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.