תרומה - ושכנתי בתוכם

Moshe has just gone up the mountain for his 40d/n stay
Immediately, instructions for bldg the משכן, traveling shrine,
and all its furniture and implements.
Description starts with the innermost vessels
(the ark, the covering for the ark with the keruvim)
and generally moves outward until the section that we are reading
which mostly describes the fabric of the outer layers of the shrine.
Central line of this opening section (before we get into all of the details):

Key question: What does it mean for God to dwell with us
in or through a structure like this?
How could something that sounds so human
be a proper conduit for our experience with God?

Since ancient times,
the question has been debated
what does it mean for God to reside
in this relatively small tent in the desert
with beautiful but human-scale furniture
and roasted incense, dough, and meat?
Doesn't God fill actually the entire created world?
Or to put the issue another way:
If a realm of worship were expansive enough for God,
wouldn't it be way too big or grand or sacred for us?
And if it were the right size for us,
wouldn't it be too small or anthropomorphic or mundane for God?
These questions aren't specific to the details of the mishkan's construction.
They're a challenge to the whole idea:

For many people, Torah could actually seem
as mundane, anthropomorphic, even vulgar, as the Mishkan:
A collection of ancient Near Eastern texts,
written with ink on parchment,
in an ancient Semitic language,
describing all kinds of stories, and laws, and practices
that may seem weird or primitive to us.
How is that a proper conduit for our relationship with the Divine?

We could ask how relevant the Mishkan is
and we could ask the same about Torah.
It's hard for me to make the pitch for the Mishkan
not having experienced it firsthand.
Torah should be easier because
I do have experience connecting to God through Torah,
and it's something I've tried to express in past דברי תורה
but I find that it really isn't easy to communicate,
and it gets way too abstract.

I don't know if I'll do any better today,
but I'll try to express it differently,
using the Mishkan as a concrete metaphor
to describe my experience encountering God (and myself, and the world)
through Torah.
The Mishkan includes two vectors:
The first is the altar, where we collectively make concrete offerings,
that are burned up together, turned into smoke,
and that rise into the air, slowly dissipating as we gaze skyward.
In my encounter with Torah,
this is the level at which I read and study, have new insights,
or insights that at least feel new,
that I offer up together with those of countless others.
But as I give them,
I come to appreciate the variety and expansiveness
of the many understandings of Torah,
and the backdrop for my encounter with Torah
becomes wider and wider
until my understanding becomes vanishingly small
on the much greater canvas of human wisdom and divine inspiration.
Then there's the focal point that Seforno emphasizes:
That tiny and intimate space of encounter between the keruvim
out of which Divine speech emerges.
When bidden,
Moshe stands before these keruvim,
and before the ark with the tablets,
separated from them by a curtain,
and he waits to hear the Divine call,
which comes to him with clarity and urgency.

For me,
a life of devotion,
and Torah,
and worship, whether in the Mishkan or in shul or somewhere else,
all exist at the meeting of these two vectors.
On one level,
there is the practice of training ourselves
to place our vision, yearnings, insights, and dreams
in the context of an infinitely vast, complex, interconnected world
within which we almost disappear.
We direct ourselves to look further and further
beyond our immediate context and perspective.
And, on another level,
we prepare to look further and further within ourselves,
to open our hearts and our ears
to listen to the call that is coming to each of us right now,
one that is sometimes quiet and subtle
but that speaks with conviction and directness.
That's a process of attunement,
as far without and as far within as possible.
We have to be willing to give what we have to offer and let it go,
knowing that that the best of what each of us has
will only be a very small part of the larger picture.
And, despite that humility,
we recognize that there is a call for each of us to hear
and follow as if life and the world depend on it.

When those two practices that seem so opposite
are both active,
I experience a kind of inner integration
and deep connectedness in what I do,
To the point that interpersonal relationships,
worship, study,
ethics, social action, ritual,
aren't different things.
They're a single state of relationship,
like the keruvim gazing at a each other,
like the student with Torah,
like God speaking and Moshe listening behind the curtain.