Harold Kushner relates to God in terms of action. This is usually called a "Predicate Theology," which says that God is experienced in a caring hospice nurse, serving others in a soup kitchen, or joining together in a wedding celebration. I have two problems with this way of thinking.
First, it lets God off the hook for the bad times. If God is part of special moments only, what is God's relationship to misfortune? We can't just leave it that God is made up of these moments of beauty, and not much more. This is like gerrymandering God, in the same way that politicians gerrymander Congressional districts to include a certain percentage of Republicans, or African-Americans, or union members. Gerrymandering ruins politics, and it ruins God. God isn't much of a god, if God includes fluffy bunnies and not hungry foxes. God has to be in all of these things and more.
Second, although it helps us to think about the Divine, what does Predicate Theology say about holiness? When a friend died, I had trouble praying and certain words stuck in my mouth. I couldn't get my lips around the word "holy." God's world seemed broken and empty of holiness. What does it mean to be holy?
What is holiness in a world with brokenness? I'd offer a hesitating definition, that comes by way of that lost friend. Joel was a marvelous musician and was very fond of the saying in the Talmud, "Sing each day, sing every day." He was an optimist, and a person of great faith. Even in his hospital bed, withered by Leukemia, he recognized his place in God's plan. He was God's finest creation, made by God with materials that don't last forever. Before his strength failed, Joel still made time to play guitar, sing and jam.
Being bold in the face of fear is holiness. Having the courage to smile and teach and sing when others would quit is godly. Living lives of faith that testify to God's real presence, even in a hospital, is what brings God's divine holiness into our world. Recognizing the limits of our bodies and our lives, knowing that we will never understand God's wide world, and going ahead in spite of our existential nausea - that's holy.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
fear
Wednesday morning, I was driving off-road in an '01 Toyota HiLux through Wadi Rum, the Jordanian desert where "Lawrence of Arabia" was filmed. Our guide had the slick look of a hustler. I didn't trust him, and had a lingering doubt that he might take our money and leave us in the desert to dry. Turns out I was wrong, and in the end he was a decent guy. I want to talk about that fear.
We were driving up, across and down massive steep dunes, and wheeling about empty stretches of desert where the only thing to see was sand, rock and scrub. My anxiety - about being ripped off, left for dead - blended into fear that the truck would tip over into the sand, and we would struggle to survive on the water left in the engine coolant. Of course, the fear was unrealistic, but there it was.
I realized that I should thank God for the fear. At a basic level, fear can keep us alive. It lets us know what to avoid, and when to run. Too much fear can slow us down, too. But by entering into the scary spaces, we have a chance to confront the ultimate fear. When you go into those unknown places, empty places, dangerous places, you can test out what it's like to face the final unknown place: death.
We live our lives in dread of the end. We are constantly slowed down by fears of loss, terror of our own mortality, and by the dark realization that it all ends, sometimes by chance. The rabbis called sleep one-sixtieth of death, and I might say that a thrill is one-sixtieth of that final fear. I think that everyday fears, about money, about family, about health and safety help us touch the awe of death from a safe distance.
Step into fear from time to time, even if it's just the terrible character of Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men." Without testing those waters, you may never be able to live with the knowledge that you will die.
We were driving up, across and down massive steep dunes, and wheeling about empty stretches of desert where the only thing to see was sand, rock and scrub. My anxiety - about being ripped off, left for dead - blended into fear that the truck would tip over into the sand, and we would struggle to survive on the water left in the engine coolant. Of course, the fear was unrealistic, but there it was.
I realized that I should thank God for the fear. At a basic level, fear can keep us alive. It lets us know what to avoid, and when to run. Too much fear can slow us down, too. But by entering into the scary spaces, we have a chance to confront the ultimate fear. When you go into those unknown places, empty places, dangerous places, you can test out what it's like to face the final unknown place: death.
We live our lives in dread of the end. We are constantly slowed down by fears of loss, terror of our own mortality, and by the dark realization that it all ends, sometimes by chance. The rabbis called sleep one-sixtieth of death, and I might say that a thrill is one-sixtieth of that final fear. I think that everyday fears, about money, about family, about health and safety help us touch the awe of death from a safe distance.
Step into fear from time to time, even if it's just the terrible character of Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men." Without testing those waters, you may never be able to live with the knowledge that you will die.
tradition
I was visiting cousins last weekend. My wife taught them to play Cat's Cradle with a spool of yarn. Then, they taught her to play Chinese jump-rope (known in Britain as elastics), which is like hopscotch with string. Aside from the basics of four-square, I have no capacity for these games. I'm horribly uncoordinated, and I can't remember the order of the moves for the life of me.
As I watched, I wondered: How can a game be the same in different countries? How do people remember all these moves? It's as if there was a hard-drive out there, with all these wild bits of information. But it's not out there, it's in us. It seems like people have an amazing capacity to remember complicated moves, and to pass the order along to friends and family members. We carry it forward and move the information along.
That seems to be how the Bible (and the Talmud, the Vedas and the Gospels) got to us. It was a group memory, like the sequences of Cat's Cradle or a family recipe. First re-told as campfire songs in the desert, it became elaborated, recited and turned into a massive ritual, hundreds of thousands of verses long. How did people remember so much, you must think. How could they not? People can still hold on to the bizarre moves of Cat's Cradle, even with all the modern distractions: the Internet, cellphones, fast cars and music videos. In a time before electronics, people had a lot more "bandwidth" to store great stories.
Remember, humans are built for stories. We thrive on narrative. Thousands of years ago, the narratives that formed the core of the Bible helped us to make order of the world, and listening to them around a fire helped us to cope with the fears that inevitably come in the coldness and the silence of the desert. Then, something changed. We moved to towns and cities, and lost our memory. We had to write down what we knew because our lives were shifting. It's no wonder that the Talmud, millions of lines of Jewish oral law and legend, was written down as Jews migrated and urbanized. It's harder to hold on to memories in cities. There are more distractions.
A funny things happens when humans write down these oral memories. We start to forget them. That was the experience of anthropologists trying to catalog Yugoslavian epics in the twentieth century. Even as the scientists tried to copy out the epics, the story-tellers began to forget them. And these were tellers who remembered hundreds of thousands of verses by heart. On another side, writing things down seems to take away the personality of the story-telling. There's less vitality and originality, because the subtle variations of the individual teller are ironed out of the story. Think about a joke that gets written down into an email. It may be good on screen, but it lacks the punch of a gifted comedian.
Singers and other musicians know this already. Fela Kuti, the great African pop musician, refused to play songs again once he had recorded them onto albums. Spontaneity in concert wouldn't make sense at that point. An audience wouldn't be able to hear his songs freshly, but would expect the album version. I wonder if that's happened with Scripture. Have we lost something vital about the religious experience now that the words are frozen on a page? What's happening to other human knowledge, now that it's being stored on Wikipedia? Will we forget our traditions and our ways? Now you can find instructions for Cat's Cradle on the Internet.
As I watched, I wondered: How can a game be the same in different countries? How do people remember all these moves? It's as if there was a hard-drive out there, with all these wild bits of information. But it's not out there, it's in us. It seems like people have an amazing capacity to remember complicated moves, and to pass the order along to friends and family members. We carry it forward and move the information along.
That seems to be how the Bible (and the Talmud, the Vedas and the Gospels) got to us. It was a group memory, like the sequences of Cat's Cradle or a family recipe. First re-told as campfire songs in the desert, it became elaborated, recited and turned into a massive ritual, hundreds of thousands of verses long. How did people remember so much, you must think. How could they not? People can still hold on to the bizarre moves of Cat's Cradle, even with all the modern distractions: the Internet, cellphones, fast cars and music videos. In a time before electronics, people had a lot more "bandwidth" to store great stories.
Remember, humans are built for stories. We thrive on narrative. Thousands of years ago, the narratives that formed the core of the Bible helped us to make order of the world, and listening to them around a fire helped us to cope with the fears that inevitably come in the coldness and the silence of the desert. Then, something changed. We moved to towns and cities, and lost our memory. We had to write down what we knew because our lives were shifting. It's no wonder that the Talmud, millions of lines of Jewish oral law and legend, was written down as Jews migrated and urbanized. It's harder to hold on to memories in cities. There are more distractions.
A funny things happens when humans write down these oral memories. We start to forget them. That was the experience of anthropologists trying to catalog Yugoslavian epics in the twentieth century. Even as the scientists tried to copy out the epics, the story-tellers began to forget them. And these were tellers who remembered hundreds of thousands of verses by heart. On another side, writing things down seems to take away the personality of the story-telling. There's less vitality and originality, because the subtle variations of the individual teller are ironed out of the story. Think about a joke that gets written down into an email. It may be good on screen, but it lacks the punch of a gifted comedian.
Singers and other musicians know this already. Fela Kuti, the great African pop musician, refused to play songs again once he had recorded them onto albums. Spontaneity in concert wouldn't make sense at that point. An audience wouldn't be able to hear his songs freshly, but would expect the album version. I wonder if that's happened with Scripture. Have we lost something vital about the religious experience now that the words are frozen on a page? What's happening to other human knowledge, now that it's being stored on Wikipedia? Will we forget our traditions and our ways? Now you can find instructions for Cat's Cradle on the Internet.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
anger
Joel Shickman, my friend and seminary classmate, died this week. He was 37, with a wife and three young boys.
What can I possibly say to God at this moment?
Quite a lot, actually.
Currently, I'm living in Jerusalem. On Wednesday night, four days after Joel's death, friends and colleagues came to visit from the United States. They invited us on a tour of the tunnels under the Temple Mount . A bit of background - the retaining walls of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem make the Temple Mount. The mount encloses the site of the First and Second Temples built to God by the kings and rulers of biblical Israel. The Temple compounds were build around the stone where Jews believe Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac (Genesis 22). That platform was the site of the "Holy of Holies," God's home on earth. Jews do not enter the mount itself, in fear of unknowingly walking on that holy ground. By taking the tunnel tour, you are able to get as close as possible to the Holy of Holies.
After I waited for our tour group to pass, I stood in that spot and spoke with God. With silent screams, I poured out my rage. I shook and I punched that retaining wall. I told God that I thought very little of God, and that God was cruel and foolish and I hated God. I said that God was lousy at God's job and at that moment, I wished that I could kill God.
Alone with those stones, I felt something very real. I felt God there with me in a way that no human being can be if we're angry. I was pounding God's chest, and God was holding me tightly, even as I tried to hurt God. With each scream and accusation, I knew that God was saying, "you are right. I am sorry." God takes my anger and says that I am right to be angry. God can't change what's happened and God can't explain it to me, but God knows my pain and feels the same thing.
God can handle our rage. Don't ever let grief make you think that you have no part in God. You are still here - a part of this universe. Even at our worst, God can take it. What I realized, and I see now even as I write, is that as much as I hate God, I am having a relationship with God. It's better to hate God that to leave.
What can I possibly say to God at this moment?
Quite a lot, actually.
Currently, I'm living in Jerusalem. On Wednesday night, four days after Joel's death, friends and colleagues came to visit from the United States. They invited us on a tour of the tunnels under the Temple Mount . A bit of background - the retaining walls of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem make the Temple Mount. The mount encloses the site of the First and Second Temples built to God by the kings and rulers of biblical Israel. The Temple compounds were build around the stone where Jews believe Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac (Genesis 22). That platform was the site of the "Holy of Holies," God's home on earth. Jews do not enter the mount itself, in fear of unknowingly walking on that holy ground. By taking the tunnel tour, you are able to get as close as possible to the Holy of Holies.
After I waited for our tour group to pass, I stood in that spot and spoke with God. With silent screams, I poured out my rage. I shook and I punched that retaining wall. I told God that I thought very little of God, and that God was cruel and foolish and I hated God. I said that God was lousy at God's job and at that moment, I wished that I could kill God.
Alone with those stones, I felt something very real. I felt God there with me in a way that no human being can be if we're angry. I was pounding God's chest, and God was holding me tightly, even as I tried to hurt God. With each scream and accusation, I knew that God was saying, "you are right. I am sorry." God takes my anger and says that I am right to be angry. God can't change what's happened and God can't explain it to me, but God knows my pain and feels the same thing.
God can handle our rage. Don't ever let grief make you think that you have no part in God. You are still here - a part of this universe. Even at our worst, God can take it. What I realized, and I see now even as I write, is that as much as I hate God, I am having a relationship with God. It's better to hate God that to leave.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
does study lead to action?
In 1980 one of my mentors, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, wrote a paper called "Study Leads to Action." The main idea was in the title, and this came from the the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic writing and customs from the first centuries of our time. Unfortunately, it seems to me that study - and the Talmud meant religious study - often just leads to more study.
There's a problem in religious life, and it's a problem I see very often in the Jewish world. I don't know if this problem exists in other communities, and I'd love to hear some comparisons. The first part is that people are entering study as if it were a game. The game has a few variations, but the goals are roughly: show how smart I am and put on a public face that's louder, bolder or just faster than other people's.
But study isn't just talk. We aren't rolling the words of a religious text around our lips like so much expensive wine, to see who can come up with the best description of the wine or compare it to another wine which only they've tasted, and then spit it out. The religious experience, the experience of God, has to be drunk and it has to affect us right down to our bones. Isn't that the best part of wine, too?
Religion, whether in study or in prayer, has to lead to something. Studying the Bible, Talmud, a Hadith, or the church fathers should lead to action. That action might be visible or it might not be. It may be making meals for AIDS patients, reflecting on your relationship with your children, joining the church budget committee, or just feeling calmer in a way that makes us able to be nicer the next morning at work.
Study can't be a substitute for action. When you study with people, you can't each be reflecting on a text without also reflecting on each other. Study (or prayer for that matter) can't be the proxy for intimacy. Religious life craves real intimacy with our study partner, other congregants and God. The ultimate goal of religious life isn't to create a tool for finding God - it's to find God without a tool.
There's a problem in religious life, and it's a problem I see very often in the Jewish world. I don't know if this problem exists in other communities, and I'd love to hear some comparisons. The first part is that people are entering study as if it were a game. The game has a few variations, but the goals are roughly: show how smart I am and put on a public face that's louder, bolder or just faster than other people's.
But study isn't just talk. We aren't rolling the words of a religious text around our lips like so much expensive wine, to see who can come up with the best description of the wine or compare it to another wine which only they've tasted, and then spit it out. The religious experience, the experience of God, has to be drunk and it has to affect us right down to our bones. Isn't that the best part of wine, too?
Religion, whether in study or in prayer, has to lead to something. Studying the Bible, Talmud, a Hadith, or the church fathers should lead to action. That action might be visible or it might not be. It may be making meals for AIDS patients, reflecting on your relationship with your children, joining the church budget committee, or just feeling calmer in a way that makes us able to be nicer the next morning at work.
Study can't be a substitute for action. When you study with people, you can't each be reflecting on a text without also reflecting on each other. Study (or prayer for that matter) can't be the proxy for intimacy. Religious life craves real intimacy with our study partner, other congregants and God. The ultimate goal of religious life isn't to create a tool for finding God - it's to find God without a tool.
Friday, October 26, 2007
my business card
My rabbi suggests that we each find a verse of scripture that we'd put on our business card. This is the story of mine, from Genesis 25:22:
When Rebecca is pregnant with Jacob and Esau, the twins struggle inside her. Having waited so long to begin her family, you can imagine her frustration at this difficult pregnancy. In pain, she cries out, "'If so, why do I exist?' She went to ask God."
This verse, to me, is the genesis of all theology. It begins with experience. Like Rebecca, we are aware of discomfort, pain or suffering. It may be our own, a friend's, or something we read in the paper. We notice the "if so" of life - the way things are. Things feel just a little out of whack, a bit off from what we want or expect.
And we are left with a difficult question, why? "Why do I exist?" Why can't I have what I want and be the person I want to be? Why do good people suffer? Why is the world made this way and not some other way? You might think, couldn't things be different? Shouldn't they? Like Rebecca, you begin to doubt your own worth. You begin to question why you're here in the first place.
Then comes the awesome moment, "She went to ask God." That's theology. We try to make sense of the "If so, why do I exist?" by coming closer to God. We take all that we've learned, all that we've struggled with, and form it into our relationship with God. Why did God make me this way? What sort of God would make a world like this? Why did God create a universe this way and not another way? You start to draw your picture of God, the way that you know God.
"'If so, why do I exist?' She went to ask God."
Learn from the if so. Wonder about the why do I exist? Try to understand and draw close in the She went to ask God. But you're not done. You see the world more clearly now - you've begun to think about its problems. You've even tried to figure out how God relates to it all. You may never have a clear handle on God, however. In fact, you won't.
You have started to see the world, and you can't turn away. Later in the story, as Rebecca prepares Jacob to trick his father for a blessing, Jacob worries about the consequences. His mother says, "I'll take your curse on me." Now, I'm not saying to go out and trick a spouse or loved one, but you will have to take on the curses of the world. In trying to understand God, you will see the world's pain. It is now yours.
When Rebecca is pregnant with Jacob and Esau, the twins struggle inside her. Having waited so long to begin her family, you can imagine her frustration at this difficult pregnancy. In pain, she cries out, "'If so, why do I exist?' She went to ask God."
This verse, to me, is the genesis of all theology. It begins with experience. Like Rebecca, we are aware of discomfort, pain or suffering. It may be our own, a friend's, or something we read in the paper. We notice the "if so" of life - the way things are. Things feel just a little out of whack, a bit off from what we want or expect.
And we are left with a difficult question, why? "Why do I exist?" Why can't I have what I want and be the person I want to be? Why do good people suffer? Why is the world made this way and not some other way? You might think, couldn't things be different? Shouldn't they? Like Rebecca, you begin to doubt your own worth. You begin to question why you're here in the first place.
Then comes the awesome moment, "She went to ask God." That's theology. We try to make sense of the "If so, why do I exist?" by coming closer to God. We take all that we've learned, all that we've struggled with, and form it into our relationship with God. Why did God make me this way? What sort of God would make a world like this? Why did God create a universe this way and not another way? You start to draw your picture of God, the way that you know God.
"'If so, why do I exist?' She went to ask God."
Learn from the if so. Wonder about the why do I exist? Try to understand and draw close in the She went to ask God. But you're not done. You see the world more clearly now - you've begun to think about its problems. You've even tried to figure out how God relates to it all. You may never have a clear handle on God, however. In fact, you won't.
You have started to see the world, and you can't turn away. Later in the story, as Rebecca prepares Jacob to trick his father for a blessing, Jacob worries about the consequences. His mother says, "I'll take your curse on me." Now, I'm not saying to go out and trick a spouse or loved one, but you will have to take on the curses of the world. In trying to understand God, you will see the world's pain. It is now yours.
Friday, October 19, 2007
quantum theology 2 - figuring the odds
How do we figure the odds to God?
Let's change the subject for a moment. Picture your favorite field in May. A hive of bees lives there. Bees love pollen, and the best things in life: clover, blossoms, acacia, tupelo, wildflowers, etc. All sorts of things are in the field. It is like an amusement park for the bees.
On an average morning, the bees go pollinating and doing their bee-things. You are stuck at work without any honey, thinking about bees and Winnie the Pooh. You can’t afford to go outside on this perfect morning, and are stuck in front of your monitor without even a digital flower. Your mind wanders and you think about the life of a bee. Where are they?
Draw a map. Beginning from an overhead view of the meadow, sketch the trees and clearings, and all other things that are fixed. Now it's the hard part. You can’t tell where each bee is – they aren't like trees or stones – they move around in search of mellow fruitfulness. Because there are thousands of lucky bees, and you can’t be there to photograph or even count them, you have to guess. Bees are not static, they can't be pinpointed. You resort to guesswork.
They are probably around those lilacs. It is probable that many are on the blooming apple tree. There may be a few on the mosses. One or two may perch on a scrap of candy I dropped recently. What you draw is a map of the odds, to show the probable locations of some bees around the landmarks. Make a bee-key for your map: shade where they might be, darker patches where they should be, even darker on the particularly sweet pollen, a mark around the hive. That aerial view might catch all of the bees, or it might not. Even the hive may have collapsed.
Mapping a swarm of bees is like mapping God. We begin to guess where God might be these days. God isn’t here with me, but God could be at church, or maybe at the symphony (Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie called that church), or at the Da Vinci exhibit. If we were to say that God is probably in church, can we be sure? Of course not. It’s all probability.
I might trace my map of places to find God: my synagogue in Venice, a hiking path in Glacier National Park, fly fishing, at a James Brown concert would be darkly shaded. But these are all just likely scenarios. That is, it seems likely to find God in Langston Hughes, but there’s no guarantee. Be careful: when you're busy looking for places to find God, you might miss God with you right now.
Let's change the subject for a moment. Picture your favorite field in May. A hive of bees lives there. Bees love pollen, and the best things in life: clover, blossoms, acacia, tupelo, wildflowers, etc. All sorts of things are in the field. It is like an amusement park for the bees.
On an average morning, the bees go pollinating and doing their bee-things. You are stuck at work without any honey, thinking about bees and Winnie the Pooh. You can’t afford to go outside on this perfect morning, and are stuck in front of your monitor without even a digital flower. Your mind wanders and you think about the life of a bee. Where are they?
Draw a map. Beginning from an overhead view of the meadow, sketch the trees and clearings, and all other things that are fixed. Now it's the hard part. You can’t tell where each bee is – they aren't like trees or stones – they move around in search of mellow fruitfulness. Because there are thousands of lucky bees, and you can’t be there to photograph or even count them, you have to guess. Bees are not static, they can't be pinpointed. You resort to guesswork.
They are probably around those lilacs. It is probable that many are on the blooming apple tree. There may be a few on the mosses. One or two may perch on a scrap of candy I dropped recently. What you draw is a map of the odds, to show the probable locations of some bees around the landmarks. Make a bee-key for your map: shade where they might be, darker patches where they should be, even darker on the particularly sweet pollen, a mark around the hive. That aerial view might catch all of the bees, or it might not. Even the hive may have collapsed.
Mapping a swarm of bees is like mapping God. We begin to guess where God might be these days. God isn’t here with me, but God could be at church, or maybe at the symphony (Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie called that church), or at the Da Vinci exhibit. If we were to say that God is probably in church, can we be sure? Of course not. It’s all probability.
I might trace my map of places to find God: my synagogue in Venice, a hiking path in Glacier National Park, fly fishing, at a James Brown concert would be darkly shaded. But these are all just likely scenarios. That is, it seems likely to find God in Langston Hughes, but there’s no guarantee. Be careful: when you're busy looking for places to find God, you might miss God with you right now.
quantum theology
Quantum physics says that very small things are particles and waves at the same time. For example, an electron is like a spot and like a blur at the same time. It has a place and it doesn't altogether. Finding the electron is guesswork, or playing the odds.
God is like that, too. We can never say anything for sure about God: God is within each of us and far, far away at the same time. You can't pinpoint God, or capture God's nature. It's better to think about the odds of finding God.
Let's take a picture from chemistry. Because they are so small, electrons lose their particle nature and are better talked about like waves. The shape of these waves is often drawn in three dimensional probability pictures. These illustrations look like clouds, with a fog to show where you are more likely to find electrons. There are darker regions to show the best chance of finding an electron. Then, the shading fades into places of limited probability. There are even empty points where electrons are never found.
God is probable, too. There are places with high God-density (ex., a mosque, a museum, being in love), and places with less density (seventh grade, recent seasons of Saturday Night Live), even empty points (war, lies, corruption). So people find God by figuring the odds. You may not always find God in prayer, and you may even find God on YouTube. For humans, the God-empty place is often the experience of despair, when we think that the world is meaningless or pointless.
God is like that, too. We can never say anything for sure about God: God is within each of us and far, far away at the same time. You can't pinpoint God, or capture God's nature. It's better to think about the odds of finding God.
Let's take a picture from chemistry. Because they are so small, electrons lose their particle nature and are better talked about like waves. The shape of these waves is often drawn in three dimensional probability pictures. These illustrations look like clouds, with a fog to show where you are more likely to find electrons. There are darker regions to show the best chance of finding an electron. Then, the shading fades into places of limited probability. There are even empty points where electrons are never found.
God is probable, too. There are places with high God-density (ex., a mosque, a museum, being in love), and places with less density (seventh grade, recent seasons of Saturday Night Live), even empty points (war, lies, corruption). So people find God by figuring the odds. You may not always find God in prayer, and you may even find God on YouTube. For humans, the God-empty place is often the experience of despair, when we think that the world is meaningless or pointless.
Friday, October 12, 2007
the soul
First, I don't think that there are two parts of us: a body and a soul. I don't like to break things up that way: mind or matter, us or them, physical or spiritual. It's really all one blur.
That said, let's talk about all the soulful things that are within us. What makes us human? What gives us our person-ness? Music, love, passion, scheming, study, drawing, humor, anger, tears, mathematics, religion and more.
So let's take all of those things that make us different from every other living creature, and see that there's a drive within each of us to do some or all of these things. Let's call that spark of human-ness a "soul." Now, a soul isn't something apart from who we are, it's just the group of virtues and values that make me, me and you, you and makes each of us human. Robots don't have souls. Robots don't have any qualities other than the ones their programmer puts in.
Do ants have a soul? Does an oak tree? I'm pretty sure that ants do have a soul. They have an ant-ness, and they know it. If they didn't, how would they go about doing their ant business, building colonies? I don't believe they could carry on if they didn't have a sense of their ant-ness. Otherwise, they'd be robots, carrying out a program.
An oak? Here, I'm stumped. I've always loved trees, and they seem incapable of harm. A tree gives air and shade, and doesn't seem to ask too much in return. An oak tree has a distinct character that makes it this oak and no other, an oak and no other kind of tree, and tree and not another kind of creature. It has an oak-ness, but does it know that? Maybe. It doesn't seem to require knowing to carry out its oak life.
That said, let's talk about all the soulful things that are within us. What makes us human? What gives us our person-ness? Music, love, passion, scheming, study, drawing, humor, anger, tears, mathematics, religion and more.
So let's take all of those things that make us different from every other living creature, and see that there's a drive within each of us to do some or all of these things. Let's call that spark of human-ness a "soul." Now, a soul isn't something apart from who we are, it's just the group of virtues and values that make me, me and you, you and makes each of us human. Robots don't have souls. Robots don't have any qualities other than the ones their programmer puts in.
Do ants have a soul? Does an oak tree? I'm pretty sure that ants do have a soul. They have an ant-ness, and they know it. If they didn't, how would they go about doing their ant business, building colonies? I don't believe they could carry on if they didn't have a sense of their ant-ness. Otherwise, they'd be robots, carrying out a program.
An oak? Here, I'm stumped. I've always loved trees, and they seem incapable of harm. A tree gives air and shade, and doesn't seem to ask too much in return. An oak tree has a distinct character that makes it this oak and no other, an oak and no other kind of tree, and tree and not another kind of creature. It has an oak-ness, but does it know that? Maybe. It doesn't seem to require knowing to carry out its oak life.
faith, belief and hope
There seems to be confusion about the following words: faith, belief and hope.
Hope is a desire for a certain result, a wish that something will happen in a specific way. Hope is optimism that something good will eventually happen. We can hope to get a new job when we're unemployed, or hope that a certain team will end its losing streak. Maybe the thing we hope for will happen. Maybe we are too optimistic.
Belief is thinking that a certain thing is likely. You may even be able to prove that this thing is real. You can believe in evolution, or that torture prevents terrorism, or that Princeton Review courses raise SAT scores. Like any belief, each of these things can be checked, proved or disproved. Sometimes beliefs have a lot of facts on their side, sometimes they don't - sometimes beliefs are strengthened, sometimes we need to re-think what we believe in the light of new facts.
Faith isn't like hope or belief. Faith is not a belief that hasn't been proven yet. It isn't believing in something without much evidence. Faith isn't like hope, although they both require a bit of optimism. Faith isn't directed toward a specific result. Faith is more like trust, an abiding trust in the universe.
Having faith means trusting that God's world, although largely unexplained, makes sense. Even if we can't see it, even if we don't have answers, we can have faith that the universe has meaning. We are meant to be here, struggling, loving and questioning. The world has a place for us. We are a part of God's plan.
You can have faith in a hospital bed. Even when no doctor believes there's a chance for remission, even after there is no hope for recovery, we can have faith that our lives were well lived. We have faith that we lived for a purpose. We trust that we were part of God's plan, and always in God's hands.
Hope is a desire for a certain result, a wish that something will happen in a specific way. Hope is optimism that something good will eventually happen. We can hope to get a new job when we're unemployed, or hope that a certain team will end its losing streak. Maybe the thing we hope for will happen. Maybe we are too optimistic.
Belief is thinking that a certain thing is likely. You may even be able to prove that this thing is real. You can believe in evolution, or that torture prevents terrorism, or that Princeton Review courses raise SAT scores. Like any belief, each of these things can be checked, proved or disproved. Sometimes beliefs have a lot of facts on their side, sometimes they don't - sometimes beliefs are strengthened, sometimes we need to re-think what we believe in the light of new facts.
Faith isn't like hope or belief. Faith is not a belief that hasn't been proven yet. It isn't believing in something without much evidence. Faith isn't like hope, although they both require a bit of optimism. Faith isn't directed toward a specific result. Faith is more like trust, an abiding trust in the universe.
Having faith means trusting that God's world, although largely unexplained, makes sense. Even if we can't see it, even if we don't have answers, we can have faith that the universe has meaning. We are meant to be here, struggling, loving and questioning. The world has a place for us. We are a part of God's plan.
You can have faith in a hospital bed. Even when no doctor believes there's a chance for remission, even after there is no hope for recovery, we can have faith that our lives were well lived. We have faith that we lived for a purpose. We trust that we were part of God's plan, and always in God's hands.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
narrative - a first crack
In 1999, I took video histories of my mother's family’s experiences before, during and after World War II. This was a chance for me to learn more about my grandfather (Zayde in Yiddish), who died in 1990.
When I interviewed my grandmother about Zayde’s life as an immigrant in the 50’s, she told me about their first home in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Traditional Jews like him walk to the synagogue on the Sabbath. After settling in, my Zayde discovered that the nearest synagogue was several miles away.
“How do people get there?” he asked the better settled immigrants. “We drive,” they told him.
“Drive,” he said, “What kind of Jews are these?” So for weeks, he stayed home, determined not to drive on the Sabbath. Finally, after missing what he missed about synagogue too many times, he got in his car one Saturday morning to pray.
By the time I was born about two decades later, we always drove to his synagogue.
In a way I'm just starting to explain, his story tells me a lot about narrative and the ways in which it shapes our religious traditions. In the Old Country, his narrative - his personal story, if you will - was that Jews didn't drive on the Sabbath. In the New World, the story had changed. Same Zayde, same Judaism, same God, but the story had shifted and with it, his actions and the way he saw himself. Even the story of being Jewish had changed.
When I interviewed my grandmother about Zayde’s life as an immigrant in the 50’s, she told me about their first home in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Traditional Jews like him walk to the synagogue on the Sabbath. After settling in, my Zayde discovered that the nearest synagogue was several miles away.
“How do people get there?” he asked the better settled immigrants. “We drive,” they told him.
“Drive,” he said, “What kind of Jews are these?” So for weeks, he stayed home, determined not to drive on the Sabbath. Finally, after missing what he missed about synagogue too many times, he got in his car one Saturday morning to pray.
By the time I was born about two decades later, we always drove to his synagogue.
In a way I'm just starting to explain, his story tells me a lot about narrative and the ways in which it shapes our religious traditions. In the Old Country, his narrative - his personal story, if you will - was that Jews didn't drive on the Sabbath. In the New World, the story had changed. Same Zayde, same Judaism, same God, but the story had shifted and with it, his actions and the way he saw himself. Even the story of being Jewish had changed.
my process
I don't know if the way I think about God (the divine, "The Force" if you will) is original, but since I was young, I've assumed a certain process to theology. First, I think about what I know of evil and innocent suffering. Then, I try to square what I know with my conception of God (this is called theodicy generally). There's no perfect theodicy, but I really think that doing theology without at least trying to make theodicy is not helpful.
Then, I take the conception of God that best fits what I know about evil, and I try to sort out what God does. What are God's limits? How does God interact with us? What are our responsibilities toward God? This is where social justice comes in. Once I know more about what God wants, I can start to order what we have to do about it.
So, I guess it's a sort of cycle: there's evil that I know of; that supposes a certain kind of God (for example, One who permits evil as a result of human freedom); such a God demands a reaction from me; usually, that reaction is to work to lessen the evil I saw.
This process has worked for me - maybe it will work for you. The good thing about it is that it's open to discussion. As long as we're honest about the world, and try to observe it well, we can compare our starting points and our understandings of God.
In the future, I'd like to tell you about my limited understanding of God that I've begun to arrive at with this process, as well as touch on some other issues related to theology: narrative, faith, religious practice. Now, I'm Jewish and most of my examples will come from my tradition, and I hope what I write about will have use for people of any faith.
Feel free to write back with your responses to my posts - partly I'm writing to join the marketplace of ideas. Bear in mind that anything on this blog might appear in future sermons, articles or even a book.
God bless!
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