A Short Introduction to Having a Personal Relationship with a Non-Personal God
Drawn from my inauguration talk, October 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhb5C-zUpwQ
I am religious, even though I have so many opportunities not to be, because being religious invites, even requires me to ask ultimate questions. Why are we, all of us, here? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do while I am here? A religious perspective presumes that the answers are more than individual answers. They are moderated and interpreted through community. This is community that is both horizontal—all the people we encounter every day, in real and virtual settings—and vertical—our ancestors—biological and chosen—who came before us, our children—biological and chosen—who will follow. A progressive religious perspective presumes that the community and its answers are constantly evolving—and that these changes can be good, they can be infused with the divine.
My religious approach embraces rationalism and sets aside supernaturalism (that is, as I am working against oppression, I don’t expect God to intervene to part the Red Sea). At the same time, I draw deeply on a belief in the God as the Source of the Universe, the Ground of Being, after [Reconstructionist founder] Mordecai Kaplan, “the Power that makes for salvation.”
Let me acknowledge that it takes work to embrace the rigorous questioning that a rational approach requires and to presume that we can end with a stance of belief. Reconstructionist Jews choose to believe—in some version of the divine, in some vision of the Jewish people—because belief affirms a beneficent universe, even as we witness horrors. Belief fuels optimism, even as we struggle in the trenches. We believe our ancestors experienced the divine at Sinai and recorded what they experienced in the Torah. That recording was tempered by their human limitations, heavily shaped by their social context. We also believe that revelation is continuous. It is our work, as Reconstructionist Jews, to discern revelation and enact the covenant between God and the Jewish people in ways that are meaningful for today’s world. We do this work always remembering our own personal and social limitations.
Here’s my take on being religious in the modern era. We acknowledge our creatureliness, that we are limited and imperfect. At the same time, we acknowledge the immense intelligence and agency that we humans possess. I take to heart the teaching of Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peschischa. He taught that we should carry two notes in our pockets. One should have the words: "I am but dust and ashes." The other should say: "For my sake was the world created." We are co-creators with the divine; we once were slaves and now are free; we willingly assume the obligation to work for the liberation of others. How we fulfill this obligation will look different for each of us, but for all of us, we can and must make “hope and history rhyme.”[1]
[1] From Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.
From "Keeping the Faith: Resilience in the Jewish Tradition"
Deborah Waxman
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/keeping-the-faith-resilience-in-the-jewish-tradition/
The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats and even significant sources of stress.” Harvard University psychologist George Vaillant suggests that resilience can be understood as a “twig with a fresh, green living core” that springs back and continues to grow after encountering pressure.
Judaism, writ large, is about resilience. Across the span of Jewish history, Jews have experienced extensive trauma, even catastrophe, and we have survived – as a people and as a civilization. After each catastrophe, the prevailing paradigm was inoperable: we no longer knew how to understand ourselves in relation to God, to other Jews, and to other peoples. And, throughout our history, Jews have ultimately transcended catastrophe after catastrophe. We have repeatedly breathed new life into the Jewish people and the Jewish civilization and we have found pathways toward repair. From trauma, we have had to heal. We have had to recover and re-vision, regenerate and re-seed vital Jewish life. We have found ways to cultivate resilience, both individually and collectively.
Questions:
- Are there times or dynamics when you feel that things feel “narrow” or that you don’t feel like you have sufficient resources to respond?
- Are there practices or orientations that help you adopt a more expansive view, in the moment or more generally?
- Are there Jewish stories or teachings that aid you in this shift?
Rabbi Shai Held:
A Jew is, ideally, a human being who, like Leah, can find her way to gratitude without having everything she wants or even needs…Disappointment need not preclude gratitude, nor need gratitude crowd out the very real possibility of disappointment. Judaism does not ask us to choose one feeling or the other but rather makes space—indeed seeks to teach us to make space—for the sheer complexity and contradictoriness of human experience. Who better than Leah to teach us that a broken heart can also have moments of profound fullness.