Shabbat Gathering: "God was in this place..."

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

The little book group I belong to just finished a short book, “God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning” by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. (The second “I” is intentionally lower case.) It’s a short book that offers seven different drashes on a single verse of Torah, the verse turned into the title of the book. The parsha the verse is drawn from focuses on Jacob and the dream he had where he saw angels going up and down a ladder. He wakes from the dream and says, “God Was in this Place and I, I Did Not Know.”

In one of the chapters, Kushner writes:

“God is the ocean and we are the waves. In some sense each wave has its moment in which it is distinguishable as a somewhat separate entity. Nevertheless, no wave is entirely distinct from the ocean which is its substantial ground. The waves are surface manifestations of the ocean. Our knowledge of the ocean is largely dependent on the way it manifests itself in the waves.” [Professor Richard Rubenstein of Florida State University]

But you cannot simultaneously be aware that you are the wave and be aware that you are part of the ocean. And that is why God is so elusive. In a similar vein, theologian Alan Watts suggests that “God is the self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes.…” Consider, for instance, what such an idea would do to our understanding of prayer. Assuming the waves could speak, what should they say to the ocean? Perhaps the most meaningful noise they could make would be the rhythmic, relentless whisper they make as they rise and fall, come in and out of being. Surely that is a worthy prayer. Surely those prayerful sounds, if they could be scored on paper, would be worthy of regular rehearsal, for they would remind each wave of the source of its being. Making those sounds would remind each wave that it was indeed a wave and, contrary to all the wave’s illusions, not something else.

,,,

Prayers run in two directions, for the ocean also speaks to the waves. But since the waves are already part of the ocean, their sound is, in some sense, the sound of their source speaking to them. They are the mouth of the ocean, and their prayer is the way the sea has of speaking to itself.

In the same way, the words of the prayerbook and all the meditations of our hearts are the sound of God speaking to God. As Rabbi Kalynomos Kalmish Shapira of Piesetzna, who perished in the Warsaw ghetto, used to say, “Not only does God hear our prayers, God prays through us as well.”

In a meditation class I once took, the teacher used the same metaphor of the ocean and the waves to describe the principle of meditation, to notice that the waves and the ocean are one, to notice that our thoughts are just on the surface of great stillness. It seems like more and more in this frantic world we live in I'm searching for great stillness so I cultivate habits that help me find that. And, sometimes, I'm even successful.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.

PS

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