investment

With my understanding of religious life as a practice (April 4, '08), and traditional ritual as an inheritance of successful ceremonies ("Ritual", September 21, '08; "Tradition", December 14, '07), what do we do with unattractive practices? In a system of "legislated spiritual disciplines," as Jacob Agus knew them, what do we do with the disciplines that no longer seem to serve us well? Aside from rules that are actually repellent or appear immoral, should we even keep practices that don't seem to bring us closer to holiness regularly?

I think we should. On balance, I believe that it's important to hold on to traditions. We should be conservative about changing tradition, not to think of ourselves as so wise or mighty as to stack the court. Religious life is there to teach us something; at the very least, tradition can give us a great counterpoint to the change all about us. We have to be humble enough to listen to it on its own terms. Frankly, religion has its own logic, coherence and consistency, and we're taking a great risk if we tamper with it.

It brings to mind my love of soccer. As an American, I started playing too late in life to develop natural skill. I play defender, and I'm not particularly good. I'd like to think that I make up for some of my weaknesses with my enthusiasm and hard work . . .

In soccer, there's an "off-sides" rule that prevents offensive players from cherry-picking passes to shoot on goal. Technically, this gives an advantage to the defense, I suppose. For me, it makes the game needlessly complicated. Sometimes, if we're not playing with a full team, we'll practice without the rule. But no one tries to get rid of the "off-sides" rule. You may not like it, but if you love soccer, and you want to become a better soccer player, you put up with it. You have an investment in the game, so you accept the short-comings, and by playing within the rules you can become a healthier, stronger person.

Religious life is that way, too. Rabbi Elliot Dorff talks about the metaphor of a book club. You're in a book club, and the book of the month is really boring. (Once, I actually picked an awful book in my club.) Usually, You read it anyway because you want to be a part of the book club community, and you hope that future books will be more enlightening. Also, you know that if you show up unprepared too often, pretty soon you won't be asked back.

And that's why we put up with the less than desirable elements of religious life in community. We want to grow in the religion. We want to grow as people, we want to share in a communal life, and we hope that the future will be better.

shepherd

Psalm 23 says, "God is my shepherd, I shall not want." Centuries later, Ben Sira said, "The compassion of man is for his neighbor, but the compassion of God is for all living beings. God rebukes and trains and teaches them, and turns them back, as a shepherd his flock." Few of us living in the modern world have any experience of shepherding or cowherding. It's almost impossible to understand what the psalmist meant when he called God a Shepherd.

A metaphor like this is called a dead metaphor - it lost meaning for us because we don't understand the main image. Since we probably have never seen a live shepherd or even a cowboy, we can't understand what the Bible means by this comparison. How is God like a shepherd?

First, it's useful to consider what livestock did in pre-modern times. Numbers 28-29 gives long lists of animals to be brought for sacrifices on various holidays: cows, sheep and goats. Livestock were the people's store of value then, through which they invested their wealth. Unlike stocks, bonds or savings certificates, however, livestock are born, reproduce and die. When a goat has kids, the goat's owner's wealth increases. His investment literally bears fruit. Unfortunately, animals can get sick or be attacked by predators. In the Bible, animals were also a way of communicating with God through sacrifices.

So, if livestock were the mobile wealth, a shepherd was effectively the portfolio manager. In fact, the shepherd was held legally responsible for the animals. In Hammurabi’s code (18th century B.C.E.), and in later in Jewish legal precedent (halakha), “The shepherd was held accountable for the flock and was responsible for their care.” What feelings might a sheep have for this shepherd? What feelings might the shepherd have for the sheep, especially given their value?

These are the qualities that define our relationship with God. I read a great book, The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Theology of a Caring God, by Rabbi Michael Samuel, that talks about how a shepherd works:

“The good shepherd must work with the instincts of the sheep and cannot force the flock to go where it does not want to go... The good shepherd could not look after the health of the sheep while standing afar. He had to be close at hand.” Like the good shepherd, God knows our inclinations, talents and flaws, and works with us. During this work, God is always close by.

Rabbi Samuel explains more, “A cast sheep is a sheep that is turned over on its back and cannot get up.” Such a sheep is defenseless, and a good shepherd must be mindful to overturn cast sheep. Likewise, lost sheep, who have poor sense of direction, are a problem: “[The shepherd] can never sleep nor be comforted until his lost sheep is brought back safely to the flock.” Even the young and injured are at risk. Often, the shepherd would lay down his coat and eat with the lambs. “He places these young lambs, or those of them that have broken legs, right inside his coat.” God certainly cares for us when we stumble, and attends to us.

Although we may think of ourselves as leaders and reject being led, it is the Presence of God that always guides and shepherds us. What I find most comforting about this metaphor is that it doesn't require God to get it all right, to be perfect and to protect us from all harm. Even the best shepherd loses a sheep occasionally; but he (or she) always cares about them. That is because the shepherd's destiny is with the flock.

May God too be our raya nehemia (faithful Shepherd), and in the words of Isaish (40:11), "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with the young."

revelation

My teacher and my rabbi, Neil Gillman, preferred to start any God-talk with the question of revelation - how did we get our Scriptures? To his thinking, all other pieces of theology flowed out of each person's understanding of Divine revelation. This is where I disagree with him. Although I agree that most parts of theology can be unraveled from your beliefs about revelation, I think that there is something else to consider first: theodicy. The problem of God and evil is too thorny not to make a stab at solving it ("Theodicy", July 13, '08, and "Evil", January 18, '08). I admit, no system of theodicy works completely; still, I think that it is important enough to begin there.

That said, I don't want a world that God is actively changing. Miracles and other interruptions of physics create more problems than they solve. If God can intervene in human life to reveal the Qur’an, to bear a son, and to cause hemorrhoids, then why doesn't God interfere in Darfur, childhood Leukemia or the global financial crisis? I'd rather have a God who doesn't act in our lives than One who does so without a moral yard-stick, randomly, or even cruelly.

When I think about a higher purpose, I can only say that it is subtle. When asked for miracles, Muhammad pointed to the sunset and listened to the birds’ song. I do not imagine a presence that moves mountains, sets the course of rivers, and orders human fate. I prefer a presence that began the comings and goings of the universe, but doesn't micromanage daily life. The divine presence does not mold or shape us like clay, but is always there to share our joy and pain.

In that case, my view of Scripture is not of revelation, but aspiration. Human beings, throughout generations and ages, felt the small still touch of God in their lives, in the same way that we still do in some rare, humbling moments. They tried to describe the experience of God first in oral forms, which were later organized and written. Through law, saga, poetry, story cycles, debates, aphorisms, and precedents, Jews (until recently, almost all men) try to put words to the unnameable.

Sometimes, their words became accepted as community standards and the core of religious identity. At other times, earlier community rituals were written down, edited and made into a system. Whether it started in writing or in action, the result was a sacred tradition of Scripture, the living and growing testimony of a community’s striving toward and with the Divine.

So, it is completely human and totally holy at the same time. Because it is the product of men in their historical setting, the tradition can be judged - even changed occasionally. Because the men hopefully aspired to something much more important than stroking their own egos, it deserves our reverence. Jewish tradition is the legacy of Jews striving beyond themselves, aspiring to know God, and Jews should pledge allegiance to that legacy. Otherwise, we spurn our own birthright.

ritual

Where do rituals come from? What's odd is that nothing exactly happens during most rituals - nothing observable, that is. In many ways, my wife and I were no different on the morning before our wedding than in the evening afterward. And in another very real way, everything had changed. That's the effect of ritual. By going through a religious event, we announce the sacredness and the continuity of tradition in public. At the same time, we take the ordinary and imbue it with holiness.

Take the Bar Mitzvah: this Jewish coming of age ceremony probably once served as a tribal initiation rite, like those still seen in some pre-industrial societies. Now, it's marked by an adolescent Jew's coming up to read from the Torah (Pentateuch). Maybe one family in ancient Judea wanted to mark their son's puberty in a public Israelite way. They approached their local religious leader and asked how they could celebrate the day in a special way. The sage made a few suggestions, and later, other families and communities adopted the idea. With time, it became the local practice, and eventually a religious standard.

Gradually, these rituals can fill up our lives. The sages and rabbis of the Jewish tradition understood this principle well. God cannot be contained or explained, and in order to appreciate the divine in daily life, we need actions and symbols. That's how ritual serves. Early ritual innovators created these "metaphors for the sacred," as Rabbi Cheryl Peretz calls them.

These metaphors bring blessing into our lives and draw us closer to God. For me, being Jewish and doing Jewish rituals add warmth to my life. Judaism gives me a comparison against which to consider the value (or faddishness) of the modern, liberal, Western experience. I can renew my focus through regular prayer, among other rituals.

Because rituals fit within a coherent system, a traditional person can accept the less than ideal aspects of the system as much as possible, so as best to gain the blessing. Also, he or she respects the historic practice, and avoids radical change so as not to do excessive violence to the system. Some harmful practices or trivial aspects do get left behind. Personally, I am conservative in this – I think it is necessarily to be humble and also smart to give the tradition the benefit of the doubt.

redemption

I visited a seventy-two year old diabetic preparing for surgery to remove his toe with gangrene. We talked about his life, and he declared again and again, "It's no good. It's no good." It seemed to him that his life didn't amount to much. The happiest moment he could remember was winning a $20 bet during the Ford administration.

He told me that God had never found him a girlfriend or wife, and he would die lonely. When I pushed to find out what he had done to improve his life, he couldn't think of anything. I wondered afterward if he was paralyzed by his age, and felt that it was too late to make things better.

Was it like the junkie who stole his brother's silver, cleans up, but still feels too ashamed to come back 'round while he's in recovery? For all of them, I say we can always make amends, and improve ourselves.That's the moral of Jesus' parable of the prodigal son: it's never too late. Even at seventy-two, we can't let shame paralyze us. Our lives can still be redeemed.

The Talmud (Avodah Zara 17a) tells about the last days of Elazar ben Durdaya, “a man who had sought out every whore in the world.” He searched the earth to beg mercy for himself and no one would; in the end “He placed his head between his knees and cried bitterly until he expired. At that moment a voice from heaven declared ‘Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya has been received in the world to come.’" Sometimes, it seems that we can never repent for our misdeeds. The simple truth is that we can.

And when we finally make the effort, God is ready for our repentance. We should not be ashamed, for God calls us to be redeemed: “Go as far as you are able, and I will come the rest of the way to you.” God meets us half-way in the act of redemption, and our lives can have fresh value.

Then, if we're truly blessed, we can bring redemption forward, through good deeds, teaching and advocacy. The shape of our lives becomes new meaning we add to the world. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “It is by lives that the world will be redeemed.” If we each choose value and testify to it with every last muscle, bone, and blood vessel, that will be our redemption.

trauma

I recently visited a young woman who was shot at a party. In the wee hours of a cousin's birthday, a dispute got out of hand, and a guest fired. The small caliber round went through her back, and she was rushed to the emergency room. Fortunately, she should not have any long-term physical effects - youthful bodies heal fast. Unfortunately, the emotional trauma is deep.

At first, I thought she was depressed. She lied in bed, scarcely moving, barely speaking. When she did speak, it was in the faintest whisper. I tried to imagine what she might be feeling, since death reached into her life with that bullet. What had I felt during a sudden death in my own life? Numbness, emotional distance, a deep feeling of overwhelm. I realized that it was shock.

Sudden trauma can be too much, and we cannot cope. Sometimes trauma, reminding us of our very fragility, can call to mind all the losses, endings, and separations of a lifetime. For that young woman, it called up her sister's shocking death a decade ago. When we are overwhelmed because the grief is too much, we must go away. In order to heal, we must retreat.

The rabbis knew the pain of such an emotional exile, and recognized that God is present even in trauma and shock. The Zohar, the cornerstone of the Jewish mystical tradition, tells this parable:

"It is like a king who had an only son. That son committed offenses against the king. One day he misbehaved before the king, whereupon the king said to him: ‘All these days I have disciplined you, but you have not improved. Now, see, what shall I do to you? If I banish you from the country, and deprive you of your royal rank, perhaps bears of the field or wolves of the field or robbers will cause you to perish from the earth. What shall I do? I and you together will leave the country and be together in exile."

Unlike the king in the parable, I don't believe that God sends suffering or trauma in order to punish or instruct us. But I am convinced that God, like the king, is most near in those moments. God is with us in the loss and the healing, close at hand. The Zohar's parable reminds: "All the time that Israel are in exile, God’s presence is in exile with them."

theodicy

the·od·i·cy \thē-ä-de-sē\, noun, (modification of French théodicée, from théo- the- (from Latin theo-) + Greek dikē judgment, right): defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theodicy)

The issue of theodicy means grappling with evil and innocent suffering in the world, even as you want to believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. This is the main problem of all theology. If it seems that good people suffer (and bad people get away with it), how can we say that God is a very good God? If God knew what was happening, wouldn’t God stop it? Doesn’t God have the power to do something?

There are a many answers people that people have offered since the Hebrew Bible, ("Evil", January 18, '08), but the simple truth is that any theodicy is easier to say when you live in a generally good world, and evil is relatively rare, or at least far off. That is, I’m safe in my suburban home, and even though my 37 year-old friend has leukemia, and I know about the genocide in WWII, it’s not affecting me every moment of every day. Even my experience of suffering when I was in the Peace Corps in Cameroon was sufficiently insulated not to rock my theology too much. We can look at evil as something limited that we just need to “solve” for those exceptional cases. If we can make the suffering of Sudan fit into our safe lives going to work and to church, then we’ve squared the circle of theodicy. And it doesn’t require truly re-ordering our perspective about God to make it work.

Working as a chaplain at an urban hospital takes away my detachment. Every day, I’m confronted regularly with gun-shots, cancer, sexual assault, illegal migration and grinding poverty and homelessness. There’s no way to view it as “out there” because it’s in my own city, just across town. And what I see is that evil and suffering are not exceptions - they’re thoroughly wrapped up in life. It wasn’t that my friend got this unlucky cancer and then died young, it’s that cancer is part of living each day. So are torture, floods, and gang violence. We can’t be here, or anywhere for that matter, without suffering. In a way, it’s not suffering at all; it’s a natural by-product of living. Death is the back on the coin of birth.

So, what do I do with God?

I’m experimenting with something new. I’m willing to say that God isn’t all-powerful. God and God’s universe are very, very wonderful, and generally very good, but not perfect. We live in a “pretty good” universe, and the Master of the World is flawed, strong but not all-strong. My bet is that God is very powerful, the most powerful part of the universe, but has some weaknesses. God is competent, supreme, but not ultimate. God couldn’t make a perfect universe. Not one that worked, anyway. The astronomic evidence seems to support this. A “perfect” universe, where all the matter was evenly distributed, wouldn’t have stars, planets, or people. It would be a residue of dust. God’s universe has to be uneven for anything to be at all.

So, God isn’t perfectly powerful. God is generally a well-meaning God, but doesn’t always have the ability to stop every bad thing. Does this make God still worth praying to? I think so. It’s like ants in an ant farm. Don’t you imagine those ants think their human minder is god-like? Isn’t little Timmy incomprehensible to that ant colony? Don’t they think of him as supremely more powerful, awesomely bigger than they are? I bet they pray every day that Timmy doesn’t forget to feed them again. Maybe having a less than all-powerful God implies that there are other powers beside God. Here, I don’t think so. Maybe there just isn’t enough power in the universe to perfectly manage all the ions, plasma and quarks that started with the big bang.

We’re living in an imperfect world, ruled by an imperfect deity. It’s not so scary. Being here is a nice thing. For example, every single person at the beach yesterday was in gleeful awe watching dolphins play in the surf at sunset. Once you realize that your suffering isn’t personal, just a regular part of getting to be here, then it’s actually a relief.

path of faith

There's a wonderful story in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a), about Rabbi Zera, who was crippled, likely by Spinal Bifida or burns:

"Some thugs lived in Rabbi Zera's neighborhood, to whom he would come around and get them to mend their ways. The other rabbis mocked his efforts.

"When Rabbi Zera died peacefully, the thugs said, 'Until now, our little cripple was praying for mercy on us. Now, who will pray for mercy on us?' They shuddered in their hearts and changed their ways."

I imagine that Rabbi Zera's life was hard. I observed the challenges of Spinal Bifida and other paralyses, and I wonder how Rabbi Zera was able to get around the neighborhood. In the developing world, which is like the world of the Talmud, cripples tend to get about on their hands, which become thick with callouses. Was Rabbi Zera padding about on hands and knees, trying to talk to these thugs? Did they bully him? After all, he was very wise, and they were very strong. I bet he was afraid.

What's more, none of the other rabbis helped him in any way. They probably said he was wasting his time. Like most people today, the rabbis probably were not very comfortable with disabilities, and tended to avoid Rabbi Zera. Maybe they preferred to ignore him and the work he was doing.

And the people he was ministering to were too tough to show that they appreciated his work. His whole life, he probably never thought that he was having any effect. When he died, I wonder if he was troubled: Did he have doubts that what he did was worthwhile? Do you think he thought he wasted his time?

Here is the way of faith: Sometimes we pray for things that we can never see in our life-time. We can spend our whole lives not knowing whether all our efforts were worth it. We certainly spend our whole lives not knowing whether there really is God. We go on faith. You have to trust that what you're doing is important, whether it's feeding AIDS patients, studying the Bible, or making a safe home for your children. The simple fact is you'll never know what the final result is. Like Rabbi Zera, you've got to keep going and trust in your instincts to do the right thing.

wholeness

This week, I read from Martin Buber's essay on "The Validity and Limitation of the Political Principle," and I thought about what it means to grow up. Buber talks about our lives being held within two worlds: a "sphere of wholeness" and a "sphere of separation". The sphere of wholeness is like our dearest childhood image of something pure, perfect and unlimited out there. We might call it holiness. Let's say that at the center of the sphere of wholeness is God.

The sphere of separation is where we live our day-to-day lives on earth, as we make imperfect choices, join teams and take sides. When we make choices and then take action, sometimes we regret the path not chosen. In part, we feel regret because no choice is perfect. And in our souls we ache when choices take us farther from the sphere of wholeness.

So, many people are pained to enter into the world of separateness, for fear that it might compromise their ideals. Teenagers seem especially ready for this fight. They view many things as hypocritical if they aren't idealistic or even idealized. But this is the wrong idea. It's not hypocrisy to compromise a principle - it's living. We must serve God even as we act within the world of compromises.

If not, we can get tripped up and trapped in a binary, all-or-nothing way of thinking, where we don't enter into any committments for fear of breaking our connection to the sphere of wholeness. But you can't sit still all day and contemplate God. You have to get your hands dirty in the real world, or at least go out to buy groceries. We can't exist as perfect ideas - we have to act.

"It is possible to serve God and the group to which one belongs if one is courageously intent on serving God in the sphere of the group as much as one can," which is Buber's way of saying that we should always keep God and holiness high on our minds when we help others, or even when we're running errands. And these choices, at least our best choices, are informed by a desire for wholeness and holiness. If we do it right, our every action in the world of separation - the world of committees, meetings and deadlines - can be a service to God. We serve God as we serve our carpool committments: Buber calls these "service and service".

I agree with Buber that it's not "either-or" but "as-much-as-one-can." You don't have to hold back from the sphere of separateness, or from making choices. You have to embrace life in all of its messiness, flaws and nuances. Otherwise, you'll get nothing done. It's this effort that unites us all. We all share a common striving - united along a common "front", Buber says, in "the one fight for human truth." The truth that there is something Divine beyond us which our souls are seeking. That striving is the highest ideal of humankind.

objects

I'm an over-eater. I'm not fat, but I eat like I have an extra twenty feet of intestine. I realize that a lot of what I eat isn't for hunger, but anxiety. Food is soothing, whether in a stressful social situation, with family, or both. Sometimes we eat because we're hungry and sometimes we eat because we're just scared.

You can get wrapped up in food and consumption, like insulation from the cold - as though some amount of possessions will ward off trouble. Some people can't wait for the newest flat screen, while others shop constantly for small trinkets. I daydream about old video games. And we get bored with almost all of it. Isn't there something more important?

When asked to recall an item that she considered sacred, a good friend named her breath. In the past year, she moved, went to another friend's funeral and then was robbed twice. After that, she says, it didn't pay to put much faith in physical objects. But her breath, she said, would always be there. Friends and cherished possessions come and go, but her breath would be hers until the day she died.

I'm not telling you to sell everything you own and go off to Alaska, although I've always wanted to cycle through Denali. Judaism is opposed to monkish behavior. It is important to have food, shelter, friends and family. And that means living a life with a certain amount of material goods, even enough to give some to charity. All of this requires what George Carlin calls "stuff". Even so, be realistic about what you need.

In the end, you can't take it with you. A Jewish burial shroud has no pockets. Besides our flesh and bones, all we really have is our breath. Even these things, sacred as they are, will one day end. And no amount of plastic toys will stop that. So try not to get caught up in the buying and eating and collecting of stuff - don't waste the time, and breath, that you have.

practice

Why be religious? Can't we just be spiritual?

I don't think so. The soul has got to be in tune before it can sing with God. We get this tune-up through religion, and we're playing with the Maestro. Religious observance is the practice that prepares us to experience God.

According to Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition in After Virtue, a practice is “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence.” For example, yoga, chess, weight-lifting and reading are all practices - they are human activities with set standards and their own essential goals. With regular effort, we are rewarded with the skills or muscles we need: in yoga, flexibility; in chess, strategy; by reading, wisdom, and so on.

In my life, Jewish observance is a practice that raises my awareness of the fragile beauty of life and increases my thankfulness for it. Although the practice does not promise an experience of God, it can make me ready for it, by making my soul fit and precise. “I would rather be exact,” says Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea, “Then when luck comes you are ready.” Like Hemingway's fisherman, we all train for that one special moment.

The goal is to be ready to meet God with love, awe and reverence. “The purpose of observance is to train us in achieving spiritual ends,” said Abraham Joshua Heschel. Religion is gym for the soul. It can stretch and strengthen your spirit beyond prior limits. When you prepare with God, you are driven to new abilities. It's like being on Venice's Muscle Beach in1979, and your soul is training side-by-side with Arnold Schwartzenegger as he prepares for his ultimate Mr. Olympia title.

fragility

Sam died last Tuesday, March 11. He was in his early eighties and was the sextant (shammas) of our synagogue for forty years. Although you might think that his death would be more understandable than that of my young colleague Joel ("Anger", November 23, '07), I find Sam's death baffling for its own sake. Sam died of Pancreatic cancer, certainly the most deadly cancer I know. But Sam was a survivor of the Shoah (the Nazi genocides of World War II), and made it through a concentration camp. Did we somehow hope that Sam would beat a deadly cancer like he beat the Nazis?

I guess in a small way, I did. Of all the people I knew, it seemed that Sam had a chance to beat death. Maybe Sam had enough piss and vinegar to survive a cancer whose average diagnosis-to-death time is less than six months. Ultimately, he grew frail and worn and died quietly. In his humble manner, he waited until his last guest left, and then died alone. The Conference of the Birds, a 12th century Sufi poem, says that even if you lived a thousand years "Still you would have to die when death appears."

Our rabbi, Daniel Shevitz, says that death is awful, but it would be far worse if some people just didn't die. That is, it's the consistancy and regularity of death that make it bearable. Imagine if there were a lottery, and some people didn't die at all. Still, the fact that some people die young and some die old seems random enough. What I've been having a hard look at is the fragility of it all: It's hard to accept that in the end, you or I have very little control over our fate.

My friend and his wife had a clear awakening to this when they tried to have a baby. Although they were young and did not expect to have any difficulty conceiving, the process proved incredibly challenging, frustrating and disappointing. After a long and complicated ordeal, they almost gave up on trying to have a biological child, and considered other options. At the last moment, his wife got pregnant. Last month, they gave birth to a healthy girl, and named her in praise of God.

As he said to me quietly, the experience was a shocking realization of how little control one really holds in the world, even over one's body. Of course, he said, he'd always known that he was not the master of his destiny, but hadn't realized how much. In this awareness of the fragility of our bodies and selves, and the slender thread of control we have in our lives, how can we conduct ourselves?

I often think of Moses' death, just within reach of his goal. He dies outside of the promised land, his life's dream unseen. Although the sages and early rabbis vividly imagine Moses bargaining and cajoling God to let him in to the Land, in the Scripture Moses dies without complaint. Moses' life was long, 120 years, but it too had a conclusion. As a professor said, There's only one end possible, but it always takes you by surprise. I've never heard anyone say that their relative lived too long - every death feels like it comes too soon. I guess the best we can hope for is to live and die with humility and quiet grace.

need

Before putting on her shoes in the morning, a Jew prays, "Blessed are You, God our God, Ruler of the universe, Who makes for me all I need." This statement - that God provides all we need - is amazing. The prayer doesn't say that God gives us everything we want, just that the clothes we wear should be enough for today. Our needs are fulfilled by God, if only we take a moment to notice. We pray to remember that the basics of food, a home and companionship are already in place.

As Jesus says in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 6), "See the lilies of the field, how they grow: they do not work or make thread, but I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. And if God gives clothing to the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won't God dress you much more, O you of little faith?. . . Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."

In God's world, we are loved, clothed, and protected. I know that many people are hungry, even starving. Others even live in war or as refugees. I admit that their needs are not met, and their desires are crushed. But too many of us live in comfort and still strive beyond. If only we had the faith to admit that God's world can give all that we need.

We have wants and lusts that take us far beyond our basic needs for food, shelter, and company. It's these wishes that trip us up every day. The Talmud reminds us, "Who is wealthy? He who is glad in his lot." Real satisfaction comes from this place of appreciating what you have and not constantly seeking more. All the other greed for wealth, fame and power is just perversion. We are tortured by longing for things we don't need.

Real faith shows what God provides: air, mountains, forests and seas full of the essentials for life. God's world even has beauty beyond our very needs: years ago, I saw an cricket's wing with flaming blues and reds that no human could paint. In fact, one tradition says that when doubters asked Muhammad to perform miracles, he showed them the sunset and birds' songs. Sometimes the simple purr of a cat can remind us that we live in a miraculous world. A world that meets all of our needs.

prayer

At a meeting last week, seminary students were asked to spend five minutes talking with God. Although the timing was right, I did not say the standard evening prayer-service in Hebrew. Instead, I spent five minutes telling God how I was doing in my own words, thanking God for good things in my life, and asking God to look over my family, my friends and me. It felt soothing and I saw that my life was in a good place. After my chat with God, I had a chance to talk with colleagues about their experiences during the five minutes. I was a little confused that the traditional Jewish mode of prayer - a fixed liturgy - hadn't appealed to me at that moment, and I didn't know why.

Then, a friend emailed a few of us to ask about "the power of our prayers to help out those who are sick." That of course leads to the question: Why do we pray? I took a long time thinking about it because I don't have a clear answer. I don't want God to answer my prayers. That is, I don't like to leave the door open for miracles, because without regular physics, the universe would show too much favoritism. I don't believe that God intervenes directly in our lives. For, if God can deliver a son, reveal the Qur'an, or split the Reed Sea, why doesn't God cure a friend's cancer or stop genocide in Darfur?

So, I don't pray because I think that God will step in and change things in response to my prayers. As much as I would like God to do things for me, I can't ask for it because it would cause theological break-downs. In part, I pray because it helps me feel close to God. I feel peaceful and know that God is with me in struggles and celebrations. Even the times when I pray and I don't feel close, I still know that I'm building a relationship with God, because it's important to spend time with someone even when there's nothing going on or not much to say.

It's also important to have a spiritual practice. Praying for me is a part of spiritual gym. Think about your exercise program: yoga, soccer, frisbee, weight-lifting. You don't feel great everytime you go. Sometimes, you feel flat. Other times, you might start out for a run without any heart in it, but it might become a great run. And occassionally, you come home feeling better than you could ever have imagined. You just have a great game.

Prayer and religious practice are like that. Traditional liturgy is a way to get regular exercise, and sometimes I need to cross-train in other ways: silence, meditation, direct address to God. And I have to keep going through a lot of down times in order to get to the peak experiences. So partly I pray to keep my soul in shape. I pray to stay connected with God. I pray to get to those spiritual highs. Also, I pray because it keeps me aware, gentle and focussed. If there's a personal problem I'm working on, I might pray to have the courage, determination and patience to keep at it. Prayer keeps me in the game.

evil

Evil in God's world is a painful problem, and so is the suffering of good people. How can we square evil and suffering with the idea that God is good and all-powerful? If God is both good and all-powerful, why does God let bad things happen to good people? Trying to answer this question is called "theodicy".

There are a few answers that traditional thinkers give, none of which satisfies me. First, in his Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides says that humans can't measure good and evil accurately. Because our perspective is skewed, we cannot judge the balance of Good and Evil across the whole wide universe. To this I say: sure, some suffering is just mine, but that doesn't make it any less real. Even worse, some horrors are beyond debate.

The second answer is that God is unknowable - humans cannot understand God’s master plan. Really, that's no answer at all, just another version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. In the same way, only insensitive fools say things like “Maybe his brother died at nineteen in order to make room for someone else to cure cancer.”

The third answer is that an afterlife will balance the scales. This requires a belief in something extraordinary. Even more, an afterlife might be so far off as to be weightless in the balances of good and evil. So the “death of death” doesn't have much value to me today.

Then there's a very old explanation. You'll find it in Deuteronomy. It says there in chapter eleven that if people obey God, God will provide rain, crops will grow and we will eat. If not, we will suffer. Basically, that means that if you do good, you will do well. Our sins cause our suffering.

Of course, we all know that the world doesn't seem to work quite that way. We each know too many people who are pretty blameless and seem to suffer, get sick or die anyway. If we're really unlucky, we even know some really vicious people who seem to have a pretty easy time in life. Quality of the person and quality of the person's life don't seem to match up.

Maybe there's another way of looking at this. Maybe, our sin permits our suffering. If not for our blemishes, this world could be a better place. That is, if humanity didn't have flaws that make us greedy, cruel or worst of all, indifferent, then we wouldn't suffer so much. Each person suffers for the sins of everyone else. What's more, being a bad person has its own punishment. Truly wicked people are empty inside. "The soul that sins shall die." (Ezekiel 18:4; G. von Rad, Genesis, pp. 207-210)

Why are we flawed? I don't know. Maybe God couldn't make us any other way. I think that God wanted us to be free to choose: good or bad, even living with God or living without God.

why be God?

Unlike ancient myths, the Hebrew Bible never explains why God creates humans. Jack Miles, in God: A Biography, suggests that God is incapable to recognizing God's self. So, God creates humans in God's image, to be like a mirror through which God can see God.

Unfortunately, those early humans immediately disobey God. When Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, God turns them out of the Garden. God's relationship with humankind, God's beloved creation, doesn't get better. The people in Noah's generation are so wicked that God must wipe them out; then the same thing happens to the people of S'dom and Gemorrah.

When God finally picks Abraham and his descendants, they fail God in new ways. Shortly after God's revelation at Mount Sinai, the People of Israel decide to make an idol of a molten calf. God is enraged, and thinks of destroying Israel to make a new covenant with Moses alone. The process of God trusting new people, only to regret God's faith, continues throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

As a mentor pointed out to me, God is the most disappointed character in the whole Bible. So, I had a strange thought: Why did God want to be God? Why did God start creating at all? Was God lonely? I don't have an answer. I suspect it has something to do with God needing to understand God's self through humanity.

This seems to fit with my growing sense of awe about the world ("Wonder", January 4, '08). Maybe the question isn't, Why is there evil in the world?, but Why is there good in the world? Why is there anything? It's a miracle we get to be here at all. God has a demanding, frustrating and thankless job. Maybe we need to start being more grateful.

e8

Last November, Garrett Lisi, a surfer, physicist and snowboard instructor, published a paper called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything." In the paper, Mr. Lisi begins to show how everything we know about the world may be described by the relationships of a 248-pointed geometric object called an E8. Lisi says, "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."

Lisi's theory can't be tested until a new super-collider comes on line in Switzerland - hopefully next year. His theory looks promising. '08 might be the year of the E8, I think, and then we'll all be saying "Holy crap, that's it!" just like Lisi did when the idea finally came to him.

As a theologian, anything we say about the universe is a statement about God. Although God is greater than the universe, the universe is a direct expression of God's self. And if Lisi is right, the universe can be explained by relatively simple details. Everything that exists comes out of fairly straightforward interactions among a few basic particles. It's supremely simple and marvelously complex, all at once.

Whether Lisi is right, or the String Theorists are, the E8 confirms my faith in God. The universe has architecture and an architect. God is in the E8 and the creator of the E8. It seems that we live in a world of unfathomable richness and limitless design. Like the whole of God's universe, God is infinite variety springing from humble principles. Like the E8, God is simple, varied, deep, and complex.

wonder

It's hard for me to be satisfied. I'm always looking for more and better. It makes for stressful relationships with friends and family. It even makes it hard to like myself. Last week, when I said the Friday evening prayers that bring in the Jewish Sabbath, I asked God for the patience to appreciate everything that came my way that day, and not to wish for more than that Sabbath brought me. I prayed for satisfaction.

I said a prayer and it worked. That Sabbath was very pleasant, and did not seem lacking in any way. As I walked home from school the next day, I realized something. I've been looking at the world with the wrong idea in mind. As I said in "My Process" (October 7, '07), my work in theology is based in a way of looking at the world that asks why there is evil in the world. Then, I try to find an understanding of God that suits my knowledge about evil.

Maybe my understanding of God is all wrong. Maybe the question isn't "Why does evil exist?" but "How are we here at all?" That is, maybe I can't ask God for an accounting of the innocent suffering in the world. I should just be grateful that I get to experience anything, pleasure or pain. It's astounding that I exist at all. Think of all the physics and biology and pure chance that had to fit together to bring me to the point of living to ask any question about God's world.

My late friend had this sense. People called Joel an optimist. I don't know if that's what I'd call it. I'm a pretty happy person, even with my share of worry. What he had over me was faith. I would like to swallow a bit of his faith, and I want to be open to the real pains of this world. I hope that this new idea will fill me with wonder. I'm trying to be open to that.