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.