Every Rosh Hashanah we read from the Torah portion called Vayera, which means, and God appeared. In tomorrow’s portion we read about how God remembered Sarah and gave to Abraham and Sarah their miracle child, Isaac, born to them in their old age. However, the joy of Isaac brought conflict in to Abraham’s home. In some way, big brother Ishmael was corrupting baby Isaac and Sarah insisted that Hagar and her son be cast out of their family to protect Isaac’s spiritual and moral development. God reassures Abraham in his distress over losing his firstborn son and tells him to listen to what Sarah says. God tells Abraham, B’Yitzchak y’karei L’cha zara, through Isaac will offspring be considered yours. God previously promised Abraham offspring as numerous as the stars and the grains of sand. On five different occasions God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a multitude of nations. Yet in the Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Abraham is commanded to bring Isaac up as an offering on one of the mountains God would show him. In the famous passage called the Akeda, the biding of Isaac, Abraham brings Isaac to the mountain and prepares to sacrifice him, as God instructed him. Abraham, the man who argued with God to save the righteous people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah says nothing. His silence is, mystifying and maddending. He is faced with a paradox: you will have many offspring through Isaac/Kill Isaac. How can they both be true?
The psychologist Robert Johnson, a disciple of Carl Jung, wrote about paradox in his book, Owning your own Shadow. He says: “Paradox is that artesian well of meaning we need so badly in our modern world. Contradiction is barren and destructive, but paradox is creative. To suffer one’s confusion is the first step in healing. Then the pain of contradiction is transformed into the mystery of paradox. The capacity for paradox is the measure of spiritual strength and maturity.”
The paradox we experience in modern life is an alienation from our own spiritual center. We live in a world of science and logic, bequeathed to us from the Age of Reason in the 18th Century. The rule of reason has served us amazingly well, giving us an understanding of natural phenomena through the physical and biological sciences, cures for disease, and labor saving and information saving devices, that have created leisure and great wealth unimaginable to those living centuries before us. But the logical, provable world supplies only half of the information we need to live happy, satisfying lives. The exploration of the spiritual world, is, in a sense the future of humanity, the historical thrust toward the messianic age.
We are told in Genesis, that God brought forth the light: the spiritual light of God’s being into the world. And also that on the second day of creation, God separated the waters from the waters, a most mysterious statement, signifying the separation of the mundane universe from the divine universe. From this separation comes paradox: that which we experience as real and that which we can only vaguely sense. It is easier to just shut out the possibility of the existence of that spiritual universe. So many people of all religions believe that is it sufficient to be a good person and live wholly in the practical, concrete universe. It’s simpler. It makes sense to our rational, intellectual selves. But by doing so we shut out half of our nature: our souls. The choice to live in the place of paradox: in the rational world and the spiritual world, the world that harmonizes male and female, is an opening to great growth and wisdom. It allows us to align ourselves with the Eternal Oneness that is God and heal the feeling of alienation that is a simple fact of being human. The more we are willing to open ourselves to the paradox of body and soul, science and God, earth and heaven, the more we bring ourselves into consonance with the divine plan: a future leading to greater spiritual awareness and understanding. In this place of creative paradox, we open ourselves to not knowing what will happen and paradoxically to a deep trust in God’s goodness and protection, The more we open our hearts and give of ourselves to others, of our time, attention, and even our money, the more we are blessed with plenty. The more we give, the more we receive. The more we strive to perfect ourselves, the less we are dependent solely on the vagaries of events. The more we let go of suspicion and selfishness, the more we can love and be loved. The more we forgive, the more we are forgiven: by God and others. This is not a belief in magic. It is the ability to know and live with paradox: to hold two truths at the same time and trust that we are part of the Divine Plan: that we are cared for, respected, and loved by God. As Oscar Wilde said, The way of paradoxes is the way of truth
Abraham was willing to trust God, who he knew with utter certainty to be a God of compassion, love, and blessing. He was willing to hold two diametrically opposed truths simultaneously, just because both were true. May each of us have the courage like Abraham, to open our hearts and our minds to encompass the great paradox of the human condition and by so doing come to know with certain clarity that we were meant to dwell in both worlds: in the love and security, the goodness, joy, and great Oneness that is God.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Spritual Action: The audience filtered into the theater. They took their seats, programs in hand. A few latecomers were shown to their seats by the ushers. It was curtain time. The lights dimmed. The audience waited expectantly. After a minute or two, there was a low buzz of conversation. The show had not started. Was anything wrong? The people sat, waiting and there were no announcements. No information to tell them how long they could expect to wait. They sat uneasily, not knowing what would happen. Not knowing what, if anything, to do.
This story is a metaphor. For the Actors temple it is a doubly fitting metaphor. We, of course, are the audience and we are waiting. We are waiting for God; waiting for God to act; to show us that God exists. We have bought our tickets and we sit in our seats and we wait for the show to begin. But nothing happens.
There is a reason that nothing happens. It’s because the metaphor is backwards. There is a fundamental misunderstanding. In actuality, God is the audience and we are the actors, except we don’t know it. No one told us that this is so; and so we wait for a show to begin in which we ourselves are the performers. No wonder nothing happens.
But really, it is illogical that we should be the audience and God the Actor. If we want to put food on the table and pay the rent, we don’t sit idly, waiting for money to be provided to us. Yet that’s what happens in our spiritual lives. We expect a result with no effort. We are still stuck in the mindset of the Ancient Israelites, who were slaves in Egypt. We want to see the signs and the wonders, but God expects us to have grown up, to be more independent, to take responsibility for our spiritual lives the way we take responsibility for our economic lives. Elie Wiesel has expressed it similarly: he said that God waits for Israel while Israel waits for God. The Torah gives us this message, over and over again. We are told so many times and in so many ways how to be the cause that produces an effect. Slaughter a lamb. Put the blood on the door. Cross the sea of Reeds, follow the 10 commandments, build a tabernacle, open your hand to the poor, love your neighbor as yourself, if you find a lost object, you must return it. We are told, IF you follow the commandments, THEN you will be blessed. We are the IF and God is the THEN. It’s so simple, and yet so confusing.
The problem goes much deeper than this, of course. We are not sure of very much. We are not sure that God exists. The old stories about God and the Israelites are so ancient, so far removed from who we are and what our world is about. Our vital connection with the past has been so weakened that we are not sure just what to believe.
God is the God of our history. In the 10 commandments, God said I am the Lord our God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. The Israelites’ knowledge of God was historical and experiential. And the relationship between God and Humankind is still set up that way.
The torah teaches us that action is the key. Our experience of God is real and interactive. When we do things that are good and right, in the words of the book of Deuteronomy, we experience God’s blessings. The day seems to flow smoothly. We encounter few problems, we even have enough money to pay bills. We are happy and productive. When we miss the mark, the true derivation of the word, chet, translated as sin, as in the prayer, Al chet shechatanu lefanecha, sometimes we experience difficulties, suffering. It’s never quite that simple. We will never understand it all, and yet the universe can be more intelligible than it seems to be.
If I could prove God’s existence to you I would be world famous. People would flock here, to the Actors Temple. On second thought, Maybe I ought to work on that. No one has ever proved God’s existence, however I have proved God’s existence to myself, and you can prove God’s existence to yourself. It sounds preposterous, and yet it’s possible. It can absolutely be done.
What exactly would be required of a person to able to experience the existence of God? It requires action. Baby steps, really: tiny increments of change, and the will to make changes. What is required is the courage of an act of forgiveness, the kindness of an increase in charity, a step away from rigidity and toward love, a step away from needing to be right and a step toward acknowledging our common humanity; sincere repentance, the refusal to hate, the refusal to blame, stopping the habit of talking about people negatively, or perhaps engaging in study, which, we are told, leads to increased understanding, and in my case, really did. Each small action matters. One of my very favorite quotations is from Psalms Rabbah. Rabbi Issi said, “Open to me the gates of repentance as minutely as the point of a needle, and I will open for you gates wide enough for carriages and wagons, camps of soldiers, and siege engines to pass through them.” Small actions are of the utmost importance. Each person’s path will be different. And then what will be needed is enough silence and thoughtfulness to understand the events that unfold. To become aware of the quiet intimations of God’s presence. I like to think of it as connecting the dots. Making sense of the events that occur, tracing my actions back to see why something happened, being totally honest with myself. Did I truly do the right thing, or could I have been wrong. Was I selfish, angry or giving? Usually, but not always, I can figure out why a negative or a positive thing happened. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach has written: “The more real a thing is the less you can see it. After you reach the level where you see all those things which are not to be seen, then you open your eyes and everything is clear to you, and it feels like you saw it all the time. To love someone is the deepest thing in the world, but you can't prove it. You can't put your finger on it, but it's the most real thing in the world. G-d is the most, utmost real thing in the world, and you can't see God, but after you don't see God, you see Him. Then you can see God everywhere,…When we say the Shema, G-d is One, we close our eyes, because first we don't see G-d, we're blind, we just believe, but then we open our eyes and it is so clear, God’s always there.”
It is out of moral, kind, and loving actions that we experience God’s blessings. We are bidden to act and God does respond. We are the actors. Each of us writes the script each day and every moment. God, too is one of the writers. But we must begin. We cannot sit back and have a “show me” attitude. It requires a conscious decision. Let this Rosh Hashanah truly be a new year: a year in which each person here becomes aware of God’s loving presence through kind and loving deeds. Ken y’hi ratson. So may this be God’s will.
This story is a metaphor. For the Actors temple it is a doubly fitting metaphor. We, of course, are the audience and we are waiting. We are waiting for God; waiting for God to act; to show us that God exists. We have bought our tickets and we sit in our seats and we wait for the show to begin. But nothing happens.
There is a reason that nothing happens. It’s because the metaphor is backwards. There is a fundamental misunderstanding. In actuality, God is the audience and we are the actors, except we don’t know it. No one told us that this is so; and so we wait for a show to begin in which we ourselves are the performers. No wonder nothing happens.
But really, it is illogical that we should be the audience and God the Actor. If we want to put food on the table and pay the rent, we don’t sit idly, waiting for money to be provided to us. Yet that’s what happens in our spiritual lives. We expect a result with no effort. We are still stuck in the mindset of the Ancient Israelites, who were slaves in Egypt. We want to see the signs and the wonders, but God expects us to have grown up, to be more independent, to take responsibility for our spiritual lives the way we take responsibility for our economic lives. Elie Wiesel has expressed it similarly: he said that God waits for Israel while Israel waits for God. The Torah gives us this message, over and over again. We are told so many times and in so many ways how to be the cause that produces an effect. Slaughter a lamb. Put the blood on the door. Cross the sea of Reeds, follow the 10 commandments, build a tabernacle, open your hand to the poor, love your neighbor as yourself, if you find a lost object, you must return it. We are told, IF you follow the commandments, THEN you will be blessed. We are the IF and God is the THEN. It’s so simple, and yet so confusing.
The problem goes much deeper than this, of course. We are not sure of very much. We are not sure that God exists. The old stories about God and the Israelites are so ancient, so far removed from who we are and what our world is about. Our vital connection with the past has been so weakened that we are not sure just what to believe.
God is the God of our history. In the 10 commandments, God said I am the Lord our God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. The Israelites’ knowledge of God was historical and experiential. And the relationship between God and Humankind is still set up that way.
The torah teaches us that action is the key. Our experience of God is real and interactive. When we do things that are good and right, in the words of the book of Deuteronomy, we experience God’s blessings. The day seems to flow smoothly. We encounter few problems, we even have enough money to pay bills. We are happy and productive. When we miss the mark, the true derivation of the word, chet, translated as sin, as in the prayer, Al chet shechatanu lefanecha, sometimes we experience difficulties, suffering. It’s never quite that simple. We will never understand it all, and yet the universe can be more intelligible than it seems to be.
If I could prove God’s existence to you I would be world famous. People would flock here, to the Actors Temple. On second thought, Maybe I ought to work on that. No one has ever proved God’s existence, however I have proved God’s existence to myself, and you can prove God’s existence to yourself. It sounds preposterous, and yet it’s possible. It can absolutely be done.
What exactly would be required of a person to able to experience the existence of God? It requires action. Baby steps, really: tiny increments of change, and the will to make changes. What is required is the courage of an act of forgiveness, the kindness of an increase in charity, a step away from rigidity and toward love, a step away from needing to be right and a step toward acknowledging our common humanity; sincere repentance, the refusal to hate, the refusal to blame, stopping the habit of talking about people negatively, or perhaps engaging in study, which, we are told, leads to increased understanding, and in my case, really did. Each small action matters. One of my very favorite quotations is from Psalms Rabbah. Rabbi Issi said, “Open to me the gates of repentance as minutely as the point of a needle, and I will open for you gates wide enough for carriages and wagons, camps of soldiers, and siege engines to pass through them.” Small actions are of the utmost importance. Each person’s path will be different. And then what will be needed is enough silence and thoughtfulness to understand the events that unfold. To become aware of the quiet intimations of God’s presence. I like to think of it as connecting the dots. Making sense of the events that occur, tracing my actions back to see why something happened, being totally honest with myself. Did I truly do the right thing, or could I have been wrong. Was I selfish, angry or giving? Usually, but not always, I can figure out why a negative or a positive thing happened. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach has written: “The more real a thing is the less you can see it. After you reach the level where you see all those things which are not to be seen, then you open your eyes and everything is clear to you, and it feels like you saw it all the time. To love someone is the deepest thing in the world, but you can't prove it. You can't put your finger on it, but it's the most real thing in the world. G-d is the most, utmost real thing in the world, and you can't see God, but after you don't see God, you see Him. Then you can see God everywhere,…When we say the Shema, G-d is One, we close our eyes, because first we don't see G-d, we're blind, we just believe, but then we open our eyes and it is so clear, God’s always there.”
It is out of moral, kind, and loving actions that we experience God’s blessings. We are bidden to act and God does respond. We are the actors. Each of us writes the script each day and every moment. God, too is one of the writers. But we must begin. We cannot sit back and have a “show me” attitude. It requires a conscious decision. Let this Rosh Hashanah truly be a new year: a year in which each person here becomes aware of God’s loving presence through kind and loving deeds. Ken y’hi ratson. So may this be God’s will.
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