When John comes down to the Jordan river saying God is on the move, the kingdom of heaven is near — hundreds of years have passed since any prophet offered a word worth keeping about God’s power to save. So far as the Hebrew Bible tells it, after the Jews headed home from exile in Babylon, God pretty much retired from the mighty works business, a.k.a. politics.
Maybe Isaiah of Babylon just went too far. In that gorgeous passage — Comfort, comfort ye, my people — so perfectly rendered by the aria from Handel’s Messiah — Ev’ry valley shall be exalted — there hides a terrible irony. When the poet writes from exile in Babylon, everyone knows that the Persian emperor Cyrus is turning his great army west toward Babylon. The die is cast. Babylon will fall. The Jews will be sent home from their sorrows to Jerusalem. Everyone knows it, but the poet in Babylon sees in it the hand of God and this inspires his song. “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God . . . may every mountain and hill be made low” – for General Cyrus! May this military march move, swift and unhindered, to victory utter and complete. That is Isaiah’s prayer. “See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him.” Shock and awe in Babylon of Iraq. That is Isaiah’s song.
On Monday morning I awoke before dawn and somehow managed to crawl out of bed, fumble my jeans and boots on, and sling my drum and backpack – the one that has become the indefinite home for my first aid kit, a patchwork bag of herbal tinctures, a squirt bottle half-full of milk of magnesia, a bottle of bubbles, and some lavender essential oil – over my shoulder.
As I checked my back pocket one more time for my ID and locked the back door, the clock on the microwave read 5:08 AM. By 5:39 AM, I was snaking through the dark streets of West Oakland in what seemed to me to be a much-too-small crowd, mostly quiet except the occasional heartbeat of a lone drum or the sleepy but hopeful cheer that rose up as we passed under the overpass of Mandela Parkway. It was somehow comforting to hear our own voices echoing off the walls – it helped us remember our power.
You better believe I was asking myself the same questions that CNN, the Huffington Post, the BBC, and Mayor Quan had that morning: Why on earth are we doing this? Are you absolutely out of your gourd, trying to shut down all of the major ports on the West Coast?
Reb Zalman Schachter Shalomi is one of the great Jewish mystics and spiritual teachers alive in the world today. He is the founder and spiritual guide of the Jewish Renewal movement, and was my teacher for thirty years directing my study for the rabbinate, and chairing the Beyt Din (Jewish rabbinic court) that examined my learning and gave me ordination (smicha) and the title of rabbi. If you ever get a chance to hear his teachings, please do so! He has written frequently in Tikkun magazine, and I count him, along with my mentor at the Jewish Theological Seminary Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great inspirers of the Tikkun enterprise. Here is a mystical message about Chanukah from Rabbi Zalman Schater Shalomi:
There are times in life when a soul needs to hear Barbra Streisand singing “Avinu Malkeinu.” It needs to hear Verdi’s Requiem. It needs to hear John Coltrane’s saxophone screaming A Love Supreme. Peace Day 2011 was such a day. Peace Day, the UN International Day of Peace and Global Ceasefire falls on September 21 every year. It coincides with the opening session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The day represents a hope that a time will come when humanity will end its violent conflicts. Peace One Day.
Since 2008, I try to publish one or more short essays to honor Peace Day, and I had intended the same for this year. I thought about writing something about peace as a contagion. I had not yet decided whether to write it as fiction or as a proposal. The weekend before Peace Day, I went to see the movie Contagion. I thought it might give me some ideas.
The movie is about a virus that spreads through touch. An infected person can touch another person or a surface, leave the contagion, and someone else touching the same surface can pick-up the contagion. Panic sets in. Social order breaks down. I tried to imagine the opposite. I tried to imagine a world where humankind has the power to think peace, breathe peace, and pass the peace through touch. Imagine a world where we could leave traces of our own peace on surfaces for a complete stranger to catch with only a touch.
But, when Peace Day came, I was no longer interested in thinking about peace as a contagion. It was the opening day of the UN General Assembly, and the world awaited what President Obama would say about the Palestinian plan to apply for full UN membership as an independent state. I also was eager to hear what the president would say. In this impasse between Israel’s need for security and the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for an independent state clouds were gathering in my soul.
At the same time, for me, there was another sad cloud looming over the day – the scheduled execution of Troy Davis. The State of Georgia had scheduled Davis’ execution on Peace Day. Did not the idea of global cease fire include state executions? I felt dispirited because clearly we have much more work to do to inform people about Peace Day and its possibilities. However, more than that, I was one of more than a million people across the globe who signed petitions to sop the execution of Troy Davis.
Sep28
by: Rabbi Michael Lerner on September 28th, 2011 | Comments Off
This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Wendy Kenin:
There are so many reasons to love the mikveh (Jewish ritual bath). My love for mikveh inspired me to keep kosher, observe the Jewish Sabbath, and cover my hair as a married woman.
Here are a few of my personal favorite things about the mikveh:
1. Immersing into the Earth’s waters
Mikveh water must meet certain requirements of being naturally existing, as from a natural body of water or harvest from the rain. Any large enough body of naturally occurring water can be a mikveh. The ocean is the largest mikveh in the world. When a woman immerses in the mikveh, she is entering the womb of the feminine Earth, called Adamah in Hebrew. She strikes a fetal position pose, and then is spiritually reborn upon exiting the waters.
“When we refer to G‑d’s presence within our world, giving life to all things, then She is the Shechinah,” writes Tzvi Freeman about why we don’t call G-d Mother.
“When we refer to G‑d’s transcendence beyond this world, we call Him The Holy One, blessed be He. G‑d does not change or have parts, G‑d forbid. Both are the same one and singular G‑d, just looking at that G‑d from different angles,” he writes.
G-d is female, G-d is male, and G-d is everything and can be interacted with and described from each of these aspects.
This week’s Spiritual Wisdom is about Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the giving of the Ten Commandments (actually more literally translated as “10 Speech Acts”). Shavuot begins this year on Tuesday night, June 7, and goes through June 9. The tradition is to stay up all night June 7th studying, so as to be prepared for the moment of revelation at dawn Wednesday, June 8.
Beyt Tikkun synagogue will hold a Sunrise Shavuot service in Berkeley, California, from 5:45 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. (including bagel and lox breakfast) at the westernmost end of the Berkeley pier at the westernmost end of University Avenue. If it rains, it will be moved to 951 Cragmont, Berkeley. All are invited.
The following passage comes from Rabbi Phyllis Berman and Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s recent book, published by Jewish Lights: Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness across Millennia.
Sinai: The universe says “I”
The Israelites stood at the foot of Sinai.
They gazed at the holy mountain, but could not see its crags, its precipices. The clouds enfolded it into an enormous mirror.
More than enormous: Infinite.
In that mirror each one saw a self, and the entire people: saw all who had just trekked out of slavery, and ancient Sarah with her husband Abraham, and many many descendants, beyond the generation that had just fled slavery and on and on, to many centuries later.
One week after Jews all over the world nosh on Haman’s hat, dress in kooky costumes and party until we no longer recognize the difference between the ancient Persian equivalents of Hitler and Einstein, our preparation for Passover begins. On Shabbat Parah we study the enigmatic commandment to purify ourselves from contact with the dead through the sacrifice of a young, unblemished, red cow.
In many ways, this reading seems to continue the comedic inversions and paradoxes of Purim, the Jewish Mardi Gras. But surprise and delight at our continued presence on earth gives way to thoughtful reflection on emancipation from slavery and the attendant new-found responsibility we incur as a nation of free citizens. Observance takes a serious turn. Passover swings into view.
Parshat Parah is a pivotal passage. Why does this turning point in an overwhelmingly patriarchal text appear to revolve around menstruation?
Why is it so hard to be grateful?
In the churches of my childhood, the ministers would intone, “Let us give thanks,” perhaps after the collection plate had been passed, and we would all bow our heads and go through the motions. I don’t remember feeling actual gratitude.
But that wasn’t for lack of reminding. A hymn too exhorted us, “Count your Blessings. Name them one by one, and you’ll be surprised at what the Lord has done.” I do not recall ever literally counting my blessings or being surprised, except in a bad way, at what the Lord had done. Being the pious kind of person who read the Bible from cover to cover on summer vacation, I must have gone through the exercise, in prayers on my knees, but I do not recall feeling grateful. Maybe I thought my blessings wouldn’t add up to much, or maybe I didn’t know how to be grateful. Gratitude was hard to muster; however, sardonic and sarcastic responses arose with great ease.
Isn’t gratitude just happy talk, denial, and bullshit? Isn’t it masochism?
This week’s spiritual wisdom comes to us from progressive activist and novelist James T. Dette, who urges Christians today to reflect on their Jewish roots. A native of New Jersey, Dette has long been active in local and national politics, and has contributed to such publications as The New York Times, Irish America, and Street News.
The Council of Jerusalem
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN
I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Passaic, New Jersey, two blocks from the synagogue, Ahavas Israel. Most of my boyhood friends were Jews. My Irish mother played mah-jongg with her Jewish neighbors. And we were well supplied with matzos during Passover. I attended bar mitzvahs and even the wedding of the daughter of our next-door neighbor. Most of the pupils in my grammar school, which was right next to the synagogue, were Jewish. We used the Jewish community center gym for our physical education classes.
I’ve always had uneasiness with John’s use of the word “Jew” in his gospel. In The Birth of Christianity, Dominic Crossan declares unequivocally that there is no anti-Semitism in the gospel, saying that the use of the word was the result of an internecine dispute. I accepted that but still could not dismiss my unease.
My heart and mind are full of this movie today, after my wife and I saw it last night. Until I read this review in our local paper by Mick LaSalle, I was wondering how Tyler Perry, whose Madea movie trailers are enough to make me never want to see the movies, could possibly do justice to this womanist play. LaSalle’s review reassured me. I’m no movie reviewer and what I have to say here is a personal take that will include a possible spoiler, so it would be best to read that review instead if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
I do urge you to go. I haven’t seen as deep a take on the human condition in many a day.
Which makes it curious that almost everyone in the theater last night was Black. My wife and I (white) sat near the front, so we left among the first and then I waited while she went to the women’s room, so everyone else passed me and after a while I saw a white woman and it occurred to me that I couldn’t recall anyone else who wasn’t African American in that stream of people coming out. Maybe I missed some. But nearly all those Latinos, Asians and whites we had been lining up with to get tickets had gone to one of the other dozen movies at the multiplex. This was in Richmond, California, a city that is incidentally 36% African American. I assume it will be different in metropolitan centers, but in this neighborhood the movie had been clearly labeled in everyone’s minds as a Black movie. And not just that, but a movie for Black women, as most women came with their women friends, and I was in a small male minority.
Big mistake. This is for everyone.
I intuitively feel that these experiences, mystical but also sensual and embodied, are the core of spirituality and the foundation that religions build their vast tottering edifices upon: these experiences that work for us, that we then work hard to name and explicate in full logical or fantastically elaborated detail. Naming is not only important but unavoidable … but once the naming develops into major exclusionary truth claims, … and once these get identified with the worldly power involved in religious organization then all the power of the experience gets harnessed to the groupthink and the powerplays (exclusions, repressions and crusades) and we have the worst of religion.
Dave Belden in response to How I Became a Pagan
Reading Dave’s comment, I was reminded of Deepak Chopra’s saying “God gave humans the truth, and the devil came and he said, ‘Let’s give it a name and call it religion.’” There is an inescapable tension between experience and the words we use to describe that experience, which cannot help but remove us from the experience itself. Ted Hughes warns us eloquently: “In a way, words are continually trying to displace our experience. And insofar as they are stronger than the raw life of our experience, and full of themselves and all the dictionaries they have digested, they do displace it.” Yet Hughes as a poet chose to use words to create extraordinary experiences for his readers. How do you communicate without words? How do you guide people on a spiritual path without names for the landmarks they are passing?
On the vision quest I wrote about, Oriah was certainly conscious of that tension. When we came back from the vision quest, we were not allowed to talk to anyone about our experience, because once we did it would become a story, and we would remember the story and how we had told it rather than the experience. After a day, we met as a group and shared the experience of our vision quest with one another, in mime. No words allowed. This was (radical understatement) a challenge, but it forced us to focus on the physical, emotional, and spiritual experience rather than moving into the intellectual world, which I at least certainly do all too easily. I remember one woman, who simply sat in the centre of our circle, and peeled an onion, layer after layer, as tears rolled down her face. When I go to sweat lodges in my tradition, we are always encouraged not to speak to any one for seven days about our experience in the lodge, so that we have time to process the experience before it becomes a story.
This diary is dedicated to Father Paco Vallejos, who has facilitated my own journey from tolerance to empathy.
Several weeks ago, I interviewed Bishop Gene Robinson, a leader in the modern civil rights movement for Tikkun Daily. Bishop Robinson, who delivered the inaugural prayer, is the first openly gay Episcopal Bishop. You can read the first installment of my interview about Obama and “the Left” here.
Nablus, Palestine, 2003. Courtesy of Rusty Stewart.
Shanah Tovu um’tukah and Eid Mubarak.
Here’s a guide I created for the Holy Days; perhaps you’ll find the section on Teshuvah useful.
May this year bring transformation and renewal on the side of reparative justice.
Blessings,
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Guide to Conducting Ta’anit Teshuvah: A Public Fast During the Jewish High Holy Days For Palestinian Human Rights
An initiative of Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence, with Ta’anit Tzedek/Fast for Gaza and The Fellowship of Reconciliation
It is a tradition for the pious to fast from morning until evening during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, as it is written, “I am with them in distress.” (Psalm 91:15)
In order to prepare for these days of reflection, we ask:
Who is driven from the land and who is invited to settle?
Who weeps amidst the rubble of her house and who destroys the family home?
Who uproots a neighbor’s tree and who replants them in the ground?
Who must choose between washing her body and a cup of tea and who waters her lawn?
Who is crushed by bulldozer and who drives the tank?
I led a nature divination workshop in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum a few years ago. I asked the group first to ground and center, then remind themselves of their oracular question, and then simply look around at the marshland where we had gathered. One woman decided to ask two questions rather than just one.
She stationed herself on a boardwalk overlooking the marsh, closed her eyes and asked: “How can I find the time and energy to enjoy my life, given the fact that I am extremely busy with work right now?” When she opened her eyes, she immediately noticed the swaying grasses and rushes in front of her and realized that she, too, could be flexible like these plants. She could go with the flow and fit pleasure into the small cracks in her work life.
Then she closed her eyes again and asked: “What should I do about my nephew?” Opening her eyes on the same scene less than a minute later, she noticed a large tree in the middle distance that appeared sturdy and deeply-rooted. Yes, she thought to herself, I could provide this teenager with the kind of stability this tree represents if I open my home to him.
My student’s experience exhibits the extent to which her insight depended on her own perception. Because she was looking for different types of feedback, at the same place and at almost the same time, she noticed two very different images.
To see more divination cards, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery.
This is exactly the type of experience I wanted to foster when several years ago I proposed a project to my daughter, the painter Linnea Vedder. My idea was a deck of divination cards that helps people access their own insight. Linnea illustrated the cards and I wrote the accompanying book. We call it The World Is Your Oracle.
This week’s spiritual comes from Vietnamese Buddhist monk and leader in engaged Buddhism Thich Nhat Hanh. Both poems come from “Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh.”
WALKING MEDITATION
Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.
I am beginning to wonder if perhaps Obama was right to tackle health care reform as a first initiative. It is difficult to find health care issues to write about these days…our mainstream and alternative media are rightly wrapped up in the crises of the day, the Gulf oil spill disaster, the Afghanistan War and high unemployment rates. Of these, at least two are directly tied to our inability as a nation to confront Big Oil. Frustrated with tepid Congressional efforts to stem the oil tide, I decided to take a small step to wean myself off of oil. I began cooking locally available food: weeds!
Photo from Appalachian Trail. Courtesy of FlickrCC/steev-o
This week’s spiritual wisdom is a beautiful poem that Ned Green wrote on the Appalachian Trail in his journal in 1997. On February 18, 2001, at age 26, he passed away while doing what he loved most — climbing. After his support on an ice ledge gave way, he fell into a deep chasm on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire.
Precarious
A grounded bird
Perched feet from sheer faces,
Freefalls and deadly drops
Flying on jutted thrusts of rock
I suddenly feel boreal
And pseudo-alpine.
The wind rustles steadily
In lower reaches of this chasm,
this monstrous ravine.
Clouds puff and duplicate
In the sun’s constant spread.
FlickrCC/Eric Haller
This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from poet Mark Siet:
And yet still through these hands do we mold
Our lives of caring from young until old.
Nothing else matters but the Creator in every breath
What else could compare to this sublime holiness
Knowing that with each step there is only One
In the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun.
There in that place where nothing may be perceived
A curious fashion comes into being whereupon received
The threads of Torah’s living letters the vine upon the Tree
Weave these pesukim flowing through Tzimtzum to the sea
Joining the waters above with those that are below
With every meaning shared light there does show
For after all this is the very purpose of divine connection
To reveal in each moment by our infinite reflection.
