They are both living paradoxes of humility and glory that signal to the rest of us how to live with God in the world, and that is why we elevate them to special dignity in our communities: Moshe Rabbeinu, Lord of the Prophets; Yeshua the Anointed One, Our Lord. )

5. Both boys are saved by women and their cleverness: Moshe by five women, Meryam, Yocheved his mother, Shifrah, Puah, and the unnamed daughter of Pharaoh; Yeshua is saved by his mother—and later by the women who save his body after he is crucified.

6. Both boys grow up as outsiders to their biological families, men for whom family ties are not as powerful as their duty to the Lord—again to emphasize their closeness to God: Moshe in pharaoh’s palace, Jesus in the temple.

7. Both are reluctant leaders

8. Both grow up to perform miracles in public.

9. Both help lead their people from darkness to light, bring about the liberation of God’s people in a way that God’s mighty arm and signs and wonders are revealed.

Why am I making this list? Not to say, Hey, they plagiarized our story! Let’s sue them for copyright infringement! Not to say, Look, all paths are the same, so be a Jew, be a Christian, be a Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It does matter. The shape and feel and details of our stories make us who we are. It’s essential to know what your story is and to live out of that particular story. Who can live in an abstracted plot: some people were harming other people and a baby was born, and all the people were saved. Hardly compelling.

I want to be very clear here. I’m calling attention to what our two stories share, not to their ultimate sameness, as if one universal and monolithic truth existed out there somewhere, the pure truth, unadulterated by myth, stripped of all our story nonsense and accessible by those who are rational and modern or post-modern and who have no need for all this detail detail detail. And what these two founding narratives, whether one is a midrash on the other or not, share is this: Both are founding stories, saving stories; both guide and inspire and comfort us frail and fragile human beings as we labor to perform the task given to us by the One God: to become fully human, to cast out fear, to bring light out of darkness, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to lift up the downtrodden, to free the prisoner, to comfort the weary with a word in the morning, to create justness out of injustice, to transform evil into good, to turn indifference into welcome, ignorance into wisdom, hate into love, to act justly, love lovingkindness, and walk humbly with our God, to hallow the world, this world, for the Holy One to dwell among us.

Our story is not better than theirs. Nor theirs better than ours. Their story is not more full of hard-to-swallow miracles or “pagan” influences than ours and thus more worthy of contempt. Nor is ours. Our story is not the truth, while theirs is an obsolete myth. Nor is theirs the truth. These stories and our re-tellings of them, today and in our spring holidays, in our prayer books and liturgies, in our daily living inside of them, are gifts that keep pointing us to the One and show us how to draw that One into the world. The challenge to us as we travel our path through this world is not to keep looking to see how far ahead or behind our companions are, not to keep looking at what paths, different, unfamiliar, our neighbors may be taking; our challenge is to keep our hearts fixed on the Holy One who draws us all toward love and justice, mercy and truth, each in our own way. Our challenge is to “Love your neighbor; for your neighbor is like you.”

Shabbat shalom!

Holy Ground, Holy Land, Holy Places?

2010-10-24T20:45:00.001-07:00

I’ll soon be on my way to the Sinai, Jerusalem, and Safed—my first trip to these “holy” places. And so I find myself wondering about holiness and space. For I am of two (at least) minds about holiness and place. I reject the assignment of permanent holiness to any place on earth, or in the heavens or anywhere within the creation for that matter. But I also recognize that some places on earth carry palpable memories of encounters with God, the Holy One.

Rabid monotheist that I am, I resist any and all permanent identification of holiness with a particular place. It is encounters with the God who can be contained nowhere, who can surprise us anywhere that give us a sense of holiness, the sense that we have gone beyond our ordinary experience. What was holy about that rock where Ya’akov lay his head was his dream experience of the nearness of heaven and earth, which announced his imminent meeting with the face of God as forgiveness in Esau. What was holy about that ground Moshe stood on was his encounter with the divine presence, I Will Be Who I will Be, in that little bush. The holiness was not in the rock or the bush, but—as Martin Buber might say—in that extraordinary I-Thou “betweenness” that occurred there, a holiness to be remembered in story, not visited as a monument erected on that very spot.

When King Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem, he is recorded as saying:

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You; much less this temple that I have erected. And You shall turn toward Your servant's prayer and to his supplication, O Lord my God: to hearken to the song and to the prayer that Your servant is praying before You today.That Your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, toward the place which You said, 'My Name will be there;' to listen to the prayer that Your servant will pray toward this place. And You shall listen to the supplication of Your servant and of Your people Israel that they will pray toward this place; and You shall hear in heaven, Your abode, and You shall hear and forgive. (I Kings 8: 27-30).

It was not the temple as a holy place Solomon was after, it seems, but the temple as an invitation to prayer, the encounter between God and human beings, in which one can meet the One and experience the forgiving face of God turned toward them. That meeting was the holiness Solomon wanted to make available, a meeting that would transform lives. God would not, could not dwell in that magnificent space. Human beings might, however, remember there that the Holy One of Israel dwelt in the midst of Israel whenever and wherever Israel acted as they were created to be, in the image of God, justly and with lovingkindness. It also seems to me that in hoping that Israel would pray toward “this place,” Solomon was asking not that the people limit God and holiness to that impressive and luxurious space, but that they keep their hearts turned toward HaMakom, God the Place, to live always as if standing before the face of God, the center and circumference of the world, wherever they were.

When we fight over owning “our” holy places, what are we fighting over? Emptiness—and not in the good sense of spiritual emptiness as openness to the One. Why are we not fighting to hallow the world by inviting God into our lives were on earth with acts of mercy and justice?

In the weeks to come, I will return to my second point--those palpable memories of encounters with the Holy One that seem to linger in certain places. I don’t know how my views on holy ground, places, and land will change in the coming weeks as I experience the Sinai, Jerusalem, and Safed, but I am sure they will.

How Does Anyone Dare Talk About God?

2010-10-07T21:44:00.001-07:00

This is the question I have been asking myself. What arrogance to talk of God. Who of us can say who or what or why or how God is?
And then today I passed two young people on the street near the University of Washington,a young man and a young woman. What stopped me, dead still, was a poster hanging from their makeshift table, a photo of President Obama as Hitler. I had seen the photo on the Internet. But I was not prepared for its impact on me as I walked down University Avenue among scores of students in Seattle. “Is that a joke?” I asked the young man behind the table covered with pamphlets.
“What has Obama done for you?” he asked me.
“What did George Bush do for you or me or anyone?’ I asked.
“No, “ a young man waiting for the bus said to me. “Don’t talk to them. I’ve tried.”
“It’s so offensive I don’t know what to say,” I told him.
I walked on, looked in a few stores, then turned back to the corner that had disturbed me so. I approached the young man at the table. A young woman was handing out fliers nearby. “Do you know who Hitler was?” I asked him.
“I know nothing,” he replied.   And the look in his eyes as they stared at me, not vacant but exactly what I could not tell, said he would tell me nothing.
“Are you saying that if Obama hasn’t done anything for you or me personally that that qualifies him as a mastermind of genocide?”
“I know nothing.”
“That’s what they always say,” the man who had tried to warn me before said. He was still waiting for the bus. I wondered lwhy he was still there and if he was a shill, the "voice of reason" somehow luring other reasonable people passing by into the argument they had set up and were baiting people for. But there was no way to tell. “They just tell you to read their literature," the voice of reason told me, "but there’s no information in there. I’ve read it. Maybe they don’t really know anything and they’re just paid to hand out this stuff.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” I said, “someone being paid for advocating violence or they’re just salespeople who don’t know what they’re selling.”
“They believe in what they’re doing,” my friend said. “I heard that some Vet actually punched out one of these LaRouchers, then went to court, and told the judge he’d be happy to pay three times the fine if he could punch out two more of these guys.”
At this, the male LaRoucher became animated. “I’m going to call the police and tell them you’re advocating violence.”
“I said,” my friend told the LaRoucher, “ that I read that that happened. It’s a fact and I’m repeating it.”
“You’re advocating violence,” the LaRoucher repeated to my supporter. “I’m going to call the police.”
His female counterpart came over to stand by her man.   Or maybe she hoped she would be punched out and make the papers and further their cause, whatever it was..
“You’re the ones advocating violence,” I told the LaRouchers. “Do you even understand what you’re doing?”
The LaRoucher tried to stare me down with his hazel eyes. “I know nothing,” he said.
“Leave it,” my young friend advised me.    “I’ve tried. They don’t listen.”
I walked to my bus stop. But I couldn’t shake the experience. The first black president of the United States of America. Coupled with a legacy sick with hatred and racism. Irrationality. Unspoken threat.   Refusal to take responsibility for what they were saying and doing. Complete disregard for the consequences of their words and actions.
In a world gone made like this with hatred and irrationality, on street corners of major universities filled with young intelligent human beings, how can anyone not talk about God, the power that makes for justice and peace, the power that drives toward truth and mercy, the power that brings good out of evil?

Islamophobia: Bred of Ignorance, Breeding Violence

2010-10-01T11:11:00.001-07:00

Fear and ignorance feed on each other, and when they are allowed to do so unchecked, they result in hatred and violence.

How many examples, from religious or secular history, do we need to confirm the truth of this statement? There are too many to list, and we all have our favorites on that list—usually involving the persecution of our own people: the early Christians, the pagans, the Protestants, the Anabaptists, the Huguenots, the Roman Catholics, the Armenians, the Jews, the Palestinians, the Tibetans, women, black people, gay and lesbian people...

Right now, in the United States and Europe, what we are most ignorant of and what we fear most is Islam. Is our Pakistani neighbor or that Algerian or Somalian stranger a terrorist? Is that woman wearing a hijab or a burqah a sign that our freedom to choose—from religion to the clothes we wear—is under threat? Do the mosques and Islamic centers appearing in “our” city landscapes mean “our civilization” is at risk?

It’s not just members of non-Muslim religions that are scared; secular people are, too. Why do we assume that certain people living in our free, democratic societies do not share those values? Because of their religion or dress? The people we are most suspicious of have come here precisely because of those values—because they value freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, and because they appreciate—in many cases far better than we do--the safety afforded by a pluralistic culture undergirded with laws to protect minority rights and enforcement agencies that, though not wholly free from corruption or prejudice, can be challenged by legal means.

Who is the real threat to the United States and Europe today? Not the millions of American and European Muslims trying to live decent lives with their families and communities. The real enemy is us: xenophobic nationalists, fundamentalists of all stripes, smug rationalists, all of whom want the protections of a pluralistic democratic society for their way of life only, and who pre-judge everything they do not recognize as “theirs” to be impure, evil, or primitive.

When will nationalists wake up to the reality that we are living and have always lived in a global, human world that transcends race and motherlands or fatherlands? When will Christian and other fundamentalists remember that "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18)? When will rationalists acknowledge that faith is not by definition irrational or anti-rational, but a well-reasoned way of orienting oneself in the world for good?

When will we stop playing the righteous god punishing all who do not follow our ways? When we will start using our imaginations not to inflate our fears but our understanding of others? What would “Americans” or “Europeans” do if anyone burned a Christian Bible? The nation’s constitution or flag? What would they do if anyone vandalized their cemeteries? Fire-bombed their places of worship and social halls and schools? Attacked one of their people on the street? Publicized lies and words of hate about them on the Internet?

In fighting ignorance and fear of those who differ from us, let’s start listening to one another and learning about the other. Let’s talk to our neighbors, find out their history, their values, their hopes, their dreams. And, as we learn about one antoher, let’s take as our guide not only the values of a free, democratic society, but also these words of Rabbi Hillel: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is interpretation." (Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, 31a).

Claustrophobia

2010-09-27T11:05:00.001-07:00

Try to imagine a world without mystery

a world where everything is explained to our reason’s satisfaction--

or will be soon, if not in our lifetime, then our children’s

or our children’s children’s for sure

Try to imagine a world without the Question of Questions

where every question, from trivial to perennial, has its answer--

if only you find the right person or formula

if only you are diligent enough, patient enough

Try to imagine a world in which only you are moving

journeying among fixed points and planes and angles

seeking the perfect place to rest

forever, your hands and feet nailed in place

Then wake up from your nightmares

shake off the death chill

and taste how sweet the Unknowing

The Name and the Names of God

2010-09-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

There is a Jewish practice and a Muslim practice of naming God that together teach us a deep truth about the One.
Jews carry the tradition of the Name that cannot be spoken. It is the name the high priest once spoke once a year, on Yom Kippur, in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem, as he was pleading for God to draw near in mercy. After the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the pronunciation of the Name was lost. Only the letters remain, Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh. These four, the Tetragrammaton, stand as mute witness to the Ineffability of God, the Unity of God that transcends all thought and speech and calls into question all our thought and speech about God. In daily practice Jews have two ways of remembering this pointer to the Ineffability of God. When the letters Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh appear in the Torah, we say “Adonai,” Lord—at once giving God a name while remembering that we do not possess the Name of God. When one wants to refer to God in daily speech, to thank or bless or reflect on the One, one says “HaShem, “the Name.” The startling paradox of naming God “The Name” is a potent reminder that we do not have power over the One, nor can we limit the Limitless One (the Ein Sof of the Kabbalists). for to name is to limit, saying, You have these qualities and not others; you have this aspect of being and not others. The practice of The Name focuses our attention on the Light Beyond, that light in which we see light
Muslims carry the tradition of the 99 beautiful names, based on the Qur’an.

"He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, The Fashioner, to Him belong the most beautiful names: whatever is in the heavens and on earth, do declare His praises and glory. And He is the Exalted in Might, The Wise. (Qur’an 59:24)
"The most beautiful names belong to God: so call on Him by them;..." (7:180)

The beauty and truth of this tradition is the invitation to all people to call upon the One by the many names, names that do two things simultaneously: point us to the complexity and omnipresence of God, which requires the use of many names rather than a single name; and focus our attention on particular attributes or qualities of the One as they relate to our personal experience in the moment. Again, as with the Jewish practice of the Name, the Islamic practice of the 99 beautiful names embodies a paradox: speaking one or two of the beautiful names while aware that these names are only one of the ways to speak of or name God’s presence. Thus, the practice of the 99 names keeps before one the transcendence of the One beyond all names, the inability to contain the One in a single name, while offering the faithful a way to approach the Limitless through the qualities of the One as they are refracted in the world, the One light, appearing in many colors through the prism of the world.
Sufis chant these names in varying combinations during communal dhikr, the remembrance of God, and individual retreats. All Muslims use these names in their daily devotion to pull their hearts toward the One in the way that they need at that moment. One woman may call upon Al-Azeez, the Undefeated, while another meditates on Al-Wahhaab, the Bestower. One man may call upon Ar-Rahmaan, the Compassionate, while another may remember the One as Al-Fattah, the Opener, or Al-Sabur, the Patient. One year a person may draw near to the One as Al-Kareem, the Generous One, another year as Al- Haseeb, the Reckoner. The practice is a celebration of the limitless ways the One is present among us and of the compassion of the One in drawing near to us in the way that our spirit uniquely needs.
The names of the One are not limited to 99. There are slight variations in the lists from one tradition and theologian to the next, but here is one version:

Allah
- Allah, He who has the Godhood which is the power to create the entities.
Ar-Rahmaan
- The Compassionate, The Beneficent, The One abundant in mercy for the believers and the blasphemers in this world
Ar-Raheem
- The Merciful, The One who has plenty of mercy for the believers
Al-Malik
- The King, The Sovereign Lord, The One with the complete Dominion, the One Whose Dominion is free from imperfection
Al-Quddoos
- The Holy, The One who is pure from any imperfection and clear from children and adversaries.
As-Salaam
- The Source of Peace, The One who is free from every imperfection
Al-Mu'min
- Guardian of Faith
Al-Muhaimin
- The Protector, The One who witnesses the saying and deeds of His creatures.
Al-^Azeez
- The Mighty, The Strong, The Defeater who is not defeated
Al-Jabbaar
- The Compeller, The One that nothing happens in His Dominion except that which He willed
Al-Mutakabbir
- The Majestic, The One who is clear from the attributes of the creatures and from resembling them
Al-Khaaliq
- The Creator, The One who brings everything from non-existence to existence
Al-Bari'
- The Evolver, The Maker, The Creator who has the Power to turn the entities
Al-Musawwir
- The Fashioner, The One who forms His creatures in different pictures
Al-Ghaffaar
- The Great Forgiver, The Forgiver, The One who forgives the sins of His slaves time and time again
Al-Qahhaar
- The Subduer, The Dominant, The One who has the perfect Power and is not unable over anything
Al-Wahhaab
- The Bestower, The One who is Generous in giving plenty without any return
Al-Razzaaq
- The Sustainer, The Provider.
Al-Fattaah
- The Opener, The Reliever, The Judge, The One who opens for His slaves the closed worldy and religious matters.
Al-^Aleem
- The All-knowing, The Knowledgeable; The One nothing is absent from His knowledge.
Al-Qaabid
- The Constrictor, The Retainer, The Withholder, The One who constricts the sustenance by His wisdom and expands and widens it with His Generosity and Mercy
Al-Baasit
- The Expander, The Enlarger, The One who constricts the sustenance by His wisdom and expands and widens it with His Generosity and Mercy
Al-Khaafid
- The Abaser, The One who lowers whomever He wills by His Destruction and raises whomever He wills by His Endowment
Ar-Raafi^
- The Exalter, The Elevator
Al-Mu^iz
- The Honorer
Al-Muthil
- The Dishonorer, The Humiliator
As-Samee^
- The All-Hearing, The Hearer
Al-Baseer
- The All-Seeing
Al-Hakam
- The Judge, He is the Ruler and His judgment is His Word
Al-^Adl
- The Just, The One who is entitled to do what He does
Al-Lateef
- The Subtle One, The Gracious
Al-Khabeer
- The Aware, The One who knows the truth of things.
Al-Haleem
- The Forebearing, The Clement
Al-^Azeem
- The Great One, The Mighty, The Perfection
Al-Ghafoor
- The All-Forgiving, The Forgiving
Ash-Shakoor
- The Grateful, The Appreciative
Al-^Aliyy
- The Most High, The Sublime
Al-Kabeer
- The Most Great, The Great
Al-Hafeez
- The Preserver, The Protector
Al-Muqeet
- The Maintainer, The Guardian, The Feeder, The Sustainer
Al-Haseeb
- The Reckoner
Aj-Jaleel
- The Sublime One, The Beneficent
Al-Kareem
- The Generous One, The Bountiful, The Gracious
Ar-Raqeeb
- The Watcher, The Watchful, The One that nothing is absent from Him
Al-Mujeeb
- The Responsive, The Hearkener
Al-Wasi^
- The Vast, The All-Embracing, The Knowledgeable
Al-Hakeem
- The Wise, The Judge of Judges, The One who is correct in His doings
Al-Wadood
- The Loving
Al-Majeed
- The Most Glorious One, The Glorious, The One who is with perfect Power, High Status, Compassion, Generosity and Kindness
Al-Ba^ith
- The Resurrector, The Raiser (from death)
Ash-Shaheed
- The Witness, The One who nothing is absent from Him
Al-Haqq
- The Truth, The True, The One who truly exists
Al-Wakeel
- The Trustee, The One who gives the satisfaction and is relied upon
Al-Qawiyy
- The Most Strong, The Strong, The One with the complete Power
Al-Mateen
- The Firm One
Al-Waliyy
- The Protecting Friend, The Supporter.
Al-Hameed
- The Praiseworthy
Al-Muhsee
- The Counter, The Reckoner
Al-Mubdi'
- The Originator
Al-Mu^eed
- The Reproducer, The One who brings back the creatures after death
Al-Muhyi
- The Restorer, The Giver of Life
Al-Mumeet
- The Creator of Death, The Destroyer, The One who renders the living dead
Al-Hayy
- The Alive
Al-Qayyoom
- The Self-Subsisting, The One who remains and does not end.
Al-Waajid
- The Perceiver, The Finder, The Rich who is never poor
Al-Waahid
- The Unique, The One, The One without a partner
Al-Ahad
- The One.
As-Samad
- The Eternal, The Independent, The Master who is relied upon in matters and reverted to in one’s needs
Al-Qaadir
- The Able, The Capable
Al-Muqtadir
- The Powerful, The Dominant, The One with the perfect Power that nothing is withheld from Him
Al-Muqaddim
- The Expediter, The Promoter, The One who puts things in their right places
Al-Mu'akh-khir
- The Delayer, the Retarder, The One who puts things in their right places
Al-'Awwal
- The First, The One whose Existence is without a beginning
Al-'Akhir
- The Last, The One whose Existence is without an end
Az-Zaahir
- The Manifest, The One whom nothing is above and nothing is underneath
Al-Baatin
- The Hidden
Al-Walee
- The Governor
Al-Muta^ali
- The Most Exalted, The High Exalted, The One who is free from the attributes of the creation
Al-Barr
- The Source of All Goodness, The Righteous, The One who is kind to His creatures, who covers them with His sustenance and specifies whomever He wills among them by His support, protection, and special mercy
At-Tawwaab
- The Acceptor of Repentance, The Relenting
Al-Muntaqim
- The Avenger, The One who victoriously prevails over His enemies and punishes them for their sins
Al-^Afuww
- The Pardoner, The Forgiver, The One with wide forgiveness
Ar-Ra'uf
- The Compassionate, The One with extreme Mercy
Malik Al-Mulk
- The Eternal Owner of Sovereignty
Thul-Jalali wal-Ikram
- The Lord of Majesty and Bounty
Al-Muqsit
- The Equitable, The One who is Just in His judgment.
Aj-Jaami^
- The Gatherer, The One who gathers the creatures on the Day of Judgment
Al-Ghaniyy
- The Self-Sufficient
Al-Mughni
- The Enricher, The One who satisfies the necessities of the creatures
Al-Maani^
- The Preventer, The Withholder
Ad-Daarr
- The Distresser, The One who makes harm reach to whomever He wills and benefit to whomever He wills
An-Nafi^
- The Propitious, The One who makes harm reach to whomever He wills and benefit to whomever He wills
An-Noor
- The Light
Al-Haadi
- The Guide
Al-Badi^
- The Incomparable, The One who created the creation and formed it without any precedent or example
Al-Baaqi
- The Everlasting, The One for whom the state of non-existence is impossible
Al-Waarith
- The Supreme Inheritor, The Heir, The One whose Existence remains
Ar-Rasheed
- The Guide to the Right Path, The One who guides
As-Saboor
- The Patient, The One who does not quickly punish the sinners.

The Name and the 99 names--both practices are powerful and life-giving. We might be tempted to say that the Jewish practice of the Name points us more toward the transcendence of the One, the Islamic practice points us more toward the immanence. This is misleading, for it ignores the wide variety of names for God in Jewish prayer—Father, Shepherd, Judge, Lover, King, Compassionate One, The Patient One, Bestower of Gifts Resurrector--and it ignores the many names in the list of 99 that point specifically to the One’s transcendence—Al-Muta-ali, Al-Haqq, Al-Ghaniyy, Al-Baaqi. Both the Jewish and the Muslim traditions point to the transcendence and immanence of God equally. This is a graceful balancing act both traditions have mastered: when pointing to the transcendence of the One, never to be far from the glories of the One’s immanence; and when pointing to the manifold glories of God’s presence in the world, never to forget that the One exists beyond all human limitation.

After the Intensity, What? God in the Doldrums

2010-09-20T08:26:00.001-07:00

For Jews, the Days of Awe have ended. For Moslems, Ramadan has ended. For Christians, we are in the long flat time between Easter and Christmas. When our rituals and practices of prayer and fasting focus our hearts and minds on drawing near to God, it may be easier for us to remember God and “know before Whom we stand.” But what about when those strong winds of community and tradition abate and we are left in the daily round of life. We still have our weekly practices of services to blow us forward. We still have our daily practices of prayer and blessing. They keep gently moving us forward. And yet, we feel—after the freshening winds of that intense concentration on God—the dull and deadening affect of ordinary life. We get caught up in the distractions and demands around us and—it seems--we stop moving toward the One.

How to recapture that intensity of communion and purpose in our daily lives of “ordinary” time? The early Hasids offer help. Try to keep before you at all times the unity of the One, which means God is present everywhere and there is nowhere where God is not. One way to do this is to repeat to yourself through the day the words of the prophet Isaiah, ”The whole earth is filled with God’s glory” (6:3).
As the Baal Shem Tov teaches:

We say, “Here O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
     When we say that “the Lord is One,” we mean that nothing other than God exists in all the universe. It is thus written, “The Whole earth is filled with God’s glory” (Isaiah 6:3).
     The main idea here is that a person should consider himself like absolutely nothing. He should realize that he has no essence other than his divine soul, and that this is a “portion of God from on high.” Therefore, nothing exists in the world except the absolute Unity which is God.
     The main idea of this unity is that “the whole earth is filled with His glory.” There is therefore absolutely nothing that is devoid of God’s essence. (The Light Beyond, ed. Aryeh Kaplan, p. 37).

And also:

God is present in every movement. It is impossible to make any move or speak any word without God’s power. This is the meaning of the verse,”The whole earth is filled with God’s glory” (Is. 6:3). Kether Shem Tov 273 (The Light Beyond, ed. Aryeh Kaplan, p. 42).

And this:

It is written, “The whole earth is filled with God’s glory” (Is. 6:3). This means that even the physical world is one of God’s garments. The verse therefore says that “the whole earth is felled with God’s glory”—even the physical. “Glory” alludes to a garment. Likutim Yekarim 17c. (The Light Beyond, ed. Aryeh Kaplan, p. 43).

What would our days be like, our lives be like, if at every moment, in every circumstance, in every situation, with every movement we made and every person and creature and place we encountered—on the bus, stuck in traffic, arguing with a friend, holding our babies, sweating after a run, cooking dinner, watching clouds drift by—we said to ourselves, “The whole earth is filled with God’s glory” and saw through these the garments of the One?
Try it for a day.

The Final Note

2010-09-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

The twenty-four things that hinder teshuvah are to be taken with great seriousness. Our self-examination must know no bounds. And yet. And yet the rabbis (ancient, medieval, modern, contemporary) always sound clearly the ground note of Torah: God is the Father of Compassion, the Womb of Mercy, who throws “the banner of love over us,” receives us in love. As Maimonides says:
“Yet all these sins and those like them, despite the fact that they hinder teshuvah, do not altogether prevent it. For if a person sincerely does teshuvah and turns from his or her sins, that person is considered penitent and has a share in the world to come.” Hilkhot Teshuvah IV.

Twenty-Four Things That Hinder Teshuvah

2010-09-16T20:16:00.001-07:00

As we approach Yom Kippur and the communal repetitions of our litanies of confession, the Vidui and the Al Chet, it is good to deepen the self-examination we have been practicing throughout Elul and the Days of Awe. One way to do this is by taking to heart some of the rabbis’ “Twenty-Four Things That Hinder Teshuvah.” Of these, four are great sins, five close teshuvah in the face of the sinner, five prevent a person from turning in complete teshuvah, and five are sins toward which the sinner will always be drawn and will find it hard to leave off.

There is one more set and it is this set of five I want to focus on: the “sins for which the sinner may be assumed not to do teshuvah, because they are trivial in the eyes of most [people]. The result is that the sinner imagines she or he has committed no sin.” (See translation and full text in S.Y. Agnon, The Days of Awe, pp. 111-115.) Meditating on these may help us enter the public, communal confessions in new ways. Who are these “trivial” sinners who sin by imagining they have not sinned? We might call these sins sins by way of abusing the imagination.

1. One who eats a meal where there is not enough for the host; this act is a minor form of theft. The guest imagines that he has not sinned, and says to oneself, But I ate with the host’s permission. [This applies to more than food. But she said it was fine for me to..]

2. One who makes use of a poor person’s pledge, which may be merely an ax or a plow. The borrower will generally say in her or his heart, They have not lost their value. Why, I have stolen nothing from that person! [This applies to more than tools.]

3. One who looks at a person they may not marry and imagines to themself that they have done nothing wrong. For they say, Did I lie with her/him, or even come near her/him? They do not know that even eying a man or woman lustfully is a serious iniquity, for it leads to the act of lust itself, as it is said, “and that ye do not about after your own heart and your own eyes.” (Numb. 15:39)

4. One who tries to gain honor through disparaging another. They say in their heart that what they have done is not a sin, since the other person was not there at the time, and could not suffer from any shame. Moreover, they think that they only contrasted their own good deeds and wisdom with the deeds and lack of wisdom of their fellow human being, so that people might gather that they were to be honored and the other to be despised.

5. One who is suspicious of innocent people says in their heart, I am committing no sin, because (they say), What harm have I done to that person? I only suspect them; perhaps they are guilty, and perhaps they are not. This person does not realize that thinking of an innocent person as a possible transgressor is an iniquity.

May our self-flattering imaginations not lead us astray as we complete the Days of Awe and teshuvah.

Can We Forgive Ourselves?

2010-09-13T09:53:00.001-07:00

I once left someone I had loved and promised to love forever. The pain I had caused him was almost unbearable--for me as well as him. I asked him to forgive me. He refused. He was deeply, deeply wounded. And it was I who had harmed him. The responsibility for his suffering weighed on me. Without forgiveness, it would crush me. When it became clear he would not forgive me, I wrote to him, “If you will not forgive me will have to find a way to forgive myself.” His reply, “No one can forgive themselves. Only God can forgive.”

This experience has stirred questions in me for over a quarter of a century. I realize now that I should not have asked him so soon for forgiveness. As Hazrat Inayat Kahn teaches, “Don’t ask anyone for something they cannot give.” He was not ready. And at that moment I wanted his forgiveness inauthentically, more as a balm for my suffering than as a genuine reconciliation or at-one-ment.

I believe he thought I leaped to forgiving myself as an easy way out of responsibility and guilt, a cheap “grace” I doled out to myself like a cheap little god. As if to say--with a narcissistic ego that does not see the harm it does to others, with a cold heart that does not vibrate to the suffering others’ hearts--“Well, I did it and it’s over and I just have to let it go and move on.” Just like that.

That’s not what I meant or experienced. I trusted that in time, God’s time, The Father of Mercies would forgive me, the Womb of Compassion would enfold me. But meanwhile, my experience of God was bound up with all my other relationships. If one is torn or crooked, all suffer. In a spider web, with God at the center weaving and adhering the edges into a perfect pattern perfectly fitting the surrounding space, even one broken filament mars the whole, one small cut makes the whole web tremble. I felt that my being would remain torn by this relationship in which someone I had loved and hurt went through life angry at me and refusing me his forgiveness. Without the person’s forgiveness, I felt I would never be whole.

What good was it to me that my tradition made it clear, as many do, that if a person who is asked for forgiveness refuses, he or she is in the wrong? It was not a matter of right or wrong, who bare the greater responsibility, when I had discharged my debt and fulfilled my obligation—though that, too, was important. It was a matter of feeling at one in the world.

To feel at one, I had to forgive myself. Meaning, I had to stop judging myself in a way that crushed my spirit, killed its hope for transformation, of my self and of this relationship gone awry. I had to stop playing the part of the all-knowing god who saw what I had “really” done and what the irreparable consequences “really” were. And I had to stop depending absolutely on the forgiveness of another person for my sense of wholeness, attunement with the One. The quality of every relationship we have affects our relationship to the One, but no one relationship has the power to blot out or block our relationship to the Whole. That is what I needed to see. This very large rupture in my life, as real and painful as it was, was not able to destroy my relationship with the One or prevent me from moving toward wholeness—unless I let it. If I let it, I would be causing more harm. I had to accept that I had caused this harm, that the other person adamantly refused my repentance, and that I was still on the way toward wholeness

Paul Tillich, in his famous sermon, asks, “What is grace?” His answer: “Accept the fact that you are accepted.” The One is already, always, moving toward us in wholeness, inviting us to move toward it. To be on the way toward wholeness does not relieve us of our need to make teshuvah, repentance. It does free us from relying absolutely on the outcomes of our repentance and the forgiveness of other human beings. We can still move toward wholeness, even as we hope and wait in patience for certain ruptures to be healed. And on the way, we can rest in that Wholeness, the One, given to us.

This is what spiritual leaders, psychological counselors, and well-meaning friends are reminding us of when they say, “You have to forgive yourself.” Not, “Take your acts of harm and neglect of others lightly. All that really matters is you.” But, “Let nothing obstruct you on the path toward wholeness. Receive the gift and promise of wholeness present now, a wholeness that is not of your making.”

In these ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, between the world created anew and the world made whole, we prepare to ask the One to forgive us. We intensify the examination of our spirits. We go to those we have harmed and ask for forgiveness. We forgive those who ask to be forgiven by us. These are both acts beautiful beyond compare. And if, in spite of all your have done to repair a relationship, it remains torn, keep your heart open to the day it might be made whole, and in the meantime, rest in the wholeness of the One toward which we are all traveling.

A Happy and Sweet New Year!

2010-09-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

Shanah tovah u'metukah! A good and sweet New Year!

The Great Crime--Elul 29

2010-09-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Bunam said to his hasidim:
"The sins which man commits--those are not his great crime. Temptation is powerful and his strength is slight! The great crime of man is that he can turn at every moment, and does not do so."

(Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim II: 257)

"Not Upon Our Merit"--Elul 28

2010-09-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

In the daily siddur we pray:

Master of all worlds! Not upon our merit do we rely in our supplication, but upon Your limitless love. What are we? What is our life? What is our piety? What is our righteousness? What is our attainment, our power, our might? What can we say, Lord our God and God of our ancestors? Compared to You, all the mighty are nothing, the famous nonexistent, the wise lack wisdom, the clever lack reason. For most of their actions are meaningless, the days of their lives emptiness. Human preeminence over beasts is an illusion when all is seen as futility.

But we are Your people, partners of Your covenant...

This is the paradox we stand inside everyday, but with a greater sense of urgency during the Days of Awe. It is there, between "We are nothing" and "We are Your people," that our prayers of petition, praise, and thanksgiving rise. There is no surer place to stand.

"Purify Our Hearts to Serve You in Truth"--Elul 27

2010-09-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Once again, within the eight words of this prayer, we find the inner and the outer, the heart and the deed, bound together. Not prayer or tzedakah. Not ritual or ethics. Both prayer and tzedakah is our refrain.

Once again, in this brief prayer, we find the individual bound up in the communal "our."

Once again, in these words, we hear a call to do heshbon ha nephesh, to take an honest look at ourselves before the Creator and True Judge of All and ask ourselves, Whom are we serving? And are we serving for recognition, for ego, or "in truth"?

"Purify our hearts to serve You in truth." A lifetime would not be enough to plumb the wisdom of these eight words.

"Purify our hearts to serve You in truth." When all other words fail you, lean on these as your prayer and repeat them ceaselessly.

"Purify our hearts to serve You in truth." When your mind wanders during services, bring it back to center, back into communion, with these words of beauty and holiness.

"Purify our hearts to serve You in truth."

Making Peace with the Dead--Elul 26

2010-09-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

It is customary all through the month of Elul to visit the graves of one's ancestors and relatives. I've often wondered about this custom. I could understand the tzedakah part of it--distributing tzedakah to the poor who would congregate near the graveyard for this reason. But what were people actually doing when they fell on the graves making supplication? Were they asking God to overlook their sins for the sake of the merits of their ancestors? Were they avoiding their responsibility as individuals by lumping themselves for judgment with their pious family, people in good standing? If so, these theologically suspect practices were not to my liking at all.

Here's what I do understand: We all carry conflict, hurt, alienation, resentment, fear, and other disturbing emotions toward others in our lives. If we are blessed, we have an opportunity, or we make opportunities, to turn toward these others in love and forgiveness before it is too late. That is one of the gifts of the Days of Awe--to make us aware of the urgency to do just this before the Gates of Healing close.

But what do we do if we have missed all those opportunities with a significant person in our life, and they have died? Visit the grave, and take the opportunity you were not ready to take before. Talk your heart out. Make peace between you. If you cannot visit the grave, have this conversation before a photograph of the person. If you do not have a photo, seclude yourself and sit across from an empty chair and start talking.

The call to teshuvah, repentance, turning toward the other in love and forgiveness, transforming life into greater wholeness, is not limited; it encompasses all our relationships, with God and animals and the earth as well as humans, with the dead as well as the living.

Praying Selichot and All Prayers with Strength--Elul 25

2010-09-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight near midnight Ashkenazim begin Selichot, reciting psalms and prayers that ask for forgiveness, selicha, in order to soften and awaken our hearts for the Days of Awe. Why midnight? Because of David, who says of his practice, "At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee because of Thy righteous ordinances" (Psalm 119:6). And also because by midnight the energy of our bodies has abated enough to allow us to concentrate more intently on matters of spirit.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav's advice for how to pray is good advice for how to pray the penitential psalms and supplications during this midnight watch (and all during the Days of Awe services) so that we don't fall into rote recitation but let the words carry us beyond ourselves:

Rabbi Nachman admonished us strongly to put all our strength into the words of prayer.
     He said that a person must force himself a great deal when he prays. A minority opinion holds that a person shouldn't force himself in prayer. But this is not right--a person must force himself with all his strength when he prays.
     Rabbi Nachman also said that when a person prays with feeling--that is, when he connects his thoughts to the words, paying attention and listening to what he is saying--his strength is automatically drawn into the words of prayer. This is because a person's strength automatically waits and looks to be drawn into holy words.
     When a person prays with feeling, all his powers are drawn into his prayer. Then he prays with great strength, even though he isn't forcing himself.
(The Chambers of the Palace: Teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, ed. Y. David Shulman, 119-120)

Piety and the Scope of Tzedakah--Elul 24

2010-09-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

Tzedakah is our obligation to act justly to those who are in need. Another way to think of those who are in need, beyond economic need, is to think of those who are vulnerable to injustice and thus bear a disproportionate burden of suffering in the world. To all those we owe justice, and we can do justly in relation to them in many ways.

We are accustomed to hearing that it is not enough to give money or food to those in need--those these, too, are good. We are also to help them learn skills and gain the ability to support themselves. Here's another way to do tzedakah: become a vegetarian and/or join the hechsher-tzedek movement. As Rabbi Morris Allen of Congregation Beth Shalom in Mendota Heights, MN and others have been teaching for years, and as recent news reports have confirmed, the kosher meat industry has engaged in unjust practices against its workers. Just as rabbis in New York in the early twentieth century pronounced the matzot in Jewish factories treif because it had the blood of the hands of the underpaid and ill-treated women who made it in it, so contemporary rabbis are arguing that the unjust treatment of human beings in kosher meat plants renders the meat unfit for consumption. They have formed the hechsher tzedek project to ensure that the foods Jews eat are not only ritually kosher but ethically kosher as well. For more information, read Rethinking Kashrut: An Interview with Rabbi Morris Allen.

In these last days of the month of turning and during the Days of Awe that end with a complete fast, let us think about tzedakah and the food we bless on our tables everyday. As the prophets continually remind us, ritual does not displace ethics; the two nourish each other. The haftarah for Yom Kippur, Isaiah 57-58, puts it bluntly:

6 No, this is the fast I desire:

To unlock the fetters of wickedness,

And untie the cords of the yoke

To let the oppressed go free;

To break off every yoke.

7 It is to share your bread with the hungry,

And to take the wretched poor into your home;

When you see the naked, to clothe him,

And not to ignore your own kin.

Whether eating a Rosh HaShanah feast, giving tzedakah to avert the evil decree, or fasting on Yom Kippur, it is justice, tzedek, we are to pursue, not a false sense of piety that raises us above and beyond our fellow creatures. The test of true piety is this: does it bear fruit in acts of righteousness and lovingkindness?

Tzedakah and Supersition--Elul 23

2010-09-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

To make teshuvah, to turn to the One, in part is to become whole, to integrate ourselves as the image of the One. One goal in this is to bring our inner lives in harmony with our outer actions. This is why we can never be satisifed with sounding the shofar; we must hear the shofar and let it wake up our hearts. This is also why we can never be satisfied with giving tzedakah in any cursory or calculating way. Giving tzedakah during the Days of Awe does not pay our debt of sins or bribe the Judge to look the other way or lessen our sentence. How ridiculous! we might say. Who thinks that? Yet we sometimes act as if this were true--as if giving tzedakah in multiples of 18 will ensure a good year. Yes, pray U'netaneh Tokef, acknowledging it is God who decides who will live and who will die, who and who will suffer in the coming year, but--just to make sure--give tzedakah. This is superstition and it is incompatible with monotheism.

When we give tzedakah, just as when we perform any mitzvah or act of chesed, we are to act without hope or thought of reward, in this world or the world to come. We give tzedakah, we "do justice," because this is how those called to walk humbly with God live. Giving freely means giving generously; it also means giving up all expectation of recognition, reward, or benefit.

Tzedakah and Charity: A False Choice--Elul 22

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To give tzedakah (money) to or do tzedakah (acts of righteousness) for those in need is commonly distinguished from charity, which comes from the Latin word caritas, love. Charity, it is often argued, is something a person chooses to do because she or he feels kind or loving or compassionate toward those in need. In contrast, tzedakah, it is argued, is an obligation to act toward another in justice, separate from any feeling one might have or not have toward the other; it is not dependent on pity, empathy, compassion, kindess, love, or any feeling.

This is a false choice. Certainly, if one if offered the choice between having a fleeting feeling for a homeless person but doing nothing about it and giving a homeless person food or money even though one feels no sympathy for them it is better to give without feeling. We keep repeating this choice as if it we a true one because of the long history of the argument between Judaism and Christianity. We each want to claim our turf and announce that we got it right.

But Jews have never argued that it is best to give without love or chesed. What madness would this be? And Christians do not encourage people to feel without acting in love. Caritas is often spoken of as a law of Christ, and this law entails feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping those in need, tithing. For both, Jews and Christians, the goal is to bring our actions of justice toward others, especially those in need, in harmony with deepest hearts. No matter where we start and in what direction we are moving, from actions to feeling, or conviction to action, we are all on the way to the same wholeness.

So when you think "tzedakah," don't think, "not charity" or "better than charity." Think "God has shown you, O Earth Creature, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

Repentance = Prayer and Tzedakah--Elul 21

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There is another reason why tzedakah is singled out to represent the mitzvot that bear witness to a life lived turnged and turning to the One. Repentance as turning involves the two-fold action of praying and doing justice. When we turn from our false ego to the Holy One, we turn with our inner selves and our outer selves. We turn in the deep center of our hearts directly to the One Who Calls Us, communing with the One, and we turn in and with our actions to the image of the One in the other, creating the beloved community of the One in our world.

Prayer without justice is escapism, hypocrisy, worse.
Justice without prayer is possible, but it lacks the sweetness it has when it is the fruit of prayer.

R. Eleazar would first give a copper to a poor man, and then pray, explaining: It is said, "Through charity I shll behold They face" (Psalm 17:15). Bava Batra 10a.

Teshuvah is prayer and tzedakah vitalizing each other, communing with God, communing with the other, for one cannot separate God and the world.

But repentance, prayer, and tzedakah...--Elul 20

2010-08-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

"But teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah can avert the evil decree."

Tzedakah is an obligation. Tzedakah comes from the word for justice or righteousness, tzedek, as in “Justice, justice [tzedek] you shall pursue.” (Deuteronomy 16:20) Fundamentally, tzedakah means doing acts of justice or righteousness. And this doing, as the rabbis were well aware of in our economically unjust world, entails giving money to those in need. "Jews are to give at least 10 percent of their annual net income to tzedakah." (Maimonides, Mishnah Torah, “Laws Concerning Gifts for the Poor,” 7:5)

Here's a question: Why, out of all the other obligations that could have been listed with teshuvah and tefillah, is tzedakah singled out during the Days of Awe, the Days of Turning?

Tzedakah is not an addition to the life of faith. It is not just another obligation. It is the heart of the way of life we call Judaism. Without tzedakah there is no Judaism and no turning to the Way of Life. The rabbis teach: “Tzedakah is equal to all the other commandments combined.” (Talmud, Bava Bathra 9b).

When we say "tzedakah" in this threefold litany, therefore, we are using shorthand: We mean following the teaching of the Torah, the Way of Life. Giving to those in need is not singled out from the other mitzvot; rather, it is the part that stands for the whole--to act as the image of God, reflecting God's deeds of compassion for the poor, feeding, sheltering, protecting, and defending those who are most vulnerable among us.

Beyond Formal and Spontaneous Prayer, Words and Silence: "I Am Prayer"--Elul 19

2010-08-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

This is what Rabbi Bunam said concerning the verse in the psalm: "And I am prayer."
"It is as if a poor man, who has not eaten in three days and whose clothes are in rags, should appear before the king. Is there any need for him to say what he wants? That is how David faced God--he was the prayer."
(Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim II: 253)

Siddur Prayer--Elul 18

2010-08-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

Whenever I open a siddur or a machzor, I am amazed at the beauty and wisdom of the prayers in the litrugy. I'm a writer and a theologian, which means that the poetry of language and the adequacy of our language to the complex reality we call God are both important. Yes, I'm annoyed by the unrelentingly masculine language for God that we still see far too much of in print and hear too much of from the bimah. But this aside, time and time again I am overwhelmed by the beauty and deep of the truth prayers in the liturgy.

Take Avinu Malkeinu. This phrase is the perfect paradox of what is traditionally called, immanence and transcendence, or love and awe, or the One Who Dwells Among Us and the One Who Surpasses All. Like all Jewish prayer, this phrase does not ask us to choose between our two ways of experiencing the One; it invites us to experience the paradox of the One who exists beyond all our reason and reckoning. To me this is refreshing in an age where many translations and prayerbooks have swung to the side of immanent language for God in an attempt to make God more meaningful and accessible, or in an attempt to combat the imperialistic and two-dimensional transcendence of many fundamentalists.

Take the recurring metaphor of God as Judge coupled with God as the Father of Mercy. Again, instead of handing us a God we are comfortable with, a God who is all sweetness and light, the prayers forge these two into a single reality: righteousness and mercy. No cheap grace here.

Take the poem/song/prayer Labrit habet. Its superabundance of metaphors for God and humankind in relation to God invites all to enter, no matter what their experience, and it calls attention to the many faces of God that we encounter.

Take the Al Chet, a work of theological genius. Jews are fond of claiming that we don't teach the doctrine of Original Sin, but this exhaustive catalogue of sins--sins of omission and commission, internal and external sins, sins of thought, word, and deed, individual and social sins--shows the seriousness with which take the yetzer hara, the inclination to evil in all human beings, without exception. We are not afraid to confess the incredible depth and scope of our propensity to harm others, ourselves, and the One. We do not minimize the damage we cause. We do not avoid responsibility for the ills we cause. We do not make light of how difficult it is to repair the brokenness we bring into the world. We look unblinkingly into the heart of darkness that we may turn, now, wholeheartedly, to the light.

I love the liturgy for the Days of Awe. Certainly one can pick it apart and find something jarring to our cultural or personal sensibility; but word for word, prayer for prayer, page for page, it speaks to the depth and complexity of hearts turning toward the One.

Spontaneous Prayer--Elul 17

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Formal, public prayer took hold in Judaism after the destruction of the second temple in 70 C.E., when the rabbis substituted prayer for the sacrifices in the temple. It was never intended to drive out spontaneous prayer of the heart. The rabbis were clear that Channah, the woman praying so hard for a child on the temple steps that the priest thought her drunk, is the model for prayer. Moshe's stuttered prayer for his sister Miriam when she is stricken with leprosy is another model: "God, please, heal, please, her."

Since the days of the Torah, spontaneous and personal prayer has surfaced periodically, testifying to its centrality. Through the ages, Jewish women, who were not obligated to fulfill time-bound mitzvot, wrote techinot, prayers from their hearts that spoke to their needs, just as Channah had done. Their beautiful prayers range from supplicating God for a child to petitioning for safety for their family to thanksgiving and praise. Here is one techinah written for Rosh Chodesh Elul by Sarah bat Tovim:

With lovingkindness and great mercy, I entreat You to do with me; accept my petition....I pray that You may accept my tears as You did those of the angels who wept when Abraham, our father, bound his dear son; but the tears of the angels fell on Abraham's knife, and he could not slay Isaac [Genesis 22]. So may my tears before You prevent me, my husband, my children, and good friends from being taken from this world....'All gates are closed, but the gate of tears is not closed.' Merciful Father, accept my tears....wash away our sins with the tears and look on us, with mercy, rather than with justice. Amen.

And this one for the Days of Awe:

May the four matriarchs' merit, the three patriarchs' merit, and the merit of Moses and Aaron be present for us at judgment....We beg our mother Sarah pray for us at the hour of judgment, that we may go free....Have mercy, our mother, on us your children, and pray for our children, that they are not separated from us. You know the bitterness of a child taken from its mother, as you grieved when Isaac was taken from you. Pray now, at the blowing of the shofar of the ram, so God may remember Isaac's merit who let himself be bound as a sacrifice. Ask for mercy on our behalf.

I beg mother Rebecca to pray for her children and that our father and mother be not separated from us. You know how strongly you long for a father and mother, as you wept greatly when you were taken from your father and mother to your husband Isaac.

(Written Out of History: Our Jewish Foremothers, ed. Sondra Henry and Emily Taitz, pp. 193-194)

The women who spoke techinot were not inhibited by the formal prayers of the tradition. They had the courage to commune intimately with their Merciful Father, unafraid to speak of their daily lives and specific needs. They, too, are a model for prayer today.

In our day, though, formal prayer seems to have eclipsed spontaneous prayer. Many of us have lost the art of praying directly from the heart. We seem content or cowed, imprisoned or bored or worn out by our formal prayers. We're no longer agile enough to make the leap to personal prayer at the end of the Amidah. We are amazed when we hear our Christian friends and relatives pray spontaneously around a hospital bed or in a time of fear and crisis. We are out of practice.

Elul and the Days of Awe are the perfect time to practice spontaneous prayer and claim it once again for our lives. The formal prayers are not intended to be a barrier to personal and spontaneous prayer, or a substitute for it, but a guide, a path deeper into our heart, an opening in the hard clay of our hearts where our personal words and silences can flower into teshuvah.

Prayer as Resistance and Rebellion—Elul 16

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Even solitary prayer takes two:
one to sway back and forth
and the one who doesn’t move is God.
But when my father prayed, he would stand in his place,
erect, motionless, and force God
to sway like a reed and pray to him.

Yehudah Amichai, “Gods Change, Prayers Are Here to Stay,” in Open, Closed, Open
When most people think of prayer, they think of a certain kind of prayer: petitionary prayer in which one asks God for something one does not have. But prayer takes as many forms as there are persons communing.
One form that Amichai evokes so beautifully in the image of his father praying is that of prayer as resistance. Similarly, Isaac Bashevis Singer, in his Afterword to the novel “The Penitent,” speaks of prayer as rebellion. Other post-Holocaust thinkers have come to similar conclusions, like Eli Wiesel who speaks of the Jews’ ongoing argument with God. To resist, to rebel, to argue means that one is actively engaged in a relationship with that Presence one can neither control nor comprehend.
Is this form of prayer appropriate for the Days of Awe? Don’t we confess, over and over again, as one of our many sins, that “we rebel”?
Let me ask you this: If you had a son, a daughter, a partner, a friend with whom you had a misunderstanding or from whom you had grown distant, would you rather they avoid you, keep hostile silence against you, be indifferent to you, or that they start an argument with you and pour out their heart full of grievance and anger in your presence?
Why do we think that we, human beings, need to protect God’s honor and tell others how to commune with God. When the Torah was revealed at Sinai, every one of the 600,000 heard God speaking in a voice unique to them. Theologians like to speak of this as “God’s accommodating” to our limits and limitations in order to pursue a relationship with us. Surely that God, who is also the Womb of Mercy, the Father of Compassion, is not offended by the sputterings and spittings of troubled hearts or frightened by the anger or even hatred some feel. Surely the One Who Surpasses All , Encompasses All, and Dwells Among Us welcomes all prayer, all true communing, in all voices, in all language, in all tones, when they fly from a true heart.

Prayer as Thanksgiving--Elul 15

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What was the sin of Adam and Hava in Gan Eden? That they disobeyed the Lord's command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? That they lied, denying what they had done and blaming another?
That they overstepped the boundaries set for them and rebelled? That they let their desires run away with them? All these answers have been offered through the ages, by Jewish and Christian theologians alike.

Here is an interpretation that I find evocative: the root of Adam and Hava's alienation from God, which sprouted into their lies, rebellion, and unchecked desire, was their lack of trust in and gratitude to the Giver of Every Good Gift.
They forgot to give thanks for the beauty and bounty and love and wholeness that had been so generously given them.

Prayer as thanksgiving can train our hearts and eyes to see our lives in new ways. It can help us become aware of the gifts that are already ours and help us develop what one of my friends calls "an attitude of gratitude." Gratitude is one of the core values of Jewish life. It is exemplified for me in these words of the Hasidic master Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov, whose very life had become a constant prayer of thanksgiving: "My life was blessed, because I never knew I needed anything until I had it." (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim I: 156)

During Elul and the Days of Awe, try praying daily in the form of a litany of thanksgiving, silent or spoken, for the many gifts that sustain and enrich your life. It can transform your life.

Prayer as Praise--Elul 14

2010-08-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

The poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol (b. 1021 C.E.) gives us some of the most beautiful examples of prayer as praise in his long poem The Kingly Crown. Here are a few excerpts especially suited to Elul and the Days of Awe:

Thine is the name that is hidden from the wise, the strength that sustains the world over the void, the power to bring to light all that is hidden.
Thine is the mercy that rules over Thy creatures and the goodness preserved for those who fear Thee.

Thou art One, but not as the One that is counted or owned, for number and change cannot reach Thee, nor attribute, nor form.
Thou art One, but my mind is too feeble to set Thee a law or a limit, and therefore I say: "I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue."
Thou art One, and Thou art exalted high above abasement and falling--not like a man, who falls when he is alone.

Thou livest, and whoever attains Thy secret will find eternal delight--and "eat, and live forever.

Who can requite Thy bounties, when Thou gavest the soul to the body, to give it life, to teach and show it the path of life, to save it from evil?
Thou didst form man out of clay, and breathe into him a soul and set on him a spirit of wisdom, by which he is distinguished from a beast, and rises to a great height.
Thou didst set him enclosed in Thy world, while Thou from outside dost understand his deeds and see him,
And whatever he hides from Thee--from inside and from outside
Thou dost observe.

(Joseph Dan, The Heart and the Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experience, pp. 83ff.)

How Do We Commune? Let Me Count the Ways--Elul 13

2010-08-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

We are accustomed to thinking of prayer primarily as petitions, bakashot. We need food, shelter, mercy, forgiveness, a softened heart, freedom from oppression, anything, and we ask the father of compassion, the womb of mercy, the fountain of blessing, the well of light, the strong deliverer to provide it for us. There is nothing wrong or lesser about this form of praying. It is an expression of our absolute dependence upon and trust in the One who is not Enemy but Friend. And during the Days of Awe, from Erev Rosh HaShanah and the Rosh HaShanah seder through Neilah, both publicly in the synagogue and privately in our homes and hearts, we rightly practice this form of prayer vigorously.

During this month of teshuvah, reflect on what it is you truly need, what it is you truly desire, and whom you are addressing--then frame your heart's petitions accordingly.

But petition is not the whole of prayer. To take it for the whole would be like remaining a child who never grows beyond an awareness of his needs or her desires and asking for them to be satisfied by the benevolent parent. Communing with the One Who Surpasses and Encompasses All is for mature spirits, those who are able to pray in the form of praise and the form of thanksgiving as well. And these forms of prayer, too, we practice vigorously during the Days of Awe, at home and in the synagogue.

But Repentance, Prayer, and Tzedakah…—Elul 12

2010-08-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

“But repentance, prayer, and tzedakah can avert the evil decree.” What do we mean when we repeat this phrase during the month of turning toward the One? First, these three, repentance, prayer, and tzedakah are not separate actions. It is not that we make teshuvah and then, or also, pray and give tzedakah. Prayer and tzedakah, are part of the larger process of repentance or turning. Teshuvah is a process that involves the transformation of the whole person and thus is necessarily multi-dimensional. It includes actions toward the Wholly Other and actions toward others; it is not an interior process of feeling that begins and ends with the individual. Prayer is primarily (not exclusively) communion or an active relating to God. Tzedakah is communion or active relating in righteousness to others.

We’ve talked about prayer as “being present to the Presence” and “paying attention” to the fullness and depth of the reality that surrounds us at every moment. We’ve also talked about the aloneness of the life of the spirit. It’s important not to interpret this in an individualistic, privatistic, or passive way, however; for even at its most still, prayer is an action in relation to the world, and even at its most solitary and private, prayer is—to use that old-fashioned word—communion. It’s common to hear people say, “When we pray, we talk to God; when we read Torah, God talks to us.” But prayer is not a monologue. When we pray we are doing what all meditators do—trying to commune with a reality larger than our puny and deluded selves. We are trying to enlarge our spirits to touch, to taste, to see, to hear, to smell—you can use whatever language you want—a reality or way of being beyond our ordinary experience, a reality so overwhelming in both vastness and intimacy, distance and nearness, that everything else is thrown into a new perspective, a reality so far surpassing our reason and imagination that our very existence is called into question.

To be called into question—that is why we pray, why we enter that space of communing. And that is why we need to pray, in whatever form is native to our temperament and circumstances.

When we pray in this way, not talking to God or at God, but communing with that Other who calls us into question, we are transformed, we become new. That is one way that prayer can alter the world by “averting the evil decree.” By praying during Elul we are not necessarily petitioning God to alter or magically erase a judgment against ourselves as individuals; we are seeking to become whole, to live lives of righteousness and mercy in all our relationships and actions in the world. That changes not only ourselves, but the world, and thus can help avert the evil decree of injustice that so many innocent people today suffer under. For when we turn at the root of our being from evil to good, we act in the world for good, containing and combating evil, transforming the evil we encounter into good, and creating new opportunities and structures for the good.

Don’t underestimate the power of prayer, the action of communing, enlarging one’s spirit beyond the narrow strictures of the self, opening oneself to radical transformation, in the work of social justice in the world.

The Third Failure;: Failure to Realize the Good and Combat Injustice—Elul 11

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For Kaplan, the third failure that repentance helps us surmount is “the failure to realize to the fullest degree the potentialities inherent in our natures and in the situations in which we find ourselves.” (The Meaning of God, 184) We all have “latent powers for good” that we don’t call upon unless there is a crisis. We’re all too familiar with this. We quarrel, we bicker, we carp, we criticize—and then when we need to pull together or we need to be creative, we find we can actually do so and enjoy doing so! Why didn’t we do it before?
Kaplan stresses the social dimension of this as well. We as individuals get fixated in old patterns, but so do social institutions. And when they do, when they no longer respond to new situations in a life-giving way, they obstruct the ability of individuals to realize their creative potential for good; they actually obscure social evils and tempt individuals to accept certain inevitable conditions, like poverty or discrimination, instead of combating them. He dares to call this “social sin.” “Ethical religion” he concludes, “is incompatible with an attitude of submission to social institutions that work injustice.” (Ibid., 186)
One of the sins we confess during the liturgy of the Days of Awe speaks to this: “We are complacent.” Kaplan puts it this way: “To accept complacently ways of life that hinder us from realizing the best that is in us, or even to resign ourselves to the assumptions that they are intrinsically and unalterable, is sin, and calls for repentance. Such repentance must express itself in determined and persistent effort to reconstruct our social institutions with a view to human welfare as realized in the synthesis of maximum individuality and maximum cooperation.” (Ibid.)
As our ancestors counseled, we don’t have to do all the work ourselves or finish the work we have begun. But we cannot stand idly by. We cannot remain complacent. We must choose where we can combat injustice in our lives and begin to realize, now, the good among us.

The Second Failure: Failure to Grow in Character—Elul 10

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For Kaplan, the second type of failure that calls for repentance is “the failure to keep on growing in character.” (The Meaning of God, 183) This goes to the root of what we confess in the Vidui, We abuse, we betray…. We built up behavior patterns based on our experience, Kaplan says. But then, the conditions of our life change and impose new responsibilities on us that our experience and patterns did not prepare us for. Instead of responding to the new conditions and obligations, we keep repeating our old patterns of behavior. Whether we call it “fixation,” rigidity, laziness, or lack of imagination, we all get caught in this. To prevent it, we need to stay aware.

Kaplan brings the example of a child, for whom obedience and deference to parents is a virtue. But when the child matures, the virtue of initiative is important: He or she must take responsibility for his own career and mate choices. One might also mention the need for parents to transform from parent to guide as their children mature, to practice tzimtzum (contraction of the fullness of their being), instead of fixating on a certain role in relation to their children. The transition from single to married life entails a similar transformation of character, as do all major changes in economic status, health, and innumerable other aspects of our lives.

His conclusion: “Whenever we recognize the inadequacy of our acquired personality to do justice to the demands of a new situation, and we try to overcome the obstacles that prevent out lives from manifesting the divine, we are practicing repentance, or the return to God.” (Ibid., 184)

Where and how have we have gotten stuck in an old behavior pattern that is no longer life-giving? In what relationships have we allowed our old selves to become “fixated” instead of opening our hearts to new (and sometimes awkward and painful) growth?

The First Failure: Failure to Integrate--Elul 9

2010-08-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Let’s not worry about the word “failure.” Failure (or whatever synonym you choose to use for it: sin, alienation, missing the mark) is an inevitable part of the process of becoming truly human. As Samuel Beckett says: “Fail. Fail again. Fail better.” As Mordecai Kaplan reminds us, though failure is inevitable, repentance is always a possibility.

The first failure is “the failure to integrate our impulses, habits, social activities and institutions in harmony with those ethical ideals that make God manifest in the world.” (The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, 182) If we’re not integrated, we don’t trust ourselves and we become frustrated. Insecurity and frustration lead to many acts of unkindness, often hidden to ourselves.

When we work to integrate ourselves, all of who we are, internally and externally, individually and socially, we are acting as the image of God, whose character we experience as integrated. This is one of the meanings of affirming in the Sh’ma that “The Lord our God is One.”

Kaplan draws this conclusion: “If human character is to reflect the divine, it must be integrated and self-consistent. This involves a working synthesis of individual self-expression and social cooperation. Such a synthesis is, therefore, evidence of atonement won and the fruit of effective repentance.” (182-183). One might say this is another way to interpret Hillel’s famous counsel: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14)

Some of us are very integrated individually. Some of us are very integrated socially. How are we doing on the synthesis in our lives?

Teshuvah as a Natural Social Process--Elul 8

2010-08-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

Mordecai Kaplan spent his life formulating the “organic and dynamic view of Jewish life,” because he believed Judaism had fallen into “maladjustment” and an “unhealthy state” in the modern world. (Preface to The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion) His revolutionary approach was to look at the religion of Judaism as a “natural social process which arises from man’s intrinsic need of salvation or self-fulfillment” (Ibid.) This approach yielded many insights that complement the study of traditional texts and bring their truths into the experience of contemporary men and women. His insights on the regeneration of human nature, on sin and repentance, are one example. By focusing on the natural, social, and process dimensions of repentance, he uncovers aspects of it that are often neglected and that can aid spiritual growth and creativity. As he argues, “The sacramental efficacy of the ritual of atonement is nil, and its symbolic power of no value, unless the sense of sin leads us to seek the reconstruction of our personalities in accordance with highest ethical possibilities of human nature; only then can we experience teshuvah, the sense of returning to God.” (187).

Teshuvah is natural. Kaplan defines repentance or teshuvah as “part of the normal functioning of our personality in its effort at progressive self-realization.” (Ibid., 182) It’s not an arcane or particularistic religious habit, but an essential part of all human life. We focus on this process during the Days of Awe, but we recognize that it is part of our normal daily lives, as evidenced in our daily prayer, “Cause us to return, O our Father…”

Teshuvah is social. Teshuvah, whether toward God, the natural world, or other human beings, is by definition a social act. It is not a matter of an individual’s self-contained purity or impurity or state of imperfection. It involves the quality of one’s relationships with others. We do not seek perfection within ourselves; we live toward greater wholeness (shalom) in the full context of our lives.

Teshuvah is a process. Repentance is not a single once-for-all act or a series of discrete acts. It is the very movement of life. We are always either moving toward greater realization and fulfillment or we are stagnating. Life or death: the choice is ours. But we must choose, at every moment.

So what does repentance look like in our daily lives? Kaplan outlines “three types of failure which repentance should aim to remedy.” (Ibid.) We’ll reflect on each of these three failures (yes, failures) in the coming days of Elul.

Why the Name “Jews”? Elul 7

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We Jews have many names for ourselves.

We are called b’nei Yisrael, the children of Yisrael, the one who wrestles with God.

We are called rachmanim b’nei rachmanim, the merciful ones who are the children of the merciful ones.

We are also called Jews, from Yehudim. Historically and politically this makes sense, since the tribe of Yehudah gave its name to the Kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom that emerged after the tragic fall of King Saul. which in turn gave the name to the land of Judea. But what of the spiritual meaning of this name? Do we want to claim this, too, as we have claimed the spiritual ancestry embedded in the names God-wrestlers and rachmanim?

There is good reason to claim that we are Yehudim during Elul and at all times of the year because Yehudah is the first recorded person to make full teshuvah to another human being.

As the liturgy continually reminds us, Yom Kippur atones for our sins with God, not with people. It does not atone for the ways we have harmed or alienated our family, friends, community, and natural environment. For those acts, we must make teshuvah, and it is Yehuda who guides the way.

It’s a great story, and Yehudah is no hero in the ordinary sense. Nor is he an anti-hero. He is a hero of the spirit.

As Genesis 38 tells it: Yehudah married off his son Er to Tamar. Er died. Following the law of levirate marriage, Yehudah gave her to his son Onan, to bear sons in Er’s name. We know what Onan did. Onan died—or God killed him as punishment. Yehudah, fearful that his daughter-in-law is an incarnation of what we now call the vagina dentata, refuses to let her marry any more of his sons. But he lies to her (and perhaps to himself, intending to marry her to his next son, just not yet), telling her to be patient and wait and he will do the right thing. He doesn’t. And he doesn’t. And he doesn’t. So Tamar takes it upon herself to set the law of God in motion. She dresses up as a sacred prostitute and stands along the road her father-in-law is traveling. He sleeps with her. She cleverly asks for a token. He tries to fob her off with the promise of a lamb. She demands his seal and cord, and his staff in addition. To his credit, Yehudah sends her the promised lamb. He makes good on his obligation to her, though it would have been easy to let it slide. He is a man of his word, if not master of his desires.

When his lackeys report that his daughter-in-law has “played the harlot” and gotten pregnant, he says, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.” He is a man of justice. Sin must be punished. Tamar whips out his seal and cord, saying, “I am with child by the man to whom these belong.”

Yehudah’s response is miraculous. He could have denounced her as a liar. Who would have challenged him if he had had her burned, a woman already responsible for the death of two good men? a woman without a man, a widow, less than nothing? He could have equivocated, masked his responsibility by invoking general principles, or deflected the attention of himself back to her by focusing on the act of her harlotry. Instead, this is his response: “She is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he was not intimate with her again (v. 26).

I love Yehudah for this. What he does in response to her confrontation is a blueprint for true teshuvah in relation to others. He does not deny or minimize the harm he has done. He accepts full responsibility for the action of his that has brought about this state of affairs. He does not blame her, he doesn’t even mention what she has done that is wrong. He is convicted of his own sin, shoulders his own burden of responsibility. He sets himself and her free in this moment. But his teshuvah, his turning from evil to good, from alienation to love, is not yet complete. Convictions alone, realizations alone, and words alone do not make for teshuvah. These must bear fruit in changed action, sustained over the rest of one’s life. And this is what we are given to understand by the narrator’s comment, “And he was not intimate with her again.” He now acts as a true father-in-law, he defends and protects his dead sons’ wife, the woman he has wronged in so many ways. He does not use her for his own purposes, as he might easily have done. He acts toward her in justice. He cannot undo what he has done. She will bear sons to him. But he transforms death and destruction to life and justice.

This is the courage and creativity of teshuvah. This is what it means to be a Jew.

This is the territory of teshuvah--messy, downright ugly, lurid, mean, dangerous, and miraculous.

Teshuvah Trumps Despair Elul 6

2010-08-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

Cain murdered his brother. He could not have committed a more heinous deed during those days on earth. Yet he did not despair. Instead, he clung to God, in his own way, and made teshuvah.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav said:

Even if a person has fallen to a low level, he must strengthen himself and not despair at all. God’s greatness is much higher than the Torah: on God’s level, everything can be rectified, for repentance is even higher than the Torah.”

   I asked him “But how does one reach this?”

   He answered, “One can reach this as long as one does not despair from crying out and praying. One should remain untiring until one finally succeeds.”

   This is because the essence of repentance is crying out to God.   (Sichot Haran, no. 3; in The Chambers of the Palace, ed. Y. David Shulman, 31)

Perhaps this is what Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans, when he wrote, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

There is a way back, always, from however far away we have slipped, from whatever depths we have become mired in.

Cain: The Father of Teshuvah? Elul 5

2010-08-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Cain is much maligned. We tell the story of how he kills his own brother in a fit of jealous rage at God. How God curses him to till the earth in vain and wander the land as an exile. How God marks him forever with a sign so that all will recognize him as the sinner he is and go on living as a cautionary tale to others: This is what you turn into when you do evil. Whatever the mark of Cain looked like (some say it was a dog, others a horn protruding from his forehead, others writing on his forehead), it has come to symbolize the evil human beings are capable of.

But what about that mark? God gives it to Cain for protection. Anyone who lays a hand on Cain will suffer seven-fold violence. Why is it that God wants Cain alive? What is Cain’s life a sign and reminder of to human beings?

One answer is suggested by comparing Cain’s encounter with God after his sin of murder with his father Adam’s encounter with God after his sin of failing to trust God in the Garden of Eden and eating a forbidden fruit. When God confronts Adam, who is hiding, Adam lies, and he blames God. “I didn’t do it,” he says. “The woman You gave me did it.” God’s response: God exiles Adam and Hava from the Garden of Eden and punishes them with hard labor and birth pangs. When God confronts Cain, that vile son guilty of fratricide, he, too lies. “I don’t know where my brother is,” he says. “Why should I? I’m not responsible for him.” The implication here is that God is his brother’s keeper, so Cain, too blames God. God’s response: He punishes Cain with fruitless labor and exiles him everywhere on earth. So far, not much difference. What happens next changes everything—for Cain, for God, and for all who follow.

Cain dares to respond to God, to stay in the relationship with God. “My punishment is too great for me to bear! Since you have banished me this day from the soil, and I must avoid your presence and become a restless wanderer on earth—anyone who meets me may kill me!” (Gen. 4: 13-14) Cain is the first in a long illustrious line of those who argue with God for mercy, who dare to negotiate terms of punishment. And he is the first to mourn the fact that he has alienated himself from the Presence and must suffer the pain of that alienation every day of his life. Remarkably, God responds to him not with more curses for his cheekiness and whining, but with a mark of protection and a promise of mercy: “If anyone kills Cain, sevenfold vengeance will be taken on that person!” The next thing the Genesis account tells us is that Cain went out from the Presence of the Lord and settled in Nod, built a city, and raised his family.

A midrash in Genesis Rabbah (22:12) fills in the gap between leaving the Presence and settling into his life as the man who murdered his brother this way:

“Cain went out from the Presence of the Lord” (Gen. 4:16). Cain [did not speak deceitfully, but] went forth as one glad in heart. Adam met him and asked, “What was done in punishment of you?” Cain replied, “I vowed repentance and was granted clemency.” Upon hearing this, Adam, in self-reproach, began to stroke himself in the face as he said, “Such is the power of repentance, and I knew it not.” Then and there Adam exclaimed, “It is a good thing to confess to the Lord.” (Ps. 92:2)

Did Cain “vow repentance”? Perhaps all that was necessary was for him to stay close to the presence of the Lord, to trust God enough to keep talking to him. Even as he bore the pain and shame of his incomparably evil deed and God’s anger, Cain trusted--in his own puny way-- in the power of God’s compassion, and thus in the possibility of return, teshuvah. That is all it takes to awaken new life and set teshuvah in motion.

Adam or Cain? Whose way of responding to sin is a better guide along our way?

The Beginning of the Way of Turning Elul 4

2010-08-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

In Genesis Rabbah, a medieval collection of midrashim, R. Ahavah son of R. Ze’era makes a curious claim about teshuvah, the way of turning: God created teshuvah before creating the world, including the Earth Creature, ha-Adam. [1:4]

This is compassion: to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, care for the orphan and widow, release the fettered, comfort the afflicted, make ready the healing before the wound has been suffered.

What else does R. Ahavah’s order suggest?

The Power of Repentance, Prayer, and Tzedakah Elul 3

2010-08-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

On Yom Kippur, the congregation and chazzan repeat this teaching of the ancient rabbis: “Repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil of the decree” (Teshuva, tephilah, and tzedakah maverin et Roeh HaGezerah). This is the mantra we live by in Elul as well. Let’s set aside for a moment the question of that image of an “evil decree” and consider instead the power of these three actions: teshuvah, prayer or tephilah, and charity or tzedakah. Each of these actions has the power to transform evil into good. There is no greater awe-inspiring human power than this, to turn that which was destructive into something lifegiving. Recovering alcoholics and addicts, those who have been betrayed by loved ones, survivors of war, genocide, and domestic violence, and many others know the truth of this in their lives. To stop evil is praiseworthy. To do good is praiseworthy. To transform evil into good, as Yosef did with the ten brothers who sold him into slavery—that is even greater.

What unites these three ways of transformation is that each is a way of acting in the world. They are not words or feelings or intentions or hopes that reside within an individual. They are actions directed to an other; they are relational. This is the foundation for understanding their power and how they work, in relation to ourselves, others, and God.

Let’s consider these three ways of turning evil into good one by one, starting with teshuvah.

Who are we? Forgetting and Remembering Elul 2

2010-08-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

To turn or return, we need to remember where we have been. This is one reason why we begin the ten days of repentance with Rosh ha-Shanah, the creation of life and root of all being, instead of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

S. Y. Agnon (Days of Awe, 23-34) retells this parable about remembering from a midrash in Darchei Hayyim, The Ways of Life.

Once a king’s son sinned against his father, the king. His father expelled him from his house. As long as he was near his home, people knew he was a king’s son, and befriended him, and gave him food and drink. But as the days passed, and he got farther into his father’s realm, no one knew him, and he had nothing to eat. He began to sell his clothing to buy food. When he and nothing left to sell, he hired out as a shepherd. After he had hired out as a shepherd he was no longer in need, because he needed nothing.He would sit on the hills, tending his flocks and singing like the other shepherds, and he forgot that he was a king’s son and all the pleasures that he had been used to.

     Now it is the custom of the shepherds to make themselves small roofs of straw to keep out the rain. The king’s son wanted to make such a roof, too,but he could not afford one, so he was deeply grieved.

     Once the king happened to be passing through that province. Now it was a common practice in that kingdom for those who had petitions to the king to write out their petitions and throw them into the king’s chariot. The king’s son same with the other petitioners, and threw his note, in which he petitioned for a small straw roof such as shepherds have. The king recognized his son’s handwriting, and was saddened to think how low his son had fallen that he had forgotten that he was a king’s son, and felt only the lack of a straw roof.

     Our master ended: “It is the same way with our people: They have already forgotten that they are each of them king’s sons [or daughters], and what they really lack. One cries he is in in want of a living, and another cries for children. But the truth, that we lack all the treasures we had of old—that is something they forget to pray for!”

Martin Buber retells a Hasidic version of this parable:

Rabbi Shelomo of Karlin asked: “What is the worst thing the Evil Urge can achieve?”
And he answered: “For a man to forget he is the son [or daughter] of a king.” [Tales of the Hasidim 1: 282]

Let us start by remembering.

Turn, Turn, Turn Elul 1

2010-08-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today the month of Elul begins, the month of repentance or turning, when Jews concentrate their hearts and lives on turning to God. Repentance or teshuvah (from shuv, turn) is good at all times. God stands ready at all times, waiting, longing for us to turn back, turn around, turn toward the way of life. It is we who are not ready. We often need a push, a pinch, or a reminder of who we are and what are lives are. The month of Elul is such a reminder. It puts creative pressure on us by setting a limit of thirty days in which to prepare ourselves, to practice heshbon hanephesh or the examination of our souls, so we can enter the Days of Awe, the ten days of repentance that stretch from Rosh ha-Shanah through Yom Kippur, ready.

Every man must prepare himself thirty days beforehand with Teshuvah and prayer and charity for the day when he will appear in judgment before God, on Rosh ha-Shanah. Then let him give all his heart to the service of God. And those who interpret the Torah metaphorically say, “The initials of the words, Ani Le-dodi Ve-dodi Li (”I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”—Song of Songs 6:3), when read consecutively read Elul. If Israel will long to turn in a complete Teshuvah to their Father who is in heaven, then his longing will go out to them, and he will accept them in Teshuvah. [Mateh Moshe, 1591, by Rabbi Moshe ben Avraham of Przemyśl: in S.Y. Agnon, Days of Awe, 18]

Thirty days of turning. Long enough to meditate on who we are, what we are doing with the life given to us, and what it means to turn, to pray, and do justice. I invite you to meditate with me each day this month.

How to Become a Worm, a Faqr, Not Yourself, Nothing

2010-08-06T13:04:00.001-07:00

It’s a popular sport, it seems, to make fun of the Calvinist view of the human being as a worm. How absurd, we think. Didn’t the Renaissance, which preceded Calvin, turn all this religious drivel on its head and praise the glory of man. Think Pico della Mirandola’s oration “On the Dignity of Man.” Think Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. Calvin and his ilk were nothing but religious reactionaries.

So the popular interpretation goes. Whether we blame Calvin or other religious leaders, we often assume that to be modern, to be progressive, to be scientific we need to move beyond God and glorify, or at least focus on, humankind.

But let’s dig a little deeper. It’s not just Calvin. It’s not just dead theologians from another age than our enlightened one. And it’s not just religious reactionaries who speak of God and of the smallness of humankind in relation to God. To cultivate proper humility among human beings is not to muzzle intellect, art, and science. It is to place humankind in perspective.

Just as the Renaissance was necessary to highlight humankind and the temporal world, now, in our post-Renaissance, post-Enlightenment world, it is necessary to be reminded that humankind and the material world are not all that there is. We need to de-center humankind for many reasons. One, anthropocentrism and human pride have contributed to the damage of our environment. Two, our concern for our selves interferes with our ability to relate to others and is the cause of much suffering.

Maybe it’s time to take another look at what Calvin and other mystics and ordinary people were trying to remind us of.

Yes, John Calvin spoke of human beings as worms before the majesty of God. He also was a Renaissance man and praised the glories of human reason and humankind’s creative accomplishment in the political and artistic realms. What he wanted to remind people of is the danger of making humankind ALL.

The Qu’ran, too, speaks of this when it says, “O, humankind! You are the poor! Allah is plenitude.” (35:15) It is partly for this reason that Sufis became faqrs and faqirahs, ones who are poor, indigent and needy. Their torn and patched cloaks were a reminder of their poverty of self in relation to God. “The work you do,” Jalal al-Din Rumi writes, “yourself not in the midst, that is work done by God—know this for sure.” (Mystical Poems of Rumi, tr. A.J. Arberry, 2:32)

This teaching is not for mystics, but for everyone. It is not for one tradition, but for all.

Jews bow and cover their heads, Christians bow and kneel, Muslims prostrate themselves, and Buddhists bow—these are not the acts of submissive persons; they are reminders of who we are in relation to that which surpasses all our thought and feeling, the circumference we can never reach—small, fragile, ephemeral creatures not fit to be the center or scope of the universe. Pascal saw this while looking at the night sky filled with stars and recorded it in his Pensees, not to demean the human creature, but to place it in the proper perspective. . These gestures are a call to awake from the illusion of our great selfhood and find ourselves in a genuine humility that liberates us to find our true place in the world of nature, humans, and other animals..

Dare “To See with Two Eyes”

2010-08-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

Mystics of all traditions speak of double-seeing, looking at the world from two perspectives simultaneously, from the point of view of the spiritual reality and from the point of view of our limited material reality. Ibn ‘Arabi calls this “to see with two eyes.” It’s not easy. It takes practice to recognize the difference between the ways of seeing, avoid getting stuck in one or other, and walking around seeing from both perspectives. William Blake was an expert at it.

Blake was well-known and often ridiculed for his double-seeing, his visionary experience of the world he shared with other human beings. In the biography The Life of William Blake, Alexander Gilchrist records this story of an encounter Blake had with a woman, as told by Blake himself:

“The other evening” Blake said in his usual quiet way, “I came to a meadow, and at the farther corner of it I saw a fold of lambs. Coming nearer, the ground blushed with flowers; and the wattled cote and its wooly tenants were of an exquisite pastoral beauty. but I looked again, and it proved to be no living flock, but beautiful sculpture.” The lady, thinking this a capital holiday-show for her children, eagerly interposed, “I beg pardon, Mr.. Blake, but may I ask where you saw this?” “Here, madam,” answered Blake, touching his forehead. (pp. 337-338)

Gilchrist points out that Blake was not mad: He not only knew the difference between the reality perceived by most people and the phenomena he saw, he "would candidly confess [his visions] were not literal matters of fact.” (338) He understood these spiritual appearances to come from the faculty of the imagination. Not imagination as we think of it: the invention of empty fantasies or fictions. But imagination as the power of sensing subtler realities, realities, than we usually perceive. Gilchrist notes: “He said the things imagination saw were as much realities as were gross and tangible facts He would tell his artist-friends, ‘You have the same faulty as I (the visionary), only you do not trust or cultivate it. You can see what I do, if you choose.” (339)

Whether we’re artists or not, his counsel is valuable. Don’t get stuck in a particular literalistic view, whether it be a scientific or religious one. Trust and cultivate that power of imagination that expands our view of the universe and connects us more deeply to all.

Emily Dickinson’s “Serve or Set a Force Illegible”

2010-08-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

Emily Dickinson was acquainted with many kinds of loneliness. She also engaged in a lifelong conversation with God, that which she inherited and that which she experienced. I think of her poems—all of them—as hymns in the tradition of the Psalmist. Their meter evokes for me the meter of the Calvinist hymns she grew up with--made new with fresh images, lively juxtapositions of incommensurables that explode into new ways of thinking about God in relation to our world. She was a woman who lived contradiction intensely, sincerely, and gracefully; a woman who understood our experience of God gives rise to our view of God but is always too small, too limited, to be equated with that reality; a woman unafraid to travel to the end of the road where one stands alone—enough reason for me to consider her a mystic. Consider poem #820:

All Circumstances are the Frame
In which His Face is set —
All Latitudes exist for His
Sufficient Continent —
The Light His Action, and the Dark
The Leisure of His Will —
In Him Existence serve or set
A Force illegible.

(#820; p. 398 in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson)

Loneliness: What Do You Do with Yours?

2010-08-02T13:12:00.001-07:00

Solitude and seclusion give life to the spirit. A life seeking and being sought by spirit is, even in the midst of community and action in the world, necessarily a solitary and even lonely life. How else to blunt the power of the many distractions that seem to consume us? We are good at marshalling distinctions: solitude, being alone to the Alone, is not loneliness, we say. Distinctions are helpful. But experience is never as tidy as our intellect would like it to be. Deep meditation and prayer, that profound communion when one is present to the Presence that overwhelms as it embraces, is a kind of lonely experience. One might feel amazingly close, where one truly belongs, and at the same time, amazingly far—from others, from the daily world, from what—we cannot say.

Reflecting on the variety of our experiences of loneliness can be a helpful guide through this inner territory. Howard Thurman, a mystic rooted in the Christian tradition who embraced many traditions in friendship and co-founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, points the way. In The Inward Journey, one of his many books of meditations, he writes about loneliness. His words, written in 1961, seem even more apt for our age, caught up as we are in a social media feeding frenzy.

#96. Your Loneliness
What do you do with your loneliness? One of the massive results of the invasion of privacy so characteristic of our times is the increasing fear of being alone. Loneliness is of many kinds. There is the loneliness of a great bitterness when the pain is so great that any contact with others threatens to open old wounds and to awaken old frenzies. There is the loneliness of the broken heart and the dead friendship when what was full of promise and fulfillment lost its way in a fog of misunderstanding, anxiety, and fear. There is the loneliness of those who have absorbed so much of violence that all hurt has died, leaving only the charred reminder of a lost awareness. There is the loneliness of the shy and the retiring where timidity stands guard against all encounters and the will to relate to others is tilled. There is the loneliness of despair, and the exhaustion of the spirit, leaving no strength to try again, the promise of a the second wind can find no backing. There is the loneliness of death when silently a man listens, one by one, to the closing of all doors, and all that remains is naked life, stripped of everything that shields, protects, and insulates.
But there is loneliness in another key. There is the loneliness of the truth-seeker whose search swings him out beyond all frontiers and all boundaries until there bursts upon his view a fleeting moment of utter awareness and he knows beyond all doubt, all contradictions. There is the loneliness of the moment of integrity when the declaration of the self is demanded and the commitment gives no corner to sham, to pretense, or to lying. There is the loneliness in the moment of creation when the new comes into being, trembles, then steadies until the path takes them out beyond all creeds and all faiths and they know the wholeness of communion and the bliss of finally being understood.
Loneliness is of many kinds. What do you do with yours? (130-131)

In Praise of Seclusion

2010-08-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

The Hasidic masters say: “A person who does not have one hour in each day to herself or himself is not a human being.”

Where have you been?

“God”--That Weasel Word

2010-07-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

William James called “experience” a “weasel word.” The same can be said of the word “God”: It means something different to every individual. Even when we think we’re talking about roughly the same reality when we converse about God, we’re probably still light years away from one another’s experience and understanding of God. Does that mean we should stop talking about God? Or stop using the word “God”?

A cultural and global moratorium on the word “God” might give us the time and silence we need to find our way forward at this moment in history. Since that’s unlikely, maybe we should each observe an individual moratorium on speaking the word “God.” For a limited amount of we would refrain from using the word and meditate, as honestly as we can bear to, on the following questions:

What do you mean when you say “God”?
What do you think most people around you mean when they say “God”?
What do you hope when you use the word “God”?
What do you fear when you use the word “God”?
What word or phrase would you substitute for the word “God.”

We Are Anxious, We Are Afraid, We Want to Fall Back Asleep

2010-07-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

It amazes me how many ways we find to run away from ourselves. The temptations are endless.

What is temptation? Anything that keeps you from becoming who you are, who you were meant to be. Anything.

Some temptations confront us with a clear and urgent choice like the one Moshe put before the fledgling nation: Choose you this day life or death, the difficult freedom of the way of the Teaching or the easy way of the scattered and lost. Emanuel Levinas, in his essay “The Temptation of Temptation” (Nine Talmudic Readings sets before us another like choice like this: Place ontology, the science of being, first, or ethics, the responsibility to the Other that confronts you, first. The temptation of temptations is to choose knowledge, for knowledge sets you at the center of the universe. If your choose obligation, you acknowledge that you stand always already in relation to an Other than has a prior claim on you. That is the way to life.

Some temptations come with the full force of drama, complete with warning lights and sirens and axes falling. That woman or man who promises to be a better match for us than our current partner. That urge to hurt the person we love. The need to push another lower to raise ourselves higher.

But it is the countless, tiny little temptations we face every day without realizing it that worry me today. All the distractions of “normal” life that we allow to crowd our lives and dull our attention. We want to pay attention, be present to the Presence, and what do we do? We watch TV, we exercise harder, we call our friends, we drink wine or beer or smoke, we surf the Web, we frenetically try to keep up and stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter, we read literature meant for consumption, we clean our houses, manage our family’s lives, search out great meals and other pleasures, shop, find new hobbies to “pass the time,” consult the stars and psychics, follow the lives of the gods and demigods we call “celebrities.” None of these is bad in itself. But when we do them unconsciously, repeatedly, they keep us from going deeper. It’s easy to stay on the surface. Nothing is required of us.

We know how alive we feel when we wake up from this stupor and are really present, even for a moment, to another person or the natural world or ourselves. Yet we keep going back to sleep. We keep sipping that sleeping draught so we will not be fully present. St. Paul said it well: “The good that we would we do not; and the evil that we would not, that we do.”

Why, when we know gives us life and what numbs us, do we keep choosing what numbs us? Why do we keep enslaving ourselves to empty habits that drain the blood from our lives? Why do we keep running away from ourselves? Why do we keep hiding? Why are we so frightened of becoming who we are? So afraid to be free? So afraid to be found?

Do We Need God?

2010-07-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Do we need God? This is a question. It is not a rhetorical opening to an argument for or against the existence and necessity of God.

Do we need God? Let’s bracket for a moment the questions of who this “we” is, what “need” means, what “God” means, “need God for what?” and “who wants to know?”

Countless observers of human beings--from all disciplines and traditions--have concluded that part of what it means to be human is to stand in relationship to something greater than ourselves, a reality that goes beyond the corporeal world or the world that appears to us, a reality that is eternal or infinite that we nevertheless sense or participate in. Whether they speak of humankind as homo religiosus, piety as the feeling of the Infinite acting upon you in your finitude (Schleierrmacher) the sacred dimension (Mircea Eliade), the idea of the holy (Rudolph Otto) the alone with the alone (Emily Dickinson), the eternal in man (Max Scheler), the religious experience (William James), the Ultimate Concern (Paul Tillich), or the face of the Other (Levinas), they point to the pervasiveness of this experience. A sweep over the millenia of human history confirms this: human beings in every age, in every culture have developed and continue to develop rituals, texts, and spaces that nurture this relationship. And today, even many of those who have stopped believing in God continue to think about God or the Eternal. Recently, Jacob Needleman put it this way: “To think about God is to the human soul what breathing is to the human body.” (What Is God?, 3)

Many other observers, acknowledging the pervasiveness of the human concern with God or the Infinite, argue that this failure to cast off believing in or thinking about God by no means proves that God or something like it is essential to human life. Rather, it proves that most people are still caught in primitive, unenlightened, irrational ways of interpreting reality. Common religion and God may be, but they are by no means inevitable, essential, or necessary to human life. Quite the contrary, they are distracting at best and destructive at worst. We don’t need God; we need rationality, we need morality, we need humanism. Read the news for “God-inspired” genocide, terror, torture, abuse. Case closed.

I tend toward the first position. As long as there are human beings we are going to wrestle with, puzzle over, rail against, and argue about that reality we cannot fully grasp or control that nevertheless impinges upon our existence or intrudes itself into our lives or awakens us to something beyond the limits of our ordinary minds. Some of us will experience this as “sacred,“ others may call it the ultimate ideals they live by. I came of intellectual age in a time when scholars were speaking of the religious dimension of all experience, or the root of faith in all human beings, that which they place their ultimate trust in and give their ultimate loyalty to, whether they identify that center of all value as empiricism, secularism, family, nation, a religious tradition, or the One. To me the question of faith and God is simply this: How does one ultimately orient and ground one’s life? Whatever the answer—and it is a difficult question to answer honestly for even the most self-aware—that is one’s god.

And yet, I would not argue with a person who claims to be or boasts of being areligious or indifferent to faith and God. Should I insist that they are religious even though they do not realize it? Should I prove to them that in the absence of faith in the One that they really worship money? success? That their body or their partner is their idol? How would that serve? I am no apologist for the one true faith, however I or anyone else may define it. Perhaps their denial of faith as they understand it and of God as they have understood that concept is what clears the way for them to experience the depths of the Infinite in the limits of their finitude, whatever they may call it, however they may interpret it. Maybe my way of asking the question or the language I am using has closed an opening for them. And why have I made their inner life my goal, when the work on my own remains unfinished? The question is to me, not them: Who are you? Where have you been? Where are you going? Are you on the way to becoming truly human?

The power of persuasion lies not in words or arguments, but in the felt experience of the One among us.

To Be Free, Tether Yourself?

2010-07-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

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.

A Riot of Images for God

2010-07-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of Hayyim Bialik’s poem “Zohar” (1909), the poet, compelled to speak that which cannot be spoken, spills forth a world’s worth of ways to point to that elusive reality:

In the midst of my childhood I have been engulfed by loneliness,
And craved all my life for silence and the hidden,
From the body of the world I craved for its light,
Something which I could not fathom murmured like wine inside me.
I was looking for hiding places. There I silently observed,
I was like a visionary looking into the eye of the universe.
There my friends were revealed to me, I received their secrets,
And sealed their voices in my mute heart.
My friends, how numerous they were: any flying bird,
Any tree and its shadow, every bush in the forest,
The face of the meek moon shining into a window,
The darkness of a cellar, the creaking of a gate . . .
The sweet and awesome mixture of light with darkness
In the depth of a well,
Where the echo of my voice and my image are found,
The chiming of a clock, the tooth of a saw grinding within a log,
As if they are pronouncing the forbidden name of God . . .

(in Joseph Dan, The Heart and The Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experience, 252)

Faith? Belief? What’s the difference? Who owns them?

2010-07-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

It’s common for people to distinguish between faith and belief, usually assigning the lesser of the two, belief, to one group, such as the Christians, and the greater, faith, to another group, such as the Jews. In Two Types of Faith, Martin Buber distinguishes between these two ways of relating to God without playing the game of My Religion Is Better Than Yours. He contrasts the Hellenistic-inspired notion of faith as “mere believing,” that is, accepting the certainty of specific truths one had not previously held, with the Hebraic view of relational faith as trust, that is, depending on the “contact of my entire being with the one in whom I trust” (8). He refuses to identify faith as belief with Christians in general and faith as trust with Jews in general, arguing that both types of faith permeate both religions. He does argue, however, that faith as belief finds its “representative actuality” in Christianity and faith as trust finds its “representative actuality” in Judaism (11-12).

Though I may quarrel with his last conclusion about “representative actualities,” my experience within and knowledge of Christianity and Judaism confirms his view that faith as belief and faith as trust run through both traditions (and more than likely through Islam as well). Faith as belief is part of both Christianity and Judaism. Christians have creeds, distillations of teachings that help people navigate the scriptures and contemporary philosophy rightly, and they recite many of them during their liturgies. So do Jews. The Sh’ma and and Maimonides’s Thirteen Attributes of God are the most well known, but Saadia Gaon, Yehudah HaLevi, and others developed lists of beliefs to guide the faithful through the scriptures and contemporary intellectual challenges as well. Whether formal or informal, universally or not universally accepted, intellectual formulations of specific truths it is important to affirm or assent to--such as the unity of God and the goodness of the created world--play an essential, constructive role in religious traditions. They complement faith as trust; they do not supplant it. The faith that grounds and transforms the whole person must be mind and heart, truth and trust, emet v’emunah.

Faith as trust (emunah in Hebrew), Buber’s second type of faith, is also at the core of both Judaism and Christianity. The dominant understanding of faith in Christianity, before and after the Protestant Reformation, is also trust, as Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and many others confirm. To call this talk of trust, as Buber does, the survival of or a resurgence of “genuine Judaism” within Christianity seems incorrect and unnecessary. The 20th-century Reformed theologian H. Richard Niebuhr bypasses the notion of belief altogether to define faith as “radical trust in and loyalty to the One.” In Jesus, Buber says, “the genuine Jewish principle of” faith is manifest (12). I agree, but I would argue that in accepting Jesus as the Messiah, Christians did not merely believe him to be God: they adopted his way of being faithful to God, his way of trust. Faith as trust cannot be claimed primarily for one community of faith over the other.

I confess my great ignorance about the Islamic tradition. Yet from my reading and experience I would venture to guess that it, too, is pervaded by faith as belief and faith as trust. The shahada (and much of Islamic theology) represents one side, the recurring note of faith as radical trust in the One (tawwakul) the other. Recently I came across a definition of faith by al-Hujwiri, the 11th century Persian Sufi saint, that plumbs the depths of this notion of faith as radical trust, trust that penetrates to the root of one’s being, unifies all of one’s being, and requires the slaying of all rivals for our absolute trust: “Faith is really the absorption of all human attributes in the search of God.” (Revelation of the Mystery, tr. Reynold A. Nicholson, 289)
What al-Hujwiri means by this he shows by telling a story he heard:

[W]hen Ibrahim Khawwas was asked [by the man narrating the story] concerning the reality of faith, he replied: “I have no answer to this question.just now, because whatever I say is a mere expression, and it behooves me to answer by my actions; but I am setting out for Mecca: do thou accompany me that thou mayest be answered.”
The narrator continues: “I consented. As we journeyed through the desert, every day two loaves and two cups of water appeared. He gave one to me and took the other for himself. One day an old man rode up to us and dismounted and conversed with Ibrahim for a while; then he left us. I asked Ibrahim to tell me who he was.
He replied: “This is the answer to thy questions.”
“How so"?” I asked.
He said: “This was Khidr [the enigmatic figure in Islam said to have guided Moshe to deeper wisdom and who continues to appear to guide and instruct people with his illuminated wisdom; roughly analogous to the legend of the Prophet Eliyahu in Judaism], who begged me to let him accompany me, but I refused, for I feared that in his company I might put confidence in him instead of in God, and then my trust in God (tawwakul) would have been vitiated. Real faith is trust in God.” (Ibid., 289-290)

Faith as trust and loyalty belongs to no religion, no tradition. It is the way of living from the root of one’s being with the One.

The Wheel That Revolves Us Nearer to the Center

2010-07-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

This poem from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours, with its own wonderfully strange images of God, is reminiscent of Yehuda Amichai’s and other poets like Yona Wallach’s focus on coming and going, opening and closing when the subject is God. Why, I wonder, do so many poets find themselves at this image of continual movement when struggling to point to this reality? Thomas Mann gives a clue in Joseph and His Brothers, when he speaks of the God of Joseph as the “God of becoming.” Martin Buber gives another when he translates the name of God revealed to Moshe at the burning bush, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, I Am that I Am, this way: I Will Be who I Will Be.

This is one of the challenges of relating to the One: that we are not responding to a static order or reality, one that we can finally grasp or contain; we are responding to a dynamic, living reality, one that is continuously creating, ordering, healing, limiting, opening doors and slamming them shut, disappearing from the familiar places and reappearing in strange ways and places.

All intimate relationships require us to seek the depths of constancy and faithfulness in the midst of continual change, the hub that anchors the spokes. When we can’t find those depths, our spirits suffer. When we do, everything we do widens from “turn to turn.” Our relationship with the Ever Alive, as I refer to God these days, is no different.

You come and go. The doors swing closed
ever more gently; almost without a shudder.
Of all who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.

We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow. For all things
sing you: at times
we just hear them more clearly.

Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, I am forest.

You are a wheel at which I stand,
whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,
revolve me nearer to the center.
Then all the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.

(I: 45, tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, 81)

Turning Our Pronouns for God on Their Heads

2010-07-22T09:31:00.001-07:00

There’s been a lot of argument over the years about the proper pronouns to use when speaking about and to God.

With the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s, we began to see the limits of the supposedly universal pronoun “he” and lobbied for more inclusive language—adding “she” to “he” when speaking of God, or avoiding pronouns altogether by simply repeating “God” in every sentence instead of using a pronoun for the antecedent. (Admittedly, this is a bit awkward, but it’s still better than most alternatives. And is anyone else dismayed by the lack of inclusive language in most religious services today, after all these years of consciousness raising?)

Some—I among them—opted to go the route of many mystics and use the neutral pronoun when referring to God, “it,” as a way of focusing on the reality of God beyond the personal dimension. This was distressing to some, who (incorrectly) concluded that referring to God as “it” necessarily objectified God or stripped God of all personal dimensionality. They might accept impersonal metaphors or names for God such as Ocean or Being or Ultimate Reality or the One, but referring to God as “it” or speaking of “its” complexity was beyond the pale for them. Nevertheless, I found the pronoun “it” a good reminder not to limit God to the personal, our privileged way of experiencing God. I often joked that I taught my children not to say He-She or She-He when speaking of God, but “He-She-It.” For some this was blasphemous (spotten we called it in Dutch, making light of the sacred) rather than funny. For me, it was another reminder: humor is also necessary when we talk about God.

We all make assumptions about the meaning of pronouns in our language. Ancient and contemporary rabbis, for example, are fond of teaching the theological depth of the pronoun switch in the formula for blessing, Blessed are You, Lord Our God, Ruler of the Universe, who.... Many prayers start out addressing God in the second person as “you” and then switch midstream to addressing God in the third person, “Ruler/King/who=he.” This juxtaposition embodies the life-giving paradox that God is at once very near us and far beyond us. That is a deep theological teaching.

And here is another. When it comes to God, all our language falters, even our pronouns. They may not mean what we assume they mean. Recently, this teaching of the Baal Shem Tov from Ben Porath Yosef 31a made me sit up and pay attention to pronouns for God in a way I had never considered before:

It is written, “You are He, the Lord our God” (Jeremiah 14:22). The Baal Shem Tov explained this verse in the following manner:

When a person thinks that he is speaking directly to God, where he can say “You,” he is really very far from God. He is actually only speaking to Him in the third person, and is actually saying “he.”

On the other hand, when a person feels that he is separated and far from God, where he can only speak of Him in the third person—”He”—then he is really very close to God, and is actually in His presence. Such a person can therefore speak of Him as “the Lord our God.”

[in Aryeh Kaplan, The Light Beyond: Adventures in Hassidic Thought, 29]

Let Poets Be Our Theologians Now

2010-07-21T08:51:00.001-07:00

Some of the most creative reimagining of God today is being done by poets, singers wrestling with God, wresting a blessing for our time from words and images. Like this stanza, Number 20, from Yehuda Amichai’s poem “Gods Change, Prayers Are Here to Stay,” in Open, Closed, Open, 46:

The sounds of a drawer closing—the voice of God,
the sound of a drawer opening—the voice of love,
but it could also be the other way around.
Footsteps approaching—the voice of love,
footsteps retreating—the voice of God
who left the country without notice, temporarily forever.
A book that stays open on the table beside a pair of glasses--
God. A closed book and a lamp that stays lit--
love. A key turning in the door without a sound--
God. A key hesitating—love and hope.
But it could also be the other way around.
A sacrifice of a fragrant scent to God,
a sacrifice of the other senses to love:
a sacrifice of touch and caress, of sight and of sound,
a sacrifice of taste.
But it could also be the other way around.

Secularism Envy?

2010-07-20T13:18:00.001-07:00

Have you ever envied your totally secular friends? The ones who don’t think or worry about God? Who aren’t troubled by God? Who are comfortable living in the world they can see and hear and touch and explain (if not now, someday)? Those for whom “God” is a sociopolitical problem, cultural artifact, or distant memory from their childhood, nothing more?

I have. In college, I studied philosophy and literature, not theology, because I wanted to be the kind of person who had nothing to do with God—an intellectual! How could you be and intellectual and believe in God, a holdover from a more primitive, less enlightened time? When I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School to study history of religions with Mircea Eliade, I wanted to be like many of my classmates—interested in God only from the distancing vantage point of academia, not from within the standpoint of a faith community. To be a person of faith meant you were not capable of true objectivity about your own religion or that of others.

Many times in my life I have wished I could just forget about God. It’s nothing but trouble and embarrassment, being a person of faith who is also a 21st century post-Enlightenment, post-Darwin, post-modern, post-post citizen. How can one defend oneself? There are no airtight proofs of God’s existence. The reality and experience of God exceed the limits of reason. The concepts we’ve inherited for talking about God, self, and world are woefully outmoded or just out of touch with the assumptions or worldviews of most people. We often look like fools or are taken for fools.

Here’s the burden or responsibility some of these fools bear: finding ways to mediate between the wisdom of our faith and the best of contemporary culture’s rational understanding of the universe. It’s a classic move among people of faith, faith seeking understanding. Origen, Philo, Augustine, Anselm, Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rushd, Maimonides, Ibn-Ezra, Erasmus, Schleiermacher, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, and H. Richard Niebuhr practiced it.

It would be easier to ditch God and run with whatever current or perennial philosophy is hot. I’ve tried. I can’t do it. I have to accept that I was born tuned to spirit. Not everyone is. That’s good, too. And sometimes I wish I were like them. But whether i like it or not, I’m one of those fools who dance to music some people can’t hear. And that means I have to shoulder my part of the burden of finding new ways of practicing faith seeking understanding today. I’m often not sure how best to do that. Counter the fundamentalist attack on reason and science? Create new concepts and images for God that incorporate recent scientific understandings of matter and the universe? Sidestep science with poetry? Bracket God and focus on morality? I’m still finding my way. What’s yours?

What Carries You Beyond?

2010-07-19T17:59:00.001-07:00

No metaphor, simile, concept, or model can ever fully or adequately capture the reality of God.

Still, we’re human: we talk. And if we’re going to talk about God—there’s no stopping us, it seems—then we need a wildly abundant garden of metaphors, similes, concepts, and models to draw from, so that we can point truly to that complex reality that goes beyond all our thoughts and imaginings. Consider the diverse metaphors for God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Father, Mother, Friend, Warrior, Shepherd, Lover, A Woman Baking Bread, King, Eagle, Dove, Enemy, Compeller, Rock, Thunder, Storm, Mountain, Fountain, Ocean, Womb, Center, Place, Dwelling. The list is long and it is open-ended.
Each of these images, whether it’s personal or impersonal, female or male, active or static, does the work of metaphor: It carries us beyond our ordinary perception to taste something new of the reality of God, which is like and unlike all that we know. In La métaphor vive (The Living Metaphor), Paul Ricouer notes the power that metaphor releases when two things like and unlike one another are juxtaposed. The force of their collision explodes into new meaning. We need metaphors to expand our awareness of all experience, including our experience and understanding of God. And where God is concerned, we need even more metaphors. Let a thousand metaphors for God bloom!

And yet, in different times and circumstances, certain metaphors dominate human consciousness. This is not necessarily a bad thing. True, some metaphors are used to to devalue and push out all others. Examples of this are all too easy to find. But a single shared metaphor that is not a despot but primus inter pares can focus, unite, and guide a community or an individual. There may be a thousand metaphors for God, but from this fertile garden which is the one (or ones) that looks and smells most beautiful to you? Which is the one (or ones) that is alive for you? That speaks the language you understand? That explodes into your consciousness and carries you beyond yourself to experience God more deeply? It may not be the same metaphor your culture or faith community finds so compelling. It may be one that is unfamiliar or even repulsive to them. Yet it is yours, and it is to be cherished.

Metaphors for God are dynamic. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic communities, for example, experienced God in different ways through the ages and developed new ways of relating to God and talking about God to reflect that new experience. (See Karen Armstrong, The History of God; Jack Miles, The Biography of God; Ilana Pardes, The Biography of Ancient Israel). The same is true for individuals. We develop our own shorthand images for our personal experiences of God, and these change through our lifetime. (See Ana-Maria Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God; James Fowler, Stages of Faith.). The metaphor of God as Father may comfort a child, but when the child reaches adolescence she may need a new image that supports her growing independence—an eagle bearing her fledglings on her wings, perhaps; and when she reaches maturity, she may require a new image, such as Friend or Beloved. In every stage of communal and individual life crises and trauma can shatter our familiar images and force us to wander in search of a new focusing image. As painful as this can be, it is inevitable, and it can lead to new awareness.

When I was a child the image of God as Father was comforting to me. Because of my family, I would have found the image of God as Mother far too frightening. When I was an adolescent, the image of God as a rock in a changing desert landscape or as the purifying waters of life settled my spirit. When I became a feminist, I still did not warm to God as Mother. Instead, nurturing images from nature, such as a well of living water, spoke to me. During my many anxious years of converting to Judaism from Christianity I experienced God as a compelling force, more like Job’s destroying whirlwind than anything else. As a Jew I discovered the beauty of the rabbinic image of God as Ha Makom, The Place which is the center and circumference of all that is, the only reference point for our lives. My journeys with the Sufi community have reawakened in me the image of God as the Beloved, an image I have known well since childhood from the prophets and the Song of Songs. My love for the work of poet-novelist-theologian Edmond Jabès has brought me the evocative image of God as Question. (See Jabès, The Book of Questions).

What’s your history with images of God? What is the metaphor(s) for God that opens up new meaning and experience for you now, carries you beyond?

Crying Out for a Vision

2010-07-18T11:23:00.001-07:00

To remain present to the Presence every moment is a continual challenge. We keep slipping back inside the prison of our fears, anxieties, disappointments, anger, pride, desire. Once back behind the bars of our self, how do we escape? There are times when a liberator comes to us from outside, saying just the right word, hitting just the right note, performing just the right action that bumps us out of our narrow vision to see ourselves and the world anew. This agent of liberation could be a teacher, a friend, a stranger on the street, a book, a piece of music, a wonder of nature, an illness, a trauma, a crisis, a gift—anything. But what of the times when no agent appears? When we are left inside, alone, and our faith, once a strong flame, flickers in the winds howling around and inside us? When we feel abandoned, desperate?

Cry out to God. Literally. Practice the kind of prayer that Hasids call hitbodedut. Seclude yourself and begin talking out loud to God. Scream. Cry. Complain. Lament. Accuse. Give voice to the depths of your feeling, the not so flattering ones included. Don’t be afraid to expose the worst of your personality. Forget your image of yourself as a spiritual or pious or loving person and just speak from your heart—all of it.

What kind of spiritual counsel and practice is this? Isn’t it wrong to complain? Are we not supposed to bless and thank God for all that happens, the sorrows as well as the joys, evil as well as good? Isn’t it blasphemous to speak to God this way? Are we not to praise God’s name and stand in awe before the Presence? Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

And yet hitbodedut is a practice that can break you free of your little self so you can stand in the Presence in awe, praise, and thanksgiving. Here’s how it works. You express all that is in your heart in the language of your heart, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav teaches, talking in whatever way will lead you to “experience true heartbreak.” (Likutey Moharan B 25; in Aryeh Kaplan, The Light Beyond, 226) He doesn’t mean only until you feel the full force of the pain or sorrow or fury you are carrying; he means until your heart breaks open. You cry out, giving full vent to the depths of your heart. As you talk to God, you begin to hear the words you are saying. You hear how silly or petty or angry or unhappy or blaming or lost you are. You begin to “see” yourself from a distance, as if from a larger field of vision. You and your experience and feelings and personality are put in perspective and so become fundamentally altered. Perhaps, seeing yourself from this perspective, you begin to have compassion on that little self daring to speak so boldly about its little concerns to the One. It may take minutes, hours, or days, but if you are sincere in crying out to God in this way, you will be bumped out of your self-concern into a larger space where you can breathe spirit freely and calmly.
Complaining is a dangerous habit. It quickly becomes a trap. But a sincere complaint, spoken from the heart directly to God ,is one way to draw closer to the Presence. The Psalmist knew this. Why have you abandoned me? How long must I wait? My enemies surround me. The prophets, too. You have ringed me about with walls, set obstacles in my path, sent lions to devour me. And Job, that troubled friend of God. I cry out to You, but you do not answer me…You have become cruel to me; with your powerful hand you harass me.

Hitbodedut is also a sign of trust in God. The Psalmists, prophets, Hasids, and others who shout out to God are not afraid to show themselves in all their humanness to God; for they trust that the All Merciful will not judge them for what they do not yet see or accept but will accompany them on their journey to full communion with the One. Like a child raining puny fists on the chest of its father, or a lover crying out to his or her beloved, “Be with me as you were in the youth of our love!”, they know they are loved. They trust that the One who loves them wholly and unconditionally will never abandon them, but will wait them out and guide them as they journey closer. If they did not, they would not be locked in this embrace with God, crying out with such passion. Being held in this loving embrace while they cry out is what brings them the calm they need to realize they are not little selves straining against prison bars but the friends of God.

The practice of hitbodedut also sets a liberating limit to the troublings of the heart, whether they take the form of complaint or railing or tears. Practice this conversation with God one hour a day, the Hasidic masters say, and then leave it behind and move through the remainder of the day in joy, free to serve.

Who’s present? Who’s absent?

2010-07-15T09:39:00.001-07:00

We long for God’s presence. We lament God’s absence. But what do we mean by this? We often speak of wanting God to be with us, to comfort, protect, guide, or calm us. We pray for this, in words and silence. But what if we turn this inside out, the way Martin Buber does when he says, “There is no Presence for those who are not present”? Instead of imagining God coming to be present with us, imagine our being present to the Presence in which we live and move and have our being. This requires its own kind of discipline—removing the veils and masks our egos and minds and hearts throw up that obstruct our experience of the Presence. When we carefully, patiently strip away these obstructions, we are able to breathe spirit freely, and we are released into a new way of being—being present to the Presence. For Buber, being present to the Presence is the definition of prayer. For many Native American tribes it is as well; they call it “paying attention.”

When you leave behind the demands of your ego, your concepts and self-consciousness, and your passions, you experience the calm and calming liberation of entering a place far greater than yourself, your family, your community, your country, or your culture or race or gender—a place where you belong with and among all, but where you are not the center or even a focal point. Here there is rest and joy and freedom. You never want to leave this place. (The Place, HaMakom, was one of the names the rabbis of the Talmud used for God. It is a rich image—one I’ll return to in a later post.)
You can practice being present to the Presence as you move through every moment of each day, You’ll probably slip out of this presence back into your narrower world of self, but you can always slip back into it. The goal is to be fully present to the Presence that is All, that is Whole, more and more of your life. The Navajo call it “walking in beauty.”

May we all practice being present to the Presence, breathe spirit freely, walk in beauty.

How does one talk about God?

2010-07-13T10:03:00.001-07:00

Out of silence. In order to talk about God without speaking total nonsense and causing trouble, we need to cultivate silence. The mystics of many traditions remind us—from Dionysius the Areopagite to Amma Theodora to Maimonides to Meister Eckhart to Hildegarde of Bingen to Krishnamurti to Rav Isaac Kook—we know nothing about God. And as the eight century mystic Rabi’a teaches,

Since no one really knows anything about God,
those who think they do are just
troublemakers.
(Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems to God, 27)

Whatever and whoever God is, the reality of God ultimately lies beyond our grasp. We with our limited minds and hearts cannot comprehend it. We cannot contain it in concepts, images, or words, however complex or evocative they may be. It will always break the bonds we place around it. The most appropriate response then is silence.

And yet. And yet we must speak of it, for this reality is that in which we live and move and have our being. How can we, the creatures born to consciousness and language, not talk of this reality that impinges on and supports every moment of our existence? Like many mystics, Rav Shneur Zalman of Ladi experienced the power of this paradox:

The rav asked a disciple who had just entered his room: “Moshe, what do we mean when we say ‘God’”? The disciple was silent. The rav asked him a second and third time. Then he said: “Why are you silent?”
“Because I do not know.”
“Do you think I know?” said the Rav. “But I must say it, for it is so, and therefore I must say it: He is definitely there, and except for him nothing is definitely there—and this is He.” (Buber, Tales of the Hasidim I:263)

To live this paradox of silence and talking about God is the goal. All talk of God must emerge out of silence, be limned by silence, and return to silence.
What does this look like in practice? Cultivating a life of prayer and meditation beyond words in which one experiences the boundlessness of The Beyond. Taming the tongue so that one speaks only that which is necessary, straining to say that which one does not understand. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan quotes this advice on speaking from a dervish, “’Only speak when you realize that you can’t say what you want to say. If you think you can say it, then don’t say it.’” (The Call of the Dervish, 30) In short, make humility your practice. Speaking of God out of and with silence is part of the prophet Micah’s (6:8) counsel to “walk humbly with your God.”

Welcome to the conversation!

2010-07-12T14:28:00.001-07:00

Everywhere today God’s name is invoked. Yet there are so few places to have a genuine conversation about God, a true I-Thou dialogue in which the participants are present to the depth and complexity of the reality we call God, aware of the limitations of their own concepts, assumptions, and perspective, and able to see and hear the others as they are. Conversations that are dialogues are not arguments in which opposing adversaries compete for the one single truth. Nor are they sales pitches for the best product or tradition, or bids for confirmation of one’s position. True conversations are more like this: navigating an ocean with a group of strangers who are unlikely travelling companions, each one boarding the boat in a different place, each one speaking a different language, all working together as a crew along the way to keep the boat afloat and moving forward, each one disembarking at a different place—yet each traveler arriving at a new place, a place different from where she or he began, a place they have not been before, everyone transformed by the journey.

This is the kind of conversation about God I crave. Am I capable of it? I hope so. At least I aim to try, with the wisdom of Samuel Beckett to guide me: “Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”

I invite you to board the boat and join me on this spiritual adventure. What I’m interested in is seeking spiritual insights that can revive and refresh spirits weary of arguments and images that were once fresh in their day but have now worn thin. When the ancient Hebrew prophets had a question about what was happening in their community, they would go “inquire of the Lord” for a fresh word to bring to their new experience. We live in the twenty-first century. The Enlightenment has been over for 300 years, and we’re still in a quandary about how to talk about God in a way that makes sense to intelligent people who want to deny neither religion nor science and philosophy. So let’s talk inquiring. I’ll offer questions, reflections, or suggested readings as catalysts. Let’s start talking and see what kind of journey we create together. As the theologian Nelle Morton says, “The journey is home.” As Rabbi Hayyim teaches, this is how we journey together:

In the month of Elul when the people prepared their souls for the days of judgment, Rabbi Hayyim was in the habit of telling stories to a tune that moved all his listeners to turn to God. Once he told this story: “A man lost his way in a great forest. After a while another man lost his way and chanced on the first man. Without knowing what had happened to him, he asked the man the way out of the woods. ‘I don’t know,” said the first man. ‘But I can point out the ways that lead further into the thicket, and after that let us try to find the way together.’ “So, my congregation,” the rabbi concluded his story, “let us look for the way together.” (Buber, Tales of the Hasidim II:213)