The List - Part 2

"All these deeds that were done in Egypt took place because God had already placed in Egypt hidden treasures that Israel still had to take out. 'My signs' (otot) refers to the letters (otiyyot) through which heaven and earth had been created. The children of Israel, who were ready to receive the Torah, first had to bring forth words and letters that already existed in the world." ~  The Language of TRUTH: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger. Translated and Interpreted by Rabbi Arthur Green

It can be a jolting experience to look back at the choices a person has made in his life and see a very recognizable pattern emerge from the situations and circumstances that once appeared to him as random chaos. Our Living Judaism bonus class last night was eye-opening for me in this regard: I was overcome with a sense of spiritual purpose (I am not yet comfortable with the word "destiny") as we read more of Arthur Green's translation of the Sefat Emet, saying "Just as we have to testify and make it clear that God created the world, so do we have to bear witness that all choice, all human actions and undertakings, come about in accord with God's will. Thus we can counter the 'fool's wrath' that says: 'I did it by the power of my own hand.'" 

Whoa! Wait just one minute! What?! Stop the car. I need to get out and walk around.

How many times in my life have I thought I was running away from what I thought I knew was True about God only to run straight into a bolder, more pronounced understanding of the reality of God? Too many times to count. Now, don't mistake this for willful rebellion. While there was a period during my early college years when I wrestled mightily with the particular Pentecostal Christian version of God with which I had been raised, I am not writing here of any conscious rejection of belief in God (though certainly there have been periods of great doubt over the years about the influence of God in the direction of my life). Rather, I am talking about the peeling away of the layers of onion skin wrapped around my many different ideas about God to reveal an ever-changing, yet ever-constant presence behind the sea changes that have influenced the experiences that have brought me to this new, yet very familiar encounter with Judaism. 

One of the books on my current reading list is Rabbi David A. Cooper's, God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism. I have actually been reading this book for over a year now, taking a very small section (maybe a paragraph or two, but no more) to read and digest as I eat my breakfast before heading out to work. This is one of the special alone-times of my day that I have grown to cherish. Presently, I am in the chapter titled The Path of the Tzaddik. This morning's section describes the Path of Respect, wherein we are taught that "one of the best spiritual practices for cultivating precision [zhiruth, understanding the significance of every word, deed, and thought springing forth from within] is to develop great care in the use of speech." 

Now, the Christian prohibition against gossiping is fairly straight forward: don't do it; speaking ill of another is contrary to the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself. Who gossips about themselves? It is advertising self-hatred. Well, as easy as this is to grasp, I cannot truthfully say that I ever began to understand the concept until my struggles with many of the foundational dogmas of Christianity sent me searching for a more believable reality and I wandered quite unintentionally into Buddhism through a yoga practice I had taken up to manage my stress levels. Here I encountered the Noble Eight-fold Path and Buddha's teaching on Right Speech - particularly the power of words to bring healing or destruction into existence. 

Perhaps I was just at a different place in my life where I was hoping for something more than  the vicious cycle of self-destructive behavior that saw me ruin one friendship after another with my hateful attitudes and selfish actions. Perhaps the rephrasing of the no-gossip rule in the Buddhist context relieved me because I was able to identify a great moral truth that wasn't dependent upon any acknowledgment of the deity of Jesus. Or... as the Sefat Emet would have us believe, perhaps I was making choices in accordance with God's will. Considering all of the other countless little encounters, seeming coincidences, and unusual experiences I have had over the years, I sit here now writing a blog about my leaping-off into unknown waters (unknown to me, at least) with a set of fears and doubts that is somehow calmed by an overcoming confidence that the shifting topography along my journey for Truth has always been guiding me to the Source. Most of the world's religions point to a few universal truths, but there is a Source of Truth in creation that is the bridge between God and the created order: "the children of Israel, who were ready to receive the Torah, [who] first had to bring forth words and letters that already existed in the world." 


In many ways I feel as though my journey is still at the starting point; there is so much to learn about Jewish belief and practices. Yet, more so, I feel as though I am coming home for the first time in my life. I have passed through the gate and am now in a new country, no longer wandering in the desert.


After class last night, Barb and Amy and I sipped on tea and coffee and talked about our different paths to this point in our lives. Between us - though we are in many ways very recent recent additions to each others' lives - a familiarity has blossomed that feels very old indeed. We are able to look back on our lives and see the possibility of God's will guiding our steps to this shared (re)discovery of the Source. I am thankful for the journey. I cannot say that the many pains and disappointments experienced along the way have been diminishing. In fact, they have formed within me a confidence to push forward with joy. As Rabbi said a few weeks ago, "the Baal Shem Tov – the founder of Hasidic spirituality, teaches that God answers every prayer, just not in a time that is convenient for us – or in ways that we expect – we have a different understanding of time than God does and it is God’s time that is measurable in every instance, not ours.  As challenging as this may be for us – I think that this is the start of an answer." My prayer has always been to experience union with Truth. Who is to say when that has happened, is happening, or will happen? Perhaps the journey itself is Truth.