ON ANOTHER LEVEL

This is a different kind of writing than I usually post.  It's what they call 'narrative non-fiction'  (I think.) and more autobiographical.  Let me know what you think!  -- Jane

ON ANOTHER LEVEL

When I was a little girl, I loved to watch my mother get ready to go out but literally, on different levels.  On the surface I saw a lovely lady looking fresh and coiffed.  She wore her green silk brocade shirtwaist dress with gold threads that shimmered. There was a smell of face powder and freshly applied lipstick which always required some strange but interesting facial expressions.   There were the instruments of beauty lying on the dresser such as tweezers, emory boards, and, the one which seemed, even to my unschooled mind, the closest to a medieval torture devise: the eyelash curler.  There was a good smelling perfume in a lovely cut glass bottle.  And all of it glittered with the reflected light shining from the thick glass top of the dresser.  Life, temporarily, on that level, seemed suffused with the sophisticated stability of a Connecticut suburb of New York City.

But as much as I loved that level, there was another realm that enchanted me:  If I bent down I could look into the side of the thick glass and see into a different world.  It was like floating in a green, sunlit ocean of calm that extended indefinitely.  And yet, at any moment, with the mere lifting of my head, I could be back in the everyday world above.  Then return, then back, then return, then back.  I could watch her, and know that the other world existed just below the surface.  Or, I could be in the other world and not see her.  I would try but could never be in both worlds at the same time.

 In the same years I had special places I'd go to.  There was a grove of trees on a hill near our house.  These pines provided me with a room of solace, a place to be alone and wonder about my life, and my family.  I could pretend it was a cottage in the country where I lived alone in another era or it was a secret hideout of a daring scout.

There were two other trees that were special.  One was for climbing.  I'd jump up to catch the lowest branch, then bring the legs around, hoisting the body up and climb high into the leafy top.  There, with the breeze and the sun on my body and a view of the surrounding area, I would feel like a sea captain at the top of a mast with a sense of exhilarating freedom and mastery.   The other tree was for more contemplative moments.  Like the biblical imagery of a tree nurtured by a stream, it sat, shady and serene, with a crook in it just right for reading.  And that too would take me to other worlds at other levels.

Saturday mornings in the Spring and Summer I'd join my father at the tennis courts, though never to play tennis.  Instead, it was Doc’s snack shed set high above a child’s vantage point and the woods and stream beyond the stone wall that brought me there. In his little green hut, Doc, the calm old man with a lean and lined mustachioed face, was the Zen master of all sodas and candies.  From his perch he would patiently and quietly observe the faces of those choosing from his domain of treats.  Sometimes I had enough allowance saved up and with me to buy something on my own.  Usually it required a great deal of cajoling and plaintive pleading with my father (also known as whining) to achieve my goal.    Those times, when the sun was so unbearably hot, the game so interminably long, and the spending campaign finally successful, made the taste of a cool, wet can of grape soda or the sweetened licorice of Good and Plenty all the more delicious. 

When I wasn’t focused on Doc’s candy heaven, I would wander beyond the stone wall and venture into the woods beyond.  There, in a patch of undeveloped land probably no bigger than a city block, I found another world beyond the everyday.  Wedged between the main street and the courts, it was probably one of those leftover lots that one whizzes by, not even noticing, on major commercial roads around the country  The little stream gets clogged with trash thrown from cars or by teens walking past, but never through.  But to me, this place was a beautiful, pristine forest, the jungle, the Garden of Eden without anyone else. The sun filtered through the trees and it felt as grand and as beautifully lit as a Hudson artist painting.  Ferns and frogs abounded.  Dragonflies flitter over the water which moved so lazily.  And I was an Indian princess camped on the side of my people’s life source.  I was a fairy princess joining the dance of the little people’s fair.  I was a solitary traveler like Rip Van Winkle lost in a different time.  I was fully in another world and when it was time to come out, I felt refreshed and renewed.

I suppose those times of being in a different realm or level are similar to what one experiences with meditation or those heavenly moments of transcendence -- you go beyond everyday life, and you ‘come back’ refreshed and renewed.  But you can’t be at both levels at the same time.  If I pay attention to what's happening on the surface, I can't be in the place of calm.  Even today, when I'm snuggling with my husband or sons, it won't feel blissfully sweet if I'm thinking about all the things that need to get done.

I sometimes worry that kids today don't have places on a different level.  It seems they live in a world of veneer, without ever seeing or being beyond it. Their towns have nothing but housing tracts and strip malls.  The fields and woods that were there have disappeared and only their names remain.  Or they don't feel safe.  People wake up to the TV, rush to the car, get to the job or the school, talk whatever talk, walk whatever walk, go to organized afterschool activities, rush through dinner and chores, watch TV and social media, and go to bed exhausted.  They don't even honour their dreams, a nourishing spring that is definitely at a different level!  When the weekend comes they rush to the sports, or malls or the home improvement stores and busy themselves with restaurants and movies.  There's nothing wrong with any of that.  It's just that, it reminds me of that old pop song by Peggy Lee, "Is that all there is?  Is that all there is?"  And the answer, in my experience, is no.  There is a deeper level to life all around us there for the seeing.  We just need to stop and go there.

WHERE WORLDS MEET

The following article of mine was published in the Journal News, a Gannett Newpaper, on January 24 and 31, 1998:

 

When I was 19, a group of friends and I were camping on a beach in India on the Indian Ocean.  It was nighttime, and we had a campfire near the coconut palms.  Understand that in India, at night, in those years, the sky was rounded, dome-like, and the stars were thick and went on forever.  I walked away from the warmth and the people, down to the edge of the sea where the moonlight glimmered on the water and the phosphorous sand sparkled in the waves.

I stood there in tremendous awe of this lively vast universe.  I recognized that I was standing at the meeting place of three infinitely different and diverse worlds: land, sea and sky.  And at the same time, it felt like a metaphor for the ‘Jungian psyche.’  The ocean was the swirling, deep, collective unconscious.  Space, full of dark and light, was like the infinitely unlimited imagination of personal consciousness.  The land, terra firma, was like the ego, that which I am consciously aware of, that which I can see and know.  Sts. Augustine or Patrick would have likened it to the Trinity: with God represented by the ocean, source of all life, becoming manifest on land represented by Jesus, and infused with the Holy Spirit of the air.  But to me, it was a moment of moonlit, elemental enlightenment, which both grounded me and allowed me to soar.  To use a term by the noted Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, I experienced a dimension of depth.  And that moment transformed and enriched my life significantly.  I call it a religious experience.

Rachel Carson, in her book The Edge of the Sea, begins “The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place…an elusive and indefinable boundary.”  It is a strange and beautiful place.  But I think that part of its beauty, its thrill, its liveliness, is that it is the meeting place of boundaries.  All children love to play the game at the beach where they run up to the water’s edge and run back, shrieking with delight as the water comes forward.  Or stand and feel the water wash away the sand from around their feet.

Why are those moments so exciting?  Perhaps because we stand there recognizing, as I did that night, that we are on the edge, and that makes us feel quite alive.  We feel we’re on the edge of the land and the sea, and we’re aware we are on the edge of the globe!

In fact, our whole lives are lived on the edge in other ways also.  We live on the edge between birth and death.  Not between life and death.  No, life is what we do between birth and death.  And it’s in those moments that we’re most aware of being between that we become truly alive.

Dr. James Fowler, who has written on the psychology of religions, woke up once in the middle of the night suddenly completely aware that one day he would be detached from all the life around him and he would die.  He writes in his book, Stages of Faith: “In that moment of unprecedented aloneness…I found myself staring into the abyss of mystery that surrounds our lives.  As never before I found myself asking, “When all these persons and relations and projects that shape and fill my life are removed, who or what is left?  When this biological embodiment of me ceases to function, is there – will there be – any I?  When the ‘I’ steps into the velvet darkness, will there be this center of consciousness, this ‘I am,’ or not?”

This man was on the edge.  But he’s not alone.  We all are. 

The word religion comes from two Latin words: ‘re’ and ‘ligare’.  It means to connect again.  And that’s what religions try to do.  They try to connect us again, bring together these two polarities in our lives, birth and death, like a yin-yang symbol, so that we can live fully.  Beginning with our awareness of birth and death, each religion attempts to grapple with, describe, define and re-experience the experiences of birth and death.  The description and definitions may be different for each religion, but I think that ultimately, we’re all standing on the same edge – between birth and death – and each religion is trying to make sense out of what that means.

Religions also try to reconnect our little finite selves beyond the boundary of our edge to the energy flow of something larger and deeper.  Call it the meeting place of the immanent and the transcendent, the now and the eternal, the material world and the spiritual world, the everyday and the extraordinary – it is at this edge where religions live.  In the Qur’an, Sura Qaf reminds believers that the God who made the heavens and “firmly set mountains and made grow therein [something] of every beautiful kind” also “created man and knows what his soul whispers to him, and [is] closer to him than [his] jugular vein.”

Robert Ellwood, author of the textbook on world religions entitled Many People, Many Faiths describes it this way: 

“For religion, the line between is not seen as solid…The main idea behind religion is that it is full of doors and windows and much commerce passes between the two sides.  Words and people pass through those invisible doors and the world is full of places and occasions that are like windows to the other side.  This porous borderline, where the action is, is the realm of the religious.”

Maybe that’s another reason why the edge of the sea is so awesomely strange and beautiful: because by being there we remember that no one realm is the only reality that exists, just as no one view of truth is the only one.  The sea has a beauty and reality quite different and no less real than that of land or air.  Buddhism, in trying to describe nirvana to us, said it’s like trying to explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land and breather.  It’s impossible.  Yet it doesn’t mean that the other reality doesn’t exist.  It only means that we can’t conceive it.

The seasons remind us of being on the edge as well, for they are different realities bound together.  In fact, perhaps part of the reason we feel most invigourated in the fall and spring, besides the temperature, is that they are the edge seasons: the seasons between the full ripe richness of life and the deadly dearth of life. So it is with each religion.  In different spiritual languages, they attempt to put into words, actions and metaphors our human experience of being on the edge between birth and life, the known and the unknown, the here and now and the beyond.  To rephrase Rachel Carson:  “The edge is a strange and beautiful place…an elusive and indefinable boundary.”  Let us savour and enjoy our time being here on the edge.

 

 

 

PROPHETS

“Visit the sick, feed the hungry and free the captives.” So said the prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him.

“Let the oppressed go free…share your bread with the hungry. And bring the homeless poor into your house….” So said the prophet Isaiah.

In the U.S., we will soon celebrate Thanksgiving. So I thought it’s a good time to talk about something that’s common to Muslims, Christians and Jews: the message of the prophets. All three groups see the role of the prophets as important to their religions and each group sees the message of the prophets – taking care of the needy in our midst -- as a central message.

What is a prophet? A prophet is someone who is a messenger or mouthpiece for God. To Jews, Christians and Muslims, the 16 biblical prophets [with the addition of Muhammed for Muslims] used words and actions to try to get the community back into right relationship – with each other and with the essence and power of life which they called God. Said the scholar Abraham Heschel:

“The prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency…” (Heschel, The Prophets II p. xvii) The prophet Amos said: “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies” (Amos 5:21) because, he felt, they were full of hypocritical posturing.

But they didn’t just “say” no to society, they acted in a way that got people’s attention. Wrote one author about the prophets:

“They staged what are known as prophetic acts – wild attention grabbing, God-inspired pieces of performance art. the prophets were the inventors of street theater.” (Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically p. 88) Jeremiah went to the equivalent of the Capitol in Jerusalem with a huge vase which he smashes and says this is what will happen to the kingdom if they don’t stop being so materialistic. Isaiah took off all of his clothes and wandered naked through the streets as he shouted his message. Hosea married a known prostitute faithless to him in order to illustrate how faithless the people were to their vows of caring for each other and God. Pretty dramatic ways of speaking truth to power!

But all of them were trying to get across the same message: we are commanded to be good and just to everyone. It wasn’t just a nice suggestions to be nice, we are required to practice social justice all the time.

The prophet Muhammed, who believed that the same God who spoke to Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus spoke to him, said “One who tries to help the widow and the poor is like a warrior in the way of God,” “Every good action is a charity.” and “God is not kind to him who is not kind to people.” (al-Bukhari)

For Jews, Muslims and Christians, the prophets’ message of social justice has been heard – sometimes louder than other times – throughout history. It is why so many social action organizations exist in our world today and why so many try to change the world. The reason Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan and Jews fast on Yom Kippur is to experience what it is to be hungry so you can help those who really are. And it’s why each group is commanded to give to and act to help others.

People often wonder if there are prophets in the world today. I think they still exist. I think MLK was a prophet. His bus boycott, the marches and his sermons against racism and the war in Vietnam dramatically got the point across that this society must change. In his sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct”, Reverend King is very clearly speaking in the prophetic spirit when he said:

“If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody's going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don't let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. (Amen) They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.

But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." (Preach it) And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.”


I think Malcolm X was a prophet. In fiery speeches and interviews, in his willingness to put his life on the line he made it clear that his objective was “complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary." He said “Early in life I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.” and: “if we don't stand for something, we may fall for anything."

Today? I don’t know. Perhaps we only know who the prophets in our midst are after a bit of time has past. Perhaps it's the comedian Jon Stewart, who always speaks out against the hypocrisies of our government and the need for justice. Maybe it's the young woman, Malala Yousafzai, who spoke for Muslim girls getting an education and was thus shot in the head. Maybe they are the people who are written about in the book Divine Rebels: American Christian Activists for Social Justice by Deena Guzder. Or people on the front line of climate change/environmental issues. Maybe it's the person who is organizing a food and clothing drive in our town for those effected by the economy. But I do know that the message of the prophets – whether from a Muslim, Jewish or Christian perspective is still with us: do justly and love mercy.

So, as we eat our meat or soy Turkeys this Thanksgiving, let's remember the message of the prophets. There are plenty of ways to make this world a more just, and caring place. I shall end with the same quotes with which I began:


“Visit the sick, feed the hungry and free the captives.” So said the prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him.

“Let the oppressed go free…share your bread with the hungry. And bring the homeless poor into your house…If you put yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness…and you shall be like a watered garden.” So said the prophet Isaiah.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

DEATH: What's Life Got to do, Got to Do with it?

Death has been on my mind the last couple of months.  But in fact, I've thought about and written about death a lot over the years.  Below is something I wrote so many years ago, I can't find the document on any of our computers -- only the hard copy which I've retyped!

What will happen when this body gives out?  Where or what will the "I" that I've lived with so long go to, or do, or be, or not be?  How many people in how many ages and cultures have asked those questions?  Yet, for as smart as we are, as insightful or knowledgeable as we might be, we don't have an inkling of an answer for that one.  All we have are the ideas and hopes that we are brought up with and hear about from this side of death.  And those ideas differ from religion to religion, culture to culture.  Each answer effecting not only what we think will happen, but how we live our lives now as a result.

Take the Muslim view:  this is the one and only time a person comes around.  What you do with this "one precious life" as the poet Mary Oliver calls it, will determine what happens to you -- the you that is eternal and fully, individually you.  there's no coming back, no 'do over.'  For Muslims, there will be a day, Akira, of judgment, of reckoning.  On that day, that one day, all souls from all time and places will be judged by God and that will determine whether one goes to heaven or hell.  Says the Qur'an about that day:

"Then a soul will know what it has given and what it has held back...
What can I tell you about the day of reckoning?
Again, what can I tell you of the day of reckoning?
A day no soul has a say for another
and the decision is at that time with God." (Sura 82, The Tearing)

So, your actions and your intentions in this lifetime have long term consequences!

Compare that to Hinduism in which life is a constant 'do over.'  You didn't get it right the first time?  Back on the wheel of life to try again -- and again and again and again.  There are consequences to your actions here too.  But there is no judge who will determine what happens.  It's strictly cause and effect.  Like driving a car.  If I move the steering wheel left, the car goes left.  If I put the foot on the brake, the car stops.  If I treat people well, I will be treated well.  If I am greedy and mean, I will suffer the consequences -- perhaps not in this life, but in the next.

Whether we are Hindu or not, we all understand that when it comes events in this life.  When I look at baby pictures of myself, I don't look like the same person and in many ways I'm not.  Something continues to the next stage -- adolescence, adulthood or old age, even if it doesn't ook or act the same.  But how I was treated as a baby, the love I did or didn't get, the things I did or didn't do then, determine to an extent who I am today and who I will be when I'm older.  Just extend that idea beyond death and one has a clearer picture of the Hindu understanding of what happens to us after death.  The atman, the energy force that resides in this lifetime in our bodies will continue on to some other form based on our actions -- good or bad -- that determine what will happen to us in our next life.  The  goal, however, is that one day our atman will be released from the cycle of rebirths and rejoin the great ocean of energy known as Brahman.  Say the Katha Upanishad, an ancient Hindu Scripture:

"Lo! I will declare to thee this mystery of Brahman never failing.
And of what the self [atman] becomes when it comes to the hour of death.
Some to the womb return,
Embodied souls, to receive another body;
Others pass to lifeless stone in accordance with their works
In accordance with the tradition they had heard."

Christians are more similar to the Muslim view.  The person who dies will be resurrected as whom they are and they will either go to heaven or hell.  But there is a difference between the physical and the spiritual.  Said Paul in his beautiful (and very Greek) letter to the Corinthians:

"What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  and what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain... So it is with the resurrection of the dead.  What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.  It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.  It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.  It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.  If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body." (I Cor. 15.35-44)

Indigenous cultures, the original natives of many places such as Africa, Asia and the Americas, seem to have similar ideas to each other as to what happens after death.  In all of those traditions the spirit or ghost of the deceased becomes more powerful and more influential in the life of the community.  the Akan of Africa, for example, believe that:

"There is a reciprocal relationship between the dead and the living and both sides have a role to play in keeping the relationship alive... the dead have a duty to protect, intervene, and mediate on behalf of the living, and as it is believed that death increases one's powers, the dead are able to offer more help and assistance." (Professor Kofi Asare Opoku, Nananom Nsamanfo: The Akan and their Ancestors, AAR, 2000)

When Robert Coles, the noted child psychiatrist who has studied the beliefs of children of many different cultures interviewed a young Hopi girl, she made it clear that to her people, the ancestors who had already died, were living on the mesa and communicated with the living people through birds.

Jews are perhaps the only group that does not clearly delineate what happens to a person after death.  In the Torah, the first five books of both the Jewish and Christian bibles, God says "I set before thee life and deth, choose life."  And so, the whole focus of Judaism has been this world, this life.  For a group as loquacious as the Talmudic rabbis, who argues about all kinds of things, they were relatively silent on what happens after death.  One sees both the ideas of resurrection and reincarnation in Jewish texts.  But as my Jewish grandfather used to say, "There's enough to worry about here, you think we need to worry about what happens next?"  and yet, for a culture that doesn't focus on what happens after, there are all kinds of practices related to the care of the dead.

For Buddhist, there is no death because there is no me -- change happens all the time so the "me" that existed before, doesn't exist anymore anyway.,  It's kind of like my skin.  I know that this largest organ of my body sloughs off as new skin grows, so that the skin that was me seven weeks ago is not the same skin that is me now.  We are, according to the Buddhists, nothing but skandha, a collection of strands that have temporarily come together, for now, and that will dissipate like a cloud, when the time comes.  Or, like a candle that lights another candle, the energy will transfer.  Of course, that might be what the historical Buddha said, and it might be what many Buddhists around the world think.  But there are other Buddhists, Pure Land Buddhists for example, that have quite a different view.  For them, we will go to a place, the Pure Land, if we live right and if our intentions at the moment of death are focused and pure.

Despite real differences in views of reality before and after death, there seems to be some similarities among cultures as well.  all traditions believe that there are consequences to our actions and that how we treat ourselves and others matter.  This life, whether the one and only or one of many, is a test to see if we can be good and care for others.  And all people, no matter what they think happens to someone when they die, grieve for the loss of loved ones.  We may believe they may go on to something else, something better.  But the wailing for a dead child is the same in Hinduism as it is anywhere else.  There is a Buddhist story about a woman whose son died and, distraught, she goes to the Buddha pleading with him to bring her child back to life.  the Buddha agrees -- "But first", he says, "You must find a household that has not been touched by death."  the woman begins her search, knocking on every door in town.  "No" says each place.  "We lost a parent, an uncle, a child, a brother, a sister."  Finally the woman realizes what the Buddha wanted her to learn:  There is no one who is untouched by the death of a loved one.  Somehow, that knowledge itself made it a bit easier for her to accept.

Ultimately, however, we humans are left with what the Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, identified as the "tragic sense of life."  Because the "man of flesh and bone, the man who is born, suffers, and dies -- above all who dies .. wishes never to die and that longing of ours never to die is or actual essence." (The Tragic Sense of Life)

I don't know what will happen when this body gives out.  I do know what people think will happen.  And perhaps that in itself is a comfort.  It certainly is a mystery!

FESTIVALS OF LIGHT: DIVALI, HALLOWEEN, HANNUKAH AND CHRISTMAS

At the time of the year when the days get darker and colder, we humans seems to need a festival of light which will give us hope. In the West, we celebrate Hannukah or Christmas – even Halloween and the next day, All Saints Day or the Day of the Dead. But the Hindu holiday, Diwali, which was celebrated last week, is also a festival of lights and the similarities underneath the differences are striking.

Imagine Christmas, New Year, Passover, Easter and July 4th all rolled into one holiday--that's Diwali. Houses are given a spic and span cleaning, people wear new clothes, eat a lot of sweets and get together with family and friends. There are fireworks and all through the house there are lights ablaze -- tiny cups of oil with cotton wicks.

Like Hinduism itself, the diversity of Gods honoured and remembered at this holiday are multi-faceted! So many different Gods and different stories. But two stand out: the story of Rama and the story of Lakshmi.

The Ramayana tells the tale of Rama and Sita. A young prince and his wife, theirs was the love of a lifetime. They were happy, content models of how husband and wife should love and how they should honour their parents. But along came Ravana, a wicked, cruel, power hungry beast. He kidnapped Sita and forced her away --against her will-- to his palace. Rama has lost the “light of his life”. But eventually, with the help of the Monkey God, he overcomes all obstacles and gets her back. (Unfortunately, the story doesn’t have a particularly happy ending.) The story emphasizes the importance of the Hindu value of duty. But it also reminds us, as Halloween does, that there are bad spirits that frighten us and could snatch us away. But perseverance, bravery, and the help of others (including the Gods) conquers the bad guy.
The same can be said for the story of Hannukkah. Bad guys take over the Temple, but perseverance, bravery, and the help of others (including God) conquers the bad guys.

Diwali also celebrates the hope that the New Year, which begins the day after, will be a welcome one. The second story is of the beautiful Goddess Lakshmi. Lakshmi, Goddess of wealth and prosperity, was temporarily expelled from God Indra’s court. In disguise, she wandered in the complete darkness of night with no moon, stars or house lights to guide her. Finally, afar in the distance, she saw a tiny light in a hut. She knocked on the door and was welcomed warmly by the family that lived there. Even though they didn't know who she was, she was shown such hospitality that as thanks she blessed the family and made them wealthy. So Diwali celebrates the welcoming of the spirit of God into each and every household for the New Year.

There is a biblical story of God approaching the home of Abraham in disguise and being welcomed into his home. The value of hospitality, of treating others as if they may be a God – or Goddess – incarnate, even if they’re looking like a beggar is a shared idea.

Isn't it fascinating that the holiday -- while so different on the outside -- has such similar themes on the inside to Halloween, Hanukkah and Christmas? Because these holidays also celebrate good forces conquering evil forces and use the light to keep back the dark. Hanukkah honours those little guys who managed to overthrow the big, bad army and by doing so saved their religious traditions. Christmas recognizes that even a tiny little baby, born against great odds, can grow up to save his people. All souls Day/Day of the Dead which happens the day after Halloween, Christmas and Hanukkah all involve cleaning up and celebrating with family and friends. Like Diwali we shall light our pumpkins, our menorahs or our Christmas trees and sit safely in their glow graced by their beauty, hope, and promise.

As we begin to shiver from cold, as the light fades more quickly from the glumly grey sky, as we face the reality that all life has seemingly left the natural world and as we begin to feel overwhelmed by the powers beyond our control (whether they be work or weather) -- it is now that we really need the reminder that there is meaning in life, there will be a vanquishing of evil, there is a welcoming light ‘at the end of the tunnel’, light and life will return and there is holy wisdom. Against great odds: Rama does get Sita back, Lakshmi does find a light in the forest, the boogey man doesn’t get us, the Maccabees do regain their temple and their ways, the baby Jesus is born safe and sound, and we will see Spring, warmth and long languorous days again!

So here's to the lights of Diwali, Halloween, Hannukah and Christmas. Here's to their promise and their hope and their reason's for celebration!

WONDER

This was an essay I had published in the Jewish magazine, TIKKUN about 10 years ago. It still holds up, I think.


One of my favorite biblical characters is Moses. He is my favorite because of his sense of wonder. Think about it: There he was, out in the desert taking care of his father-in-law's sheep. That's a lonely, boring job -- in a desert no less! Then he saw:

"a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked and behold the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, "I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when God saw that Moses turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush…"

Exodus 3.2

Now, whether you take that literally (which I don't,)or figuratively, Moses saw something so astounding, so out of the ordinary, so amazing that he turned aside to see it. And it was only then that God spoke to him. It was only when Moses was willing to stop his daily routine, stop following or leading the sheep, stop wandering in a la-di-da or driven sort of way, and turn toward to consider this sight before him that the essence of creation spoke to him.

I think about that burning bush almost every day at this time of the year. I look around at these trees with their bright oranges, yellows and reds. I see the sun slant light through the branches and to me, they look like burning bushes. They look awesome and beautiful and on fire although they are not consumed. Unfortunately, too often I'm rushing from here to there or there to here. So while I might take note of those trees, I don't "turn aside to see them" as often as I should. And what would I hear if I did turn aside and see these great sights?

I think trees talk to us. Of course, they don't use words. But with their beauty and their majesty they remind us of who and where we are in this world. So do birds and sky and ground. They speak to us, but we no longer have the patience to listen to them. Our inner ear has atrophied from lack of use. We fill ourselves up with so much human noise that we don't leave any room for nature sounds. Indigenous people always read the signs of nature around them. As did Buddha when he sat under a tree for 40 days and there became enlightened. Or Jesus when he said, "Consider the lilies of the field."

The philosopher Martin Buber, in his short but dense book, I-Thou, wrote that when we have a relationship with someone or something, it's a dialogue or an exchange. We face one another and connect. That's two way communication. The other doesn't have to be a person, it could be a tree, a rock or a bird. But that other is in relation to us so both are affected. When we are in an I-It relationship, says Buber, the other is just a thing, an object, nothing that touches our being. Unfortunately, too often we see the people around us as "its", as mere objects for our use. We see the trees, the grass and the stars as mere backdrops for our lives.

But when we stop and face them, when we turn aside from our own dramas, we can't help but be in awe of the creative power in front of us. It changes our perspective, our whole way of looking at life.

Last night everyone in my family was rushing around. Half of us were coming in and half of us were going out. My husband went out to his bridge game, my older son to a babysitting job, my little one to the TV and I to write this, correct papers AND read the newspaper. But when my older son came home, he took us all outside because Mercury and Jupiter were in an alignment that only happens every 7 years. We looked up at the sky and there they were. It was awesome! Like two stars, these two planets, so far away and seemingly on either side of us, were sitting side by side shining away. Reflected light beaming down on us from millions of miles away and only for now will they be in this place for us to see. We stood there huddled in the dark, little human beings. And I was very glad that despite all that I had to do, I had said like Moses, "I will now turn aside, and see this great sight." Did God speak to me? I think the energy force of creation -- which is what I call God -- speaks to me or any of us every time we turn aside to listen.

Diversity and Commonality

I look out at the scene of grass, bushes and trees in my backyard with the late day sun shining on different places, and I wonder how many greens do I see in this one little place? If I were painting this view, how many colours would I need to mix in with green (and which green would I use) to capture the multitude of greens – those in the shadow, those in the sun, those textured with spindly leaves or flowing in the wind, those that are fading, those that are new. I’m sure I would need thousands of different greens to make this one little patch look alive. And yet, whether they’re prickly and rigid or flowing and bushy, they’re all green, because they all have chlorophyll, the life-giving ingredient that transforms sunlight into green. Diversity and commonality.

I think of cultures. Despite the fact that we are all genetically the same, humans have created on this little planet vastly different cultures. Traditional indigenous cultures around the world see themselves as family members with trees, animals, mountains. As a result, they treat and relate to the trees, animals and mountains quite differently than we who grew up in the West do. They see the space around us as imbued with ancestors and spirits. They are relatives to the land and thus, one must pay attention to, revere, and learn from the land rather than see it as empty space that one may redesign for one’s own personal profit. As ethnobotanist, Wade Davis, writes about the Indians of the Amazon, “rivers are not just routes of communication, they are the veins of the earth, the link between the living and the dead, the paths along which ancestors travelled at the beginning of time.” (Wayfinders, p. 95) In Polynesia, there are navigators who – without using any tools other than the observation of waves and currents – can guide boats to islands they cannot see. Hunters in the Kalahari desert in Africa read the sand for clues to water, honey and animals.

A culture such as Hinduism sees life recycled into another being at the end of this life. As a result of that view, they see opportunities for ‘do overs’, and a diversity of different possibilities that is mind boggling. Not only does an individual have multiple lives in this tradition, but universes do as well. That is quite a different way of understanding life than a culture such as Islam or Christianity which sees this life as the one and only opportunity to get it right. And mind you, neither view is just a matter of beliefs, it’s really quite a different way of understanding and living reality. But as different as both ways are, humans in both cases recognize that our deaths inform our lives and that what we do with our lives has consequences. Diversity and commonality.

The rituals humans do – those markers for life events such as birth, adolescents, marriage, death – reflect the differences in cultural understanding of reality. The Jewish ritual of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah where a young person reads from the holy scripture is quite different than the scarification ritual in Papua New Guinea or a Hopi kiva experience in which a young man is put into an underground cave for a period of months to be reborn by mother earth. In the African country of Ghana the spirit of the dead person, who will still be an active ancestor in the community, is sent to the other side in a coffin resembling something they did in this life – perhaps a fish for a fisherman, a plane for an international business person or a shoe for a shoeshine boy. That is quite different than our way of dealing with a dead body here in the U.S. or in China. And yet, all cultures have rituals marking transition times: of initiation rites that bring young people into the larger community, marriage, death. All cultures have pilgrimages, physically challenging travel that combines spirit and land. The lessons to be learned from the rituals may be different. But the purpose is the same. Diversity and commonality.

Languages, religion and art all are examples of diversity and commonality. They use different vocabularies and grammars, different symbols and movements, different media and myths. But they all communicate the most intimate or passionate, the most inspiring or banal, the most emotional or analytical, of our human thoughts and feelings. We can express love and wisdom, hatred and cruelty with all three forms of human expression, and they will reflect different cultural values and different times. But as the writer in Ecclesiastes notes: “A generation comes, a generation goes, there’s nothing new under the sun.” There is always a longing in the human spirit for connection to something beyond ourselves, however we may express it. Diversity and commonality.

As a cultural anthropologist – both in my personal and professional life – I find the diversity and commonality of human life heartening, interesting, and vital to a multidimensional understanding of life. And I find the work and words of Wade Davis to be essential to everyone: “Every effort should be made…to understand the perspective of the other, to learn the way they perceive the world, and if at all possible, the very nature of their thoughts.” (Wayfinders, p. 70)

Furthermore, we better do it soon – as much of the diversity which makes this planet so interesting is being lost in so many ways! Not only in the biosphere but also in what Davis, calls the ethnosphere. He points out there are currently 7,000 languages spoken on the earth now. But more than 50% of them will disappear within the next 40-50 years. Globalization, hegemony, and cultural domination are destroying cultures as fast as forests in the Amazon. Communities once nestled in the integrity of their culture, are being ripped apart by industrialization which leaves them unmoored and poor in ways that didn’t exist before. Which is a shame as different cultures offer different solutions to life problems.

The different greens and the different textures in my backyard are what make it interesting and beautiful. The different cultures and realities in this world do the same.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Wade Davis’ book, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World:

“Our [Western] way of life, inspired in so many ways, is not the paragon of humanity’s potential…Were societies to be ranked on the basis of technological prowess, the Western scientific experiment, radiant and brilliant, would no doubt come out on top. But if the criteria of excellence shifted, for example to the capacity to thrive in a truly sustainable manner, with a true reverence and appreciation for the earth, the Western paradigm would fail. If the imperatives driving the highest aspirations of our species were to be the power of faith, the reach of spiritual intuition, the philosophical generosity to recognize the varieties of religious longing, than our dogmatic conclusions would again be found wanting…the plight of diverse cultures is not a simple matter of nostalgia or even of human rights alone, but a serious issue of geopolitical stability and survival.” (pp. 195-196,198) .

REFLECTIONS ON REFLECTIONS

  (Author's note: This is a 'reprisal' of an entry I did a number of years ago, but still holds up.  I need to think a bit more before I do one on weddings!)
        
        It is now September.  Summer -- although it only officially ended two days ago -- already seems long ago.  If I were still at the beach or camping, would it still feel like summer?  Does it feel like summer when I laze in my backyard?  The answer is no.  The crickets at night sound different.  The breeze feels less like a reprieve from the heat and more like a gentle message from the winter reminding me of what’s to come.  The leaves on the trees have begun to change.  They’re still green but it’s a different green then summer green.  It’s not new, tender green, it’s a green that’s been around for awhile, older, experienced, dryer.  Do they know they will fade?  Do they know that soon they will change and die? The light is different too.  A duskier, huskier ripe heaviness of autumn light is beginning to slant and glow as it reflects off the trees and bushes. 

            I think it’s the light that has changed the most and changes me.  I feel like a plant leaning towards the sun.  My body wants to soak up as much sun-energy as I can to use during the light starved days of winter.  In some real ways that’s what summer does for us: stores energy.  People often complain that teachers – and students – are lucky because we get to take the summer off.  We are.  What they may not realize is how much we really need that time to recharge our psychic batteries.  Recreation time allows us to re-create ourselves so that we have the energy we need during the school year.  By June we are depleted and need that time again.  Justice Louis Brandeis said: "I can do 12 months of work in 11 months, but I can't do 12 months of work in 12 months."  He recognized, what wisdom traditions have long promoted and neuroscientists are beginning to understand: we humans need 'down time' in order to function effectively.

            Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath every seven days, does that on a weekly basis.  From Friday evening to Saturday evening we have a period of rest: a time set aside during which one is not supposed to work, run errands, get distracted by everyday life.  It’s a time for spiritual re-creation, for reflection like a spiritual summer every 7 days.  And, interestingly enough, it’s marked off at the beginning and the end by light: the light of candles.

            In a few weeks Jews will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world.  It is a time set aside to celebrate the life force around us, to marvel and to reflect on the sweetness of life.  Just as the beginning of a new school year, when you are refreshed and rejuvenated is a good time to ponder on who we are and what is around us, so is Rosh HaShanah.

            A Hasidic rabbi, Nachman of Bratslau, wrote this following prayer in the late 1700’s:

           “Master of the universe, grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass – among all living things – and there may I be alone and enter into prayer, to talk to the One to whom I belong.  May I express there everything in my heart, and may all the foliage of the field – all grass, trees and plants – awake at my coming, to send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the life and spirit of all growing things, which are made as one by their transcendent Source.”

            Students often ask me what I think G-d is.  My answer is I don't know.  But I believe I see reflections of G-d every day in every way.  It is in these changes of the seasons and the changes in a person.  That life-energy force that transformed a one-celled water creature into my baby, then into a boy who became a thinking, shaving teenager, and now into a mature responsible husband is an awesome power.  One day, hopefully, that transforming life force will change my son into a father and finally a shrinking old man with few teeth but many memories.  That changeable energy, that transforming life force that enlivens him is, to me, G-d. 

            I used to run a nursery school and some of the things I miss about it are the seasonal projects.  In the fall children made artwork out of collected seedpods and leaves.  In the spring we had caterpillars that built cocoons then became butterflies.  We put fertilized eggs into incubators and watched them change each day until they emerged as cute fluffy chicks (and later became big smelly chickens!)  Those projects reminded us of the wonder-full power of transformation that I call G-d.

            When I look at the trees I see G-d.  Roots spreading deep below the surface reaching tentacles down for nutrients that then get sucked up into the farthest highest branches. Leaves waving in the wind and at this time of the year glowing with the reflected light from the slanted sun.  In the winter new growth will begin when the light changes yet again and the sap flows.   These amazing energy exchanges are part of what I call G-d.

            The science teacher told me at the copy machine one day about a theory that we choose our spouses because their smell is different then our own to better ensure variety in our gene pool.  That to me is the work of G-d.  Particle-wave theory, muons or undersea crystalline structures, are also the handiwork of G-d.  Not because I don’t understand it – but because the more I do understand the intricacies of this world around us, the more in awe of it all I am.

            When I think about Moses at a burning bush, the Buddha under a tree, Jesus at a river, Muhammed in a cave, or Lao Tzu in the mountains, I do believe they have had an experience with that nature-force called G–d.  But I also believe it can happen to anyone of us who sits on the edge of the ocean at night and watches the moon and stars or a group of people who either through song and dance or calm quietude feel the spirit of G-d alight upon them.

            G-d can be embodied in each one of us as well. In the Christian experience this creative force becomes personalized in the life and death of Jesus who by sharing human experience, sharing human pain and overcoming human death understands what we go through.  Hindus recognize the divine in each one of us by bowing and saying namaste.  Quakers see a divine light in each one of us.  And the Sufi mystic, Rumi, likened the divine in us to the breath through a flute.  They both make beautiful sound.

            I believe G-d is in those moments – sometimes brief – when there is abundant love and kindness.  An old Jewish saying says that the Shekinah, the spirit of G-d is there when a husband and wife embrace.  I think it was there in those times that my mother had her arm around me and read to me, as it is when I have my arms around my children.  It is there when someone helps a stranger, or an orphan or anyone in need.

            Does this make me a pantheist, one who sees G-d in everything?  Yes.  And furthermore, I believe in miracles, because the word miracle comes from the same root word as the word mirror does – the Latin word to wonder.  And as I see life’s creative energy reflected in everything in & around me, I do wonder and marvel.

            I sometimes go to synagogue and I celebrate all of the Jewish holidays.  Both our sons had Bar Mitzvahs.  But for me, the vehicle of Judaism is just that.  It is a way – not the way.  It is a language with a grammar and a vocabulary I can use to communicate, but it’s not the only language.  And like any language, it has its limitations.  We use analogies or metaphors for speaking about G-d in Judaism.  But they are just metaphors and they aren’t the only ones that work and they don’t show the whole picture. 

            As we start this new year, as we get into our year's busy schedules and the stresses of work, social lives, errands, responsibilities, set aside some time – each day and each week -- to get in touch with that creative energy force inside of you and outside of you.  Whether you do it alone or with others, through prayer or meditation, with music or with silence, at a communal place or in the woods, be in touch with that spirit.  Whether you call it nature, G-d, Shekinah, Jesus, the divine light, chakra energy, chi, Allah, the Force or simply love and goodness be in touch with that which makes life wondrously beautiful and creative.  Nurture it, share it, and be nurtured by it.  To be aware of and tapped into cosmic energy is like a light bulb using electricity.  If each one of us takes the time to be fed by and to feed the spark of creative energy inside of us, the potent force would be truly awesome.

 

Dancing with the Stars

Last year we had what we thought was a fool proof plan for seeing the annual August meteor shower, the Perseids. Instead of sitting in our suburban backyard, brightened by our neighbor’s houselights and the orange glow of a street light so that only the boldest and brightest of stars can be seen, we drove three hours to the country house of friends.

After a delicious dinner and a couple of games of scrabble, we dressed warmly, took our plastic Adirondack chairs out to the clearing, and stared up at the sky waiting to see the promised shower of meteors. I expected to see a show, a naturally occurring fireworks display that would take my breath away with wonder as the sky filled with the light of shooting stars and their tails going this way and that.

That’s not what happened or what we saw. Granted, there were a few shooting stars that graced us with their beauty. I counted about 4 in the two hours that we sat there. But what we did see was a magnificent sky, filled with stars of different sizes and intensity of light. We saw the river of light called the Milky Way with its 100-400 billion stars and at least 17 billion earth-like planets! We saw the vast, limitless universe extending distances far beyond our comprehension. We saw the silhouette of the tree tops looking inky dark at the edges of our clearing. We became aware of how little we are in this universe, as individuals, as a species and as a planet. It was an awe-filled experience that sort of put us in our place.

The words of Psalm 8 come to mind from the days when people nightly looked up to the heaven and couldn’t help but respond to what was there with awe:

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

The psalmist and I may understand that question differently. Influenced by the Judaic tradition, the psalmist assumes humans have a special place in a hierarchy, chosen by a G-d on high, with the authority to rule over plants and animals. I ask the question presuming our frailty, tininess, and hubris in the greater scheme of things. For me, the answer is humans are just amazingly fortunate that we get to be a part of this tapestry at all!

Whichever way you see the answer, the experience is humbling and deepens or broadens the view of our place in the universe. It allows us to see a far bigger picture than we would otherwise. Of course, anyone who has taken the time to look at the sky like that will have a similar recognition. But the trouble is, we rarely do it! We are so busy running around with our everyday lives, so busy pursuing or worrying about the picayune things that we make into monumental ones, that we don’t keep it all in perspective. We forget just how tiny and inconsequential we are in the greater scheme of things.

Perhaps like meditation or prayer, going out and looking at the night sky should become a daily practice. Perhaps such a daily practice would be a meditation or prayer. It certainly would nudge us out of our self-centered concerns and remind us of who and where we really are. Maybe it would get us to prevent wars.

I might not have seen the Perseids, but it was a night to remember nonetheless!

Pick and Choose Views

The other day I sat by the Hudson River in the late afternoon. The reflection of the sun made the water appear as molten silver with blue mountains in the background. And yet, I know that’s not what I ‘really’ saw. My mind automatically translated the poetic vision to a deep river of tidal water with the reflection of the sun on it and a haze changing the colour in the background. But it got me thinking about how culture and creature bound our view of the world is. We assume so often that what we see – or our interpretation of what we see – is the way things really are. And we are often so wrong.

Recently a study done on plants showed that they detect and react to the sound vibrations of caterpillars chewing on leaves by creating an insect repellent. If you later play a recording of the caterpillar chewing, the plants will also react accordingly —but not to the recording of ‘pleasant’ sounds like the wind. And so, we again must recalibrate our views of other living beings in this world. Another creature we saw as nothing but a backdrop to our humanity turns out to be a sentient being after all.

This happens so often! We keep setting up criteria that distinguish us from other animals only to find others share the same aspects after all. It used to be that what separated us humans from other living creatures was our ability to use language. And then we found that other creatures, such as dolphins and crows, use language. We thought our ability to use tools separated us as distinct. And then we found that other creatures – including birds – use tools. We thought our ability to mourn and recognize death made us unique. And then we found that elephants, crows, and apes all have mourning rituals for their dead loved ones.
Humans are trained by their cultures to see and not see in certain ways because of our assumptions and our limited views. Here are two examples: The people who live in African rainforests have a spectacular ability to see snakes and animals that are camouflaged by the forest. But if you put them on the veldt, wide open ranges with far vistas, they cannot see a giraffe that is in the distance. Their eyes have been trained to see objects close up, but not far away. A youtube video, “The Invisible Gorilla” asks people to watch carefully a group of young people passing a basketball and count how many times the ball is passed to the people wearing white. People concentrate so carefully on the ball and the count, they completely miss the person in a gorilla suit walking through the crowd beating his chest!

This culturally trained vision has been confirmed by neuroscientists in laboratory experiments as well. In her fascinating book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, science writer Sharon Begley describes the conversations a group of neuroscientists had with the Dalai Lama. One of the neuroscientists, Helen Neville, summarized her findings by saying: “Brain specialization is not a function of anatomy or dictated by the genes. It is a result of experience. Who we are and how we work comes from our perceptions and experiences. It is the outside world that determines the functional properties of the brain’s neurons.” (Begley, p. 108)

Sometimes we can or can’t see because of our innate vision limitations. In the window in our bedroom we have a hanging crystal from an old chandelier. Most of the time it just hangs there like a piece of glass – clear with nothing special emanating from it. But on summer mornings, as we lie in bed, we watch the sun through the crystal create multiple rainbows shimmering and dancing throughout the room. Those colours are always coming into the room. But we only see them through the help of the crystal and even then, some of the colours that are refracted through the crystal cannot be seen by the human eye.

In fact, it turns out that we humans (who knows what other creatures can/cannot see!), only see arpoximately 4% of the whole universe. Scientists acknowledge that “roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.” (science.nasa.gov/astrophysics) They don’t know what dark energy and dark matter are, they just know that they’re there.

Physicists are boggled by the idea of entangled particles, two atoms which had been connected at one point are then separated even miles apart. Yet, despite the distance, when one changes the direction it spins in, the other one does as well, immediately. There is nothing connecting them anymore that we can see, and yet, they are still connected, still ‘communicating.’ How does it happen? We don’t know yet.

How many other things do we think look like one thing, yet are really quite more complicated and deep than we have surmised? How many things do we not see or recognize because of our cultural biases? Ghosts, auras, vibrations emanating from all kinds of sentient beings we never ‘saw’ that way before may be just some of the manifestations of a world far more complicated, vital, and knowledgeable than our limitations – cultural and physical -- allow us to see.

As Dr. Frankenstein said in Mel Brook’s movie Young Frankenstein, “I do not know what I do not know!” Perhaps like Dr. Frankenstein we too need to recognize our limited knowledge. Perhaps, like the plant that picks up the vibrations from the caterpillar, we need to be willing to enlarge our attunement to include more vibrations. Perhaps that’s what meditation and prayer attempt to do. It wouldn’t hurt!

The Talmud

One of the quips about Judaism is that where there are 5 Jews there are 7 opinions. Nowhere is this clearer than in the phenomenal collection of opinions trying to understand how best to live ethically in this world called the Talmud. Page after page, volume after volume, are discussions and arguments over time and space between rabbis from other eras who use precedents and ‘what if’ scenarios to try to explicate what the Torah, the first five books of the Bible and the heart of Judaism, is asking us to do.

In a way, the relationship of the Torah and the Talmud is very similar to the U.S. Constitution and the American Legal system. For example, our Constitution tells us that people have freedom of speech. But what if someone cries “fire!” in a crowded theater or joke about bombs at an airport? Is that freedom of speech, our Supreme court Justices asked. No! Well, what if a group of Nazis parade in a Jewish area or an anti-abortion group demonstrates in front of an abortion clinic? Is that freedom of speech? Yes. And then there’s the question as to what constitutes a ‘person.’ What if there’s a major corporation donating a lot of money to politicians? Is that to be considered a person? Unfortunately, in today’s Court, the answer is yes. Although, as with the rabbis of the Talmud, the Justices do not all agree on the answers to issues.

Based on a phrase or a commandment from the Torah, each page of the Talmud tries to work out how to apply it to everyday life. For example, in the book Exodus, it says “Do not boil the kid (baby goat) in its mother’s milk.” “What does that mean?” asked the rabbis? Well… they worked out, don’t mix meat foods with dairy foods. “But what if you have a plate that meat gravy had permeated, or was not entirely washed off?” Well then, you must use separate plates and silverware for meat and dairy. “What if … a person eats a piece of cheese, how long before they can have a piece of meat – and does it count differently if they have the meat first?” they asked. Yes, you can eat meat half an hour to an hour after dairy, but you must wait six hours after meat to eat dairy because meat takes longer to digest. (Don’t ask what if it’s hard cheese or a piece of meat between your teeth! The rabbis did, and there are answers.) These are how the laws of kashrut or keeping kosher developed. And there are Talmudic books on how to keep the Sabbath, marriage, holidays, civil law such as who constitutes a witness and what forms of punishment there should be for different crimes.

But my favorite Talmudic discussions are the ones that are ethically thorny. For example, the book of Leviticus is full of a lot of dos and don’ts for the people of Israel once they get settled into their new land. It gets quite wordy and – for me – it’s easy to zone out in a ‘yadda, yadda, yadda’ state. So I would miss a line like Leviticus 25.36 that says: “…If your … so that your brother might live with thee.” But the rabbis didn’t miss anything. Believing that every word and phrase was there as part of G-d’s message, they felt a need to understand what that meant in order to live a good life. And so they asked, “What does it mean that my brother might live with me and who constitutes my brother anyway?” And the ‘what if’ they posed is as follows:

What if two people are out in a desert with only one flask of water that’s enough to keep one of them alive, but not both of them. Who gets the water and why? When you stop trying to find a way out of the situation, you begin to consider seriously additional questions: Would it be better for both of them to die or only one of them? What is the relationship of the two people and does that make a difference? What if one of them is the parent of the other? Does age matter and if so, how? Does position or contributions to society matter – for example, what if one person is a cancer researcher and the other is a drug addict? Does over-all health matter? Or does possession (who brought the water in) matter?
And the questions – and answers -- raised by the scenario no longer apply just to this old and improbable situation, but some very real, very modern examples of limited resources as well. How do we as a society decide who gets an organ transplant when there are a limited number of donors? Do we let the wealthiest or healthiest people on the top of the list? Should it be by potential for doing good for society? Should it be first-come first serve? And what about the international black market for organs? Is that fair?

Water itself is a growing modern, global problem. In a world where there is a dramatically decreasing supply of clean, fresh water, we are already arguing about who gets it and why. Should the farmers in California get the water coming from Colorado or should the suburban citizens of L.A.? Should water continue to be sold as a bottled commodity or should it be available to all people? Is it fair that in our country that is less than 20% of the world’s population should consume 80% of this and other limited resources?

Every religious tradition has a way of asking and answering the hard questions of how best to live life in an ethical and humane way. (Although we don’t always follow the answers we give!) Japanese Zen koan, Catholic catechism, Hindu literature such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana, the Buddhist Jakata tales, all are ways of posing and grappling with life lessons. They may look to different sources, they may come to vastly different conclusions based on their understanding of the source. But they all are looking and providing guidance – whether it’s followed or not.

FASTING

Right now it's Ramadan, and Muslims are fasting everyday from sunrise to sunset for a month. some Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus often set aside days for fasting. In a few months it will be Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn day of the Jewish year. Jews will fast from sundown Friday to nighttime Saturday.

So one of the questions one might ask is –“What’s with the fasting?” Why suspend eating for a whole day or a whole month of days? It’s not the same as dieting. Nor is fasting the same as an eating disorder. So what’s the purpose?

There are a number of reasons people – in almost every religious tradition I know of – practice fasting. Literally, at a gut level it, fasting stops us from our usual running around and makes us pay attention in ways we didn’t before. We become aware of our body in ways that we didn’t before. We become aware of our dependency on food and those who make or prepare it in ways that we didn’t before. We become aware of how often we usually do things willy-nilly – like snack or how often we think we’re invincible. It empties us of our hubris and fills us with awareness of our fragility.

So fasting makes us aware. Rabbi Allan Lew in his book on the Jewish High Holidays, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, says that every tradition:

“ speaks of a kind of layered mindfulness, a sensibility that works up and out of the body, to the heart and then to the mind and finally to the soul.” (p. 190)

The Quran says that “fasting is proscribed to you…that you may learn self-restraint.” (Sura 2.183) Self restraint – there’s something to learn! It’s interesting that no human reaches maturity without learning self-restraint. Every religion, every society, every school, every family, binds us in some ways, keeps us in check somehow because to live in society – maybe even to live on our own – we need to learn self-restraint. As the Rolling Stones song lamented, “You can’t always get what you want.” And religious fasting makes you recognize the reality of that human condition.

The fasts of both Ramadan and Yom Kippur remind us that we live in a larger sphere than just our own bodies or our own lives. We are connected to a larger community. Others in the tradition are also going through the pangs of hunger and that unites us. Others in the world – through no choice of their own – are also going through the pangs of hunger and that unites us with them as well.

My friend Eboo Patel, an Ismaili Muslim who does a great deal of interfaith work, wrote a book about growing up as an American muslim. This is what he wrote about Ramadan:

"For a moment, I stopped thinking about my own gnawing stomach and dry throat, and thought for a moment about the people in the world whose hunger will not be lifted at sundown. And what was I doing for them? On a normal day, I do not think such thoughts. On a normal day, missing my daily cup of coffee or piece of chocolate puts me in a bad mood. But Ramadan is not a normal time. This is a month, in my view, not primarily about restraint, but about remembrance."

And one of the things Eboo remembers is what the Quran demands of all Muslims:

“Spend of your wealth, out of love for G-d, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask.” (Suara 2.177)

In Judaism the words of the prophet Isaiah are there to question and challenge our reasons for fasting. Resoundingly he claims that the purpose for the fast is:

“To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to cloth him,
And not to ignore your own kin.” (Is. 6-7)

As well as connecting us to a larger community, fasting empties us. We are no longer 'full,' or 'full of it,' but now we have room to receive. For the Western religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, what we hope to receive is the word and the presence of God. By shutting down our satiated self absorbtion, we can listen to the Source, the Other. For the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the fasting allows us to stop focusing on our needs and desires, and allow true insight/knowledge/wisdom to enter us. There is a Buddhist story about a scholar interested in learning from the Zen Master. He begins by telling the Master all of his credentials, books, and knowledge. The Master says we will now have tea. As the Master pours the tea, the scholar keeps talking, until he notices the Master is still pouring after the cup is full. When he asks with shock why he Master is still pouring the tea when the cup is overflowing, the Master replied: You cannot fill a cup that is already full, nor can you teach a person who is already full."

So what’s with the fasting? We become aware of our humanity on a gut level. We practice self restraint. We remember that we are connected to a larger community than our own needs. We are reminded to help others. And we practice being empty so that we can spiritually receive. Not bad lessons to learn!

Let it Shine

When I was a young teen, I had a picture of Mary, mother of Jesus, taped inside a tiny closet in my room and I used to pray to her regularly. Perhaps that’s not such a strange concept for a Catholic – but I was from Jewish-Quaker parents and had no religious education at all! I think what appealed to me is that Mary represented not just a loving mother, but a kind and patient loving mother. The mother I wish I had had, the mother I try to be. But it also had to do with the light that both suffused her inwardly and emanated from her outwardly.

The image of the sacred heart, a heart glowing with the light of a passionate fire, breaking through the boundaries of pain and thorns, is a powerful one that appeals to me greatly. It tells me that no matter how much one might suffer – and, with the death of her child, Mary certainly suffered – divine light and love can be at our very core and radiate throughout and beyond our bodies to share with others. There’s a Buddhist meditation, the Metta Sutra that is very similar to this idea. Even with the recognition that life is suffering, it suggests that we should try to love each creature in the world – all people, plants, animals, and insects – all sentient beings, as if we were their mother and they were our child, our only child. To practice that in meditation is to extend that loving light throughout and beyond our bodies. The effect of feeling this light from within that radiates without has been described quite beautifully by three very different people from very different viewpoints.

Hildegard of Bringen was a most remarkable woman in 12th century Germany. She was the founder and abbotess – head honcho -- of a number of nunneries. She was also a composer of beautiful liturgical music, an expert on and author of botanical and medical knowledge, a theologian and a visionary, as well as a lecturer and healer. Her correspondence with the Pope and leaders of her times illustrate both her brilliance and their appreciation of her counsel. Hildegard refers to what she calls “the Living Light” as the source of all her visions, her creativity, her healing powers, her life. And this ‘Living Light’ – which she saw as coming from God -- gave her sustenance, courage, and strength. At one point she wrote: “The Living Light…while I am contemplating it, all my sadness and all pain are taken from my memory so that then I act like an unaffected girl and not an old woman.”
I saw this in action one day when I was in the Behavioural Health unit of the hospital in which I was doing chaplaincy work. An older Nigerian woman, tormented by the mental illness demons in her life, sat in our group both quite agitated and morose. But then she asked if she could sing a song she’d composed about God. As she sang, and as she became more spirited, our group watched her face transfix from worn-down pain to uplifted joy. Like Hildegard of Bringen 900 years before her, The Living Light took away her sadness and pain and she looked like a young “unaffected girl and not like an old woman.”

Another person who describes this inner, divine light is a professor I heard speak at the American Academy of Religion in 2013. As well as being a tenured professor of religious studies at a prestigious university in Texas, he is a practitioner of the Santo Daime religious tradition which originated in the Amazon of Brazil. In describing his personal religious experiences he said:

"I am deeply grateful for having the opportunity to be immersed in
divine light… I’m left with a subtle (or not so subtle) awareness of
a heart that is more open than it once was; of spiritual eyes that are
more attuned to the divine Beauty that shines through the leaves of
trees as they are blown by the wind; of an increasing sense of compassion
for the suffering that this world is undergoing; and of a deepening ability
to rest in the soft glow of divine presence in the midst of everyday life.”
(G. William Barnard, “Enthogens in a Religious Context: The Case of the Santo
Daime Religious Tradition,” AAR, Nov 2013.)

Author/educator/therapist Michael Gurian, in his book The Soul of the Child: Nurturing the Divine Identity of Our Children. reminds us that what makes us alive is the electromagnetism of our brains, our heart and our bodies and that electromagnetism is just another form of light.

“The science of neurochemistry shows us that the human being, like all
living things, is only alive in relation to the electrical energy – the
light – it organizes… the very neurochemistry of human life is electrical
– a spark, a flow of light… whether a galvanic skin response test is
administered to our bodies, or an EKG to our heart rate, or a PET scan
to our brain waves, or a series of monitors to a mother’s full uterus,
all will measure that light.”
(Michael Gurian, The Soul of the Child, p. 20-21.)

He goes on to suggest what every religion has also taught: that through the love and attachment we receive from others, particularly from our family, our love light grows and develops. Studies have shown that when a mother enters a room and coos lovingly to her child, the child’s brain lights up. And that light suffusing our brain and our body, Gurian identifies as our soul.


How similar that idea is to the artists and writers of every religion who show the holy, saintly people of their tradition with a halo or aura surrounding their body. Moses came down from the mountain and his face was gleaming. Jesus was transfigured in radiant light on the mountain. Rays of light emenate from the bodies on Buddhist bodhisttvas. Or the Hindu god Krishna who is seen as a "blaze of splendor...so radiant You are glowing like the blazing fire, brilliant as the sun...Your face beaming with the fire of sacrifice, flooding the whole universe with light." (The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11) That inner, spiritual, electromagnetic light of their love and their experience is so great, that it extends beyond their skin and radiates for all of us to see and feel.

It reminds me of the sentiment in the song identified with the civil rights struggle in this country, “This Little Light of Mine, I’m going to let it shine… Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

But I'm also aware of this divine light in the heart and the body as I do meditations to cure my cancer. Meditator after meditator extols me to let the light in, to shine it on the cancer cells, and to bring a sense of peace and wholeness through this divine light wash. It seems to be working -- at at least I feel great when I do it.

May the healing power of the Living light, that comes from beyond us yet permeates the very core of us, give us strength and guidance. May it help us to remember that even on those most dark and dismal moments of our lives, we can draw upon the light, and allow it to infuse us, allow it to radiate beyond us, and, with the kindness and patience of Mary, allow us to share the light and love with all sentient beings. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

The Tree Outside My Window

Green-dappled and shimmering in the sun, the tree outside my window stretches out toward the sky, seeking and breathing sustenance from the sun and air, transforming them into the needed nutrients and chemicals for further growth. But underneath, there’s an entirely different world, like a photo negative or a mirror. The roots, like tentacle brain synapses stretch through the dark, rich, denseness of earth seeking and sucking water.

This tree, like all trees, is interactive with its environment in larger ways as well. Birds and squirrels make their way up or down, back and forth. Ants, grubs, and beetles tunnel around the roots. As Sheldon Silverstein in his book The Giving Tree, it provides us humans with food, shelter, shade, fuel, and oxygen. And more. Its root system keeps soil from eroding making land fertile. The Green World Campaign describes it on their website like this: “Trees restore degraded lands, relieve poverty, and foster biodiversity. They bring back life to struggling rural villages, and, by absorbing CO2, they help the global village, too.” (www.greenworld.org)

These magnificent beings, trees, live at once in two vastly different worlds, giving and sharing with both, and interacting with those around it. They are truly the connectors and transformers of the elements: earth, water, air and fire in the form of the sun’s light come together to promote and sustain life. Is it any wonder trees symbolize the axis mundi of our spiritual lives?

An axis mundi is an object that symbolically acts as the central pole connecting the heaven, or the transcendent beyond, and the earth, the immanent here and now, and around which the believing community gathers. They are like antennae which bring in signals from beyond and make them clear and available to everyday folk. Cultures from all times and places use different objects as an axis mundi. Sacred mountains, or objects that look like sacred mountain such as the pyramids, Mayan temples, church steeples, the Ka’aba act as axis mundi. So do trees. The trees in the center of the Garden of Eden, both the tree of knowledge and the tree of good and evil are axis mundi. A Christmas tree, a May pole, the Bodhi tree, the 8 branched menorah – all of those trees that we believe connect our earthly, ordinary lives with the spiritual beyond and by doing so transfix and transform us – are axis mundi.

Perhaps an axis mundi – whether we believe in a higher power or not – helps us to recognize, as does a tree, the duality of ourselves. We are both rooted, earthy beings with all kinds of animal instincts and needs as driven as the lowly grub. But we are also reaching out, stretching our tenderness out into the atmosphere, absorbing the ephemeral light of intangible nourishment from art, music, poetry, love, care, compassion.

The biblical creation myth says that human bodies were made of the same material as the earth. The Hebrew word ‘adam’ means both ‘mankind’ and the earthy, muddy humus of the ground. In fact, our bodies are made of the same chemicals, minerals and water found in the earth and the universe. So we are – both literally and figuratively – earthy, grounded, rooted, stick in the muds. But that’s not all.
The biblical myth goes on to say that the power of life, biblically called G-d, then breathed ‘nefish’ into us. In Hebrew the word means ‘spirit.’ So perhaps that includes all those intangibles that we think make us different from other creatures: our mind, our imagination, our artistry, our spirituality.

Strangely, like a tree, our bodies seem to inherently be formed to deal with those two elements in the same way. Our earthy part, the part that eats food, makes compost, excretes humus, and is below the nefish part that breathes in air, has great thoughts, and feels immaterial emotions. So, perhaps we too are axis mundi, connectors of the ordinary with the extraordinary, the earth with the heavens. And maybe that’s what the founders of different religions were trying to teach us as role models for our own behavior.

Moses holding the 10 Commandment on the mountain, Jesus on the cross (perhaps a symbolic axis mundi tree?), Buddha reaching enlightenment while sitting under a tree, shamans of indigenous traditions, they themselves are all axis mundi connecting the everyday world with the spiritual world beyond. All of them had extraordinary abilities to channel that which we call the divine and teach it to us earthlings. They, like trees and other axis mundi, became the central pole connecting the two worlds and around which, life revolved. Perhaps those people are role models for us.

Perhaps each one of us, with our feet planted firmly on the ground and our head in the sky, are also tree-like axis mundi. We just need to dig deep, stretch wide, tap into those internal juices, and share with the outside world – just like the tree outside my window does.