Nurturance Culture, Tzimtzum/Turning this World Inside Out, and Revelation

“What each of us does reflects on the others. So if one of us is beautiful that means we all are. If one of us does something good that means we all did it.” -Naava's Uncle

“What we need is a model for slow self-love that brings the shame up into the light, and reality checks with others who accept you unconditionally, hold you accountable, and aren’t going anywhere.
We need a model of justice that recognizes the lived reality of interdependence and learns to do it well, not a justice of shame that frightens us all out of looking at our shadow sides or weakest selves.
We can heal when we can finally be our whole, unguarded selves, in human community, without shields or guards, and be liked, accepted, seen, held. This is systemic change, spiritual change, at the core levels of our culture, lived each day.” -Nora Samaran from "The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture"

"It is on everyone’s mind and heart how to best support the genius that surrounds us all. How to shepherd each of us into the brilliance we come from even though our experience breaking each other apart through capitalism has left much healing to be done. We are more patient than we have ever been. And now that our time is divine and connected with everything, we have developed skills for how to recenter ourselves. We walk. We drink tea. We are still when we need to be. No one is impatient with someone else’s stillness. No one feels guilty for sitting still. Everybody is always learning how to grow" -from "Evidence" by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements edited by Adrienne Marie Brown & Walida Imarisha

The Silent Aleph
Rebbe Yosef Yitzhak taught that the entire Torah is encompassed in the Ten Commanments; the Ten Commandments are all contained in the first two commandments, which in turn are contained in the first commandment; and the first commandment is reflected in microcosm in the first word, Anokhi.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in The Book of Miracles, goes one step further, writing that not even the first word, Anokhi, was heard. All that God spoke was the first letter of the first word of the first commandment. At Sinai, all the people of Israel needed to hear was the sound of the aleph.

Before all things were created, the Light of Ein Sof (the Infinite One) filled all existence. There was no empty space which could be characterized as space, emptinesss, or void. There was no category of beginning or end. All was one simple, undifferentiated, infinite Light. When it arose in G!d's will to create worlds, G!d constricted (withdrew) G!d's infinite Essence away from the very centerpoint of G!d's Light. G!d then withdrew that Light even further, distancing it to the exgremities around this centerpoint, leaving a Vacated Space and Hollow Void from the centerpoint... After this constriction, which resulted in the creation of the Vacated Space in the very midst of the infinite Light of Ein Sof, a "where" existed for all that was to be created: [teh sefirot (Divine emanations), the Supernal Worlds, humanity...
-from Sefer Eitz Chaim, a collection of the teachings of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria by his disciple Hayyim Vital (16th century). Translation/interpretation by Moshe Mykoff

"The wonderful reward of creating safe bonds is that in these places of trust, a warm glow of meaning and purpose emerges. An inner circle of trust and vulnerability allows movement and rest: it lets the bees come and go from the hive. It creates shelters of chosen family and beloved community from which action, challenges to racism, sexism, institutional violence, can arise, a safety net to catch each other’s bodies and souls, the foundation that allows risk." -Nora Samaran from "The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture"