Jackson Community Church

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Weekly Meditations

Yom Kippur 2023

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , ,

Yom Kippur 2023 began on the evening of Sun, Sept 24 and ends on the evening of Mon, Sept 25.

Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year, when we are closest to G‑d and to the essence of our souls. Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement,” as the verse states, “For on this day He will forgive you, to purify you, that you be cleansed from all your sins before  G-d.” — chabad.org

May our time … today enable each of us to order our souls and release what needs releasing, to savor the journey we are on singly and together, to delve deep into the layers of who we are and who we have been and who we hope to become, and to trust, and embrace, the changes which are coming. — Rabbi Rachel Barenbat

Our lives are finite, but when we try to do right by each other and by our world we align ourselves with the flow of spirit and love. And our tradition teaches: that flow of spirit and love is eternal. More eternal even than plastic. When we transmit memory to the generations that will follow, we become part of something that is forever. And when we commit to deeds of justice and righteousness in memory of those who are gone, we uplift the best of who we can be. — Rabbi Rachel Barenbat

KOL NIDREI:

ASHMANU (confession as part of Viddui prayer on Yom Kippur):

SONGS about FORGIVENESS & LETTING GO:

Yom Kippur 1984 — Adrienne Rich

I drew solitude over me, on the long shore. —Robinson Jeffers, “Prelude”  

For whoever does not afflict his soul through this day, shall be
cut off from his people.  —Leviticus 23:29

What is a Jew in solitude?

What would it mean not to feel lonely or afraid

far from your own or those you have called your own?

What is a woman in solitude:   a queer woman or man?

In the empty street, on the empty beach, in the desert

what in this world as it is can solitude mean?

 

The glassy, concrete octagon suspended from the cliffs

with its electric gate, its perfected privacy

is not what I mean

the pick-up with a gun parked at a turn-out in Utah or the Golan Heights

is not what I mean

the poet’s tower facing the western ocean, acres of forest planted to the east, the woman reading in the cabin, her attack dog suddenly risen

is not what I mean

 

Three thousand miles from what I once called home

I open a book searching for some lines I remember

about flowers, something to bind me to this coast as lilacs in the dooryard once

bound me back there—yes, lupines on a burnt mountainside,

something that bloomed and faded and was written down

in the poet’s book, forever:

Opening the poet’s book

I find the hatred in the poet’s heart: . . . the hateful-eyed

and human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them

 

Robinson Jeffers, multitude

is the blur flung by distinct forms against these landward valleys

and the farms that run down to the sea; the lupines

are multitude, and the torched poppies, the grey Pacific unrolling its scrolls of surf,

and the separate persons, stooped

over sewing machines in denim dust, bent under the shattering skies of harvest

who sleep by shifts in never-empty beds have their various dreams

Hands that pick, pack, steam, stitch, strip, stuff, shell, scrape, scour, belong to a brain like no other

Must I argue the love of multitude in the blur or defend

a solitude of barbed-wire and searchlights, the survivalist’s final solution, have I a choice?

 

To wander far from your own or those you have called your own

to hear strangeness calling you from far away

and walk in that direction, long and far, not calculating risk

to go to meet the Stranger without fear or weapon, protection nowhere on your mind

(the Jew on the icy, rutted road on Christmas Eve prays for another Jew

the woman in the ungainly twisting shadows of the street:   Make those be a woman’s footsteps; as if she could believe in a woman’s god)

 

Find someone like yourself.   Find others.

Agree you will never desert each other.

Understand that any rift among you

means power to those who want to do you in.

Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger.

But I have a nightmare to tell:   I am trying to say

that to be with my people is my dearest wish

but that I also love strangers

that I crave separateness

I hear myself stuttering these words

to my worst friends and my best enemies

who watch for my mistakes in grammar

my mistakes in love.

This is the day of atonement; but do my people forgive me?

If a cloud knew loneliness and fear, I would be that cloud.

 

To love the Stranger, to love solitude—am I writing merely about privilege

about drifting from the center, drawn to edges,

a privilege we can’t afford in the world that is,

who are hated as being of our kind: faggot kicked into the icy river, woman dragged from her stalled car

into the mist-struck mountains, used and hacked to death

young scholar shot at the university gates on a summer evening walk, his prizes and studies nothing, nothing availing his Blackness

Jew deluded that she’s escaped the tribe, the laws of her exclusion, the men too holy to touch her hand;   Jew who has turned her back

on midrash and mitzvah (yet wears the chai on a thong between her breasts) hiking alone

found with a swastika carved in her back at the foot of the cliffs (did she die as queer or as Jew?)

 

Solitude, O taboo, endangered species

on the mist-struck spur of the mountain, I want a gun to defend you

In the desert, on the deserted street, I want what I can’t have:

your elder sister, Justice, her great peasant’s hand outspread

her eye, half-hooded, sharp and true

 

And I ask myself, have I thrown courage away?

have I traded off something I don’t name?

To what extreme will I go to meet the extremist?

What will I do to defend my want or anyone’s want to search for her spirit-vision

far from the protection of those she has called her own?

Will I find O solitude

your plumes, your breasts, your hair

against my face, as in childhood, your voice like the mockingbird’s

singing Yes, you are loved, why else this song?

in the old places, anywhere?

 

What is a Jew in solitude?

What is a woman in solitude, a queer woman or man?

When the winter flood-tides wrench the tower from the rock, crumble the prophet’s headland, and the farms slide into the sea

when leviathan is endangered and Jonah becomes revenger

when center and edges are crushed together, the extremities crushed together on which the world was founded

when our souls crash together, Arab and Jew, howling our loneliness within the tribes

when the refugee child and the exile’s child re-open the blasted and forbidden city

when we who refuse to be women and men as women and men are chartered, tell our stories of solitude spent in multitude

in that world as it may be, newborn and haunted, what will solitude mean?

IT’S YOM KIPPUR, AND I’M NOT FASTING — George Franklin

The first thing I thought of this morning

Was coffee, café au lait in a

Blue ceramic bowl, a slice of toast

Still warm in my hand. I didn’t even

Remember today was Yom Kippur.

I say I’m not observant, which sounds

Like I have poor eyesight but really

Means that when God and I have a chat

All I hear is a dial tone at

The other end of the line. I’m tired

Of imagining what doesn’t have

An image. There’re no burning bushes

In my backyard, just history that

Can’t be changed, redeemed, or atoned for.

God, I have too many images

In my head today, videos of

Villages captured and recaptured,

Reporters asking, “Can you tell us

Where the bodies are buried?” Someone

Points to a field, fresh-turned dirt not far

From a road. Eighty-one years ago,

They were the bodies of Jews in a

Ravine in Kyiv, now Ukrainians.

When can we say atoning doesn’t

Work? The Earth is full of graves, mass and

Singular. Trees send out roots to thread

Ribcages that insects and worms have

Already hollowed. Each year, the ground

Sinks a little. In the history

Of the world, no one ever went broke

Selling shovels. God, there is something

Wrong with people, and thousands of years

Of fasting hasn’t fixed it. Neither

Has prayer or the sacrifice of

Unblemished cattle or first-born sons.

The sun will set soon, and the day will

Be over. I was taught the gates of

Heaven swing closed then: no more prayers.

The ones who haven’t repented yet

Aren’t going to. Another year’s passed.

Men put on their jackets and walk home.

The LAYERS — Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned campsites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

August Rain, After Haying — Jane Kenyon

Through sere trees and beheaded
grasses the slow rain falls.
Hay fills the barn; only the rake
and one empty wagon are left
in the field. In the ditches
goldenrod bends to the ground.

Even at noon the house is dark.
In my room under the eaves
I hear the steady benevolence
of water washing dust
raised by the haying
from porch and car and garden
chair. We are shorn
and purified, as if tonsured.

The grass resolves to grow again,
receiving the rain to that end,
but my disordered soul thirsts
after something it cannot name.

YOM KIPPUR: The Holiest Day of the Year in Jewish Religious Life

 

HISTORY of Yom Kippur — chabad.org (full article: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/177886/jewish/What-Is-Yom-Kippur.htm#What)

Just months after the people of Israel left Egypt in the year 2448 from creation (1313 BCE), they sinned by worshipping a golden calf. Moses ascended Mount Sinai and prayed to G‑d to forgive them. After two 40-day stints on the mountain, full Divine favor was obtained. The day Moses came down the mountain (the 10th of Tishrei) was to be known forevermore as the Day of Atonement—Yom Kippur.

That year, the people built the Tabernacle, a portable home for G‑d. The Tabernacle was a center for prayers and sacrificial offerings. The service in the Tabernacle climaxed on Yom Kippur, when the High Priest would perform a specially prescribed service. Highlights of this service included offering incense in the Holy of Holies (where the ark was housed) and the lottery with two goats—one of which was brought as a sacrifice, the other being sent out to the wilderness (Azazel).

While the High Priest generally wore ornate golden clothing, on Yom Kippur, he would immerse in a mikvah and don plain white garments to perform this service.

This practice continued for hundreds of years, throughout the time of the first Temple in Jerusalem, which was built by Solomon, and the second Temple, which was built by Ezra. Jews from all over would gather in the Temple to experience the sacred sight of the High Priest performing his service, obtaining forgiveness for all of Israel.

When the second Temple was destroyed in the year 3830 from creation (70 CE), the Yom Kippur service continued. Instead of a High Priest bringing the sacrifices in Jerusalem, every single Jew performs the Yom Kippur service in the temple of his or her heart.

YOM KIPPUR— history.com (full article: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/yom-kippur-history).

According to tradition, the first Yom Kippur took place after the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and arrival at Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Descending from the mountain, Moses caught his people worshipping a golden calf and shattered the sacred tablets in anger. Because the Israelites atoned for their idolatry, God forgave their sins and offered Moses a second set of tablets…

… God judges all creatures during the 10 Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, deciding whether they will live or die in the coming year.Jewish law teaches that God inscribes the names of the righteous in the “book of life” and condemns the wicked to death on Rosh Hashanah; people who fall between the two categories have until Yom Kippur to perform “teshuvah,” or repentance. As a result, observant Jews consider Yom Kippur and the days leading up to it a time for prayer, good deeds, reflecting on past mistakes and making amends with others….

Yom Kippur is Judaism’s most sacred day of the year; it is sometimes referred to as the “Sabbath of Sabbaths.” For this reason, even Jews who do not observe other traditions refrain from work, which is forbidden during the holiday, and participate in religious services on Yom Kippur…

The Torah commands all Jewish adults (apart from the sick, the elderly and women who have just given birth) to abstain from eating and drinking between sundown on the evening before Yom Kippur and nightfall the next day. The fast is believed to cleanse the body and spirit, not to serve as a punishment….

Because the High Holy Day prayer services include special liturgical texts, songs and customs, rabbis and their congregations read from a special prayer book known as the machzor during both Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Five distinct prayer services take place on Yom Kippur, the first on the eve of the holiday and the last before sunset on the following day. One of the most important prayers specific to Yom Kippur describes the atonement ritual performed by high priests during ancient times. The blowing of the shofar—a trumpet made from a ram’s horn—is an essential and emblematic part of both High Holy Days. On Yom Kippur, a single long blast is sounded at the end of the final service to mark the conclusion of the fast…..

Pre-Yom Kippur feast: On the eve of Yom Kippur, families and friends gather for a bountiful feast that must be finished before sunset. The idea is to gather strength for 25 hours of fasting.

Breaking of the fast: After the final Yom Kippur service, many people return home for a festive meal. It traditionally consists of breakfast-like comfort foods such as blintzes, noodle pudding and baked goods.

Wearing white: It is customary for religious Jews to dress in white—a symbol of purity—on Yom Kippur. Some married men wear kittels, which are white burial shrouds, to signify repentance.

Charity: Some Jews make donations or volunteer their time in the days leading up to Yom Kippur….

Reflections from Genesis 32… wrestling with God, being blessed in our woundedness, holding on until we receive what we need

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , ,

I see in it [Genesis 32] an invitation to wrestle with the unknown. — Victoria Emily Jones

Everything you want is on the other side of fear. — Unatrtibuted

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. — Marcus Aurelius

Every day, I turned a “you can’t” into a “you can.” — Rulon Gardner about wrestling

The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle. — Rumi

SONGS about WRESTLING with SELF, OTHERS, LOVE & GOD

by Marc Chagall

Wrestling — Louisa S. Bevington

Our oneness is the wrestlers’, fierce and close,
Thrusting and thrust;
One life in dual effort for one prize,—
We fight, and must;
For soul with soul does battle evermore
Till love be trust.
Our distance is love’s severance; sense divides,
Each is but each;
Never the very hidden spirit of thee
My life doth reach;
Twain! Since love athwart the gulf that needs
Kisses and speech.
Ah! wrestle closelier! we draw nearer so
Than any bliss
Can bring twain souls who would be whole and one,
Too near to kiss:
To be one thought, one voice before we die,—
Wrestle for this.
by Walter Habdank

Come, O thou Traveler unknown — Charles Wesley

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell Thee who I am,
My misery and sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on Thy hands, and read it there;
But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.

In vain Thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold!
Art Thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of Thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.

Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable Name?
Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell;
To know it now resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

’Tis all in vain to hold Thy tongue
Or touch the hollow of my thigh;
Though every sinew be unstrung,
Out of my arms Thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling I will not let Thee go
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.

What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong,
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath Thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise;
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let Thee go
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if Thy Name is Love.

’Tis Love! ’tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
I hear Thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love Thou art;
To me, to all, Thy bowels move;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see Thee face to face,
I see Thee face to face, and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

I know Thee, Savior, who Thou art.
Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;
Nor wilt Thou with the night depart.
But stay and love me to the end,
Thy mercies never shall remove;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

The Sun of righteousness on me
Hath rose with healing in His wings,
Withered my nature’s strength; from Thee
My soul its life and succor brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On Thee alone for strength depend;
Nor have I power from Thee to move:
Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey,
Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

SUGGESTIONS for REFLECTING — Rev Lil Smith

  • Light a candle to remember Christ’s presence with you.
  • Sit five to fifteen minutes in silence bringing your attention to the Breath.
  • Like Jacob, we wrestle with God.
  • Notice how your body desires to wrestle with God today.
  • What words come to you in the struggle?
  • Which joint is out of socket for you?
  • Allow your attention to go to this disjointed place.
  • What does this disjointed place need to say?
  • How do you wish to respond and connect to the conversation with this disjointed place?
  • Invite God’s healing into this place.
  • What blessing do you receive?
  • What is your message from God?
  • Give thanks to God for this time in prayer and for any new insights you have received.
Greek Orthodox icon of Jabo wrestling with angel

COMMENTARY on WRESTLING

A lot of my intensity in wrestling was due to my mental preparation before the matches. I got myself into a different world. — Dan Gable

Victory goes to the wrestler who makes the next-to-last mistake. — Jackie Mason

Grappling with fate is like meeting an expert wrestler: to escape, you have to accept the fall when you are thrown. The only thing that counts is whether you get back up. — Deng Ming-Dao

No exercise brings into play all the muscles of the body in a more thorough manner, and none is more interesting than wrestling. He will find no other exercise more valuable in the cultivation of faculties that will help him to succeed in agility, strength, determination, coolness, and quick exercise of judgment. — Hugh Leonard

But it’s the wrestler who can put the fatigue out of his mind and break through the ‘wall’, like a marathon runner after 18 or 20 miles, who will survive. The key to that survival is in hard workouts that develop mental confidence to the point where you won’t submit to fatigue and pain descending upon you. — Lou Banach

Take a technical wrestler, get them tired, and they aren’t as technical. No matter what kind of wrestler get them tired, and they aren’t as technical. No matter what kind of wrestler, everyone is afraid of getting tired. It’s those who learn to perform when they’re tired that find success. — Jay Robinson

Wrestling is ballet with violence. — Jesse Ventura

Life is like a wrestling match: a lot of times, things are looking good, and then something happens, and you’re fighting from underneath. — Matt Hardy

by Chris Cook

COMMENTARY on WRESTLING with ANGEL/ GOD

Jacob called the place where he wrestled with God, Peniel — the face of God. He wrestled all night and survived.  God touched his hip and he was lame after this wrestling. He was also a changed man with a new name. God told him is name would no longer be Jacob which means deceiver or “man strives” but Israel or “God strives!” And whenever he limped, he remembered! — Grace Carol Bomer

Strange that there must be a shrinking of the sinew whenever we win the day. As if the Lord must teach us our littleness, our nothingness, in order to keep us within bounds. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Who would stick around to wrestle a dark angel all night long if there were any chance of escape? The only answer I can think of is this: someone in deep need of blessing; someone willing to limp forever for the blessing that follows the wound. — Barbara Brown Taylor

In the story of Jacob and the heavenly figure with whom he wrestles, we begin to see the elements of struggle and the unfolding, as well, of the gifts of the spirit that go with them. Jacob faces change, isolation, darkness, fear, powerlessness, vulnerability, exhaustion, and scarring. They are the price to be paid for becoming new. To struggle is to begin to see the world differently. It tests all the faith in the goodness of God that we have ever professed. It requires an audacity we did not know we had. It demands a commitment to the truth. It tests our purity of heart. It brings total metamorphosis of soul. If we are willing to persevere through the depths of struggle we can emerge with conversion, self-acceptance, endurance, faith, surrender, and a kind of personal growth that takes us beyond pain to understanding. What we see is the fullness of the self come to birth in the only way it really can: in labor and under trial. — Sr. Joan Chittister

Violence and intimacy.  The violence and intimacy of this wrestling match.  What did it sound like, how did it smell, the sweat of God and Jacob mingled in the dust?  Those who are willing to pursue God and his blessing with such force receive honor from me.  I don’t know what Jacob was thinking.  But I know I wish I had the guts to engage my God with such an intertwined closeness. — Jack Baumgartner

It seems as though I am in a struggle for at least a part of every day of my life; a wrestling match. I often feel like I’m wrestling with things like life, my health, poverty/justice issues, and most certainly, with God.
As a result, when I consider my life, I mainly think about the image in the book of Genesis of Jacob wrestling the angel. More than other stories in scripture, I resonate with this one the most…This is yet another one of those tensions in the Christian life.
Blessing and struggle.
Thanksgiving and complaining.
Comprehension and confusion.
Peace and frustration.
Joy and pain.
And because I recognize that God is in fact blessing me regularly, I also do my best to thank God even in the midst of complaining about the struggle. — Dion Oxford

This story is a profound mystery to me, but I love it because God made himself vulnerable for the sake of this man whom He loved.  — Jack Baumgartner

The Word calls us into a personal dialogue which, in many respects, is like Jacob’s wrestling with the angel (Genesis 32: 23-33). Only there, in that sort of personal involvement, do we come face-to-face with the mystery that is God. — Richard Rohr

… it happens at night when the world is dark and mysterious and the human mind is not controlled by the boundaries that usually constrain our imaginations. It is a far less peaceful encounter than the one at Bethel. It is basically a fight – some kind of spiritual wrestling match.
… It was a wounding fight and left Jacob with a limp; his inability to walk properly being a reminder of this encounter with the divine. But it was Jacob who was the better wrestler and it is the angelic visitor who asks to be released. But the tough old patriarch would not let the angel go just like that and asked for blessing.
It turns out that Jacob’s blessing was to have his name changed, a name change that recognized precisely his power and persistence as a fighter. Jacob responds to the experience as he did at Bethel by renaming the place. He called it ‘Peniel’. The final line perhaps reads as something of an anti-climax. Jacob says, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ To summarise such a nocturnal scrap as seeing someone ‘face to face’ is to understate the physicality, intimacy and vulnerability of the encounter…
But the ancient scriptures are not polite or inwardly spiritual so much as raw and rough and basic and exploratory. Reading them we should be prompted to think that some of our more difficult, sustained and damaging life-struggles were in fact struggles with angels and that our encounters with God are evident not in the way we run, skip, jump or dance, but in the way we limp towards the future, wounded and yet strangely blessed by our encounters with God. — Stephen Cherry

You do not hear much about God causing the chaos [in life], or even having a role in it. On the contrary, it is God’s job to make it stop. God is supposed to restore the status quo and help everyone feel comfortable again. Isn’t that how you know when God is present? When the danger has been avoided? When your heart stops pounding and you can breathe normal again? …It is an appealing idea, but unfortunately the Bible does not back it up. In that richly troubling book, much of God’s best work takes place in total chaos, with people scared half out of their wits: Elijah, trembling under his broom tree, pleading with God to take his life; Mary, listening to an angel’s ambitious plans for plunging her into scandal; Paul, lying flat on his belly on the Damascus road with all his lights put out. …No one in his or her right mind asks to be attacked, frightened, wounded. And yet that is how it comes, sometimes, the presence and blessing of God — Barbara Brown Taylor

Likewise, our sages ell us that Jacob’s wrestling match represented an inner struggle with his own identity. He wrestled with self-doubt and conflicting traits within himself. Was he ready and able to assume his role … We also wrestle with spiritual doubts and conflicts…
The Zohar teaches that the struggle with the angel would come to express Jacob’s … ongoing struggle between self and G‑d, between one’s ego and spirit. It symbolizes the victorious struggle to sublimate our will to that of our Creator’s will.
Contending with G‑d and man often initiates a personal search. Every great quest starts with a great question. What is G‑d, and what is G‑d not? It continues with refining and redefining one’s perception. Just as you’ve outgrown your childhood clothing, so, too, has your mind expanded its capacity for understanding. With greater maturity it becomes necessary to re-examine beliefs that have not been developed or clarified…
To reach or to exceed his personal and spiritual potentia … needs answers to fundamental questions. Why am I here and what is my purpose? How do I achieve it? What makes me different?…
Our sages teach us that G‑d communicates to us directly through our daily challenges. Life’s tests can help to refine our ability to actualize our inner potential. Adversity can be viewed as the vehicle through which we come to expand ourselves and, thereby, overcome our self-perceived limitations. The tough times can ultimately come to reveal our inner greatness. They serve to elevate us beyond what we thought we were capable of being. Conversely, we are equally tested through times of happiness and success. When things are going well, do we recognize the source of our abundance, or do we arrogantly attribute our good fortunes solely to our own efforts and skill?
Life’s tests are multidimensional; they elevate us and can heighten our vantage point to access the latent inner resources we all possess. The best criteria for evaluating an epiphany, however, are its long term effects. How much of the initial impact endures? Does it help you develop yourself to become more than you were?
Thus, “seeing G‑d face to face” is also a metaphor that illustrates how G‑d’s presence is revealed throughout life’s details… — Katia Bolotin

by Jack Baumgartner

COMMENTARY on STRUGGLE

Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion? — Rumi

Life is one long struggle in the dark. — Lucretius

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. — Napoleon HillThe most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. — Frederick Douglass

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. — Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. — Orison Swett Marden

You don’t fight your anger, because your anger is you. Your anger is the wounded child in you. Why should you fight your anger? The method is entirely nonviolent: awareness, mindfulness, and tenderly holding your anger within you. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Where there is no struggle, there is no strength. — Oprah Winfrey

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation. — Coretta Scott King

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle. —  Malcolm Gladwell

People are at their best when they are challenged. If we don’t challenge ourselves, nature has a way of giving us challenges anyway. There is great value in our struggles, and human nature has shown us that we only value the things we struggle to achieve. — Thomas Frey

by Sefira Lightstone

LEFT ME with a LIMP — Rachel Held Evans (full posting about the Bible: https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/i-love-the-bible)

It is said that after Jacob wrestled with God, he walked with a limp… So it has been with the Bible and me. I have wrestled with the Bible, and it has left me with a limp… Those of us who have wrestled know we can be wrong. … I have finally surrendered to God’s stories.
God’s long, strange, beautiful stories.
We asked questions.
God told stories.
We demanded answers.
God told stories.
We argued theology.
God told stories.
And when those stories weren’t enough, when the words themselves would not suffice, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, laughed among us, wept among us, ate among us, told more stories among us, suffered among us, died among us, and rose among us. The Word entered our story and invited us into His. The Word became flesh and said, “Watch me. Follow me.  See how I do it. This is what I desire.”
And the Word loved—
Loved the poor,
Loved the rich,
Loved the sick,
Loved the hungry,
Loved the zealots,
Loved the tax-collectors,
Loved the lepers,
Loved the soldiers,
Loved the foreigners,
Loved the insiders,
Loved the slaves,
Loved the women,
Loved the untouchables,
Loved the religious,
Loved the favored,
Loved the forgotten.
Loved even the enemy.
When words were not enough, the Word took on flesh and became the story.
I love the Bible, but I love it best when I love it for what it is, not what I want it to be…when I live in the tension and walk with the limp—
The limp that slows me down,
The limp that delights my critics,
The limp I wouldn’t change for the world,
The limp that led me to God.

Science, origin stories and creation myths: Biblical text, other cultural stories, and scientific thoughts on the beginning of the cosmos, time, and humanity

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , ,
D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? — Paul Gauguin (title of 1897 painting above)

The root of this possibility of doing good –
that we all have – is in creation. — Pope Francis

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.— Charles Darwin
Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.
            I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing…and dancing…and dancing. Until there is only…the dance. ― Michael Jackson

How did everything begin? This is the first question faced by any creation myth and … answering it remains tricky. … Each beginning seems to presuppose an earlier beginning. … Instead of meeting a single starting point, we encounter an infinity of them, each of which poses the same problem. … There are no entirely satisfactory solutions to this dilemma. What we have to find is not a solution but some way of dealing with the mystery …. And we have to do so using words. The words we reach for, from God to gravity, are inadequate to the task. So we have to use language poetically or symbolically; and such language, whether used by a scientist, a poet, or a shaman, can easily be misunderstood.— David Christian

SONGS about CREATION & NEW BEGINNINGS:

Mythology of Creation:

ORIGIN STORIES & CREATION MYTHS

Creation myths, or origin stories, tell us what a culture believes about how humans came to be. They can also tell us much about what that culture values. These are often religious or spiritual explanations for human life. — Kate Harris, Smithsonian Institute’s Learning Lab

A creation myth or cosmogonic myth is a type of cosmogony, a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term myth often refers to false or fanciful stories, members of cultures often ascribe varying degrees of truth to their creation myths. In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths – metaphorically, symbolically, historically, or literally They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths – that is, they describe the ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness.
Creation myths often share several features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily. … Creation myths address questions deeply meaningful to the society that shares them, revealing their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context. — Wikipedia.com

Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot.— Terry Pratchett

Myths are funny. Unlike histories, they are symbolic narratives; they deal with spiritual rather than fact-based truths. They serve as foundations for beliefs, illustrating how things came to be and who was involved, but they’re often sketchy about when or why. — Lisa Hannett, The Atlantic

Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the “beginnings.” In other words, myth tells how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality – an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution. — Mircea Eliade

The earth-diver is a common character in various traditional creation myths. In these stories a supreme being usually sends an animal (most often, a type of bird, but also crustaceans, insects, and fishes in some narratives) into the primal waters to find bits of sand or mud with which to build habitable land. — WIkipedia.com

When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven. ― Ovid, Metamorphoses

In emergence myths, humanity emerges from another world into the one they currently inhabit. The previous world is often considered the womb of the earth mother, and the process of emergence is likened to the act of giving birth. The role of midwife is usually played by a female deity, like the spider woman of several mythologies of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Male characters rarely figure into these stories, and scholars often consider them in counterpoint to male-oriented creation myths, like those of the ex nihilo variety. — WIkipedia.com

Ve and Vili and Odin looked at each other and spoke of what was needful to do, there in the void of Ginnungagap. They spoke of the universe, and of life, and of the future.
Odin and Ve and Vili killed the giant Ymir. It had to be done. There was no other way to make the worlds. This was the beginning of all things, the death that made all life possible. — Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

There are two types of world parent myths, both describing a separation or splitting of a primeval entity, the world parent or parents. One form describes the primeval state as an eternal union of two parents, and the creation takes place when the two are pulled apart. The two parents are commonly identified as Sky (usually male) and Earth (usually female), who were so tightly bound to each other in the primeval state that no offspring could emerge. These myths often depict creation as the result of a sexual union and serve as genealogical record of the deities born from it.
In the second form of world parent myths, creation itself springs from dismembered parts of the body of the primeval being. Often, in these stories, the limbs, hair, blood, bones, or organs of the primeval being are somehow severed or sacrificed to transform into sky, earth, animal or plant life, and other worldly features. — WIkipedia.com

The Way gave birth to unity; unity gave birth to duality; duality gave birth to trinity; trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures. — Daodejing

Who really knows,
and who can swear,
How creation came,
when or where!
Even gods came after
creation’s day,
Who really knows and
who can truly say,
When and how
did creation start?
Did He do it?
Or did He not?
Only He, up there,
knows, maybe;
Or perhaps,
not even He.
― Rig Veda
On Divine and Human CREATION

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. —  attributed to Pablo Picasso and/or  e.e. cummings

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation. — Rabindranath Tagore

You aren’t your work, your accomplishments, your possessions, your home, your family… your anything. You’re a creation of your Source, dressed in a physical human body intended to experience and enjoy life on Earth. — Wayne Dyer

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. — Charles Dickens

The key to nature’s therapy is feeling like a tiny part of it, not a master over it. There’s amazing pride in seeing a bee land on a flower you planted – but that’s not your act of creation, it’s your act of joining in. — Victoria Coren Mitchell

Every moment there is creation, every moment destruction. There is no absolute creation, no absolute destruction. Both are movement, and that is eternal. —  Ramana Maharshi

Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story. — Miguel Ruiz

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath. — Emily Dickinson

The creation continues incessantly through the media of man. — Antonio Gaudi

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. — James Joyce

If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself. —  Meister Eckhart

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified. — Hermann Hesse

All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together. — Morihei Ueshiba

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. — Albert Pike

An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an originals motivated be necessity. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human. — Man Ray

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need. — Gaston Bachelard

Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living. — Don McLean

I know that you are part of me and I am part of you because we are all aspects of the same infinite consciousness that we call God and Creation. — David Icke

The art of creation is older than the art of killing. — Ed Koch

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. … In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. ― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

On EVOLUTION, BIG BANG, STRING THEORY & SCIENCE as Tools of Understanding

When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. God is not a demiurge [demigod] or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. Evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve. — Pope Francis

Was the big bang really the beginning of time? Or did the universe exist before then?… developments in theoretical physics, especially the rise of string theory, have changed their perspective. The pre-bang universe has become the latest frontier of cosmology… In one form or another, the issue of the ultimate beginning has engaged philosophers and theologians in nearly every culture.
… We can trace our lineage back through the generations, back through our animal ancestors, to early forms of life and protolife, to the elements synthesized in the primordial universe, to the amorphous energy deposited in space before that. Does our family tree extend forever backward? Or do its roots terminate? Is the cosmos as impermanent as we are? … The ancient Greeks debated the origin of time fiercely. Aristotle, taking the no-beginning side, invoked the principle that out of nothing, nothing comes. If the universe could never have gone from nothingness to somethingness, it must always have existed. For this and other reasons, time must stretch eternally into the past and future. Christian theologians tended to take the opposite point of view. Augustine contended that God exists outside of space and time, able to bring these constructs into existence as surely as he could forge other aspects of our world. When asked, What was God doing before he created the world? Augustine answered, Time itself being part of God’s creation, there was simply no before!
… So, when did time begin? Science does not have a conclusive answer yet, but at least two potentially testable theories plausibly hold that the universe–and therefore time–existed well before the big bang. If either scenario is right, the cosmos has always been in existence and, even if it recollapses one day, will never end. — Gabriele Veneziano, Scientific American (full article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-beginning-of-time-2006-02/)

In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God’s creation… as music. — Roy H. Williams

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science. — Erich Fromm

Creation is a process that is still happening and we’re in on it! We are a part of this endless creativity of God. — Fr. Richard Rohr

Believing as I do in evolution, I merely believe that it is the method by which God created, and is still creating, life on earth. — Rachel Carson

The environment selects those few mutations that enhance survival, resulting in a series of slow transformations of one lifeform into another, the origin of a new species. — Carl Sagan

I believe God did intend, in giving us intelligence, to give us the opportunity to investigate and appreciate the wonders of His creation. He is not threatened by our scientific adventures. — Francis Collins

Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. — Francis Collins

Evolution is amazingly versatile in adapting the materials at hand to other uses. — George Gaylord Simpson

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random. —Richard Dawkins

From the paramecium to the human race, all life forms are meticulously organized, sophisticated aggregates of evolving microbial life. Far from leaving microorganisms behind on an evolutionary ‘ladder,’ we are both surrounded by them and composed of them. — Lynn Margulis

Today, I believe that humanity is at a critical crossroad. The radical advances that took place in neuroscience and particularly in genetics towards the end of the twentieth century have led to a new era in human history. Our knowledge of the human brain and body at the cellular and genetic level, with the consequent technological possibilities offered for genetic manipulation, has reached such a stage that the ethical challenges of these scientific advances are enormous. It is all too evident that our moral thinking simply has not been able to keep pace with such rapid progress in our acquisition of knowledge and power. Yet the ramifications of these new findings and their applications are so far-reaching that they relate to the very conception of human nature and the preservation of the human species. So it is no longer adequate to adopt the view that our responsibility as a society is to simply further scientific knowledge and enhance technological power and that the choice of what to do with this knowledge and power should be left in the hands of the individual. We must find a way of bringing fundamental humanitarian and ethical considerations to bear upon the direction of scientific development, especially in the life sciences. By invoking fundamental ethical principles, I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry. Rather, I am speaking of what I call “secular ethics” that embrace the key ethical principles, such as compassion, tolerance, a sense of caring, consideration of others, and the responsible use of knowledge and power – principles that transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers, and followers of this religion or that religion. — His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

 

CHRISTIAN COMMENTARY on BIBLICAL CREATION STORY

As God has not made anything useless in this world, as all beings fulfill obligations or a role in the sublime drama of Creation, I cannot exempt from this duty, and small though it be, I too have a mission to fill, as for example: alleviating the sufferings of my fellowmen. — Jose Rizal

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation. — Edmund Burke

I confess that I am a Christo-centric universalist. What that means to me is that, whatever God was accomplishing, especially on the cross, that Christological event, was for the restoration and redemption and reconciliation of all things and all people and all Creation – everyone. Whatever God was getting done there, that is for everyone. How God manages to play that out through other religions, other symbol systems, I will never understand. I have to allow for the idea that God is actually nimble enough and powerful enough and creative enough to do that. — Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber

They define virtue thus—that it is a living according to Nature, and think that we are made by God for that end; they believe that a man then follows the dictates of Nature when he pursues or avoids things according to the direction of reason. — Thomas More

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey. — Mark Twain

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect. — Desmond Tutu

That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.― Martin Luther King Jr., from “Loving Your Enemies”

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation. ― Sigmund Freud

… God who created the universe out of ‘nothing,’ that can put flesh on dry bones ‘nothing,’ that can put life in a dusty womb ‘nothing.’ I mean, let’s face it, ‘nothing’ is God’s favorite material to work with. — Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation. — Maya Angelou

I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking. ― George MacDonald

Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. — John Shelby Spong

Creation exists first of all for its own good sake; second to show forth God’s goodness, diversity, and beneficence; and then for humans’ appropriate use. Our small, scarcity-based worldview is the real aberration here, and I believe it has largely contributed to the rise of atheism and the “practical atheism” that is the actual operative religion of most Western countries today. The God we’ve been presenting people with is just too small and too stingy for a big-hearted person to trust or to love back. — Fr. Richard Rohr

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God. ― Sidney Sheldon

We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground, Got got up. ― Rachel Held Evans

God wants us to know that life is a series of beginnings, not endings. Just as graduations are not terminations, but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process, and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all, suffering will cease. — Bernie Siegel

It is the spirituality of creation—our affinity, our care, for the rest of creation—that really stretches us to the wholeness of ourselves and to the wholeness of God, as well.
Only when we see ourselves, humans, as part of creation, rather than as the crown of creation, will we ever be able to come anywhere close to really grasping the greatness of God and God’s gifts to us. Only then will we begin to see the glowing face of God everywhere. Only then will we begin to understand that we are all meant to come to fullness of life together—plants, animals, planet, and humans in one great reciprocal circle of a common creation. Until we do, all of us will go on living life with spiritual blinders.
What we do not do to save the whole of creation will shrink our own spiritual vision and separate us, starved and emaciated in soul, from the wholeness of life. We will look at forests and, like the loggers destroying the rain forests on this earth, fail to see the living gift of them. We will take for granted the devotion of our pets and fail to recognize that real human relationships are about more than sex or social comfort or authority. We will watch our children grow up in cement jungles, denied the right to plant tomatoes or the wonder of picking flowers. We will find innocent enemies and set out to destroy them rather than protect them as sisters and brothers and make them our friends.
What we do to the rest of creation we do to ourselves. What we destroy in the rest of creation makes it even easier to destroy in our own.
But God sees the despoliation of all that is “good” and comes closer to those who are its saviors. And therein lies the secret of both the quality of our “dedication” and the depth of our relationship with God. Why? Because it’s profitable to steward the world well? No. Because it is holy to care for the world as God cares for the world. Because co-creation is the task of being human.— Joan Chittister, from The Monastic Way

Reflections from Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon as part of the wisdom texts we’re exploring

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I feel so much love over my soul,
it is like an Ocean I immerse and lose myself in:
it is my vision on earth while waiting
for the face-to-face vision in light.
[God] is in me, I am in Him.
I have only to love Him,
to let myself be loved,
all the time, through all things:
to wake in Love,
to move in Love,
to sleep in Love,
my Soul in His Soul,
my heart in His Heart,
my eyes in His eyes …
—Elizabeth of the Trinity

If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. — His Holiness the Dalai Lama

… the poems both affirm human love, but also show how it is itself only a pointer to something more grand and more sublime. The book never mentions God’s love, but all the links back to the garden of Eden make the point by themselves. Who is the author of life and human experience? And who, therefore, is the author of this powerful experience we call “love?” It’s none other than the Author of all reality, who has given humans a great gift and responsibility in our bodies, minds and hearts when it comes to sexual love. — BibleProject

We do not necessarily need to become religious, nor even believe in an ideology. We need only to develop our good human qualities and know that love and compassion are the most essential concepts for human survival. — His Holiness the Dalai Lama

… the good life consists of right relationships—between man and woman [covenant partners], between humanity and the earth, and between humanity and God. In the love described in the Song, we see a reflection of the love that first called the world into being (Proverbs 8), that continues to sustain it season by season (Ecclesiastes 3), and that will bring it to new life beyond death itself (Revelation 21). — Kathryn M. Schifferdecker

SONGS about LOVE as SACRED UNION:

Don’t go anywhere without me.
— Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Don’t go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
Vision, see nothing I don’t see.
Language, say nothing.
The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me. Be the rose
nearest to the thorn that I am.
I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,
in the arc of your mallet when you work,
when you visit friends, when you go
up on the roof by yourself at night.
There’s nothing worse than to walk out along the street
without you. I don’t know where I’m going.
You’re the road, and the knower of roads,
more than maps, more than love.

DARK NIGHT of the SOUL—  St. John of the Cross, Translated by David Lewis
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
n darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
That light guided me
 More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.
As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.

O glistening sunlight — Sr. Hildegarde of Bingen

O glistening starlight,
O most brilliant singular figure
of the royal marriage,
O glowing gem:
You are arrayed as a person of high rank
who has no mark nor wrinkle;You are also an angel’s companion
and a citizen of sacredness.

Run, flee from the ancient destroyer’s cave!
Come, enter into the palace of the King.

COMMENTARY on SONG of SONGS from Jewish and Christian Scholars

All eternity is not as worthwhile as the day the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all biblical books are holy, but the Song of Songs is holy of holies.— R. Aqiva (m. Yadayim 3:5), 2nd c. CE

אין כל העולם כלו כדאי כיום שניתן בו שיר השירים לישראל שכל כתובים קדש ושיר השירים קודש קדשים The Song of Songs, along with the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, is related to Solomon as the source of Israel’s wisdom literature. As Moses is the source [though not the only author] of the Torah, and David is the source [though not the author] of the book of Psalms, so is Solomon the father of the wisdom tradition in Israel… The connection of the Song of Songs to Solomon in the Hebrew Bible sets these writings within the context of wisdom literature. – Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (21st c).

The Song of Songs, a duet scored for two young lovers, each delighting in the other, longing for one another’s presence, is one of the central books of Tanach and the key that unlocks the rest. It is about love as the holy of holies of human life. It is about the love of Israel for God and God for Israel, and the fact that it is written as the story of two young and human lovers is also fundamental, for it tells us that to separate human and Divine love is to allocate one to the body, the other to the soul, is a false distinction. Love is the energy God has planted in the human heart, redeeming us from narcissism and solipsism, making the human or Divine Other no less real to me than I am to myself, thus grounding our being in that-which-is-not-me. One cannot love God without loving all that is good in the human situation. Love creates. Love reveals. Love redeems. Love is the connection between God and us. That is the faith of Judaism, and if we do not understand this we will not understand it at all. We will, for example, fail to realise that the demands God makes of His people through the prophets are expressions of love, that what Einstein called Judaism’s “almost fanatical love of justice” is about love no less than justice, that the Torah is God’s marriage contract with the Jewish people, and the mitzvot are all invitations to love: “I see You with all my heart; do not let me stray from Your commands” (Ps. 119:10).” — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ceremony & Celebration, 21st c.

… In short, there are two primary interpretations of the Song of Songs. The traditional interpretation is that it is an allegory of the love between God and Israel or between Christ and the Church. The dominant interpretation in modern times is that it is nothing more than ancient erotic love poetry.
I would argue that the Song is both of these things. It is a celebration of the love of a man and a woman for one another, a love “strong as death” (Song of Solomon 8:6), a love reflected in the renewed life of the earth itself (Song of Solomon 2:10-13). At the same time, the Song is also a celebration of the love between Christ and the Church, a love that is in fact stronger than death, sealed by the Resurrection.
As Phyllis Trible and Ellen Davis have both argued, the Song is a reversal of the curses of Eden. The relationship between man and woman is restored. In place of Eve’s punishment in Genesis 3:16 (“your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”), the woman in the Song declares, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.”6 In fact, the woman’s is the dominant voice in the Song. She is in a full, robust, and mutual relationship with her beloved.
The rupture between humanity and the earth is also restored. Here, in the garden of the Song, there are no thorns and thistles (see Genesis 3:17-19). Indeed, the earth itself rejoices with the lovers.
Finally, the rupture between humanity and God is restored, if one understands the Song allegorically, as interpreters have done for 2000 years. One of the dominant biblical metaphors for the relationship between God and Israel (and later, Christ and the Church) is that of marriage. This metaphor takes some troubling turns in the prophets (see Hosea), but in the Song, the marriage is healed and renewed and rooted in love, love as fierce as the grave, love unquenchable (Song of Solomon 8:6-7).— Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, full article: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/preaching-series-on-o-t-wisdom-and-poetry/commentary-on-proverbs-11-7-31-8, (21st c).

The Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry. The Rabbis read it as an allegory of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Only in the Middle Ages, in Spain and Northern France, did scholars begin to pay attention to the plain (Peshat) meaning of the text. Some went as far as dropping the allegory altogether and treating it as love poetry, as it was originally intended. — Dr. Barry Dov Walfish, (21st c).

King Solomon wrote this through the inspiration of the divine spirit, for he saw that Israel in their exile was destined to mourn God, who distanced himself from them like a groom who parted from his beloved. And he began to sing his song on behalf of the Community of Israel who is like a bride before him. — Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (ca. 1085-ca. 1160)

“God is love” (1 John 4:16) may be the single most important verse in the entire Bible …
Is it any wonder that many of the great Christian mystics are renowned as lovers of God? This can take a variety of forms: for some, being God’s lover is very ethereal and philosophically abstract; but for others, an embodied, physical, even erotic quality characterizes their mysticism of love. There is even a term—“bridal mysticism”—for the many mystics (both female and male) whose experience of profound love of God was so deep and all-encompassing that it led to a spiritual sense of being “married” to God …
[It’s important to] consider that this derives from the Bible itself. One of the loveliest books in the Hebrew Bible…. is the Song of Solomon, also called the Song of Songs or the Canticle of Canticles… It is the story of a bride and bridegroom, their passion for one another, their devotion to one another, and their (strongly hinted at) passion as physical lovers.
Historically, the Song of Songs has been read as a kind of allegory: the two lovers symbolize the caring relationship between God and Israel, or Christ and the Church, or Christ and the individual believer. This is where the mysticism of love comes in. — Cart McColman, full article: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-great-love-song-2021-05-11/ (21st c).

I think religion, especially when it comes to messages around our sexuality, causes a really particular type of harm in us. Now, the culture, the broader culture, also has some very damaging messages. There’s the commodificationwa of sex. You can “know” how worthy you are of desire according to how close you are to a body ideal. Once you’re too old, or too fat, or too plain, you’re no longer worthy of sexual desire and so there are these damaging messages that society gives us around the commodification of sex.
… messages from religion, those go down to our created place, our source code. Those seep into us in a very deep level and the difference is that the society has … our society has never said that the creator of the universe is disgusted by my cellulite. Do you know what I mean? So, the religious messages are saying, “This is God. God feels this way about you as a sexual being.” And that can be pernicious in a very particular way.
Well, Augustine interpreted the Garden of Eden story in a really particular way that we are so influenced by that we don’t even know the difference between the text and his interpretation. For instance, the word sin isn’t in there, the word temptation isn’t in there, the devil is not in there, “original sin” is not in there, fall from grace is not in there. All of that is stuff that Augustine interpreted into the Garden of Eden story. So then it’s like, “Okay, well who was Augustine?” Well, brilliant guy, however had some sexual hangups like all of us do. His original shame, his story, his original shame came from an incident in the bathhouse with his father when he was going through puberty and he had an erection and his father commented on it.
In the same way, the Song of Solomon is this beautiful erotic poem in the Bible, and it’s most likely the only book in the Bible that was possibly written by a woman, and it is mostly an erotic poem about a very shameless woman who has a lover and she loves her body and she loves their body and she loves sex and eroticism, and she has no shame about this. So what happens? Origen, another … church father comes along, and he goes, “No, that’s not about sex. That’s about Jesus’ love for the church. It’s just an allegory.” And okay, well who was Origen? Origen was this guy who was so terrified of sexual temptation, no kidding, he castrated himself…. Is that the guy we want to go to for direction?” — Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber, full interview: https://wanderlust.com/journal/sex-church-debunking-doctrine-desire/

I believe the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus is summed up in the climactic line from the Song of Songs, “love is stronger than death” (8:6). If the blank white banner that the Risen Christ usually holds in Christian art should say anything, it should say: “Love will win!” Love is all that remains. Love and life are finally the same thing, and we know that for ourselves once we have walked through death.
Love has you. Love is you. Love alone, and your deep need for love, recognizes love everywhere else. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear “that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd” (Romans 3:3), says Paul. Love has finally overcome fear, and your house is being rebuilt on a new and solid foundation. This foundation was always there, but it takes us a long time to find it. “It is love alone that lasts” (1 Corinthians 13:13). All you have loved in your life and been loved by are eternal and true .. — Richard Rohr, full article: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/love-is-stronger-than-death-2020-03-27/, (21st c).

VISION

And in this vision, he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind’s eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, ‘What can this be?’ And the answer came to me, ‘It is all that is made.’ I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, ‘It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in the same everything exists through the love of God.’
In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that God cares for it. But what does this mean to me? Truly, the maker, the lover, the carer; for until I become one substance with him, I can never have love, rest or true bliss; that is to say, until I am so bound to him that there may be no created thing between my God and me. — Julian of Norwich

LOVING TENDERNESS
— Hildegard of Bingen

Loving tenderness abounds for all
from the darkest
to the most eminent one beyond the stars,
Exquisitely loving all
she bequeaths the kiss of peace
upon the ultimate King.

THERE IS NO GOING BACK – Wendell Berry

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

THE WHISTLER — Mary Oliver

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and an-
kle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

COVENANT LOVE

“in love I am more God than I am in myself.” … “It sounds wondrous, that the human being is thus able to become God in love; however, it is true in the eternal truth.” — Meister Eckhart

Covenant love is conscious love. It is intentional love. It is commitment to love no matter what. It requires thought and action. It does not wait for the encouragement of warm emotions but chooses to look out for the interest of the other party because you are committed to the other’s well-being.
Covenant love requires two factors: knowledge of the nature of love and the will to love. Understanding the 5 love languages will give you the information you need to have a successful long term covenant love relationship. Hopefully, as you see the benefits of covenant love, you will also find the will to love. — Gary Chapman

God willeth that we understand [this], desiring with all our heart to have knowing of them [Trinity] more and more unto the time that we be fulfilled: for fully to know them is nought else but endless joy and bliss that we shall have in Heaven, which God willeth should be begun here in knowing of His love. — Julian of Norwich

Peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings. — John F. Kennedy

We are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we already are. — Thomas Merton

This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
To seek the truth in love,
And to help one another.
— James Vila Blake

We are already in union with God! There is an absolute, eternal union between God and the soul of everything. — Fr. Richard Rohr

Sometimes we feel empty; we feel a vacuum, a great lack of something. We don’t know the cause; it’s very vague, but that feeling of being empty inside is very strong. We expect and hope for something much better so we’ll feel less alone, less empty. The desire to understand ourselves and to understand life is a deep thirst. There’s also the deep thirst to be loved and to love. We are ready to love and be loved. It’s very natural. But because we feel empty, we try to find an object of our love. Sometimes we haven’t had the time to understand ourselves, yet we’ve already found the object of our love. When we realize that all our hopes and expectations of course can’t be fulfilled by that person, we continue to feel empty. You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day!
In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person. You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less. Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. What happens to your loved one happens to you. What happens to you happens to your loved one. …
In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination. His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Reflections from Book of Job, one of the wisdom texts we’re studying together

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We must cultivate our garden. — Voltaire, Candide
The most famous line in Voltaire’s ”Candide” is the final one: ”We must cultivate our garden.” That is Candide’s response to the philosopher Pangloss, who tries again and again to prove that we live in the best of all possible worlds, no matter what disasters befall us. — Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times

SONGS about SUFFERING & HURTING:

SONGS about HEALING & HOPE:

 

WAGE PEACE — Judyth Hill
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and
flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music; memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the out breath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Interrelationship – Thich Nhat Hanh
You are me, and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.

I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.

GOD’S PART in SUFFERING (from Book of Job):

Excerpt from commentary by BibleProject (full article: https://bibleproject.com/articles/gods-gives-job-tour-wise-world/)
… Job claimed that God has fallen asleep at the wheel in running the universe, and because of this divine neglect he’s had to endure unjust suffering. God’s response is indirect, and it shows how his attention is actually on every single detail of the operations of the universe. In fact, God is privy to all kinds of perspectives and details that Job has never even imagined and never will…
As it turns out, Job doesn’t know as much as he thought, even about the world he lives in and should be familiar with. … God has made his first point. Job’s many accusations of divine neglect or incompetence have failed. As it turns out, God is intimately familiar with every molecule and creature in his world and knows more about them than Job can comprehend. This is an important moment in the story so far. Whatever reasons God has for having allowed Job’s suffering, neglect is not a viable option.
    Job never does find out why he suffered and neither does the reader. The goal of the book was never to offer us that information
 … This means all of our claims to evaluate God’s rule over human history are always limited, and will therefore fall short. I don’t have a wide enough vantage point to accuse God of incompetence, and I never will.
God responds again, this time inviting Job to take up the divine throne and run the universe for a day. Let Job enforce the strict “retribution principle” he thinks God ought to use in directing the cosmos: “Clothe yourself with honor and majesty. Pour out your anger to overflowing, And look on everyone who is proud, and make him low. Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him, and tread down the wicked where they stand.”
Job will find the task impossible. It would require a second-by-second micromanagement approach that would essentially result in no more human beings on the planet. Job doesn’t know what he’s asking for when he demands that God uses the strict principle of retribution to reward every good deed and punish every bad one. In theory it sounds right, but in execution, it would create a universe where no human would ever have a chance for trial and error or, more importantly, for growth and change.
… Apparently, God’s world is ordered enough for the human project to flourish, but chaos has not been eradicated entirely from God’s world. The tohu-va-vohu (Hebrew for “formless and void” in Gen 1:2

Genesis 1:2) wilderness wasteland of Genesis 1 wasn’t eliminated when God made the world. Rather, a space for garden-order was carved out and given over to humans who were commissioned to spread that divine order further out. Leviathan is out there, raw and dangerous, and you just might encounter it. It has the power to wreak havoc on your life, but what you cannot conclude from a run-in with Leviathan is that God is punishing you, or that this creature is evil. Neither is the case. You just bumped into Leviathan, and it unleashed chaos, tooth, and claw into your life, and your body…
Hebrew Bible scholar John Walton puts it this way in his commentary on Job: God’s answer to Job does not explain why righteous people suffer, because the cosmos is not designed to prevent righteous people from suffering. Job questioned God’s design, and God responded that Job had insufficient knowledge to do so. Job questioned God’s justice, and God responded that Job needs to trust him, and that he should not arrogantly think that God can be domesticated to conform to Job’s feeble perceptions of how the cosmos should run. God asks for trust, not understanding, and states the cosmos is founded on his wisdom, not his justice. [adapted quote]
Human pain and suffering does not always happen as a clear consequence of anyone’s sin. There may be a reason, but there may not be. God himself said that Job’s suffering was not warranted for “any reason” (Job 2:3. The conversation with the satan certainly did not provide a reason. That dialogue simply set the stage for the real question of the book: Does God operate the universe according to the principle of retribution?
The answer to this story is no. Sometimes terrible things happen for no reason discernible to any human. The point is that God’s world is very good, but it’s not perfect, or always safe. It has order and beauty, but it’s also wild and sometimes dangerous, like the two fantastic creatures he avows. So back to the big question of Job’s or anyone’s suffering: why is there suffering in the world? Whether from earthquakes, or wild animals, or from one another? God doesn’t explain why. He says we live in an incredibly complex, amazing world that at this stage at least, is not designed to prevent suffering.
…. So, the book doesn’t unlock the puzzle of why bad things happen to good people. Rather, it does invite us to trust God’s wisdom when we encounter suffering rather than trying to figure out the “reasons” for it.
When we search for reasons, we tend to either simplify God like the friends or, like Job, accuse God based on limited evidence. The book invites us to honestly bring our pain and grief to God and to trust that he cares, realizing that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS about HUMAN SUFFERING and GOD’s ROLE

Excerpts from chapter 13 of Biblical Wisdom Literature by Joseph Koterski (the Great Courses):

“We don’t know how it’s going to turn out, Job doesn’t know how its going to turn out. One of the problems that is presented by life as wellas text of Job, how God in his goodness could allow innocent suffering at all. Or hos God can permit those situations in which there is massive sufferings. We might think of famines. We might think of various forms of genocide, whether it be the Holocaust in Germany, whether it be the Armenian genocide, or some of the ones that seem to be happening now. Or even just the massive wars. The Book of Job poses this sort of problem in that opening scene … not trying to give historical perspective but to ask this philosophical problem. These Biblical wisdom books, Job in versy special way, as that part of the Bible that is most philosophical, that it’s a kind of philosophical debate within Israel in which various opositions will be explored and examined, including the divine position, in so far as this is divine revelation…
[Liebniz] has established for us some of the important terms. These three claims that God is all powerful, that God is all knowing, and that God is all good are crucial to the problem… And then of course the problem is more than just the triangle, you have to work in the way in which human freedom is related to these three parts of the internal attributes of God.
If there is nothing cannot God cannot do, because he is all powerful, if there is God does not know because he is omniscient, and if there is no limit to God’s mercy, because he is all good, why are there instances of suffering that are outrageous in their extent and disproportionate to anything we might reasonably expect?
[Koterski’s opinion] … this is a world that God made for a certain precise purpose, I think the purpose was to have creatures like ourselves capable of freedom, but that freedom with which we’re made will make it so that there will be destructions, there will be sometimes the opportunities to operate badly as well as to operate well, that this is the risk of freedom.
Hartshorne and other process thinkers [philosophers] have argued that apparently we simply need to change our picture of God. In regard to one of those three attributes, something has got to give. Should it be God’s knowledge? Should it be God’s power? Should it be God’s justice? … For myself, I think It does grave notion to the idea of God… [Koterski opinion]I would try to make the argument is incoherent philosophically … it is fundamentally at odds with the view of God that is presented by the Bible and by the mainstream traditions of Judaism and Christianity…
Rabbi Harold Kushner [author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People] … repudiates the notion that suffering is a punishment by God for anyone’s misdeeds. He also … rejects … the view that God sometimes uses suffering to teach people some important lessons. … Instead Rabbi Kushner holds that suffering is simply an intrinsic part of the world that God created, but that it is by random chance that one person suffers and another does not … there was no particular design to it. … Furthermore, Kushner holds that human beings are unique in this world by virtue of having the power to make free choices, and that God refuses to intervene in these choices … [Koterski opinion] Kushner is probably quite right in saying that our freedom is protected by the fact that God allows us to do what we do… Kushner does agree that God can grant us sufficient strength to deal with the troubles in our life, and yes, it does make sense to pray.
C.S.Lewis … second chapter The Problem of Pain … general outline of his views can be sketched in the following way:

  1. First point. The free choices that we make on all soprts of issues large and small wouldn’t be free unless our actions have consequences…
  2. Secondly, for actions to have their consequneces, there needs to be a world with stable natural laws, that govern how one thing interacts with another…
  3. Third thing, the action on one being on the other may well cause injury, may well cause suffering.
  4. Fourth, it will not do to have divine agency interfering with the consequences all the time … to prevent the suffering that occurs when some beinghs interact with other beings, for instance when a volcano buries a town, when a lion kills its prey, or when a microbe infects  aperson with some disease, or when an armed robber kills an innocent bystander …
  5. Fifth point, in short, for God to have created a world in which he chose there to be beings endowed with the power of freedom of choice, God has also chosen to allow any numbers of innocent suffering.
  6. Sixth, it is not that God does not know any of this … nor is it that God couldn’t do something about any one of them … God can do, and frequently has done, miracles … in this respect … the highest level of goodness is free choice. So what this system does is that God in his goodness has made a creature that is in, this respect, like himself, this creature possesses free choice, and that’s a greater good, even though there are going to be some defects and clashes at other levels.

What an argument like this does is put the problem of evil and of suffering into a certain pserpective that can give us a sense of why God, in general, allows suffering. … It does not try to answer the question why this person or that person or some other has as much suffering as any one of these individuals might. To try to answer the particular problems and personal problems, religion is needed. Real prayer. Good friends. Solid spiritual counsel. We need to have that assistance to get through it. … CS Lewis gives us the bigger picture, why there is suffering in the world, not why I am suffering….

NTERCONNECTED Reflections

Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world. ― Nadeem Aslam

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world … do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child? ― Salman Rushdie

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. — Yasutani Roshi

When we help another, we are helped. If we harm another, we harm ourselves. Perhaps harder to grasp—if we harm ourselves, we harm the whole universe. ― Rachel Wooten

… nature is interconnections.― Lisa Kemmerer

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. — Rev. Dr. Martin Liuther King, Jr.

Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet. ― Bertrand Russell

Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person. Happiness and safety are not individual matters. If you suffer, I suffer. If you are not safe, I am not safe. There is no way for me to be truly happy if you are suffering. If you can smile, I can smile too. The understanding of interbeing is very important. It helps us to remove the illusion of loneliness, and transform the anger that comes from the feeling of separation. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In today’s interconnected and globalized world, it is now commonplace for people of dissimilar world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect. — Dalai Lama

DIRECT, STRUCTURAL, and CULTURAL FORMS of VIOLENCE & PEACE

Often referred to as the “Father of Peace Studies,” Norwegian theorist Johan Galtung has developed a three pronged typology of violence that represents how a confluence of malleable factors merge in particular cultural/historical moments to shape the conditions for the promotion of violence (and, by inference, peace) to function as normative.

  • Direct Violence represents behaviors that serve to threaten life itself and/or to diminish one’s capacity to meet basic human needs. Examples include killing, maiming, bullying, sexual assault, and emotional manipulation.
  • Structural Violence represents the systematic ways in which some groups are hindered from equal access to opportunities, goods, and services that enable the fulfillment of basic human needs. These can be formal as in legal structures that enforce marginalization (such as apartheid in South Africa) or they could be culturally functional but without legal mandate (such as limited access to education or health care for marginalized groups).
  • Cultural Violence represents the existence of prevailing or prominent social norms that make direct and structural violence seem “natural” or “right” or at least acceptable. For example, the belief that Africans are primitive and intellectually inferior to Caucasians gave sanction to the African slave trade.  Galtung’s understanding of cultural violence helps explain how prominent beliefs can become so embedded in a given culture that they function as absolute and inevitable and are reproduced uncritically across generations.

From Rev Gail Doktor’s notes:

Galtung’s definition of lasting peace is built on individual, structural, and cultural aspects of peace.

  • Individual peace seeks to preserve life itself and promote human and planetary flourishing.
  • Structural peace represents the systematic ways that all groups have equal access to opportunities, goods, and services that enable the fulfillment of basic human needs.
  • Cultural peace signifies the existence of prevailing, persistent social norms that make the hallmarks of individual and structural peace seem ‘natural’, ‘right’, or ‘good’.

I and THOU: Relational

… I and Thou, is a book by Martin Buber,….— Wikipedia,com

… Buber’s main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:

  1. The attitude of the “I” towards an “It”, towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
  2. The attitude of the “I” towards “Thou”, in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.

One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber’s view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou. Martin Buber said that every time someone says Thou, they are indirectly addressing God. People can address God as Thou or as God, Buber emphasized how, “You need God in order to be, and God needs you for that which is the meaning of your life.”
One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber’s view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou. Martin Buber said that every time someone says Thou, they are indirectly addressing God. People can address God as Thou or as God, Buber emphasized how, “You need God in order to be, and God needs you for that which is the meaning of your life.”
Buber explains that humans are defined by two word pairs: I–It and I–Thou.
The “It” of I–It refers to the world of experience and sensation. I–It describes entities as discrete objects drawn from a defined set (e.g., he, she or any other objective entity defined by what makes it measurably different from other entities). It can be said that “I” have as many distinct and different relationships with each “It” as there are “Its” in one’s life. Fundamentally, “It” refers to the world as we experience it.
By contrast, the word pair I–Thou describes the world of relations. This is the “I” that does not objectify any “It” but rather acknowledges a living relationship. I–Thou relationships are sustained in the spirit and mind of an “I” for however long the feeling or idea of relationship is the dominant mode of perception. A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an “I–Thou” relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general. The stranger is a person as well, and gets instantaneously drawn into a mental or spiritual relationship with the person whose positive thoughts necessarily include the stranger as a member of the set of persons about whom positive thoughts are directed. It is not necessary for the stranger to have any idea that he is being drawn into an “I–Thou” relationship for such a relationship to arise. But what is crucial to understand is the word pair “I–Thou” can refer to a relationship with a tree, the sky, or the park bench itself as much as it can refer to the relationship between two individuals. The essential character of “I–Thou” is the abandonment of the world of sensation, the melting of the between, so that the relationship with another “I” is foremost.

INTERBEING: Inter-connection as a Buddhist concept articultaed by Thich Nhat Hanh

… Rather than signifying a lack or a void, [Thich Nhat Hanh] took emptiness to be a state of inextricable and fundamental interconnectedness in which it is impossible to identify a single, separate entity. — thedewdrop.cpm

Below is an excerpt from the chapter on INTERBEING from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Art of Living.

Imagine, for a moment, a beautiful flower. That flower might be an orchid or a rose, or even a simple little daisy growing beside a path. Looking into a flower, we can see that it is full of life. It contains soil, rain, and sunshine. It is also full of clouds, oceans, and minerals. It is even full of space and time. In fact, the whole cosmos is present in this one little flower. If we took out just one of these “non-flower” elements, the flower would not be there. Without the soil’s nutrients, the flower could not grow. Without rain and sunshine, the flower would die. And if we removed all the non-flower elements, there would be nothing substantive left that we could call a “flower.” So our observation tells us that the flower is full of the whole cosmos, while at the same time it is empty of a separate self-existence. The flower cannot exist by itself alone.

We too are full of so many things and yet empty of a separate self. Like the flower, we contain earth, water, air, sunlight, and warmth. We contain space and consciousness. We contain our ancestors, our parents and grandparents, education, food, and culture. The whole cosmos has come together to create the wonderful manifestation that we are. If we remove any of these “non-us” elements, we will find there is no “us” left.

Emptiness does not mean nothingness. Saying that we are empty does not mean that we do not exist. No matter if something is full or empty, that thing clearly needs to be there in the first place. When we say a cup is empty, the cup must be there in order to be empty. When we say that we are empty, it means that we must be there in order to be empty of a permanent, separate self.

About thirty years ago I was looking for an English word to describe our deep interconnection with everything else. I liked the word “togetherness,” but I finally came up with the word “interbeing.” The verb “to be” can be misleading, because we cannot be by ourselves, alone. “To be” is always to “inter-be.” If we combine the prefix “inter” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.” To inter-be reflects reality more accurately. We inter-are with one another and with all life.

There is a biologist named Lewis Thomas, whose work I appreciate very much. He describes how our human bodies are “shared, rented, and occupied” by countless other tiny organisms, without whom we couldn’t “move a muscle, drum a finger, or think a thought.” Our body is a community, and the trillions of non-human cells in our body are even more numerous than the human cells. Without them, we could not be here in this moment. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to think, to feel, or to speak. There are, he says, no solitary beings. The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis.

We can observe emptiness and interbeing everywhere in our daily life. If we look at a child, it’s easy to see the child’s mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, in her. The way she looks, the way she acts, the things she says. Even her skills and talents are the same as her parents’. If at times we cannot understand why the child is acting a certain way, it is helpful to remember that she is not a separate selfentity. She is a continuation. Her parents and ancestors are inside her. When she walks and talks, they walk and talk as well. Looking into the child, we can be in touch with her parents and ancestors, but equally, looking into the parent, we can see the child. We do not exist independently. We inter-are. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.

I remember one time when I was in London, doing walking meditation along the street, and I saw a book displayed in a bookshop window with the title My Mother, Myself. I didn’t buy the book because I felt I already knew what was inside. It’s true that each one of us is a continuation of our mother; we are our mother. And so whenever we are angry at our mother or father, we are also being angry at ourselves. Whatever we do, our parents are doing it with us. This may be hard to accept, but it’s the truth. We can’t say we don’t want to have anything to do with our parents. They are in us, and we are in them. We are the continuation of all our ancestors. Thanks to impermanence, we have a chance to transform our inheritance in a beautiful direction.

Every time I offer incense or prostrate before the altar in my hermitage, I do not do this as an individual self but as a whole lineage. Whenever I walk, sit, eat, or practice calligraphy, I do so with the awareness that all my ancestors are within me in that moment. I am their continuation. Whatever I am doing, the energy of mindfulness enables me to do it as “us,” not as “me.” When I hold a calligraphy brush, I know I cannot remove my father from my hand. I know I cannot remove my mother or my ancestors from me. They are present in all my cells, in my gestures, in my capacity to draw a beautiful circle. Nor can I remove my spiritual teachers from my hand. They are there in the peace, concentration, and mindfulness I enjoy as I make the circle. We are all drawing the circle together. There is no separate self doing it. While practicing calligraphy, I touch the profound insight of no self. It becomes a deep practice of meditation.

Whether we’re at work or at home, we can practice to see all our ancestors and teachers present in our actions. We can see their presence when we express a talent or skill they have transmitted to us. We can see their hands in ours as we prepare a meal or wash the dishes. We can experience profound connection and free ourselves from the idea that we are a separate self.

  1. Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.
  2. Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness.
  3. Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images, and sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.
  4. Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.
  5. Do not maintain anger or hatred. Learn to penetrate and transform them when they are still seeds in your consciousness. As soon as they arise, turn your attention to your breath in order to see and understand the nature of your anger and hatred and the nature of the persons who have caused your anger and hatred.
  6. Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you. Plant seeds of joy, peace, and understanding in yourself in order to facilitate the work of transformation in the depths of your consciousness.
  7. Do not utter words that can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.
  8. Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.
  9. Do not use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit, or transform your community into a political party. A religious community, however, should take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.
  10. Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Select a vocation that helps realize your ideal of compassion.
  11. Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war.
  12. Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others, but prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.
  13. Do not mistreat your body. Learn to handle it with respect. Do not look on your body only as an instrument. Preserve vital energies (sexual, breath, spirit) for the realization of the Way. (For brothers and sisters who are not monks and nuns:) Sexual expression should not take place without love and a long-term commitment. In sexual relationships, be aware of future suffering that may be caused. To preserve the happiness of others, respect the rights and commitments of others. Be fully aware of the responsibility of bringing new lives into the world. Meditate on the world into which you are bringing new beings.

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