Tag Archives: God

Uncategorized

An Invitation From God?

4 Comments

We were created in G-d’s image. The image of His vision.

From a point before and beyond all things, G-d looked upon a moment in time to be, and saw there a soul, distant from Him in a turbulent world, yet yearning to return to Him and His oneness. And He saw the pleasure He would have from this union.

So He invested His infinite light into that finite image, and became one with that image, and in that image He created each one of us.

As for that moment He saw, that was the moment now.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“G-d’s Image”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

G-d looked upon a moment in time to be, and saw there a soul, distant from Him in a turbulent world, yet yearning to return to Him and His oneness.

To employ a small joke, I resemble that remark. To be fair, a lot of other people within the community of faith also “resemble that remark,” whether they’re willing to admit it or not. In fact, there are times when I wonder how anyone can feel close to God because, after all, He is the Creator of the universe and the Master of all worlds. How can one, small, insignificant human being really matter to compared to all that?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor. –Psalm 8:3-5 (ESV)

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. –Matthew 10:29-31 (SEV)

I know, I know. It’s hard to say I’m irrelevant to God in an absolute sense when we have these verses to turn to. The Bible contains all of these little bits and pieces suggesting that human beings have God’s attention but it is nevertheless possible to feel as if you are utterly alone.

Rabbi Freeman, in one of his commentaries on prayer called The View From Within, mentions this.

So here we are, at rock bottom, suffering from all our circumstances because we can’t figure out how on earth any of this could be good. We’re helpless – this is an inherent deficiency in our design and vantage point.

I’m taking this way out of context (the full article can be found at the link I posted above), but it does paint a good picture of where I am right now. Remember from yesterday’s morning meditation that I’m picturing myself as sitting at the bottom of a well. God has just lowered a ladder and it is implied that by praying, I can begin to climb. Today, Rabbi Freeman is saying that even what we pray for is a matter of perspective, as well as how we understand our life circumstances. To illustrate this point, he tells a story:

When the Baal Shem Tov was leader of the chassidim, whenever troubles befell them, he would pray and avert the harsh decrees from heaven. When the Baal Shem Tov passed on and his disciple, the great kabbalist, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritch, took over the leadership, he would similarly avert these decrees. When the Magid passed on, the most difficult persecutions of their leadership and of their cause began.

The students of the Magid, all of them great, enlightened masters, beseeched him to respond to them from his place in the world beyond. They pleaded, “As long as you were here, you interceded successfully on our behalf. Certainly, from your place in the next world you have yet greater power to intercede!”

The Magid responded to his disciples, “When I was below, I saw these things as harsh and cruel. But from my station up here, I only see the good in all of this. As Rabbi Akiva taught, all that the All-Merciful does is for the good. How could I pray to avert something I see as true goodness?”

His disciples then asked, “If so, our master, what about us? Should we also desist from praying that these decrees be averted?”

“No,” the Magid responded. “Since in your world these appear to be evil, you must do everything in your power to avert them and alter the heavenly decree!”

-Rabbi S.Y. Zevin, Sipurei Chassidim

In real life, we hardly ever hear from people who have ascended into the Heavenly realm (if we do at all) and so we do not, in actuality, have any idea of their perspective. We remain locked into our own, like an ant trying to move a pebble in the dirt. We human beings can look down on that ant with a completely different viewpoint and realize a world the ant has no ability to imagine, let alone experience. But we are unable to impart to that ant how much more there is in the universe around it, even though we see a vast panorama beyond that one small ant pushing a pebble in the dirt.

This is how we are in comparison to God.

But we didn’t create the ant’s universe, nor did we create the ant. The vast majority of us don’t care all that much for ants, and if they get into our homes, we’ll exterminate them without hardly a thought about their deaths. This, we hope and pray, is not how God sees us, and in fact, we hope and pray that God sees us with love and compassion, rather than as insects infesting His world.

But all we have is an ant’s point of view. Unlike the ant, we have the imagination to envision something much more; something we cannot directly experience, but there’s a difference between imagination and knowledge. There’s even a difference between faith and belief and knowledge.

If I were to take Rabbi Freeman’s lesson at face value, I would have to accept that however I currently imagine my experience, it is not at all the same as seen from God’s perspective. What I experience as feelings of emptiness, He may see as something else entirely. But unlike the Magid to his students, God does not speak to we, His creations, to tell us that what we see as evil, God only sees as good.

Or does He?

So here we are, at rock bottom, suffering from all our circumstances because we can’t figure out how on earth any of this could be good. We’re helpless — this is an inherent deficiency in our design and vantage point. And the Mastermind of All Worlds turns to us from His penthouse panorama with banks of video monitors on every creature in the universe, and yells down into your pit, “So how’s the weather down there? Any complaints?”

And this is mitzvah of tefillah! To “petition for all your needs with requests and supplications” three times a day!

It must be, then—because this is the only way out of our conundrum—that for whatever reason (or just out of pure desire), the Creator of this reality is interested in the experience from within, and not just from above. And He wants to bring the two into perfect union.

Tefillah, then, means a union of two worlds, two perspectives, two forms of consciousness: The view from Above unites with the view from within. And we are the matchmakers.

This again, is an interpretation and an imagination as related by Rabbi Freeman’s commentary on prayer. He is telling us that prayer does matter because, in part, it is the joining of our experience with God’s experience and that God desires we share our experience with Him. Of course, Rabbi Freeman is saying all of this from a Jewish perspective and relating it to a Jewish audience, but given the comments on prayer I made yesterday, I don’t think it’s terribly unreasonable for me to apply his lesson to an individual Christian sitting at the bottom of the abyss.

But as I imagine prayer as the means by which I may start climbing out of the pit, Rabbi Freeman has other ideas.

This is vital for us to know before we go any further into the spiritual ascent of prayer, mystic union and higher consciousness: The goal is not a jailbreak out of the dungeon of material existence. The goal is a marriage of two worlds—ours and His. Heaven on earth. Tefillah is where the two kiss.

Sounds very “romantic,” but then in Judaism, God is called “the lover of our souls.” I don’t know if the exact same relationship can be said of God and me relative to Judaism, but perhaps filtered through John 3:16, it might apply because of the Messiah. Because of Jesus, God may also love the Christian soul.

So if prayer isn’t a ladder designed for the human to ascend out of the pit of the world and into the heavens, is it instead an invitation to dance? If so, I’ll have to learn to stand first, and then to walk. Right now, I’m like the wallflower at the high school prom, staring in disbelief at a hand being offered, beckoning me to rise. I hope this isn’t just wishful thinking. We’ll see.

The road

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Uncategorized

Expecting Something Wonderful

Leave a comment

To help reduce this tension which seems to dominate our people everywhere, you can start by reducing your own pace. To do that you will need to slow down, quiet down. Do not fume. Do not fret. Practice being peaceful. Practice “the peace of God which passeth all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7) Then note the quiet power sense that wells up within you.

-Norman Vincent Peale
“Chapter 6: Stop Fuming and Fretting”
The Power of Positive Thinking

Up until Peale mentioned “quiet power sense,” he was actually saying just about the first thing that made any sort of sense to me in this entire book thus far.

Peace is a difficult concept to apply universally across a person’s life, mine or anyone else’s. We all want some sort of “peace” but we can’t be totally relaxed and at ease twenty-four hours a day. Frankly, there are times when we really need to be focused, or excited, or agitated, or even angry. But as I was reading this chapter over my lunch hour, I realized that I don’t allow myself a great deal of peace, even when I’m supposedly relaxing. More to the point, I don’t really allow myself the time and the luxury of being at peace in the presence of God.

However, as much as I can argue about the various circumstances in my life and the relative amount of control I do or don’t have over them, I do have some sort of control over finding the time and the place to be alone and uninterrupted with God so I can have a “peaceful” conversation with Him (I say this with the caveat that, living with other people doesn’t mean I can always guarantee I will be uninterrupted).

But I can try. I’ve said in previous blogs that I didn’t find Peale the sort of writer who matches my “style” or “metaphors,” but I’ve been trying to find ways of translating some of his more hokey stories and comments into a language I can relate to. He actually told a story (I don’t know if it’s about an actual, factual event or not) that I found brilliant.

Peale relates the tale of a baseball team who just couldn’t seem to do anything right. Although they were originally the favorites to carry the season, the team ended up losing 17 of their first 20 games. Naturally, team morale was at a low ebb and they weren’t expecting to score significantly and they absolutely didn’t expect to win any of their future games.

And they almost didn’t.

It so happened that a preacher named Schlater was popular in that neighborhood at that time. He claimed to be a faith healer and apparently was getting some astounding results. Throngs crowded to hear him and most everybody had confidence in him. Perhaps the fact that they did believe in his power enabled Schlater to achieve results.

O’Reilly (the team owner) asked each player to lend him his two best bats. Then he asked the members of the team to stay in the clubhouse until he returned. He put the bats in a wheelbarrow and went off with them. He was gone for an hour. He returned jubilantly to tell the players that Schlater, the preacher, had blessed the bats and that these bats now contained a power that could not be overcome. The players were astounded and delighted.

The next day they overwhelmed Dallas, getting 37 base hits and 20 runs. They hammered their way through the league to a championship, and Hugh Fullerton (a famous sports writer when Peale was a youth, according to the book) said that for years in the Southwest, a player would pay a large sum for a “Schlater bat.”

Actually, it’s O’Reilly who was brilliant for what he pulled off. Peale was only brilliant for relating the tale (unless he made the whole thing up, then Peale really was brilliant). The “faith healing powers” of Schlater were irrelevant. The team didn’t even have to meet him. All they knew is what O’Reilly told them…that Schlater blessed the bats with a special power. As long as the team believed the bats were powerful, then they would behave out of that belief. Nothing else had to change.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right.

All I (or anyone) have to do is believe in my relationship with God and my own worth in God’s eyes and my own. Nothing else has to change in order for me to start rising up out of the bottom of the well. All I have to do is to believe that I don’t require a faith community in order to be free of the emotional requirement. The whole point of books like Peale’s is to convince their audience to believe in some sort of special power. That’s why Peale presents various passages from the Bible as he does. If his primary audience believes in Jesus or God, and they don’t mind taking Bible verses woefully out of context, then the book will have the desired effect.

Many years ago, I heard a teaching counselor use the phrase “the trickster healer.” It sounds a little suspicious, since you want people who are healers (doctors, psychologists, etc…) to be forthright and honest, but as we see in the story about O’Reilly and the “Schlater bats,” just telling someone what their problem is doesn’t always work. Sometimes you have to “convince” them in other ways that don’t require them to make a conscious, rational decision. Sometimes they just have to believe.

Unfortunately, knowing about the “trick” robs it of its power, so in being aware of the “trick” and writing about it, I can’t also “con” myself into believing in the personal equivalent of a “Schlater bat.”

But I can try to believe in God.

I realize that, based on most of what I’ve said so far, it is practically beside the point whether or not God even exists as long as I believe He exists. This is probably why Peale’s book works even with atheists if they choose to believe in some other internal or external source of “power” instead of God.

I am convinced of the existence of the God of the Bible, however the presence of God isn’t always enough. If God didn’t require my cooperation or involvement in solving my little dilemma, He could just invoke some supernatural power and *poof* my perspective would be different and my paradigm would be shifted. End of story.

But it doesn’t work that way.

Maybe God doesn’t answer the majority of prayers using supernatural means. Maybe, most of the time, He just allows our faith and our trust in Him do most of the work. I’ll talk more about my journey in prayer while sitting at the bottom of my well in tomorrow’s “morning meditation.” In the meantime, the first lesson I’ll need to continue to learn is to be at peace right where I am, expecting nothing, before I can learn to believe and then expect something.

Heywood Floyd: What? What’s going to happen?
Dave Bowman: Something wonderful.

-from the film 2010 (1984)

Uncategorized

Fixing a Broken Connection

2 Comments

How will you repair a soul?

Blind yourself to the shell of mud. Dig deeply and deeper yet, sift through the darkened embers, search for a spark that still shines. Fan that spark until a flame appears, fall in love with the flame and despise the evil that encrusts it. Until all is consumed in the warmth of that flame.

For empathy is the redeemer of love and the liberator of deeds that shine.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Soul Repair”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

This is part of my Finding My Metaphor project which I guess started when I wrote Learning Acceptance. I didn’t realize how difficult this would all be or rather, I didn’t realize when I started this line of questioning, that it would lead in such a difficult direction. Certainly starting to openly question whether or not I trust God is a difficult direction. So where do you go from the bottom of the well?

Actually, even before writing Acceptance, I wrote Waiting in a Minefield, which presents an image of trying to proceed on a spiritual journey but being afraid to move. Then I wrote Waiting for Hope in the Abyss, which is where I return to when I get stuck. If I just sit down at the bottom of the well, I can’t fall any further, can I?

So what now? I can just sit here and hope nothing falls on me, or hope that the bottom of the well doesn’t give way. Or I can try to get up and risk the walls of the well collapsing on top of me, burying me even deeper…or maybe actually getting out of here, but that’s a long shot. Actually, I kind of like it here in the dark. It’s quiet and peaceful and it’s easy on the eyes and nerves. I can just take deep, slow breaths and watch the dust swirling around in the air, caught in the beam of light filtering down from the top of the well.

But I can’t wait down here forever, can I?

Rabbi Freeman wrote in the introduction to A Multimedia guide to Jewish Prayer:

A mitzvah is an opportunity to act out your inner soul. A thought of Torah is an opportunity to hear it speaking. But when do you have an opportunity to experience that soul? When, other than at prayer?

To pray comes as naturally to the human being as breathing—where there is an openness to something greater, something beyond, naturally we cry out to it from within. Nevertheless, there is a ladder, a set of skills and techniques that can be learned. With knowledge, with practice and with persistence, we can all learn to excel at the art of dialogue between that breath of the divine within us and her Beloved Above.

So I’m sitting at the bottom of my well, and then I realize there is a ladder down here with me that leads to the “art of dialogue between that breath of the divine within us and her Beloved Above.” What have I got to lose?

Is prayer normal?

Anybody who has watched the standard morning minyan knows that Jewish prayer is not normal. It is not normal to wrap yourself in a white woolen sheet, strap leather boxes containing ancient scrolls on your arm and head, sway back and forth with your cohorts chanting Hebrew incantations and reading from a parchment scroll. It is not normal to stand before a wall and appear to be speaking to it. It is not normal in this day and age and may never have been normal in any era.

“Normal” is whatever you’re used to in your day-to-day life and, not being Jewish and certainly having never prayed in a minyan, the type of prayer Rabbi Freeman describes above is not “normal” for me. But I did say a few days ago that I would have to restructure the metaphors I feel closest to in order to derive a meaning that makes sense to me.

Even Rabbi Freeman admits that prayer is somewhat “absurd” in acknowledging that we believe God is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Beneficent. After all, God doesn’t need us to tell Him who and what He is. The classic answer to why we pray when God doesn’t need our prayers is because we need to pray. Prayer changes us, not God. God is God. He is immutable, unchangeable, eternal.

We’re not. I’m certainly not.

I mentioned previously that Freeman tells us the word “tefillah,” which we translate into English as “prayer,” “is etymologically related to the root word tofel—meaning reconnect or bond.” When Jews pray three times a day to God, they are reconnecting or “sticking” themselves back to their (our?) Original Source above. In this sense, “prayer” doesn’t mean beseeching, imploring, or appealing to God for something, but instead, it means reconnecting, reattaching, rebonding to the source of our lives and souls.

A fairly inaccurate but still apt analogy would be plugging your dead cell phone into the recharger to restore electricity to its drained battery…sort of.

But we don’t really do that when we pray, do we?

We do not suffice with standing there and acknowledging, “Yes, you are the Omnipotent King and we owe everything to you.” We continue by petitioning, pleading and begging that He change the situation. We repeat again and again, “Let it be Your will…”—directly implying that what we are requesting is not currently His will and we are out to change that.

We are quite frankly creating a revolution: Those at the bottom are dictating to the One Above. Our prayers are definitively not passive—we are taking a real nudnik, back-seat driver role.

And this is a mitzvah—He told us to do this!

The ideal is to reconnect to our source and to restore the Divine spark within us, but in any practical, real-life manner, we ask and plead and beg and implore God to help, help, help us with the mess of our lives.

And in Judaism, this is a mitzvah? Is it a “mitzvah”, an obedient act of righteousness and charity, if a Christian does this?

Judaism interprets the commandment, “You shall serve the LORD your God” (Exodus 23:25, Deuteronomy 6:13) as a positive commandment to pray daily. According to Maimonides:

…this commandment obligates each person to offer supplication and prayer every day and utter praises of the Holy One, blessed be He; then petition for all his needs with requests and supplications; and finally, give praise and thanks to God for the goodness that He has bestowed upon him; each one according to his own ability. (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Prayer, 1:1)

The Apostolic Scriptures also frame prayer as a positive commandment, making it accessible to the Christian as well as to the Jew:

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison – that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. –Colossians 4:2-4

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. –1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

That’s hardly a comprehensive list, but you get the idea. Continue praying. Pray without ceasing. Pray for others. Pray that the word declaring the “mystery of Christ” continues to be preached. Give thanks in all circumstances…even when sitting at the bottom of the well, because praying is “the will of God in Christ Jesus.”

When Paul writes, “for you” at the end of verse 18, I have to assume he’s referring to the non-Jewish believers, so that God’s will for me personally is to pray as I’ve described above.

Paul makes prayer sound so noble and selfless, but that’s hardly how most people pray. We pray asking for what we think we need and want. We pray when we’re upset or in pain. We pray with life isn’t going our way. And we have the audacity to ask God to change things around to the way we want them to be. Rabbi Freeman puts it this way:

The question returns: Why would the Ultimate Driver of the Universe want a nudnik, back seat driver?

So, when I pray, am I a pest? How is this repairing my soul? How does this help me relate to God?

Until after the final redeemer arrives, there is no person on earth without some fault. Where this person fails on one count, another fails elsewhere.

We don’t appreciate someone else prying into our faults and underlining each one with a red pencil. So we know it is not right to emphasize and magnify the faults of another.

This is the way all people should relate to one another.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Ignoring Faults”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

“To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

-Elbert Hubbard
American writer, artist and philosopher

I’m far from perfect God, but I want to trust you. Should I put my foot on the first rung of the ladder?

Uncategorized

Trust

6 Comments

TrustFor the conductor, on Jeduthun, a song by David. For God alone my soul waits silently, from Him comes my salvation. He alone is my Rock and my Salvation; my Stronghold, I shall not falter greatly. Until when will you plot treacherously against a man? May you all be slain – like a leaning wail, a toppled fence. Only because of his loftiness have they plotted to topple [him], they delight in deceit; with his mouth each one blesses, but inwardly they curse, Selah! For God alone, waits silently, my soul, because my hope is from Him. He alone is my Rock and my Salvation; my Stronghold, I shall not falter. Upon God rests my salvation and my glory, the Rock of my strength, my refuge, is in God. Trust in Him at every moment, O people! Pour out your hearts before Him; God is a refuge for us, Selah! Common people are but vanity! Distinguished people are but a deceit! Were they to be lifted up on scales, together they would be lighter than vanity. Trust not in oppression, and in robbery place not vain hope; though wealth flourishes, set not your heart on it. One thing has God spoken, these two have I heard: that strength belongs to God; and Yours, O Lord, is kindness, for You repay each man according to his deeds.

–Psalm 62 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

I’m continuing my pursuit of restructuring the meaning of storytellers so that I can better understand and incorporate the lessons of God into my life. I have previously written about my need to find my own metaphor in the multitude of spiritual, religious, and psychological messages available so that I can better focus on what is important in life, and minimize or disregard all of the other “bothersome” minutiae.

It isn’t easy.

Life, or rather my approach to it, is a decades-long habit and like all “bad habits,” it’s difficult to break. It’s like quitting smoking (which I did decades ago). I know it’s good to break a bad habit, but I have to give up its secondary benefits and focus on what I’ll gain, even while “mourning” what I’ll be losing which, if nothing else, is the familiar. However, quitting smoking is child’s play compared to what some people call “making a paradigm shift“. This is a fundamental changing of perspective on how to approach and respond to not only circumstances, but to all aspects of existence.

Like I said, it isn’t easy.

There are a lot of elements involved but the first one is trying to find a starting point. There are all kinds of places that you might think to begin a journey of self discovery and self change. In yesterday’s morning meditation, I focused on prayer. That’s a good place to start since, for me, any shifting in paradigm also involves a change in my relationship with God.

Look back at the psalm I quoted from at the beginning of today’s blog. Look at what David’s saying.

For God alone, waits silently, my soul, because my hope is from Him…Trust in Him at every moment.

It’s not only hope and trust that belong to God, but salvation, strength, and kindness are His and His alone. In fact, David goes so far as to say that for “God alone my soul waits silently.” He is not depending on anyone else but God for hope, trust, strength, kindness, and salvation. David proclaims that even “distinguished people,” if you put them all on a scale, would still be “lighter than vanity.” Part of what I get out of this, is that there is no one to depend upon except God. Each person waits alone for His response.

I want to take all that and reduce it down even further to a single element: trust.

Churches talk an awful lot about having faith in God or having faith in Jesus, but they don’t mention the word “trust” at all. What’s the difference? I found an excellent metaphor comparing faith and trust, and I encourage you to read my wee missive on the difference before continuing here. It’s easy to have faith that God exists. It’s not so easy to actually trust God with everything that’s important to you…especially your life.

I know this sounds terrible, but I don’t think I trust God very much. Yes, I acknowledge and have faith in His existence and sovereignty over the universe and everything in it, including me, but I don’t trust Him to keep me safe in an absolute sense. After all, bad things happen to people all the time. Even people who have an amazing faith and trust in God suffer horribly. People get all kinds of hideous cancers, get in car wrecks. lose loved ones tragically, have heart attacks and strokes, are in hurricanes, have their homes wiped out by tornadoes, have their emotions utterly shattered, are reduced to nothing anyone wants to get close to.

They trusted God to keep them safe and look what happened.

Actually, the record of the “saints” in the Bible, the record of the lives of the Prophets, show that holy people who had faith and trust often came to rather “difficult” ends and in fact, their lives might have been a great deal more peaceful if they hadn’t been such significant servants of God.

So if I do or don’t trust God to protect me, I’m still vulnerable to everything. Anything could happen at any time. Any disaster could strike. Any illness or accident could occur at any moment. No one is safe, whether you have faith in God or not.

I realize that God “never promised me a rose garden” and that God doesn’t owe me (or anyone) a “safe” life. I know that life involves taking risks. All that is very rational. So then, is faith and trust in God all about the “afterlife” and our lives in the here and now are identical to those of our secular counterparts? Are both the saint and the sinner equally libel to get mugged, raped, or murdered?

But is being safe the point? God does what He does. In Romans 9:15, Paul quotes God’s conversation with Moses when He said, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” (Exodus 33:19 ESV) God grants mercy to or withholds mercy from people in accordance to His will. That makes God rather unpredictable. So is the only thing I can trust the fact that I can’t trust anything? Depending on how you translate Job 13:15 it can read Though he slay me, I will hope in him,” or it can be understood as, “Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope.”

So whether you trust in God or don’t trust in God, God will still do what God will do, so what’s the point?

But all of these “holy guys” seemed to think there was a point and they faced all kinds of horribly difficult situations depending on God to either get them out of it, as David did, or continuing to cling to God even if God chose to kill them.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” –Daniel 3:16-18 (ESV)

So how do you learn to trust God under these circumstances? If you are a child, you trust your parents, in part, because they keep you safe (I realize this is overly simplistic, since plenty of parents are untrustworthy for a lot of reasons, and plenty of children are hurt and even killed as a result). Children learn to trust their parents as their parents build a track record of keeping them safe and providing for their needs. Trust in any human relationship is based on experience. The longer we are in a relationship with a party who does not harm us physically or emotionally, and who provides for our needs, the more we tend to trust them and feel safe around them.

FallingBut how does that work in a relationship with God, who is so totally and completely alien to us and who, for any reason or for no reason at all (or for no reason we can understand), could allow us to be thrown under a bus (sometimes literally) at any moment and without warning?

It goes without saying that we cannot trust someone we don’t know, and therein lies the secret of learning to trust God. When someone says, “Trust me,” we have one of two reactions. Either we can say, “Ok, I’ll trust you,” or we can say, “Why should I?” In God’s case, trusting Him naturally follows when we understand why we should.

The main reason we should trust God is that He is worthy of our trust. Unlike men, He never lies and never fails to fulfill His promises. “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19; Psalm 89:34). Unlike men, He has the power to bring to pass what He plans and purposes to do. Isaiah 14:24 tells us, “The LORD Almighty has sworn, ‘Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will stand.’” Furthermore, His plans are perfect, holy, and righteous, and He works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His holy purpose (Romans 8:28). If we endeavor to know God through His Word, we will see that He is worthy of our trust, and our trust in Him will grow day by day. To know Him is to trust Him.

-quoted from GotQuestions.org

That works if everyone who ever trusted God remained safe and nothing bad ever happened to them, but the person who answered this question never got around to explaining why people who trust God still end up hurt and dead. The quote does say this, however:

A third reason to trust God is that we really have no sensible alternative. Should we trust in ourselves or in others who are sinful, unpredictable, unreliable, have limited wisdom, and who frequently make bad choices and decisions swayed by emotion? Or do we trust in the all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, gracious, merciful, loving God who has nothing but good intentions for us?

So, this person says we should trust God simply because we have no choice. But that comes back to God doing things to us (or allowing things to happen to us) whether we trust in Him or not.

But the person I just quoted did make one good point. You can’t trust someone you don’t know.

That goes back to yesterday’s “morning meditation” about prayer. Without an ongoing, continual “dialog” with God, how can you know Him? That’s the same for any human relationship. If you don’t communicate in a meaningful and frequent manner, how can you get to know someone and then maintain a relationship?

You can’t.

So prayer is just as good a starting point as any.

The GotQuestions.org person describes God as “all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, gracious, merciful, loving” and a God who “has nothing but good intentions for us.” Sorry, but I’m having a difficult time reconciling that statement with the reality of the world in which I live; a world where six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, a world where Christians have historically been tortured and executed for their faith, a world where people living in terror pray to God for them to be delivered and instead, are left to die alone in agony.

I know, I sound grim.

The supreme irony is that, at least as far as the Biblical record is concerned, people continued to trust in God, no matter what. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked into Nebuchadnezzer’s fiery furnace, believing that God either would save them or wouldn’t, and subsequently the King saw four men walking around inside of the flames unhurt, including someone who had the appearance “like a son of the gods.”

Sometimes trust works.

I remember sitting in church when the Pastor would say stuff like, “surrender all of your cares to Jesus and just let them go.” I heard similarly phrased “flowery speeches” like this time and again in various Christian venues and never had any idea how to accomplish such a feat. How does one simply “let go” of problems, worries, cares, sorrows, and so on? What is the mechanism of release? How can you simply and suddenly “stop worrying?” Where does the “worry” go?

I now realize what was really being said is to “trust Jesus to take care of your worries.” Jesus himself said something similar.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. –Matthew 6:25-33 (ESV)

But verse 34 is the kicker:

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

And yet people die of starvation and thirst everyday somewhere in the world. People of faith do go without adequate clothing or sustenance. We do whither away like grass before a raging fire, and no one walks among the living and the dead who looks like a “son of the gods.”

But we’re supposed to trust anyway…I’m supposed to trust anyway. Peale’s book has the reader recite and repeat the various “promises of God” to empower believers and keep them safe…engendering trust in God, and supposedly, in spite of the long and difficult world history of men and God, it works. Rabbi Tzvi Freeman wrote a multi-part series on Jewish Meditation and Prayer which more or less says the same thing, in spite of the long and torturous history of the Jewish people and God.

(I suppose I should mention at this point that multitudes of secular people have also gained great benefits from following the advice in Peale’s book, substituting “higher power” or even their actualized selves for specific references to God. It’s astonishing then, that these people learned to shift their paradigms and improve their lives, not by trusting in God or any external source, but by trusting themselves! Does this mean that who or what you trust is irrelevant as long as you trust something? If a religious person and a non-religious person achieve the same self-improvement goals using identical processes but different targets [God vs. the self], is that saying God is actually doesn’t matter as long as you trust something? I know, these are horrible questions.)

The only thing I can get out of this is that, like Job, I am compelled to trust God, though He may slay me, just because I have no choice. Or rather, I have a choice: maintain my faith in God and learn to trust Him, or surrender my faith and trust no one, least of all me. Since the latter choice results in only despair, the former choice is my only real choice. It’s like allowing someone to tie me up, hand and foot, blindfold me and gag me, stand me at the edge of a mile-deep cliff. Then they say to me that even if they push me over, I’ll still be safe. I wonder if that’s how Isaac felt at the Akedah?

In that situation, I can’t even scream in terror or beg to be released. My mouth is stuffed with cotton and my throat is full of sand. All I can do is hang on and trust…or continually, moment-by-moment, be terrified. Like the title to Harlan Ellison’s classic science fiction tale, I have no mouth, but I must scream.

What would you do?

Uncategorized

Restructuring Meaning

2 Comments

Praying with tefillinIf you ever hire an architect to design a synagogue, you will need to inform him of the two-door rule: The worshipper must first enter into a vestibule that precedes the sanctuary before walking through the doors of the sanctuary itself, as verse in Proverbs goes, “Fortunate is the man who listens to me to watch by my doors day by day, to watch the doorposts of my entrances.” (Talmud Berachot 8a. Tur, Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim, Levush 90:2. Magen Avraham ibid. Shulchan Aruch Harav 90:19.)

The first door, explains Rabbi Sholom Ber of Lubavitch in his “Booklet on Tefillah,” (Kuntres Hatefillah, siman 11) is the door in from the street. You first need to leave the confusion of the world outside and empty your mind of all worldly concerns, power down your cellphone, spend a few moments to gain calm and focus. As Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel would say (Avot 1:17), “All my life, I grew up among the sages and I did not find anything better for a person than quietness.” That is the point of that first door, something particularly necessary in our modern, cacophonous world: You want your mind to settle down, like a bubbling brook might settle into a still pond. There, reflected in that still water, it may be possible to behold a clearer image of the universe.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Meditation’s Hallway”
from “A Guide to Jewish Prayer” series
Chabad.org

I wrote Choosing a Storyteller for yesterday’s “morning mediation” and then realized that I have more control over this whole process than I previously thought.

Here’s part of the quote I pulled yesterday from Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking from the “prayer” chapter:

An illustration of a scientific use of prayer is the experience of two famous industrialists, whose names would be known to many readers were I permitted to mention them, who had a conference about a business and technical matter. One might think that these men would approach such a problem on a purely technical basis, and they did that and more; they also prayed about it. But they did not get a successful result. Therefore they called in a country preacher, an old friend of one of them, because, as they explained, the Bible prayer formula is, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) They also pointed to a further formula, namely, “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19)

Now, let me back up in Rabbi’s Freeman’s Guide to Jewish Prayer series and quote from the first article, Is Prayer Normal:

With this passage and other similar such statements, Maimonides makes it clear that G-d could run the universe perfectly well without our prayers. The implication is that we are the ones who need prayer—in order to connect Him to our lives.

In fact, we may be using the wrong word altogether. The English word, prayer, means to beseech, to implore, to plead for something.

There is another word, bakashah, that certainly does mean all those things. But that’s not the word we use. We use tefillah. Does tefillah really mean “prayer”?

Tefillah is etymologically related to the root word tofel—meaning reconnect or bond.

While I’m not trying to appropriate any sort of “Jewish identity marker” or make myself a pain in the neck to Jewish people, on a fundamental level, prayer is prayer, regardless of who is doing the praying. If “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” then certainly He desires both the Jew and the non-Jew to pray and to “bond” or “reconnect” with Him. If the first century Roman centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10) learned to pray from his Jewish mentors, I don’t think it’s so out of line for me to take what I find valuable about the Jewish prayer and adapt it for my own use.

Chapter 4 in Peale’s book is called “Try Prayer Power.” I’m willing to admit that I’ve been looking for something I’ve had access to all along. Perhaps it just needs a bit of refreshing. I am not going to “pray as a Jew” as such, but since the Jewish people have been “bonding” to God a lot longer than we Christians, on the order of thousands of years longer, maybe they have a few ideas on the subject.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, then Attorney General Robert Kennedy ignored a threat made by Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and proceeded with negotiations to defuse the crisis as if he had never heard Dobrynin’s original. It was Kennedy’s setting aside of Dobrynin’s statement that allowed the Soviet Ambassador to safe face and continue to proceed to a peaceful conclusion that prevented a nuclear war (I know this is a strange metaphor, but please bear with me).

If I can somewhat apply the same principle and temporarily set aside the fact that Freeman’s series on Jewish prayer is intended only for Jews, I can imagine that it can apply to me too. Then maybe this particular series can be a story that I can use in seeking my own connection to God as a means of “cognitive restructuring.” A sort of “refactoring” of Peale’s ‘Chapter 4″ in a way that uses better metaphors.

It’s a matter of learning how to walk again.

WalkingLearning to walk involves taking the first step, and then another, and then another. I’ll probably never find the “perfect” inspirational book (excepting the Bible) out there, so I’ll have to construct one of my own. I guess that’s part of the reason I created this blog series in the first place. They’re “morning mediations” that are supposed to start a person’s day. I can start out by letting each one be a meditation for me again, and then, as Meditation’s Hallway suggests, move from my morning meditation, into prayer.

When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Morning Meditation”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

I have always known the storyteller I have ears to listen to. I just need to restructure the meaning for a wider focus; one that includes me. I hope nobody minds.

Uncategorized

Choosing a Storyteller

12 Comments

An illustration of a scientific use of prayer is the experience of two famous industrialists, whose names would be known to many readers were I permitted to mention them, who had a conference about a business and technical matter. One might think that these men would approach such a problem on a purely technical basis, and they did that and more; they also prayed about it. But they did not get a successful result. Therefore they called in a country preacher, an old friend of one of them, because, as they explained, the Bible prayer formula is, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) They also pointed to a further formula, namely, “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19)

Being schooled in scientific practice, they believe that in dealing with prayer as a phenomenon they should scrupulously follow the formulas outlined in the Bible which they described as a textbook of spiritual science. The proper method for employing a science is to use the accepted formulas outlined in the textbook of that science. They reasoned that if the Bible provides that two or three should be gathered together, perhaps the reason they were not succeeding what the they needed a third party.

-Norman Vincent Peale
Chapter 4: Try Prayer Power
The Power of Positive Thinking

As some of you know who have been reading this blog for a while, I’ve been considering going back to a church. Of course, there are many barriers to this goal, if it is even an appropriate goal for me, so I don’t know if I will end up at that particular destination or not. However, if I ever find myself sitting in a church sanctuary, and the Pastor delivers a message that sounds anything like the quote from Peale’s book I posted above, I would immediately start looking for the nearest exit.

Why?

I’ve commented on Peale’s book before, and now that I’m almost a quarter of the way through, I remain dubious of how he treats the Bible and prayer. Can the Bible be reduced down to a “textbook” and can one pray by a formula?

Actually, in Judaism, prayer is a highly formal and routinized matter, so on this point, I guess I can’t complain, since I find Jewish prayer beautiful. But Peale’s presentation makes it sound like some sort of scam. I feel like I’m listening to some slick, phony prayer service headed up by the likes of Benny Hinn. I feel like I’m listening to someone trying to sell me the “name it, claim it” philosophy of God; as if God were Aladdin’s genie and had to do what I told Him to do because of some “magic prayer” in the Bible.

No, really, I’m trying to like this book, but I don’t think it speaks my language. Let’s try a different approach.

During tefillah, you must focus your heart on the meaning of the words your lips are uttering. You must imagine G-d’s presence right there before you. Dismiss whatever thoughts are bothering you until you are left with a clear mind to focus on your tefillah…

This was the practice of inspired and legendary people; they would seclude themselves and focus on their tefillah to the point that they transcended their physical senses, and their mental powers dominated bringing them close to prophecy.

If an extraneous thought comes into your mind during the tefillah, stay quiet until the thought disappears.

It’s necessary to think about matters that subdue the heart and focus it on your Father in heaven. Don’t think about empty matters.

—Tur and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 98:1
as quoted from Chabad.org

Really, what’s the difference here? Peale characterizes prayer as a “scientific formula” while the quote from Tur and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 98:1 presents mediation and prayer as a transcendental and mystical practice. Who is right? Neither? Both? Does it matter?

Maybe it doesn’t matter which approach you take as long as it works for you. I’m not sure that Peale works for me, and maybe my continuing attraction to the various Jewish sages and their opinions is telling me something about what does work for me.

When I started reading Peale’s book, I did a bit of research on the man and, according to Wikipedia, he’s not exactly without critics. Given the various doctors and scientists and scholars to whom Peale refers to in the book I’m reading, there are concerns that these so-called experts may have just been fabricated by Peale for the sake of telling a story. But then, I’m not above telling a tale and having it interpreted as fact if there’s a good reason for doing so, and some moral or lesson is imparted that way. Milton Erickson was the absolute master of the “therapeutic tale” and, when I used to be a practicing family therapist, he was one of my “heroes”. The use of metaphor and storytelling in promoting psychological change can be amazingly effective, so I can hardly criticize Peale if that’s the way he chose to transmit his lessons in his book. It’s the way the tales of the Baal Shem Tov have come to us from ages past, still full of power and wisdom.

I think Peale’s book really has worked out well for thousands and perhaps millions of people, but the reason it doesn’t work for me is that it doesn’t say that thing I need it to say in a language that makes sense to me. One can tell the same basic story in a Saturday morning cartoon or an erudite philosophical tome, and one method or the other will work out better depending on the audience. I know now that I’m an audience looking for the right storyteller. I don’t think Peale is that guy, so I need to find someone else saying the same thing in a different way.

So was the practice of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as they sat in perfect awe beneath the star-speckled sky of the still desert night; so too, the ancient prophets in the Judean hills, strumming musical instruments as they gazed upon the mysteries of heaven and earth, awaiting the vision of prophecy as the morning’s horizon awaits the rising sun; so did the sages of the Talmud, the Bahir and the Zohar lift their souls on mystic journeys through orchards and palaces, chambers and pathways of the spiritual realms, never sure that they could return to their earthly bounds; so too the chassidim were lost in contemplation and the ecstasy of their prayer from early morning until the hours of night.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Meditation’s Hallway”
Chabad.org

But if Peale, as the Christian storyteller seems too “phony” and (as I’ve been told) the Jewish storytellers are just for Jews, where is my storyteller?