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.
Friday, October 26, 2007
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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