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greatest commandment

Lev/Heart as reflected in the Jewish prayer known as the Shema: home of your intellect, emotions, and discernment and decision-making, integrating body-mind-spirit

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

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you? ― Rumi

We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion. This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. — Dalai Lama

Sometimes the love of God is 12 inches from being real, the distance from the head to the heart. — David Ivey

In the Bible, however, heart is not a symbol. It isn’t an internal organ in your body either… Heart is your conscience. It’s the status of your deepest feelings. It’s the truth of who you are. — Sarah Fisher

Which brings us all the way back to the Shema. Every day God’s people are called to devote to God their body and mind, their feelings and desires, their future and their failures. This is what it means to Love the lord your God with all your heart. — The Bible Project

Everybody has all three centers (head, heart, moving) in them… It’s only when you have balanced the three centers—kinesthetic moving center, emotional center, and intellectual center—and integrated them that you become conscious. — Cynthia Bourgeault

SONGS about LEV- HEART

SONGS about HEART

There’s a morning when
presence comes over your soul.

You sing like a rooster
in your earth-colored shape.

Your heart hears and,
no longer frantic,
begins to dance.

At that moment,
soul reaches total emptiness.

Your heart becomes Mary,
miraculously pregnant,
and body like a two-day-old
Jesus says wisdom words.

Now the heart, which is the
source of your loving,
turns to universal light,
and the body picks up
the tempo and elegance
of its motion.

Where Shams-i Tabriz walks
the footprints become notations of music
and holes you fall through into space.

~~ Rumi
 

Blessing for a Whole Heart —Jan Richardson
You think if you could just imagine it,that would be a beginning;
that if you could envision what it would look like,
that would be a step toward a heart made whole.
This blessing is for when you cannot imagine.
This is for when it is difficult to dream of what could lie beyond
the fracture, the rupture, the cleaving
through which has come a life you do not recognize as your own.
When all that inhabits you feels foreign,
your heart made strange  and beating
a broken and unfamiliar cadence,
let there come a word of solace,
 a voice that speaks into the shattering,
reminding you that who you are is here,
every shard somehow holding
the whole of you that you cannot see
but is taking shape even now,
piece joining to piece in an ancient,
remembered rhythm that bears you not toward restoration,
not toward return—
as if you could somehow become unchanged—
but steadily deeper into the heart
of the one who has already
dreamed you complete.

Resources:

LEV-HEART REFLECTIONS

The Hebrew word often translated “heart” is the word lev, לב. Although lev is frequently translated as “heart,” it should be rendered “mind.”  This information is actually very important for accurate reading of many Biblical texts. —Berkowitz, MBT Kids

In the Bible the heart is considered the seat of life or strength. Hence, it means mind, soul, spirit, or one’s entire emotional nature and understanding. The heart also is the primary source of such bad behavior as adultery, hatred, lust, mischief, pride, and rebellion as well as such neutral or good behavior as desire, doubt, fear, gladness, love, obedience, and sorrow. The heart is the organ that is said to have the ability to reason, question, meditate, motivate, and think. All of these mental processes in today’s world are normally associated with one’s mind or brain and not the heart (except metaphorically). God or the Lord is described as being able to know, search, enlighten, open, recreate, examine, strengthen, and establish one’s heart — not the mind. One can have a clean, contrite, perfect, pure, or wise heart, but those qualities are not biblically attributed to the mind. —Dr. Lorence G. Collins

“Heart” does not mean the emotions (though it includes our emotions). It refers to our inner orientation, the core of our being. This kind of “heart” is what Jesus was referring to when he told us to store up treasures in heaven instead of on earth, “for where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” (Matthew 6:21) This is the “heart” Jesus was worried about when he said “from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy.” (Matthew 15:19) Jesus observed that our heart can get untethered from our actions: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Matthew 15:8) Heart in this sense—the totality of our response—is the concern of the Spiritual Exercises. This is the ancient meaning of “heart” in biblical usage, but we actually retain traces of this meaning in contemporary English. When we say to someone “my heart goes out to you,” we mean something more than a feeling of concern. If said sincerely, it communicates a sense of solidarity with someone. It means more than “I understand” (our intellect). It means more than “I sympathize” (our feelings). It means something like, “I stand with you in this.” It is an expression of a fundamental choice. — David L. Fleming, SJ.

… biblical authors talk about the heart in many other ways that may seem strange to modern readers. That’s because the Israelites had no concept of the brain or any word for it. So they imagined that all of a human’s intellectual activity takes place in the heart. For example, you know with your heart; 5your heart is where you understand and make connections. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom dwells in the heart, and your heart is what you use to discern between truth and error. … So the heart is where you think and make sense of the world, but it does more. In the Bible, the heart is also where you feel emotions. You feel pain in your heart,… You also experience fear in your heart… Your heart can even be depressed.But on the flip-side, your heart is where you experience joy. … So the heart is the generator of physical life and also your intellectual and emotional life, but there’s more. In biblical Hebrew the heart is where you make choices motivated by your desires …Your heart is where your affections are centered; they’re called “the desires of your heart,” and if you really want something, you’ll go after it. …So then, in the Bible, the heart is the center of all parts of human existence.— Bible Project

This teaches us that the heart, that the love that it represents, can thrive, can flourish, only when there is a totality in connection. The Jewish heart, true love, represents a mind-to-mind, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, body-to-body, soul-to-soul connection. —Sara Esther Crispe

The Hebrew word for this part of us is “Levar” or “Lev – לב” for short. Although lev is frequently translated as “heart,” it really could also be translated “mind”. This word does not refer to the organ that pumps blood but rather it has Biblical meaning which most often refers to the control center of our lives. Today we might refer to the mind as the place where decisions are made. In the Bible Lev literally means the inner man, mind, will, heart, soul, understanding. It is where we use what we know or understand, where we have thoughts and feelings in order to discern right from wrong. Lev also refers to feelings like joy, sadness, happiness, love. At times we make decisions based on these fleeting parts of us. — Chapel Hill Kids

In Hebrew, the holy language that holds the secret of all creative power, the word “heart” is written לֵב, a lamed (ל) followed by a bet (ב). Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, one of the greatest medieval Kabbalists explained that the word for “heart” in Hebrew, alludes to the physical form of the human heart: two (the numerical value of the letter bet-ב) lamed’s (ל) face-to-face. The Heart Understands Knowledge It is stated in the Midrash (Otiot d’Rabbi Akiva) that the name of the Hebrew letter lamed stands for Lev Meivin Da’at: “the heart that understands knowledge.” The same idea is expressed in the form of the letter lamed (ל), which depicts the aspiration of the heart to ascend to the highest level of consciousness, the understanding of knowledge. Knowledge (da’at) is the power of the soul which forges the connection between man and God, between man and his fellow, and especially between husband and wife… — inner.org

… the mistranslation of Lev as the figurative “heart” is replaced with Mind—the core of our mental reality…

  • a) the non-figurative “lev” never meant the anatomical heart;
  • (b) the figurative use of lev is, first and foremost, as the seat of rational thought, awareness, intent and reflection; and
  • (c) by correcting the mistranslation of lev (replacing the excitable “heart” with the perceptive “mind”) the bible’s fundamental teaching about the soul, prophecy and transformation emerges dazzlingly from the text.

— Ethan Dor-Shav

BODY-MIND-SPIRIT INTEGRATION

Wisdom is a way of knowing that goes beyond one’s mind, one’s rational understanding, and embraces the whole of a person: mind, heart, and body. These three centers must all be working, and working in harmony, as the first prerequisite to the Wisdom way of knowing. —Cynthia Bourgeault 

You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. — C.S. Lewis

We see in Jesus that a physical life is a spiritual life. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

The secret of health for both mind and body is…live the present moment wisely and earnestly. — Gautama Buddha

All prayer disciplines are somehow trying to get mind, heart, and body to work as one, which entirely changes one’s consciousness. “The concentration of attention in the heart—this is the starting point of  all true prayer,” wrote St.Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894,) a Russian monk, bishop, and mystic. Apart from Love, any other “handler” of your experience, including the rational mind or merely intellectual theology, eventually distorts and destroys the beauty and healing power of Wisdom. — Fr. Richard Rohr

You need the practice of mindfulness to bring your mind back to the body and establish yourself in the moment. If you are fully present, you need only make a step or take a breath in order to enter the kingdom of God. And once you have the kingdom, you don’t need to run after objects of your craving, like power, fame, sensual pleasure, and so on. Peace is possible. Happiness is possible. And this practice is simple enough for everyone to do. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Whether you are sick or well, lovely or irregular, there comes a time when it is vitally important to your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address. After you have taken a good look around, you may decide that there is a lot to be thankful for, all things considered.  — Barbara Brown Taylor

The main concept behind the mind-body-spirit connection is that we are all more than just our thoughts. We are also our bodies, our emotions, and our spirituality … all these things combine to give us identity, determine our health, and make us who we are. — Cooper University

What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world. ― Barbara Brown Taylor

Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. — William Blake

Our ‘ministry’ is Word and Sacrament —everything else flows from that. We see a need, we fill it. We f*** up, we say sorry. We ask for grace and prayers when we need them (a lot). Jesus shows up for us through each other. We eat, we pray, we sing, we fall, we get up, repeat. Not that complicated. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber

Brene Brown’s 10 Guideposts for Wholehearted Living are as follows:

  1. Cultivating Authenticity and Letting Go of What Other People Think
  2. Cultivating Self-Compassion and Letting Go of Perfectionism
  3. Cultivating Your Resilient Spirit, Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
  4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy, Letting go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
  5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith, Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
  6. Cultivating Creativity and Letting Go of Comparison
  7. Cultivating Play and Rest, Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
  8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness and Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
  9. Cultivating Meaningful Work, Letting Go of Self-Doubt and Supposed-To
  10. Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance. And Letting Go of Cool and Always in Control

Each guidepost is like a coin with two sides. On one side, it shares what to cultivate. And on the other, it instructs what to let go of. The two work hand-in-hand.

More info: https://mindfulambition.net/wholehearted-living/

Reflections on the name of God, written as YHWH, but replaced by ‘Adonai’ in spoken version of the Jewish prayer called the Shema, and other names for the Divine.

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

How I long to see
among dawn flowers,
the face of God.
― Basho

God’s name is not known; it is wondered at. — Gregory of Nyssa

He is who He was, and He is also who He will be because the great I Am never steps out of the present tense. ― Tony Evans

I am a passionate seeker after truth which is but another name for God. — Gandhi

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion. — Meister Eckhart Tolle

He loves each one of us like there is only one of us to love (when God whisper your name) — Max Lucado

Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight. — Maya Angelou

SONGS about NAMES of GOD

The incarnate Word is with us,
is still speaking, is present
always, yet leaves no sign
but everything that is.
— Wendell Berry

The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things,
I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever …
— Mary Oliver

When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning. — John O’Donohue

Just as a person is in relation to you a father
and in relation to another either son or brother —
So the names of God in their number have relations:
He is from the viewpoint of the infidel the Tyrant (qaher);
from our viewpoint, the Merciful.
— Rumi, Divan e-Kebir, tr. Annemarie Schimmel

With us, the name of everything is its outward appearance;
with the Creator, the name of each thing is its inward reality.
In the eye of Moses, the name of his rod was “staff”;
in the eye of the Creator, its name was “dragon.”
In brief, that which we are in the end
is our real name with God.
— Rumi, Mathnawi I:1239-40, 1244

Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life. And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity. — Dalai Lama XIV

RESOURCES about the name of God:

YHWH: The Tetragrammaton

The Tetragrammaton, referred to in rabbinic literature as HaShem (The Name) or Shem Hameforash (The Special Name), is the word used to refer to the four-letter word, yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה), that is the name for God used in the Hebrew Bible. The name, which some people pronounce as Yahweh and others (mostly Christians) as Jehovah, appears 5,410 times in the Bible (1,419 of those in the Torah). — My jewish Learning (full article: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-tetragrammaton/)

The letter from the Holy See explains that the Divine Name as revealed in the Old Testament, יהוה (YHWH), has been held as unpronounceable as an expression of reverence for the greatness of God. The directive notes that “in recent years the practice has crept in pronouncing the God of Israel’s proper name,” known as the holy or divine tetragrammaton, written with four consonants, YHWH, in the Hebrew alphabet. In order to vocalize it, it is necessary to introduce vowels that alter the written and spoken forms of the name (i.e. “Yahweh” or “Jehovah”). Citing theological and philological reasons, and in keeping with tradition, the letter reminds the bishops that “from the beginning… the sacred tetragrammaton was never pronounced in the Christian context nor translated into any languages into which the Bible was translated.” Historically the Divine Name was rendered in Hebrew as Adonai, in Greek as Kyrios, and in Latin as Dominus. — Letter to Bishops Conferences (link to full resource)

The most common name of God in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, that is usually transcribed as YHWH. Hebrew script is an abjad, so that the letters in the name are normally consonants, usually expanded as Yahweh in English. Modern Jewish culture judges it forbidden to pronounce this name. In prayers it is replaced by the word Adonai (“The Lord”), and in discussion by HaShem (“The Name”). — wikipedia

GOD’S NAME for US

The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God’s name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough. ― Rachel Held Evans

And the Word that had most recently come from the mouth of God was, “This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased.” Identity. It’s always God’s first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God’s own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school—they all have a go at telling us who we are. But only God can do that. Everything else is temptation. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

The love of God is not generic. God looks with love upon every man and woman, calling them by name. — Pope Francis

I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous. — Maya Angelou

God calls each and every star by name. It’s not likely He has forgotten yours. — Louie Giglio

USING OTHER WORDS for the UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAME of GOD

Historically the Divine Name was rendered in Hebrew as Adonai, in Greek as Kyrios, and in Latin as Dominus. — Letter to Bishops Conferencs (link to full resource)

Hashem is a Hebrew term for God. Literally, it means “the name.” In the Bible the Hebrew word for God is made up of four vowels, and according to tradition it was only pronounced on Yom Kippur by the High Priest. Saying God’s name was considered a very serious and powerful thing, so much so that one of the Ten Commandments prohibits us from saying God’s name in vain. As a result, people have come up with various substitutions. When reading Torah, we generally substitute the word Adonai for the four letter un-pronounceable name of God. Outside of reading and praying, God is often referred to as Hashem, a creative way of not saying God’s name. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, it’s kind of the opposite of how Voldemort was referred to as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” — My Jewish Learning (full article: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/hashem/)

There are many other names for God in Jewish tradition, including Adoshem, Yah, Yahweh, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, El Shaddai, Av Harahamim, and Harahaman. — My Jewish Learning (full article: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/hashem/)

Instead, a variety of pseudonyms are used, such as Adonai (Lord), Elohim (God) and HaShem (The Name). — My jewish Learning (full article: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-tetragrammaton/)
SOME WAYS of PRAYING the NAMES of GOD

See the songs above for some approaches to the 99 names and 72 names of God as acts of prayer.

Additional resources:
• Praying the names of God by the Navigators:
https://www.navigators.org/resource/praying-names-attributes-god
• Praying the names of God with Tony Evans: http://tonyevans.org/praying-and-pronouncing-the-names-of-god/ • Praying the names of God with Ann Spangler: https://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals/prayingnamesgod/
• 99 Names of God: https://marytn.medium.com/the-most-beautiful-names-of-god-99-names-of-allah-b898f624cada
• 72 Names of God: https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/1388270/jewish/72-Names-of-G-d.htm

REFLECTIONS on NAMES of GOD

Watches have watch makers, paintings have painters, designs have designers, and creation has a creator. ― Tony Evans

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. — William Makepeace Thackeray

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. — Paul Tillich

God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him. — Paulo Coelho

There is no greater spellbinder of peace than the name of God. — GandhiIt has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God.  — Tony Campolo

God is a name we give to love. — Nancy Pickard

I guess if you’re doing God’s work, whatever you do is in His name. — Edward Zigler Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a thelogically defensible reading of the Bible. — Sam Harris

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think. — Maya Angelou

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
Lo, for I to myself am unknown, now in God’s name what must I do? — Rumi

When you bow deeply to the universe, it bows back; when you call out the name of God, it echoes inside you. — Morihei Ueshiba

The God we worship writes his name upon our faces. — Roger Babson

We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There’s not much personal about the laws of physics. — Stephen Hawking

Many are the names of God and infinite the forms through which He may be approached. —Ramakrishna

Somebody said once or wrote, once: ‘We’re all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God’s name with the wrong alphabet blocks! — Tennessee Williams

We, like the people of Israel, would like to think we get to name God. By naming God, we hope to get the kind of god we need; that is, a god after our own likeness. — Stanley Hauerwas

I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise it can feel like I am worshipping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber

God wrote a book on suffering, and its name is Jesus. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn’t matter what his name is. — Joseph Campbell

The love of God is not something vague or generic; the love of God has a name and a face: Jesus Christ. — Pope Francis

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