Easily Amazed

[christy]

I got to give the D'var Torah at last week's Shabbat service, which was designed and led by women in our congregation, in explicit celebration of the energies of the Divine Feminine.

"D'var" can mean "word" or "thing" or both at the same time!

here's what I wrote down, and pretty much what I ended up saying:

Behaa-LO-techa (you shall raise up) 6.01.07
Shabbat shalom!
This week’s Torah portion is called “Behaalotecha”
…and this is NOT my favorite Torah portion… (I know you're not supposed to have to explain the funny parts -- but, Rabbi Ted starts every d'var with something about how "this is his favorite Torah portion")
…JUST KIDDING! Now, after living with this portion for a month, I’ve come to love it and think about it all the time, and we have become Best Friends Forever.

Here is an OVERVIEW:
∑ Aaron is commanded to raise light in the lamps of the Sanctuary
∑ The tribe of Levi is further initiated into their role in the Sanctuary.
∑ Details about a "Second Passover” – some people missed the first one
∑ Instruction from the Eternal on the procedures for the journeying and the encampments in the desert
∑ The people complain— bitterly – about the (delicious and perfectly nutritious) manna, the “bread from heaven” that has been given to them for years, and demand that Moses supply them with meat (– remember Amy’s great d’var from last year? The Israelites with the quail coming out of their nostrils? It is that time of year to hear it again, and the CD will be available in the lobby after the service!)
∑ Moses is exhausted from about to take care of these people. The Eternal allows him to appoint 70 elders of the community, they receive an “emanation of Moses’ spirit”, and then they are able to help him.
∑ Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses, they are called into an audience with the Eternal, Miriam is afflicted with a skin condition. Moses offers the short and beautiful prayer that we sing during Shabbat service, el na r’fa na la. (God, please heal her, please) The community waits for the seven days it takes for her condition to resolve, and then they move on to the next place.

There is a lot going on in this portion!
But, I’m not so interested in the story, in the content. It turns out that what’s most interesting to me is the whole process of becoming friends with torah – and it turns out too that following what you are interested in, is part of this process. So, being a very new d’var torah maker, I’d like to especially invite and encourage everyone else who has not done this process much to try it. I’ll talk about some of the guide-lines that I’ve found useful for getting to be friendly with torah & then I’ll come back to the particular portion.

You might know that the name “Yisra-el” means “wrestles with God,” “one who is wrestling with God,” and also that Jacob the patriarch, became Israel, when he engaged in a wrestling match with a mysterious being – or man? or angel? – and Jacob wouldn’t allow the Being to go until he was given a blessing. That’s our lineage, that’s our path, that’s what we do, -- we hold on until we get to blessing, until we open to blessing. To me, that “wrestling” is the mental exertion part, the thinking hard, researching other commentaries, and actively working on the questions that come up, asking myself more questions.
We at Bet Alef are also very lucky to be immersed in another aspect of the tradition: the contemplative, meditative, listening-to-the-silence part. And I think of that more as “dancing” with god, as allowing ourselves to become intimate with the teachings. And, think about it: if you were torah, to whom would you rather give your most precious secrets? To the one who’s got you in a headlock? Or to the one who’s taking you out for a little samba? Well, OK. Maybe you’d like both of those… but the point is, it’s good to have a wide repertoire of approaches.

My second guideline is the way that the act of studying and understanding Torah is often described – it’s often called “unpacking” the text. I love that! I have the image of the surface of the text as an array of all kinds of packages. There are some that are heavy and hard to open, but some people have figured it out, and unpacked them, and we are very grateful. Some of them are very bulky and bumpy and wrapped with lots of knots, so that each knot that’s untied leads to another knot that needs to be untied, and that requires lots of patience. Some are like little lunchboxes with cartoons on the outside and a very simple clasp, and inside there are cookies! Others are gorgeous and glorious on the outside, and they fall open at the slightest touch, and inside are even more gorgeousness and glory. And, inside of all of those packages, there are uncountable treasures. Some have been unpacked already, and still amaze us – and some of them are entirely new, and they’re waiting for me, particularly me, and waiting for particularly you, to unpack them.
In fact – maybe they don’t even exist until we, until particularly I, or particularly you, start to look for them, in an act of co-creation. Like Olivier said about revelation on shavuot, “the universe wants this to happen, and it will step forward to meet us.” Martin Buber wrote, “Listen to the course of being in the world…and bring it to reality as it desires.”

Then, as a 3rd starting point I took something that I heard once from this nice rabbi that I happen to know – well, I think maybe I heard it more than once, but I really HEARD it, once: “All the stories are true.” And maybe just as the face of God is only all the faces that ever were, maybe no story is all the way true all by itself – the most true story has to be all the stories. Even the ones that are “wrong.” My friend Jack Ricchiuto writes, “When we’re conscious, we love all the stories”. In fact, it is also part of our lineage, our tradition, to use our imaginations to make up new stories, to make stuff up, as a valid tool for understanding the teachings.

So I began with these: the commitment to hold on / to stay with, until I get to blessing, until I become open to blessing; the trust that there are treasures in there, under the surface, waiting to be unpacked, waiting for me to unpack them; and the sense that all the stories are true. And I started to see the study of torah as a way to stretch the flexibility of my mind and imagination, as a way to learn how to encompass more possibility, more possibility that all the stories are true.

So, to go back to this week’s parshah, Behaalotecha: and actually, my real, pre-starting point was, when Olivier invited me to give a d’var on it, was to read it, and think: “I don’t get this! …I don’t get it how this will teach me about anything that I care about.” But, luckily, one thing I did get, was that this is a good place to start.

Then I had to choose a box to unpack. As I looked for a handhold, and tried to match the dance steps, I found a few places; but the obvious point of connection for me, and especially on this Shabbat honoring the energies of the Divine Feminine, was the part at the end about Miriam. In this parashah, she speaks negatively of Moses, is afflicted with a skin condition that has “scales like snow,” Moses offers a prayer for her healing, and after a week of isolation from the community, her condition resolves. Illness, prayer, healing – what could be better than that?

Most of the commentaries I read focused on Miriam’s criticism of Moses, imagining details of what she said and what she meant, why she deserved to be punished, and so forth, but… that’s not so interesting to me! What intrigues me is the description of Miriam’s skin condition – she was covered with “scales like snow” – and my imagination stretched out and touched down on the description of the “bread from heaven,” the manna that was “fine and flaky like frost.” I know this is a weird connection, and I am not saying that they’re the same thing, but, you know what? There are lots of very weird extrapolations to be found in commentary, and this one is not the weirdest one I found. (And… they’re all true). What occurs to me is that there is a resonance between the manna, the gift that was so bitterly criticized, and Miriam’s skin affliction which struck her after she criticized her brother Moses. Miriam as an elder and a matriarch of the community, became the body, the ground, that bore the consequences for her own, and maybe also for the people’s, harmful, and hurtful, stories.

And as I stretch my imagination, I feel the Torah coming forward to meet me, saying, “OKayyyy…Where are we going with that?” …and this is where we’re going: what if the gift and the affliction are not just resonant, but they’re the same thing? The affliction itself also somehow a gift, that needs some devoted, patient, unpacking? Because on the surface it’s not so interesting, not so attractive, we don’t see how it can teach us about anything we care about; maybe it’s even painful. But if we grapple with it, and tell new stories about it, and let it become intimate with our own imagination, it will help us eventually to be made open for blessing. El na r’fa na la. Word of caution: of course it is tricky, and it can be very mean, to tell someone else that what they perceive as affliction is really a gift. Rather, this is a story whose truth we can start to explore on behalf of our own self, and as we do, we will feel the universe step forward to meet us, and in that way we will co-create the possibility that this story can be true for more and more of the one consciousness that we all share.

What if it’s all blessing? And how will we live, knowing that all of these stories are true?

[fiz]

...last week's Shabbat service, which was designed and led by women in our congregation, in explicit celebration of the energies of the Divine Feminine.

...inside of all of those packages, there are uncountable treasures...some of them are entirely new, and they’re waiting for me, particularly me, and waiting for particularly you, to unpack them.

maybe they don’t even exist until we, until particularly I, or particularly you, start to look for them, in an act of co-creation.

Martin Buber wrote, “Listen to the course of being in the world…and bring it to reality as it desires.”

...the most true story has to be all the stories. Even the ones that are “wrong.”

“When we’re conscious, we love all the stories”.

Miriam as an elder and a matriarch of the community, became the body, the ground, that bore the consequences for her own, and maybe also for the people’s, harmful, and hurtful, stories.

Word of caution: of course it is tricky, and it can be very mean, to tell someone else that what they perceive as affliction is really a gift. Rather, this is a story whose truth we can start to explore on behalf of our own self, and as we do, we will feel the universe step forward to meet us, and in that way we will co-create the possibility that this story can be true for more and more of the one consciousness that we all share.

What if it’s all blessing? And how will we live, knowing that all of these stories are true?

[fiz]

energies of the divine feminine

story

unpacking

co-creation

our necessary presence for any story to have a life

harmful stories

identity of affliction and blessing

consciousness

a dynamic knowing all stories to be true

an essential challenge. . . .

[fiz]

I've tried to sift out (above) some choice elements from Christy's presentation that resonate for me, and possibly invite further reflections (from you, me) as moved. . . .

In particular, I find myself stirred by the culminating challenge to live with a consciousness of all stories possibly being true, and the unique route you took, Christy, in getting there.

I specifically feel called by your presentation to consider living with a consciousness of all stories -- old and not yet realized -- in the context of the divine feminine, and what this means to me, especially in light of a story that portrays an image of the (elder, matriarchal) feminine as "the ground, that bore the consequences for her own, and maybe also for the people’s, harmful, and hurtful, stories."

Christy, you beautifully enact unpacking a story in a way that demonstrates such grace in inviting and allowing for more of the same from anyone lucky enough to hear and appreciate your own carefully chosen words.

Enriched. . .again,

Chris

[christy]

Thank you, Chris, for that careful winnowing down into essence of the aspects that reverberated for you -- fun to see you shaking it down to the barer and barer core!

I am still really juggling like a hot potato that idea, that teaching, that "all the stories are true" because I hear so many stories (especially from patients) along the lines of "I'm not good enough" or "there's something wrong with me" -- I know that those stories are Wrong, and yet I also sense a deep root straight to source that connects each expression, even those distorted in the manifest, with the True...that everything points to the One because there just isn't anywhere else to point. ??? I'm only making a little bit of sense even to myself!...

love, Christy