Secularization, Good. Religion, Good

Let me be clear from the start: my goal in creating space between secularism and fundamentalism to talk about God is not to argue against secularization and for religion or vice versa. What I am opposed to is secularism,, the closed view that the finite world we perceive with our senses and grasp with our intellects is all there is, and , fundamentalism, the closed view that one’s God is the only true God and that one’s sacred text, which has one and only one meaning, is the only true text. My assumption is that both secularization and religion are valuable, in fact necessary for existence in the twenty-first century. Let me give you a sense of what I mean by these terms.

One of the best outlines of secularization is given by John E. Smith in the epilogue to his book Experience and God. Here is his answer to what secularization means.

The answer can be given in its most concise form by means of five outstanding traits that not only mark life in the most highly developed nations of the West, but which now fire the imagination and spark the wills of countless millions in those lands we have come to describe as underdeveloped. These traits are autonomy, expressed individually as freedom and ethnically as national independence or the right of self-determination; technology or industrialization which means science transformed into human power over the environment and even man himself; voluntarism, with its closely associated individualism acting as the drive to control recalcitrant forces both in the inner depths of man and the temporal stretches of human history; temporalism, or a sense of urgency expressing itself with sharp focus on present existence and the immediate, and a corresponding lack of concern for the abiding, the time-spanning, and the long-range goal.
The fifth trait, which is closely connected with the preceding, is one for which it is difficult to find an adequate term; the basic feature is a concern for art, for the senses, for free self-expression, coupled with a feeling of relief wherever it is possible to break out of conventional patterns. This trait may be called “aestheticism” if the term is not understood in a basically derogatory sense, and If it is taken to include the two elements that must always be comprehended in art, namely, an appeal to significant sensible form and an expression of “free play” indicating that the system in which we live has relaxed its demands upon us. (pp. 181-82)

These five traits structure and determine individual spirits as well as the spirits of nations and peoples, he says. They can be misused and indeed are often found in degenerate forms, as in the exploitation of the earth without regard for the autonomy of the earth, and the capitalist greed that drives technology without regard to its consequences to the earth and its inhabitants. But these traits of our secularized society are not, in themselves, the enemy of religion or any concept of God. They have, indeed, brought great good to the world, including for religion. We have a public space to talk about our various religions with respect now, for example. And, as Smith points out, it is the Western religious tradition that spawned secularization.

The question is, given that this is the secularized society we live in, what is the response of religion to that world? We may judge secularization’s abuses and deformations, but we cannot reject it out of hand and go back to a pre-secularized existence. Also, we have to ask what secularization has to teach religion about religion’s abuses and deformation? What does it have to tell us about religious traditions that use authoritarian tactics, running roughshod over the autonomy and free expression of its adherents? What does it have to tell us about religious traditions that force outmoded concepts and images of God on people who no longer even understand well what they mean? Or insist on a notion of God and humankind as the image of God that leads to the exploitation of the earth?

Today, if we are going to avoid social and natural disaster, religion has to be in conversation with the world we live in; it can’t stick its head in the sand and pretend we’re still living in the first or seventh or sixteenth or eighteenth or whatever century has been identified as the “pure” age for that religion’s expression. This is the world we live in, a secularized existence. How do we respond to that?

Making Space for Questions Between a Rock (Fundamentalism) and a Hard Place (Secularism)

Everyone’s so sure these days about God and religion and spirituality. The religious fundamentalists know God, they know the name of God, they know the ways of God, they know the judgments of God, they know who the chosen people of God are and aren’t—self-appointed messengers, they are the voice of God. The atheist fundamentalists know God isn’t, they know the names of all that exists and does not exist, they know the ways of the universe, they know how to judge all—infallibly—in the light of reason, they know anyone who is religious is not a member of the chosen, the enlightened ones—self-appointed iconoclasts, they are the voice of Reason.

But if everybody’s talking (shouting really), who is listening? Listening to other people, to other theories of human existence, to reality itself? To listen requires humility. And that is what is lacking, the humility that recognizes one does not know, that instead of filling up the void with words, a hedge against anxiety, one must sit still and listen. Religious and atheistic fundamentalists, as well as many artists who specialize in ironic distancing, share the same disease: a feeling of absolute certainty about things that cannot be known, a feeling that makes them feel superior to all who do not see or hear or feel reality in the same way they do, whose limited view does not match their limited view exactly.

I have lost all patience with all this absolutism and misdirected chatter incessantly coming from all sides. People are hungry for meaning. They thirst for new ways to imagine and interpret their lives, ways that nourish them and sustain them as they search for ways to live good and meaningful lives. With all this noise and heat coming from the fundamentalists, where is the silence and the light that will show us the way to a new understanding of the complex and mysterious existence we have been born into, a reality that is—whatever you call it—multi-dimensional, at the very least both material and something more than material, something that goes beyond the merely physical?

Let’s stop all the shouting and mutual condemnation. Let’s stop wringing our hands in despair at the state of religious discourse today. Let’s stop taking the easy way out in irony, winks and witticisms that reveal how bored, how above it all, how past it all we are. Instead, let’s get busy and start making space for uncertainty and questions, a space where we befriend silence and practice listening.

Maybe if we can clear a space like that, a place of openness and opening, there will be room for food to grow and springs to burst forth that will nourish the hunger and slake the thirst of those of us who know we do not know and find our way in seeking.
So that’s what I want to do—declare a pox on both their houses, the religious and the anti-religious fundamentalists, and start clearing a space where we can breathe freely, open or eyes, our hearts, our minds in asking questions, genuine questions, about who we are why we’re here, what matter is, what “beyond matter” is, what people mean when they say “God,” what it can mean to say “God” or “spirit” in 2012.

I will try. And I will begin by clearing away some obstacles. I want to dispel certain notions of God that have been dead for centuries but act as if they are still viable. Call them zombie notions of God. Before we can even start listening, we have to rid the world of religious discourse of these zombie ideas and images that suck the life out of every conversation, stop them dead in their tracks.

Coming into the Presence: Be Present—Elul 29

What if you can’t imagine yourself standing before anyone or anything, coming into any presence at all? What then? Do you go to shul on Rosh HaShanah or Yom Kippur and kibbitz with your neighbors or criticize the rabbi or chazan or feel inadequate because you’re not really davening or perhaps even paying much attention to all those words? Or do you just not go, because it has lost meaning for you, or because you consider yourself above it all?

Why let your intellect interfere so? Just show up and be fully present. And see what happens. One of my favorite sayings of the modern Hasid Martin Buber is this: “For those who are not present, there is no Presence.”

Coming into the Presence of the Friend—Elul 27

And again, coming into the Presence, the Friend. How do you stand before your dearest friend? You may do all kinds of favors for them, and praise them endlessly, but if you don’t know what pleases them, what good is all that when you are in their presence? If they are truly your friend, you know them and what pleases them. A friend is your friend not because you have done this or that for them, given this or that to them, because you are beautiful or rich or well connected. Friendship is mysterious. It can’t be earned. One loves a friend because one loves them, because they have found favor in your eyes. As God says to Israel, “I chose you to be my treasure. You weren’t the most powerful nation. Far from it. You weren’t the most numerous people. Far from it. I chose you to be my treasure because you found favor in my eyes. Because I fell in love with you.”

I was once asked by someone, “Why are you friends with that person? You two don’t seem much alike at all?” I was taken aback by the question, because for me friendship is always inexplicable. There was no way to explain why I loved this friend. I just did—in all her frailties and strengths. Friendship, like beauty, is truly in the eyes of the beholder. What I saw in my friend this other person could not see.

And that is how we stand before the Friend during the Days of Awe, coming into the Presence of our Friend, knowing that though others (or even we ourselves) may judge us ugly or wanting, in our Friend’s eyes we are beautiful and whole, cherished for no other reason that than we are.

Let’s go and meet the Friend.

Coming into the Presence of the Friend—Elul 26

During the Days of Awe we pray often that we may be remembered in light of the “merits of our ancestors.” I often wonder about this. Are we invoking some kind of substitutionary atonement here? Look at the faith and deeds of our mothers and fathers, not ours! No. We’re asking that the covenant with them be remembered, a covenant of mercy, and that we be enfolded in that same bond of trust and faithfulness unto a thousand generations.

Which makes me wonder about that bond made with Avraham and Sarah. What is it about that bond with the One that we want to recall in these days of awe?

Some say that the name Avraham comes from haver, for Avraham was a friend of God, and God visited with Avraham as Friend. That is how I want to imagine coming into the Presence during Elul, the Days of Awe, and every day—coming into the Presence of the Friend.

Imagine being in the presence of you deepest, oldest, most trustworthy friend. They know you. They see you. You cannot lie to them, or to yourself in their presence, for they see through to the heart of all you do and have been and will be. When you stand in their Presence, if you have erred, you don’t have to wait for them to judge you, you judge yourself for having failed, for you see yourself through their eyes, as a person capable of so much good. You don’t make excuses, for in that between of honesty you know how foolish such words would sound. You feel their disappointment in your actions as if it were your own, and you vow not to slip again; you vow to be the person you and they know you to be.

That’s one way to imagine coming into the Presence during the Days of Awe as we pass in review before our Friend—fully exposed to eyes of truth and love.

Coming into the Presence: “To Be Simply in Your Presence”—Elul 25

And a last prayer from Rilke for the days of Selichot, to prepare our hearts to come into the Presence.

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing—
just as it is.

I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones—
or alone.

I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

(Rilke's Book of Hours, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, p. 59)

Coming into the Presence: “It’s Not Too Late”—Elul 24

Here is another of Rilke’s outpourings that may give us the words our hearts need to unfold into the Presence:

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

(Rilke's Book of Hours, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, p. 61)

Coming into the Presence: Encounter on Sinai—Elul 22

We have come to the time of Selichot, the four days just before the Days of Awe, when we intensify our search for blemishes that will render the sacrifice of our everyday lives we offer unfit and we increase our prayers for forgiveness. Selichot, often translated as “penitential prayers,” is from the verb root “to forgive,” and this word, as a plea, Forgive, s’lach, is the opening word of the Selichot set of prayers and the refrain that runs throughout the Days of Awe.

Forgive us, our Father, for in our abundant folly, we have erred.
Pardon us, our King, for our iniquities are many.

This plea is followed by a prayer based on the beautiful witness in Exodus 34: 6-9 to the One who passed by Moses on Mount Sinai, showing him the backside of the glorious presence and Moses’ response to that Presence. In the siddur, in the Selichot and Days of Awe services, these verses take this form:

Adonai, Adonai, God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness and truth, preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, forgiver of iniquity, willful sin, and error, and who cleanses. May you forgive our iniquities and our errors and make us your heritage. Forgive us, our Father, for we have erred; pardon us, our King, for we have willfully sinned; for you, my Lord, are good and forgiving and abundantly kind to all who come upon you.

As we reflect on what it means to come into the Presence, to be awakened, judged, forgiven, made new, and reflect on how to respond to that Presence should we be so favored as to experience it, it’s worth it to take a look at the dramatic encounter between the Presence and Moshe that inspired the rabbis to write this prayer. In the Torah’s endlessly wonderful laconic way, it gives us a glimpse of the Presence and our response. In Edward Fox’s translation, the encounter goes this way:

And YHWH passed before his face
And called out:
YHWH YHWH
God,
showing-mercy, showing-favor,
long suffering in anger,
abundant in loyalty and faithfulness,
keeping loyalty to the thousandth (generation)
bearing iniquity, rebellion and sin,
yet not clearing, clearing (the guilty),
calling-to-account the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons and
upon son’s’ sons, to the third and fourth (generation)!
Quickly Moshe did-homage, on the ground, bowing low,
And said:
Pray if I have found favor in your eyes,
O my Lord,
Pray let my Lord go among us!
Indeed, it is a hard-necked people—
so forgive our iniquity and our sin,
and make-us-your-inheritance!

During Elul, Selichot, the Days of Awe and all the days of our lives, we, like Moshe, climb, each in our solitariness, a mountain—a mountain of distractions, a mountain of despair, a mountain of hope, a mountain of terror and trembling, a mountain of guilt, a mountain of shame, a mountain of confusion and darkness, a mountain of struggle and longing; we are climbing toward a clear experience of the Presence, to know who we are and how we should live to be always in that Presence.

Coming into the Presence: Graveyards and Epitaphs —Elul 18

Last weekend, for the tenth anniversary of our father’s death, my sister, my niece, and I traveled to the cemetery where he is buried. As we walked through the grave markers, almost every one of them a modest plaque flush with the earth—no statues or obelisks or worldly glory of any kind for these mostly Dutch Calvinist immigrants and their descendants—one epitaph appeared over and over. One word, directly under the name and dates of birth and death spanning their life: “Redeemed.”

Redeemed. It may strike one at first as arrogant. How do they know they are redeemed? Why are they so focused on their reward, the eternal life of their individual soul, for their believing? But this epitaph isn’t necessarily a sign of spiritual pride. For many it is simply a sign of their trust and hope, based on the verse from Acts 16:31: “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” They believed, and they rested in the blessed assurance that they had been saved. This gave them comfort in life and their families comfort in their death, knowing that their sins had been washed away and that they were in heaven with the Lord who had atoned for them, not suffering eternal punishment for their sins.

As we walked among the redeemed, my sister noticed one marker that carried a different epitaph: “In His Presence.”

These three words, “In His Presence,” set me wondering, about the person who had chosen those words as the sign of his or her life to others, and how that sign might be different from “redeemed.” Was this person’s longing in life to be always nearer to God, more and more in God’s presence, trusting that when their body died and their life on earth ended they would experience that Presence fully, with no barriers? As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Perhaps this, too can be seen as arrogant, to claim that one is in God’s presence, has reached that station in death that was never possible in life, or been taken there as a reward for one’s trust while alive. For can we ever make such claims as fact? No. These epitaphs read as claims of fact, but they are signs of trust, and true in this sense.

You may say there is no difference in these two epitaphs. To claim, in trust, one is redeemed is to say one is enjoying God’s presence forever (as the Heidelberg Catechism says it so beautifully), and vice versa. But words matter. And this woman or man chose “In His Presence,” not “Redeemed,” to signify the direction in which his or her life was always moving. These three words focus less on the redemption of the individual soul from sin, and more on the joy of dwelling in the Presence of the Holy One, in this life, and beyond it.

I left the graveyard where my father is buried wondering. About that person who chose those three words, “In His Presence.” About what their experience of communion with God had been, and is. How they imagined coming into that Presence. Standing before the Judge? Wrapped in the loving embrace of “our Father in heaven”? Caught up in the joy of experiencing the end for which the world was created: enjoying God forever?

Coming into the Presence: Celebrity Worship—Elul 16

If we no longer know what it feels like to stand in the presence of a king or queen, what experience can help us understand coming into the Presence during the month of Elul, the Days of Awe, or any day?

I’ve always been baffled by celebrity worship. I don’t even ask authors I respect to sign their books. Maybe it’s the fierce anti-idolatry I was imprinted with by growing up Calvinist and that has only been reinforced by being a Jew. Like Mordecai, I won’t bow to any human being.

Many years ago, however, I read an op ed piece somewhere that argued that with the death of God and attrition of religion, celebrities have become our gods. That makes sense to me. We need something to believe in, to look up to, to focus our lives on. And our celebrities are indeed like the Greek gods—fickle, misbehaving, at the mercy of their passions, jealous, cruel, violent, vengeful, silly, lawless, all too human—at the same time that they live high above us on a Mount Olympus of wealth and privilege that most of us will never experience. They’re very human ness perhaps is what makes them dear to us. They are like us, yet not like us. Because they are like us, we are able to form a bond with them. Because they are unlike us, we are able to live out our ideal life through them. In identifying with them, their beauty, their wealth, their “highness,” somehow our lives are elevated from the mundane work and experiences we must slog through every day to survive. They perform that function for us: to incarnate an ideal to which we direct our lives. Perhaps not every one of these ideals is one we would choose to direct our life toward, but they are ideals nonetheless, and not to be held in contempt.

Does this metaphor work for coming into the Presence? Think about meeting a celebrity that would inspire a little trembling in you. It could be Barak Obama. It could be Elvis. It could be Toni Morrison. It could be Janis Joplin, Golda Meir, Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu. Whoever it is, you’d want to be your best self in that moment, wouldn’t you? You might be a little flustered, a little jazzed, but you would pay attention, be present, try to drink in as much of that person’s presence, their atmosphere, as you could in that moment, so that their shining, in whatever way it is that they shine, rubs off on you and changes you permanently, makes you be a better person from that moment on, because you had met them, come into their presence. And from that moment on your life would change; it would now be a life after you had met x, and that is what would make all the difference.
So, as silly as it may seem at first, maybe there is something to this way of understanding coming into the Presence after all.

More tomorrow.

Coming into the Presence— Fear and Trembling, or Fear or Trembling?—Elul 15

Here’s a quote from that great mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi—not the Rumi of sweetness and light and lover and bellowed and love that so many people want to excerpt today, but the man who also knew the One as slayer and violent batterer of hearts. Like Jonathon Edwards, Rumi was well-versed in the complexities of religious experience and he, too, guided seekers, though through poetry and not theological treatises. This couplet of his speaks to the false claims to absoluteness from which condemnation springs, which we saw with Jonathon Edwards. It speaks to our ongoing Elul reflections on “know before whom you stand” and “coming into the presence.” What does it mean to come into the presence with fear and trembling?

And, in true “doctor of the heart” fashion, this couplet guides those finding their way. Seekers often like to measure their progress, against themselves or against others (comparing again!). Rumi cuts through that urge while directing seekers to one of the paradoxes at the core of the life lived into the presence. In speaking of different stations along the way of the spiritual path, Rumi brings this arresting report of following the way from his experience:
It’s from his Mathnawi, # 228, as translated by A.J. Arberry (Mystical Poems of Rumi 2, p. 24):

Know as a station of fear that in which you are secure;
know as a station of security that in which you tremble.

The Hand of God—Elul 6

We desperately need new ways of thinking about an imaging God, especially in this month of preparing our spirits to come into the Presence. If many of us are no longer comfortable with standing before the Father or Judge as our only way of understanding our relationships to God, how then to think of coming into the Presence? Here is an image from Jane Steger, an American woman born in 1878 who recorded her life’s “adventure of the spirit” in Leaves from a Secret Journal in 1928.

I sometimes think that we are to God as his fingers are to a blind person. Through us He feels of life in all its manifold experiences. Through some of us He feels of happiness, and through some He feels of pain. It consoled me somewhat, when I was unhappy, to think that perhaps He was feeling of suffering through me. ..
The fingers and palm of the hand seem to me to be a good symbol of our relationship to God. We are all separate and distinct and yet all rooted in Him, and we spring from Him as our fingers are rooted in, and spring from, our palm. (p. 51)

Steger’s lovely wondering gives me a new way to think about how to live out what the rabbis said was the focus of our preparation for standing before God: turning or repentance (teshuvah), prayer (tefillah), and tzedakah (charity). Have we amputated our fingers, cut them from their root? What textures of life are we feeling with our fingers? What are we using our fingers to do to and for others?

What Kind of Atheist Are You? On Spiritual Defensiveness—Elul 5

I once asked a man I had recently met, “What kind of atheist are you?” This was after we had talked for many hours about deep and intimate personal experiences and had moved to the question of spirituality and religion. After I summarized my conversion to Judaism from Evangelical Christianity, I asked him, “What about you?”
“I’m an atheist!” he said.
“A true atheist or an agnostic?” I asked, having encountered many people who didn’t know or weren’t concerned that there is a difference between acknowledging that one knows nothing about God and believing and confessing that God does not exist.
“An atheist!”
“What kind of atheist are you?” I asked.
I was not prepared for his response. What I wanted to know was, Was he a garden-variety atheist? Someone who was not persuaded by a traditional religious or spiritual teachings about God and had had no experiences of God and concluded, logically, that God did not exist? Was he a “God is Dead” atheist, a person who believes the old concepts of God are dead and we must seek new ones that jibe with current science and philosophy? Or, Was he a Christopher Hitchens kind of atheist, that is, a militant, crusading fundamentalist who believes that there is only one truth and he has it: God does NOT exist; and that anyone who disagrees is misguided and irrational. IN short, I wanted to know how open his mind was to different ways of thinking of God and spirituality.
“Why would you ask that?” he asked. He was clearly miffed. “That’s offensive.”
“What do you mean?”
You wouldn’t ask that of anyone else? IF I were a Christian, you wouldn’t ask me what kind of Christian I was. In America today people single out atheists for abuse. It’s like we have to keep quiet, hide in the closet, because everyone has their church or their prayer group. And they treat anybody who doesn’t believe in God badly, with pity or contempt.”
I laughed. “No! You don’t know me! If you had said you were a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim I would have asked, ‘What kind of Christian or Jew or Muslim are you?’ If you had said you were a Presbyterian, I would have asked, “Are you a United Presbyterian, a Southern Presbyterian, or an Orthodox Presbyterian?’ I taught historical theology. I’m a lifelong lover of all religious traditions in their glorious variety. I’m really interested in the differences. And when I ask that kind of question, I want to know about you, where you feel at home, what your deepest values and commitments are. ”
“It’s an aggressive question,” he continued. “People attack atheists and we’re forced to defend our position, when no one else is.”
“I’m not asking you defend it,” I said, “just describe it, so I can get to know you better.”
He wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, describe it.
He was just mad. Mad about all those religious people he had to live among. Mad about being a misunderstood minority. Mad about being questioned at all.
We talked more. I told him when I asked him what kind of atheist he was I just really wanted to know if he was a fundamentalist, meaning, a person who is closed-minded, who doesn’t admit that anyone else’s experience or values or beliefs are legitimate. Because it’s not just religious people who are fundamentalists, secularists and certain atheists are, too. It’s their literalism and absolute certainty that I worry about, not the particular way they understand the universe and its workings.
I don’t remember his response to that other than a denial that he was a fundamentalist.
I tried another tack. I explained to him that if he thought that “God” meant an angry old man out there somewhere, dropping down every once in a while to punish people or stick his finger in the machine of creation to get the gears unstuck or interfere with the course of nature, then I was an atheist, too; because I didn’t believe that god existed either.
But he didn’t want to hear about other ways of conceptualizing God. He didn’t want to talk about God at all. Just talking about God seemed to make him mad. He was mad. Just mad. So I dropped it.
I’ve been thinking about this conversation ever since. Which is one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog. People have such misconceptions about “God” and religion and spirituality. Old, dead ideas that the media keep playing on. Yet some people, not all, are hungry for new ways of thinking about God and spirit. So after Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur I will continue to talk about our images and concepts of God, the obstacles to our understanding, building on what I have started during this month of Elul talking about “coming into the Presence.”
I’ve also been thinking about how vulnerable we all are when it comes to our deepest values. We are quick to get defensive when we think someone is attacking the core of our being, that which centers our self and guides all our actions. We leap to protect ourselves with anger or certainty or distance, even if we perceive we are not being respected or we are being misunderstood. For who we are in those deep places is so tender, so close to the bone, so sacred, I might say, that it hurts for another not to honor it. This is true no matter how we define ourselves, as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Moslems, mystics, agnostics, atheists, or the ones who don’t know where to turn.
So let’s be careful out there. Let’s not leap to take offense where none is given. And let’s honor the hearts and spirit of the other. That’s another way to come into the presence of the One.

Coming into the Presence—Elul 4

On Rosh HaShanah we celebrate the creation of the world. On Yom Kippur we stand before the Creator to be judged for the way we have used the life we have been given in the last year. In the ten days between celebration and judgment, life and death, we turn toward the One.

Here’s a fresh way to think about coming into the Presence that sparks in me new ways to think about celebrating the creation of the world, turning to the One, standing before the judgment of the One, living a life of gratitude in the presence of the ever-renewing One. It comes from a Hasidic story recorded by Martin Buber in his book Ecstatic Confessions.

In the earliest morning twilight a tzaddik stood at the window and, trembling, called out, “Just a short time ago it was still night, and now it is day—God is causing the day to arise!” And he was full of fear and trembling. Moreover he said, “Every created being should be ashamed before the Creator. For if he were perfect, as he was destined to be, he would have to be astonished and awaken and catch fire over the renewal of the creature at every time and in every moment.” (p.147)

Coming into the Presence—Elul 3

On Rosh HaShanah and all through the ten days of Repentance through Yom Kippur, we sing and chant, Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father, Our King. We have a host of other metaphors for God in our festival liturgy, too. Witness these we sing when thanking God for remembering the covenant of love with us:

We are your children, you are our father.
We are your servants, you are our master.
We are your heritage, you are our destiny.
We are your flock, you are our shepherd.
We are your vineyard, you are our watchman.
We are the clay, you are the potter.
We are your subjects, you are our king.

Still, Our Father, Our King is the refrain of the Days of Awe. And indeed, these are the two metaphors that permeate and dominate not only the Torah, the writings, and the prophets, but also the Talmud and the Hasidic stories and most of the Jewish tradition, like most of the Christian tradition. They are beautiful, rich, evocative, lovely. God is a loving father, not a slave master. God is a faithful and generous and wise king, not a fickle, bloodthirsty, and foolish one.

It is not the metaphors themselves that are wrong. It is that our world has changed and these metaphors no longer speak to us in the liberating ways they once spoke to our ancestors. They’re dead metaphors. Unfortunately, many of us today no longer even know what having a father present at all means. And very few of us have experienced standing before a king.

Are we just stuck with going to services and praying these words without having a deep understanding of them? Without much of a way to relate to them so that they become meaningful to us? We can use our imaginations to help bring these metaphors back to life, yes. That’s good. But why not use our imaginations with new images so turning toward the Presence during the month of Elul and the Days of Awe is meaningful to us in new ways. Why not ask ourselves, What does it mean today to “Know before whom you stand”? What does it mean to “come into the Presence?” What gives us that experience of standing before someone who or something that existed before we were born, gave us life, sustains us in life, calls us into question, is larger and wiser and in all ways better than we are, showers us with favor, holds over us the power of death, inspires awe and boundless love and speech-defying gratitude in us? What is it that you would bow before, with dignity not servility?

Know Before Whom You Stand—Elul 2

“Know before whom you stand” (Da lifnei mi atah omed). These words, which one finds near the ark in many ancient and contemporary synagogues, are the words that will guide my reflections this Elul. There are many versions of this sentence in the Jewish tradition, including in the Talmud (B’rachot 28b), and even more interpretations. I want to follow where these words lead me during this month of teshuvah, turning.

Before I throw words at you in the next days, I invite you to muse on these words in silence: Know before whom you stand. Imagine yourself standing before someone who or something that or whatever it is that inspires awe, respect, wonder, and boundless love in you, that makes you aware of all your flaws, makes you long to be better than you have been and be all of who you are, that makes you want to live each moment fully, your whole being singing with gratitude and joy. Someone or something or some experience before which you would bow with dignity?

Know Before Whom You Stand—Elul 1

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 and what it means to be judged by God the “Judge,” turn toward the “Father,” and stand before God in prayer and reflection. I invite you to meditate with me each day this month on what it means today to come into the presence of the One.

For those who want to follow a different set of reflections during the month of Elul, ones that are more focused on traditional Jewish texts, read my posts for Elul 2010, which begin with Turn, Turn, Turn. Just type Turn, Turn, Turn into the search box and you’ll be taken to the beginning of that set of meditations.

A Joyous Eid ul-Fitr! From Ramadan to Elul—Bowing All the Way

A blessed Eid ul-Fitr! Today, as the world moves from ending one month of fasting, charity, and prayer, Ramadan, to beginning another month of fasting, charity, and prayer, Elul, which starts at sunset on August 18, I can’t help thinking about one ritual that marks both of these months: bowing.

Most people today, certainly North Americans, have a kind of visceral reaction against bowing. I’ve heard people say this in many different contexts: “I don’t bow to anybody or anything. That’s a sign of submission or subservience. It’s groveling. We stand upright, proud. We shouldn’t humiliate ourselves. We’re not worms that we should crawl on the ground before anyone, even God.”

But that’s the point of bowing when one stands before God, or comes into the Presence! The point is we don’t bow to anything else in the creation. We bow only to that which is worthy of being acknowledged as greater than ourselves. As the meditation before opening the ark in the Torah service puts it:

I am the servant of the Holy One, whom I revere and whose Torah (teaching) I revere at all times. Not on mortals do I rely, nor upon angels do I depend, but on the God of the universe, the God of truth, whose Torah is truth, whose prophets are truth, and who abounds in deeds of goodness and truth. In God do I put my trust; unto God’s holy, precious being do I utter praise. Open my heart to Your Torah. Answer my prayers and the prayers of all Your people Israel for goodness, for life, and for peace. Amen.

This bowing we do is not sniveling and groveling before the slave master or executioner. It is an act of dignity and honor. It’s an act of humility. An act of surrender of our little self with all its narrowness and pettiness to the One, to a truth that is larger than our tiny little minds can grasp or own.

That’s what Jews are doing when they bend the knee and bow their heads during the Amidah, the silent, standing prayer that is part of each of the three daily services; and what they are doing when on Yom Kippur they, like the High Priest who entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, prostrate themselves when praying for forgiveness. And that’s what Moslems are doing when they kneel on their prayer rugs five times a day throughout the year and with special repetitions during Ramadan, and bow repeatedly, touching their palms and foreheads to the ground. We are all saying with our bodies, “We are not all that is. We do not stand on a mountaintop looking down on everyone and everything else. We stand in awe before the Presence. We are servants of the Holy One, ready to be of service with our very lives.

Fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Moslems aside—let them argue about exactly how close to stand and exactly when and exactly how to bow—to me Jews and Moslems are one on this. Even the beloved and wise Abraham Joshua Heschel (May his memory be for a blessing) misunderstood this when in his book on the prophets he compared Islam to Judaism negatively by saying Islam means “submission” and Jews don’t submit, they work with God in the world. We both bow. We both surrender our lives, our selves to the One that we may walk humbly in the world, in beauty, mercy, justice, and truth.

Let Poets Be Our Theologians Now--continued

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

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.