inspirations towards revelation
sparks to help us find our way in to interconnection, connection, receiving
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Shavuot, the holiday about receiving Torah on Sinai (seven weeks after leaving Egypt, of course) begins on Thursday night.
We haven't spent much time this year on the spiritual journey of this wilderness season, but hey, a few notes on my own voyage through these weeks: I've helped create and launch a fund to support survivors of trafficking, as part of Jewish communal amends and accountability work (a bit on that below); I've been off to speak at a Harvard Business School conference on race, gender and equity (will share the talk when they post it), guested at a University of Chicago Divinity School class on leadership and community change, and been working hard on a bunch of behind the scenes things that are allllllllllmost ready to launch, as intimated last week– can't wait to share any minute, now.
Grace Gilson
More about this here.
In any case, Shavuot is the holiday that's about Revelation. Theophany: That experience of encountering the Biggest Big there is, the All of Everything And Beyond, the Oneness Beyond Language Yet Requiring Capitalization.* And it's celebrated, traditionally**, by staying up all night to study Torah.
In addition to an overabundance of stuff from the archives below (probably more than you can deal with, probably), what I really want to give you today is the chance to experience a range of perspectives–some profoundly exquisite sources, from across a millennium and a half.
They're here to help orient all of us to the ways in which learning and understanding connects us to the Big Interconnected Everything that includes and transcends all of us, in different ways. Whether or not you're secular, religious, spiritual or 🤷, whatever you think (or don't) about any of the theological words any of the sources are using here, see if you can find some nugget of illumination or connection for you– a spark of light, if you will.***
*As Rabbinic texts teach us, “the Torah speaks in the language of human beings,” (Sifrei Bamidbar Shelach 6 and elsewhere). The capitalization is for, you know, us.**It's a tradition started about 500 years ago, which is fairly recent in Jew-time, by the Kabbalists in Tzfat, in the Galilee. One of the pieces below talks a bit about how and why that happened. Ottoman Empire trade routes were a non-trivial part of that puzzle.
***This isn't the time to get into the Kabbalistic system of Isaac Luria and his ideas about lifting up holy sparks in the world, but... yeah.
Some questions to ponder as you read:
Where do you see yourself? Where do you find yourself most intuitively connected? Which sections do you find yourself resisting, and what might that be about? Is there a secret side doorway into which you might find an access point?
Please, dig in.
Any person can enrich the entire world with their spiritual treasures, if you have the strength to reveal them. You don't have to be a wise or learned person. For there is no way to assess the excessive wealth of your soul, because your soul is the light of the divine in the world. (Rav Abraham Issac Kook, Shmoneh Kvatzim)
Eagle Poem
By Joy Harjo
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
Rabbi Yehoshua Ha-Kohen bar Neḥemya said: At the moment that The Holy One blessed be God appeared to Moses, Moses was a novice at prophecy. The Holy One blessed be God said: ‘If I appear to him in loud voice, I will terrify him; in soft voice, he will take prophecy lightly.’ What did God do? God appeared to him with the voice of his parent. Moses said: ‘Here I am; what does [the Parent] want?’ The Holy One blessed be God said: ‘I am not your parent [Amram], but rather the God of your parent .I have come to you with inducements so you will not be afraid.’" (Midrash Exodus Rabba 3:1)
You find that when the Holy One gave the Torah, it was entirely of fire, as it is said: "At God's right hand was a fiery law unto them" (Deut. 33:2). Our sages said: The law was of fire, the parchment was of fire, its writings were of fire, the thread was of fire, as it is said: "At God's right hand was a fiery law." The face of the agent (Moses) became fiery, as is said: "And [the Israelites] were afraid to come to him" (Exod. 34:30).
The angels who descended with it were of fire, as it is said: "Who makes winds Thy messengers" (Ps. 104:4). "The mountain burned with fire" (Deut. 4:11), and it was given within a fire consuming fire, as it is said: "For God your God is a devouring fire" (Deut. 4:24). And upon the earth God made you to see God's great fire" (Deut.4:36). The Divine Word also came forth from the midst of fire: When [the Israelites] beheld the lightning and the burning letters, the Holy One said ... "I am God..." (Exod. 20:2). (Midrash Tanchuma, Yitro 16:2)
Snail
By Langston Hughes
Little snail,
Dreaming you go.
Weather and rose
Is all you know.
Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking
The dewdrop’s
Mystery.
MADE OF
Aurora Levins Morales
from Rimonim Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation
We are made of the mineral dust of stars and every molecule of us burns with the memory of vastness and splendor. We are living constellations, minute fiery suns, each of us with our orbiting miraculous worlds, our silent moons, all born from the hunger of atoms to embrace. Our light reaches beyond us, through the beautiful dark, through the universe without end. Everything that exists, has existed, will ever exist in all the unimaginable folded flower of time is holy, and there is nothing ever and anywhere that is not Spirit.
We are made of earth, small seeds, dreams of photosynthesis, curled inside brown husks, made to crack painfully from our shells, to push heavy soil aside, to move, stubborn and fragile toward our destinies, into sun and rain. To break and grow green, break and flower, to be trees of life, and fall broken onto the ground becoming rich humus full green unbroken dreams. Everything that is, we turn into ourselves and give back as soil. Give back as oxygen. What we breathe is each other. Nothing that lives is alone.
We are made of water: salty rivers run in our veins, lymph ebbs and swells, saliva and tears leak into the air and dry. We are always changing: wide seas into clouds, rain into puddles, rivers into muddy fields that run along ditches into the sea. We flow, freeze, boil, rise, disperse, are hurled this way and that. We declare that we are the blue edge of glaciers, the great ocean swell, stagnant teeming ponds, months long tropical downpours, the delicate tracery of frost on a dry leaf, rusty drip of a faucet. We are the shape of what's happened to us. We are caught up in doing, and whirl through our lives, suffering, joyful, filled with doubt. And yet we return to ourselves again and again, to the Self that is all there is. We are made of water, called to find our true level by that great force of love we call gravity. We are made to trust our destination. We are not lost.
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