Brick By Brick: TorahCycle Metzora

Posted on by
Reply

SheminiThe protagonist of Stephen King’s novel Dr. Sleep has a deep, guilty, secret. He builds his life around it, hiding it in the foundation of his identity, always believing that no matter how much good he does, he’s still the guy who did That! When he finally spills in an AA meeting, something miraculous happens. He realizes everyone around him has heard and possibly done worse.

We don’t need to build our lives on a dark foundation. Better to build them with our best actions, and clean out old dry rot as we grow.

This week’s reading’s about ritual purification of a house with patches of red and green on its walls. The high priest assesses if it’s possible to cleanse or if it should be demolished. A house can mean a dwelling but it’s also a symbol for self.

For decades I thought in eastern metaphors. I would have said I was a Buddhist or Bu-Jew. A fundamental goal of many eastern religions is transcendence of the self. Goodbye to the idea of I/me. I’ve come to believe that there’s great benefit in elevation through self. Not in a chest-thumping ego way, but in a we’re-here-to-do-good way. So when I hear house, I think of self as our home base in each incarnation.

We’re here wearing earthly clothes exactly because we’re supposed to be working on earthly things. Cleaning up the place, energetically as well as ecologically, while we move our personal karma along. Helping out day by day, in both random and conscious acts of goodness.

You don’t need a scorecard to measure the good you do. It shouldn’t matter if you’re an activist or just in the right place and time to help. Whether you do a big deed or are a willing ear or shoulder to cry on, or a pair of helping hands for someone in need. However you make our collective self happier, sweeter, and more harmonious elevates your self and the rest of us. Your actions reflect the higher and better good, and raise the bar for all of us.

You and I and everyone we know have a unique and necessary constellation of talents and skills. Yes, plus all our foibles and habits and annoyances. But in the toolkit of us, we’ve got everything we need to cleanse this house of ours.

When you arc too far into greed, gluttony, or any form of darkness or sin, your ego attracts mold and dry rot. It doesn’t take a priest to see the changes in your personality, vocabulary, and day-to-day choices. The rest of us observe and feel it all too easily.

We build the houses of our lives brick by brick. By acts of kindness or acts of selfishness. By our caring or our indifference. Now’s a great time, right before Passover, to clean out the dirt before it does damage. Spring cleaning your character as well as your cupboards.

Start by looking for your old splotches. Then get out the bleach and begin paying better attention in each moment. If we can stay more conscious, live with greater awareness and intention, we might be able to prevent what we’d otherwise hide and then need to heal.

Cleaning Up Your Act: TorahCycle Tazria

Posted on by
5

Tazria 2014Yiddish has great onomatopoeic words for dirt/dirty: schmutz/schmutzadick. In case 10th-grade English didn’t kick in, onomatopoeia describes a word that is what it sounds like. In this case soiled or unclean.

This week’s reading is about cleansing body and soul (and your clothes along the way) when your body shows visible evidence of sin. Bleaching away what defines you as having done wrong. In this case getting rid of spots–which could be anything from psoriasis to leprosy.

When we’re teenagers, spots are usually hormone-related. Hormones are a great source for sinful thoughts, regardless of age. In adulthood our bad actions cover a broader range, though the spots are usually less visible.

Although most of our secrets are less dark than we fear, we do work to keep them hidden. If someone gets too close to uncovering them, we might become insular, grumpy, or even angry, act the jokester, or use another form of hyper-drive to diffuse our distress.

But what if you couldn’t hide evidence of your misdeeds? What if your spots were there for everyone to see? If you were ritually declared unclean? What then?

In this story the afflicted is Miriam, Moses’ sister, accused of the seemingly mild sin of having gossiped about him.  Officially the bad action is l’shon hara, speaking badly of another, from disparagement to rumoring.

There’s the story of a rabbi who takes the town gossip to a windy rooftop and has her slash open a feather pillow. Imagine, says the rabbi, if each feather was a story you told. Could you undo what you have done?

True or not, what is said in a moment can change how we think of someone for a lifetime.

Our inner judgements are no less damning. Our inner lady Macbeth, walking around muttering, cursing, and praying for the damn spot to be Out! Out!

When our misdeeds are recognized (or their telltale flags, the spots, become visible) we are shamed and lose social standing. But there’s a formula for cleansing, and then re-admittance back into the tribe. Slate wiped clean. Like the kid toy where you raise the cellophane and your picture disappears. Or its modern equivalent, the delete key.

Would you be willing to endure public acknowledgement that you’d done something wrong (even if folks didn’t know what) and a week of isolation, to earn that clean, refreshed screen? And remember that if folks are gossiping about what you might have done, they risk earning spots of their own.

Imagine a world where you didn’t gossip about or judge others and they did the same for you. What if we could choose this, instead of having it decided for us? What if we could devise a cleansing ritual that got us to the same place?

Judaism has the mikveh, a ritual bath, three times fully immersed in water, releasing the past and the future, then committing to being fully present. Can you imagine your own version of that? Can you imagine it working? It might not clean up acne or the past, but it could lighten your soul, and your preoccupation with what you’ve done that wish you hadn’t.

Can you imagine a world free from spots and judgement?

Playing Fair: TorahCycle Shemini

Posted on by
1

ChukatEvery year when this reading rolls around, I feel like the cranky neighbor your parents warned you about when you were a kid, the one shaking my fist and muttering about how unfair life is.

Quick plot summary: Two of Aaron’s sons enter the holy of holies with what we’re told is “strange fire” and are zapped dead. Every year I look in vain for some fine print to make this story more palatable.

The majority of rabbinic commentators assert they were killed for disobeying the rules and regs of priestly behavior. They’re castigated for being young and impetuous, possibly drunk or stoned, and generally impious. A minority offer up the possibility that their eagerness to serve was rewarded by instant graduation to their next next, whether you think that’s heaven or reincarnation.

Every year I ask: Short of harming a living being, how the *&%$^&%* can there be any wrong way to pray? To honor creation? To give praise and thanks, or even to ask for help?  That covers most of our convos with the invisible divine. It would be a short life if we got zapped for them.

There’s an old Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to any club that would admit him. My corollary: I don’t wanna belong to any religion that believes there’s only one right way to do things. That goes for fundamentalists of every stripe, from spiritual dogmatists, to food or fashion police, or any my-way-or-the-highway true believers.

One of the questions I asked in a recent class was, What are your personal spiritual values? Some of mine: I believe in goodness, and our individual and collective right and responsibility to practice goodness often. We should be trying to find and follow paths that heal what is hurt or broken in ourselves and others, paths that help make us more whole and holy.

It’s the logical extension of Think globally, act locally. You’re as local as it gets.

In the new Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson did a great job of locating earth and humanity in space/time. We have a similar responsibility–each cellular constellation of you and me–to navigate our holy spark through the same cosmos.

We may just be teeny specks in a gigantic universe, but we are conscious and holy ones. Our prayers are an instinctive desire to connect with other holy sparks. It doesn’t matter much to me if they are human or divine. We’re intrinsically good and should treat ourselves and others as though we are. We all deserve that.

Being human means we’re fallible and prone to all manner of blowing it, from putting self-interest first to inconsistency, denial, or fear. So despite our best hopes, we don’t always choose the right path. But most of us are trying to get it right, or at least better, and our enthusiasm shouldn’t be so harshly punished.

I have a friend who leaps into exercise regimens with vigor and passion, though sadly without stretching. She cycles through workout-injury-recuperation (the sound track is exultation-anger-frustration). But she’s trying. Hard.

The moral I want from this story is that every nanosecond of trying is good and worth it, no matter the short-run outcomes. Teach your soul to play the long game and believe it’s worth doing.

What If? : TorahCycle Tzav

Posted on by
1

KarmaRide 2013If you ran the world, how would it spin?

Everybody’s idea of happiness is different. (For some clues about how different, take a handful of buzzworthy quizzes.) Your idea of relaxation might be a four-star beach; your friend’s could be backpacking. You might aspire to being a musician or a CEO. Another’s dream is being a priest, a seeker whose job is to make ritual and to bless.

This reading tells us about the seven-day purification process for Aaron and his sons to become priests. But because I think this whole story is really about/for us, it suggests how to shed whatever’s keeping you from living not just holier but happier.

So, what would make you happy?

Most folks want to change something: from their bodies to a bad job, an unhappy relationship, or an unhealthy habit. We hope the payoff will be a better life, a good life. I’d like to expand the “good life” to be more than a satisfied sense of achievement and self-indulgence. I’d like it to include goodness in the moral and ethical sense.

One of my favorite bumpers stickers has always been If you want peace work for justice. Collectives, whether they’re tribes, nations, or political parties, tend to have goals that seem complicated. Individuals are easier. They mostly want to be happy. To not have to fret about safety, love, or money. To know the bills will get paid, that there’ll be food on the table, and that the house and kids are squared away. That there’s hope for the future.

Social equity breeds peace. Happy people are less likely to fight or kill.

If you decided to initiate yourself as a happier person, what would it take? Making and keeping vows? Making more time for your own priorities? Doing more for others? How would you do it and how will you know when you’re there?

The classic Buddhist answer is to shed desire. But for most of us there’s always one more nagging gimme, big or small, profound or silly.. The classic Jewish answer is similar: be happy with the life you’ve got. See everything that happens to you–no matter how undeserved or painful it may sometimes feel–as a chance to step up and show your faith.

Those may be the enlightened views, but small steps are a great start. Happiness with ourselves can amplify our caring and compassion for our friends and neighbors. And happier, more satisfied, people make this a better planet to hang out on.

We’ve all seen zillions of internet and email promises of Just 10 steps to [insert goal]. They generally include buying vitamins or pills, CDs, or books. But what if, as this reading suggests, taking seven days to focus on initiation could actually change you. Commit to doing any one thing, and actually stick to it. You might not become a priest, but what if you could become more/less  _____________?

What if you committed to one change for the next seven days, just to see how you’d feel on the other side? Nothing dramatic, just a single right step, repeated consistently. I’m going to do it, and pay good attention along the way. Please join me.

Yes, Me: TorahCycle Vayikra

Posted on by
1

Va'eirahThe most common answer from kids to Who Did This?!? is Not Me! It doesn’t change much as we grow up.

We’re quick to put distance from our flaws and failings, especially once they’ve been discovered. We try hard to be noticed for achievements, but are often surprisingly shy to accept praise, even when it’s well-deserved. Such a strange mix of seeking on the one hand, and hiding on the other.

Who did this? Not me. Ummm……., Yup, me.

We need to take credit for the good we do, and responsibility for the not-so-good. It turns out better in the end. Dodging rarely does, as politics often proves: It’s not the misdeed that screws you, but the cover up.

This week’s reading, the first of Leviticus (a book primarily about laws and rules) is about what to do after we’ve done wrong. Atonement rituals, specifically sacrifices, for spiritual transgressions, bad actions, and sins real or even merely possible.

Lots of places to set the bar. And many bendy, twisty things to do once you get there. I’m a metaphorist, so words are as real to me as offering up critters or grain. I’m hoping sincerity counts on the scales of justice, as well as literal sacrifice.

Regardless of form, it’s useful and healing to have atonement rituals. You might get there by truly saying Sorry, by making a peace offering, or by sacrificing in measure and kind, or with your time and energy. All to wipe the slate clean, or at least cleaner.

The first step is simple and necessary: taking responsibility for your words and deeds. First to yourself–in whatever squeaky voice of conscience you use. And then to whomever you’ve wronged. Even when it stings, it feels good to raise your hand and say Yes, me. And then to do what needs to be done.

We know we’ll feel better on the other side. So why’re we so slow to raise our hands?

I think because we’re used to hugging the midline. Dodging blame even when it’s due, and ducking praise even when it’s well-earned. We may feel guilty for saying Not me when we need to. So when we’re appreciated, we’re more modest than we should be.

That’s how karma accretes. Like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls downhill, the layers that shield our holy self grow each time we don’t step up. Jewish mysticism calls these layers klipot. Think of them as husks or veils. Coverings that conceal your inner holy spark. Every time you do anything less than be your highest and best self, you add more klipot to your holiness.

These rituals help thin those layers. They’re meant to happen soon after we blow it, not to wait for the annual fall confessional, when we core dump all our sins. Don’t wait; step up now.

There are wonderful website and postcard projects where people can take their darkest secrets and toss them overboard with anonymous confessions. Not as direct as an apology, but a good first step in saying Yes, me.

However big or small your sins, imagine how much lighter you’d feel if you did that. How much brighter would your holy spark shine? How much happier would you be?

Anybody Home?: TorahCycle Pekudei

Posted on by
1

Toldot

When I was in high school, my father, much to my chagrin, began answering the phone saying Nobody home!, mostly in jest but also implying prospective friends or dates too flummoxed or intimidated were people with whom I should not socialize. (This the same guy who, invited to a boring relative’s three months out, intoned gravely I’m sorry, I have a funeral.)

These days when we say Nobody home, we’re usually referring to what we politely call a “senior moment,” a confusion/absence of facts or names, one or many synapses misfiring. We’re so in the moment we can’t add more to it, or so “out to lunch” we can’t cope with what’s already on our plate.

So how do you know if there’s somebody home or not?

In this reading we’re told “HaShem’s glory” descended to fill the mishkan and will hover over it in a cloud as a sign of God’s presence. If the cloud rises in the morning, time to pack up and get shlepping. If the cloud remains low, a day to stay put. HaShem will also keep a fire burning in the mishkan each night.

Hearth fires give security. Very different than being out in the dark wondering what’s too near, eying us with predatory intent. The fire mean’s God’s home and with you. No matter what’s circling, you can feel safe and protected, if you believe HaShem is home.

How can we know as clearly when we’re really present? Having our brains respond accurately is a good start. Other parts showing up help too. If we’re talking I might hear your words. But that doesn’t guarantee I really understand you, or that I’m ready to help. I may hear that you need something, but unless I open my hands, my wallet, or my heart, you might think nobody’s home.

So if we’re not always fully present—for whatever reasons–why would we assume the divine presence is always on tap? Cloud, schmoud! Couldn’t it be smoke and mirrors?

Q: How do you know anyone’s really home in the mishkan?
A: It’s partly a matter of faith. But if you’re not at home in you, it won’t much matter.

More answer: To live with greater awareness and intention, you have to be home in yourself, regardless of what/who is outside you. You need a strong center, though not one that’s housed in too strong an ego. You should be at least as receptive as you are active. Working on your karmic homework while listening for the help that’s offered you regularly.

How? To really connect with HaShem, not just sidle up to the reassuring presence of the fire or the cloud, you have to really be home in your inner mishkan. You need to listen with your heart and soul as well as with your ears. If you’re thinking too much about your t-shirt dyed pink in the wash, you’re unlikely to hear divine insights, even if they’re telling you how to bleach it–or your soul–white again.

Final answer: If you’re at home with you, HaShem is too.

Making My Mishkan: TorahCycle Vayakhel

Posted on by
Reply

Class - Post

Much of this week’s reading is about the making of the mishkan, the portable ark, and the accoutrements for its assembly and use. I’ve spent the past several weeks working on a different sort of mishkan, the workbook for a class/process I’m developing. I’m loving the chance to re-encounter Jewish mysticism and to express my take on Kabbalah, the system of insight that’s become the spine of my spiritual journey.

Our spirituality is deeply individual. We may share holidays or prayers, language or metaphors, a belief in what’s eternal. But at its heart, spirituality is a conversation you have most often with yourself, and with the world of the unseen, however and wherever you encounter it.

The mishkan is a receptor site. A place to encounter the world of the unseen in space-time.

Some folks get that sense of connection in services or ritual. I find it most often through writing. In the magical connection between words and synapses. Images and ideas than run through me, teach me, help me talk to others.

I hope you find this place, because there’s few feelings as good as being connected with a wisdom greater than one’s own.

Developing this course is pushing me to go face-to-face with my beliefs and practices. Just as the ice storm that disconnected me from the internet for days left me grateful for my wood stove, I’m distilling what really matters. What’s necessary and core. What gives nourishment. When it’s incredible joy, it’s rewarding from soul to gut. I hope the same for you, however you get there.

I’m working through images and practices that connect us with our highest selves, and that help us examine why our less noble parts sometimes grab the wheel. I’m trying to express these concepts in ways that feel accessible and whole. As I do, I’m struck again by the importance of sharing our best with one another. For me, that’s writing and problem solving. For someone else it might be singing or carpentry.

We’re a community. Each one of us part of a whole trying to express itself through the imperfect instruments that we are. Our job is to listen well, and then do our best to give our best. Together we make a mishkan, a place to receive the holy and to heal this imperfect world.

We may have snarky days, or clumsy ones. No one can be sacred and in a good mood all the time. No email, phone, and FaceBook made me cranky as well as giving me time to write.

Being human means we need lots of slowing and quieting down to hear what we’re supposed to. Turning down outer noise, albeit not by choice, brought all the blessings of any great vacation or extended Shabbat. A chance for reflection, for hearing the universe tell me more than I often try to ask or tell it. Visiting the mishkan of greater quietude.

By being in your own mishkan you’ll hear what you most need. Let what comes through open and teach you. However you find your mishkan, I hope you’ll visit often and receive much.

PS – If Discovering Your Inner Tree of Life sounds interesting, please let me know.

Mercy, Mercy: TorahCycle Ki Tisa

Posted on by
2

Vayeira 2013Have you ever done something so bad you thought you’d never be forgiven? Not a small thing, but something you thought, maybe even swore, you’d never do?

That’s what the Israelites do this week, while waiting for Moses to descend Sinai. They get impatient, worry he might not come back. They violate the No other gods commandment, and smelt their gold into a golden calf. It’s not as small as Don’t think about X and then doing so obsessively. But it’s a helluva lot more than We were restless. Hard to stay calm when your mind keeps chewing over  the insufficient calming of Don’t worry. Be patient..

I just finished two books about guilt and shame. About actions taken which dominate the lives of the people who did them. Both Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowlands are good reads, though it’s tough living inside the heads and hearts of people in chronic emotional pain. Each needs to find a road to redemption. A way to start over is lots harder and more important than dialing up a pizza or a Netflixx movie.

It means finding and accepting forgiveness. In this story it’s gonna take a coupla generations and forty years of schlepping. A road, a long one, to the promised land. Moses, pleading for them, gets HaShem to say yes to coming along as witness, guide, protector.

Interestingly this same reading includes the thirteen attributes of mercy  (rachamim in Hebrew, a lovely sounding word), including compassion, mercy, graciousness, truth, forgiveness, and pardon.

Imagine if those qualities organized your life, your head, and your heart. Imagine a world slow to anger. Imagine yourself slow to anger.

When Moses returns, his face is so touched with holy light that the people, albeit guilty and ashamed, cannot look directly at him. His face also gets red with wrath as he breaks the tablets.

There was a great NPR riff the other day (though it may have been on Bluff the Listener) about an app that lets you see what someone else sees when they’re watching you. How you look when flushed with joy, red with anger, or blushing in shame. A chance to witness yourself as others see you.

My family didn’t do anger with sound. Instead people retreated to their corner with a book. No eye contact. The app would not have shown their inner turmoil, that churning of anxiety, guilt, and fear of future consequences, even if apologies were said and officially accepted.

External forgiveness is great. But it doesn’t really take hold until you forgive yourself. Imagine extending the thirteen qualities of mercy towards yourself. Imagine being able to bathe in them, wash clean your bad choices and your mistakes. Whatever you said or did not undone but cleared of its power to influence your next forty years. Imagine mercy that releases their hold on your heart.

It takes time for a new equilibrium to settle in. We’ve all learned from our personal shlepping that the road is rarely smooth and level. There are always more tests, reality checks large and small, to test our resolve. But if we let mercy in, and our commitment to change is strong, we can move from this now to a better next.

Put On Your Robes: TorahCycle Tetzaveh

Posted on by
Reply

Tetzaveh 2014

This week’s reading has very detailed instructions about priestly vestments. Think special in the way of prom and wedding dresses. Clothes we wear for high occasions, for initiations, and that ready the wearer for ritual. In this case, white linens and a jeweled breastplate, and rituals of atonement and renewal.

Torah names a select few, and one High Priest, as initiated and elevated. In my cosmology, humanity is a nation of priests, each for another.

Some days I can see my robes and on other days yours. When it’s yours, I transcend knowing you don them on one arm at a time, just like I do. Instead I listen up, and can hear deeper truths from you about how I’m off-track and screwing up, or doing well, making good choices. I credit your stories with more authority.

Most problems in life come when my non-robe-wearing self butts into your non-rob-wearing self. If we could remember who we really are, we’d be less easily annoyed and frustrated by what’s said. We’d listen better and argue less. We’d tell stories of friendship, growth, and hope.

There’re days when you feel like a priest and days when you don’t. Days (or at least moments) when you walk around glowing with wow. Others when you’re cranky and nothing helps, no matter what you’re wearing. In those moments what I most need—and can seem furthest away–is to laugh. Or at least a good story.

Neil Gaimon’s sequel to American Gods dramatizes the transition from gods whose stories were tales of carnage, red in tooth and claw, to the rise of trickster gods and clever heroes. Gods who teach by making us think. The God of Torah is yet another evolution: a god whose stories open our consciousness and our hearts. Who helps us out of stuck. Who readies us to elevate both our stories and our souls.

Good priests do that too. Beyond conducting a great ritual, they invite you to see yourself in a clearer light: to witness, accept, and ask for more insight–from yourself and others, from holy messengers in every form. They bring you closer to the holiness inside and around you. They help you make more moments of your life feel sacred, or at least better.

The stories we tell matter. They make us priestly or competitive, feel holy or provoked. Because thought is the greatest trickster god of all. A thought can make you hungry or sad, satisfied or victorious. It’s all in how you tell your stories, and the rituals you conduct to reinforce them. Why choose anger when you could choose love?

Try to be and see the priest in yourself and others, even wearing jeans and an old t-shirt. Even in your nemesis or the guy asking for handouts. It’s harder, and usually we don’t. More often we judge our own or others’ distance from the very holiness we profess to aspire to. Each time we do, we fail an initiation.

Putting on your robes lets you access your wisdom and experience. Lets you leave stories of hurt, cynicism, and doubt in your past. And gives you new stories of love and hope.

Home Base: TorahCycle Terumah

Posted on by
1

Terumah 2014A lot of my spirituality comes from the idea of being told. Of instructions about everything from my karmic homework to where I put my glasses. Messages that come with a deep sense of knowing: a synchronous recognition in my head, heart, and gut. Like the puzzle piece that slides perfectly into place, it’s an awareness of direction and action that just feels right, even if sometimes it also seems challenging, or ironically simplistic. Of course I need to be listening to hear it.

Most of us get instructions for from context. From family, teachers, partners, and mentors. Verbal and nonverbal. (Insert the classic image of my mother pulling her shoulders back and square like a drill sergeant, hissing Stand up straight!) Sometimes we listen and sometimes we don’t, to our benefit or peril.

The reading’s about the construction of the miskhkan, the portable ark the Jews will carry through the desert. It acts as home base. A place for people to gather and listen, and for HaShem to communicate with them. Such a fascinating contradiction between the core idea of indwelling spirit (our holy spark) and the need for a special site for God to visit and instruct.

I recognize and respect sacred spaces, from the comforting hush of formal sanctuaries to the hidden magic of ancient painted caves. But I prefer the idea of a portable sanctuary that’s in me. A beacon emitting the Help me, Teach me, Thank you signal the way the SETI Project sends earthly transmissions to whoever’s out there listening.

My word for that inner mishkan is HaMakom, a God-name that means The Place. Completely portable. Where the inner and outer rest within one another. HaMakom can occur anywhere in space-time. In nature or dreamtime, meditation or inspiration. It’s a conversation between worlds seen and unseen that feels just right.

No one yet knows how long they’re gonna be on the road. Making something together is a bonding exercise. Everyone contributes: money, ideas, thread.

The idea that you could make a place to invite the divine to show up is seductive. The instructions, like Noah’s ark, are many and specific. Part of the message: it takes work and time to get where you wanna go. Lots of steps. Collecting. Measuring. Assembling. Blessing. But like the old cartoon about the seeker parked outside a guru’s cave, just because you show up and ask, doesn’t mean you’ll hear anything

Atop the mishkan are two cherubs. They face one another, with a space between them. When I first heard Charlie Hayden/Pat Metheny’s album, Beyond A Missouri Sky, I was fascinated by the openness between the notes. A breath. Like an open heart, that space is our inner mishkan, our receptor site to get spoken to.

There’s lots of instructions coming. For now they’re delivered without recriminations and scolding. We’re encouraged to do good and well. Offered hope in the possibility of progress. Even its inevitability, if we listen well and choose a righteous path with an open heart.

Create HaMakom by honoring your inner mishkan. Stay open and listen well. The more you do, the better you’ll hear the answers you seek.