a collection of inspirations and reflections
"How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared."
Maureen died peacefully in her sleep earlier this year, at her home in Colorado. On Sunday we'll be gathering together on campus to honor and remember her big deep laugh, x-ray insight, and all the amazing things she gave us and taught us.
"...a temple is not an art gallery. It is not a place to view pictures but to venerate them. If we could understand this difference, we might grasp the contrast between the spirit and the soul of religion: the spirit seeks enlightenment while the soul seeks connection.~Thomas Moore, The Soul's Religion
"To be in the presence of a sacred image is not to be instructed, to know something one didn't know before, but simply to be the receiver of a transforming radiance. The effect on the devotee can hardly be seen, measured, or explained, and yet veneration is the quintessential religious act.
"...The religious traditions can return us to a proper idea of what devotion, sainthood, and sacred image are all about. They teach us veneration, which is the artful alternative to obsession."
"As the Maitri Sutra says, 'With a boundless mind one could cherish all living beings, radiating friendliness over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit.' In practicing equanimity, we train in widening our circle of understanding and compassion to include the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.Ani Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
"However, limitless equanimity, free of any prejudice at all, is not the same as an ultimate harmony where everything is finally smooth. It is more a matter of being fully engaged with whatever comes to our door.
"We could call it being completely alive.
"Training in equanimity requires that we leave behind some baggage: the comfort of rejecting whole parts of our experience, for example, and the security of welcoming only what is pleasant. The courage to continue with this unfolding process comes from self-compassion and from giving ourselves plenty of time. If we continue to practice this way over the months and years, we will feel our hearts and minds grow bigger.
"When people ask me how long this will take, I say, 'At least until you die.'"
"The Kaddish… is basically a prayer, written mostly in Aramaic, expressing praise of God and the yearning for the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth…Here is a version of the Mourners' Kaddish and interpretation by Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center:
...at the end of the service, the last Kaddish is called the Mourners’ Kaddish.
Traditionally, only those who are mourning the loss of a close relative rise and recite this Kaddish, but in some communities, everyone rises."
This portion (Pinchas) concludes with a detailed description of our daily and festival offerings. God describes these offerings as, "my food." These are offerings of awareness - surrendered to the fire of our lives in order to feed that God-place within us. That God-place within us hungers for this "food" of awareness that we offer each day. Awareness, made manifest in our spiritual practice, is received by God (and the God-sense within us), as a sweet savor.
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During this week of Pinchas, take a moment before each prayer, each blessing, each conscious practice you perform, and consecrate your intention as the food of God. Make your practice into an offering that sustains, nurtures and brings pleasure to the spark of God within you and to the energy that connects and enlivens all of Creation.
"I love to have poetry along with music and movement and even cooking. It’s good to have a lot of different art forms going at once, because they deepen each other ... to go into the heart. These are all the tastes and fragrances that Rumi talks about in knowing the divine ... The written page has become so lonely. I like to bring back a cello near the page, and, if I can, a little curry."
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Listening is magic. It turns a person from an object outside, opaque or dimly threatening, into an intimate experience, and therefore into a friend. In this way, listening softens and transforms the listener.
I had the great fortune, and fun, to have been part of a group of people from my synagogue who chose to step into our "official" roles in the community as B'nei Mitzvah ("children of the commandment" or, a deeper meaning that Rabbi Tedhttp://www.rabbitedfalcon.com/ uses for Mitzvah, based on the word's linguistic root, is "path of connectedness"). The seven of us and our teacher, Amy, studied and sang and ate delicious food together and got to know and love each other for over a year, and two weeks ago welcomed family, friends, and our amazing community to co-create with us a space and time of powerful and very sweet blessing. It felt to me afterwards as if we'd all managed to catch and ride a huge wave together, and make it smoothly to shore, after a really long time of paddling in the sun and the rain (and sometimes in circles).Shabbat shalom! which means, Shabbat “hello”, Shabbat "peace", and Shabbat "wholeness".A big hug and deep bow to my dance partners Anya, Margie, Alan, Roger, Peter, Meli and Amy. I'm glad we did it, I'm glad it's done, and I'm so glad it was with you.
Thank you to everyone here for sharing your radiant and singular presence with us—as Rabbi Ted saidin a workshop the other night, this community is “a community of Presence.” My special thanks to my mother, and mother-in-law and father-in-law, and my sister (in this photo with me) and my brother-in-law, for coming from far away to be here today. And, to my husband Robert and our boys who have always been at the heart of my spiritual journey.
Jewish mystical tradition teaches us—and when I say “Jewish mystical tradition,” I really mean, “what I’ve learned from Rabbi Ted and the Bet Alef community,” because even if I read or heard some of the teachings years ago, they’ve only really made sense since being here—The tradition teaches us that every story in the Torah contains the essence of the wisdom of the whole; and not only that, but every word, every letter, and even the spaces between and around the letters, contain the essence of the whole teaching. Some of the teachers also say that every person and every being is like a letter of the Torah—so, each of us is a Way in, to the Whole thing, and the space between us, the relationships we have with things and with each other, are all ways in to the Whole, too.
As my friends Joel and Michelle often teach, "anywhere you dig deeply enough will take you Home”
The Jewish tradition gives us an amazing and beautiful framework for doing that digging, which consists of four layers of interpretation that I’m going to apply to my birth portion. I’ll touch on the first two just briefly, since it’s really the deeper two that make my “homing instinct” start to hum:
∑ The first layer is “P'shat” in Hebrew, which means “Simple”. This is the literal, surface understanding. I think of this as corresponding to the skin of the body (and you’ll see why I’m using body metaphors in a moment)
∑ The next layer is “Remez,” which means “Hint”. Where we start to see that the place where we’re digging is connected to lots of other places… so I think of this as being like the connective tissue of the body.
∑ The third layer is “Drash” or “Midrash,” which means “Search” or “Interpretation.” Now we’re looking between the lines, paying more attention to the spaces between. This is the realm of metaphor, poetry, archetypal energies. To me this corresponds to the internal organs, because in Chinese medicine--which is my other spiritual training and practice—the internal organs are respected as beings, with spirits, and functions, and minds of their own. Just like what we’ve all experienced, when we have a gut intuition that’s different from what our mind believes; or when our Heart or Lungs or Stomach, or some one of the other organs, tells us very clearly that it needs something or other, and right now, regardless of what the rest of the bodymind was happy to go along with…So we respect the organs as one of the ways that the universal archetypal energies move in us.
∑ The Fourth, last layer is “Sod,” which means “Secret” or “Hidden.” This is the most interior, deepest, and the vastest, realm—because here we begin to glimpse eternity. I think this level is the Heart. Which is one of the family of organs, but is also special amongst organs—in Chinese medicine, the Heart is the place where Heaven and Earth meet; it embodies the archetypal energy of the Emperor/Empress, who is the one with the most direct connection to the Way of Heaven—which in Hebrew we could translate as “Torah.”
My “birth portion” is in the section where Moses is giving reminders to the people, since they’ll be leaving the wilderness without him. Reminders to be good, to be grateful, to take care of the orphan and the widow and the stranger in their midst. And, it includes this very curious line, which in English is translated variously as: "remove the barriers of your heart," or "cut away the thickening around your heart," but which in Hebrew says literally to "circumcise the foreskin of your heart."
There are many many tribal and personal resonances that I could follow here, all of them like trails homeward, and so I’m just going to pick a single one.
Skipping the first two levels and entering in at the “Drash”/ ”Archetypal”/ ”Internal Organs” level:
It so happens that, in Chinese medicine, the tissue around the Heart, the Pericardium, which we also call the Heart Protector, is an important organ whose job is to choose what parts of the outside world will be allowed in through the Inner Gate, into the most private chambers of the Heart. In terms of our everyday lives, this is the energy of love & intimate relationship, and of our connection to what we allow to touch our Hearts.
In one school of thought of our medicine, we “diagnose” (or, “appreciate”) every human being as most strongly embodying the archetypal energy of one or two of the twelve main organs.
And in a play of cosmic resonance—one of those “serendipitous non-accidental accidents” that Margie spoke of—one of the organic energies I’ve been “diagnosed” with embodying most is this very one, the Heart Protector, that shows up in such an interesting way in my birth portion.
Because this is an energy given to me pay a lot of attention to, and to wrestle with, and to learn from, I can say from experience that one thing I'm pretty sure of is that there are many ways that the Heart Protector opens, allowing access to the Heart—“cutting” is maybe one way…Reb Nachman of Bratslav, whom Roger quoted, also said, “the most whole heart is the broken heart” (and btw, it’s not the Heart that breaks, it’s the Heart Protector). So, there’s breaking; and there’s also melting, and there’s softening. And maybe most pertinently for us, there’s choosing—just as the regular ritual circumcision doesn’t just happen all by itself, but is a tribal, and sometimes personal, choice.
“I Open My Heart to This Moment” (this is the song co-written by Rabbi Ted, which we opened the service with) is something we do on purpose, with intention.
To finish with just a glimpse into the level of Sod, the Secret and the Heart—which is probably more accessible in silence than in words, anyway—because this is the level we arrive to, when the Heart Protector is opened wide to the whole world, and the World can touch the deepest part of the One Heart, when we’ve gone all the way down, and all the way in, and we’ve come all the way Home, what we find in is that the whole manifest world is already in there with us. The One manifesting as the Many, and the Many remembering ourselves to be the One.
Like in this “secret teaching” my Zen friend Paul gave me the other day—because, you know what, all the Many secret teachings--of course--lead to this same One Heart:
That what we think of as the world outside of us…is really our own tender, sensitive, heart, born out from our own being, and into the world, and there it is, all over the world, disguised as the Many.
I Open My Heart to This Moment—and we’re all in there together.
Shabbat Shalom.
...If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. & there is nothing more to it than that.
...The hardest struggle of all is to reconcile life's polar realities. I love books, Beethoven, and chocolate brownies. Yet how do I justify my pleasure in these in a world where millions are illiterate, the music never plays, and children go hungry through the night? How do I live sanely in a world so unsafe for so many?
I don't know what they taught you here at Hamilton about all this, but I trust you are not leaving here without thinking about how you will respond to the dissonance in our culture, the rivalry between beauty and bestiality in the world, and the conflicts in your own soul. All of us have to choose sides on this journey. But the question is not so much who we are going to fight against as it is which side of our own nature will we nurture: The side that can grow weary and even cynical and believe that everything is futile, or the side that for all the vulgarity, brutality, and cruelty, yearns to affirm, connect and signify. Albert Camus got it right: There is beauty in the world as well as humiliation, "And we have to strive, hard as it is, not to be unfaithful...in the presence of one or the other".
That's really what brings me here this afternoon. I did put myself in your place, and asked what I'd want a stranger from another generation to tell me if I had to sit through his speech. Well, I'd want to hear the truth: The truth is, life's a tough act, the world's a hard place, and along the way you will meet a fair share of fools, knaves and clowns--even act the fool yourself from time to time when your guard is down or you've had too much wine. I'd like to be told that I will experience separation, loss and betrayal, that I'll wonder at times where have all the flowers gone.
I would want to be told that while life includes a lot of luck, life is more than luck. It is sacrifice, study, and work; appointments kept, deadlines met, promises honored. I'd like to be told that it's okay to love your country right or wrong, but it's not right to be silent when your country is wrong. And I would like to be encouraged not to give up on the American experience. To remember that the same culture which produced the Ku Klux Klan, Tom DeLay and Abu Ghraib, also brought forth the Peace Corps, Martin Luther King and Hamilton College.
And I would like to be told that there is more to this life than I can see, earn, or learn in my time. That beyond the day-to-day spectacle are cosmic mysteries we don't understand. That in the meantime--and the meantime is where we live--we infinitesimal particles of creation carry on the miracle of loving, laughing and being here now, by giving, sharing and growing now.
"We will climb together not as individuals who belong only to this or that nation or faith, but as a team who all share a common home: the earth. By bringing people together from different cultures we will be setting an inspirational example of courage, friendship and teamwork - and through our Peace Climbs show the world that people from various faiths can live together, work together, and depend on each other while doing something extraordinary..."They are also raising funds for Room to Read, an organization which has partnered with rural communities all across Asia by providing challenge grants and donating expertise to build schools, establish libraries and fill them with donated books, establish computer and language labs, and provide scholarships to underprivileged girls.
David (Dudu) Yifrach, Ali Bushnaq, and Micha Yaniv holding the Israeli and Palestinian flags joined together
The real does not die, the unreal never lived. --Nisargadatta Maharaj Our practice for the week of Tzav is to journey to the fire on the altar of your heart and listen to its voice.This week, Parashat Shimini:
Tzav asks us to enter within and inspect the condition of the innermost fire upon the altar of the heart. We are challenged to look at our lives and ask the serious and probing questions about what supports that fire as well as what puts it out.
--Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before G-d, which He commanded them not. And a fire went out from G-d, and consumed them, and they died before G-d. (Leviticus 10:1-2)
They approached the Supernal Light out of their great love of the Holy, and thereby died. Thus they died by "divine kiss" such as experienced by the perfectly righteous; it is only that the righteous die when the divine kiss approaches them, while they died by their approaching it... Although they sensed their own demise, this did not prevent them from drawing near to G-d in attachment, delight, delectability, fellowship, love, kiss and sweetness, to the point that their souls ceased from them. (Ohr HaChaim)(via Chabad.org)
If someone could see into your heart, the deepest part of you, and really see what it is that you've been trying to do all this time, what is it that they would thank you for?I am thanked for for that, I think. For being willing to look in the heart-part of people, and to appreciate and bless their particularness (which is their own genius) and for being a warm and kind and not-sticky place where people can glide and blow through and sidle up as themselves without any guilt or shame. I don't manage to do it all the time, but I am practicing.
