What Makes Us Unique

My friend Hal gave me a copy of “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. I’m only on page 3, but I already feel compelled to comment.

Gilbert speaks of The Sentence; that one line on which so many of us live or die: “The human being is the only animal that…”

Gilbert says humans are the only beings that think about the future. I don’t know if that is true, but, true or not, there are other ways to complete this sentence that I find more compelling: The human being is the only animal that… pays for sex; packs things with Styrofoam peanuts; and bothers to complete the sentence: The human being is the only animal that….

But these answers, while wildly clever, don’t mean much. Thinking a bit more deeply, I would say the human being is the only animal that imagines God cares about what he or she believes God cares about. We are the only animals that worry about heresy, blasphemy, and making sure that Passover matzah is baked no longer than 18 minutes.

Now you might argue that I am missing the point, and that we humans are the only animals that care about Truth. But I don’t think truth is what we care about. What we care about is belief. What you believe may be totally insane, but you will fight to the death (preferably someone else’s) insisting otherwise.

Most likely the insanity belongs to those who believe other than you do. For example, it is insane to think that a bit of dry cracker becomes the body of Christ, but it makes total sense that the sun stood still at midday to allow Joshua enough time to finish his military conquests. Or, it is ludicrous to think that God kept feeding lines to Mohammed in a cave, but the quintessence of reason to believe that He dictated a few lines to Moses on a mountaintop.

I am not saying that one person’s belief is another person’s heresy. I am saying that when it comes to religious belief people are nuts. And we like it that way.

Take the Buddha. He comes to a very simple insight: life driven by unquenchable desire is painful, so stop living that way. That is a very clear, testable truth. And then his followers spend innumerable hours decorating it with wild stories about cobras, demons and virgins over whose existence we can argue incessantly.

So here is another ending for Gilbert’s sentence: The human being is the only animal that prefers fantasy to reality.

Now it is your turn: The human being is the only animal that…

The Name Game

A couple of days ago I commented on changes to the American Catholic liturgy. Today I read that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is considering some drastic changes of its own.

The church’s national assembly voted to “receive” (one step short of approving) a more gender-inclusive reference to the Trinity. No, not Natalie, Martie, and Emily, they are the Dixie Chicks. In addition to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (nee Ghost) the Trinity may soon make a liturgical debut as Mother, Child, and Womb” or “Rock, Redeemer, and Friend” or “Lover, Beloved, and Love.”

The goal of the changes is to remove the misnomer that God— King of Kings, Lord of Lord, and Man of War—is male. Not a bad goal as goals go, but to say that these changes “do not alter the church’s theological position,” as the church claims, is to say you are not taking these changes very seriously.

If God the Father is now God the Mother, just how did Mother impregnate Mary with Child? And if She did, what does this say about homosexuality in the church? God is now a lesbian, so how can we say lesbianism is an abomination? Gay men are still out, of course, because it is man on man sex that really freaks the Church Fathers out. Women on women, well lets just say boys will be boys unless they are gay in which case they are abominations.

But could a Lesbian God really hate gay men? I doubt it. So I imagine that soon after the return of the Mother we will find a way to welcome gay men as well.

I for one am happy about this. I am a bit less comfortable with the Holy Womb.

A womb is a uterus, a hollow muscular organ located in the pelvic cavity of female mammals. True, I believe that God manifests as all things, so this hollow muscular organ is also God, but do I really want to pray to it? When people say they are moved by the Holy Spirit, am I to imagine they are being squeezed by an invisible uterus? And if we are trying to make our religious language gender-inclusive, did it ever occur to people that only women have wombs?

For a moment I thought the way out would be the Lover, Beloved, Love trinity. But lovers need not be spouses and spouses need not be lovers, so now God is supporting love outside of marriage which makes everyone not living in Massachusetts very nervous.

So what to do? Opt for the liturgy of the unformed Quaker service: silence. Just sit in God’s presence and know that whatever images come to mind regarding God are neither real nor accurate.

As Lao Tzu has been trying to teach us for thousands of years: the God that can be named is not the eternal God.

A Shameless Plug

My friend Rich called last night and urged me to let my readers now that I have recently published a new book with Skylight Press. The book is called the Sacred Art of Lovingkindness. It should be in most bookstores by now, and can be ordered from either Skylight or Amazon.

If you are readers of my books, I would like to ask a favor. If you can make the time, please go on Amazon.com and write comments in the review section. Of course I am assuming you would right positive reviews. If you didn't like the book no need to write a review.

Thanks,
Rami

A Shift in the Making?

Just when I was packing to move to Canada, or Amsterdam, or Israel (notice the order), I read that the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group's president at its meeting in Greensboro, N.C., and Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is elected to lead the Episcopal Church USA. While too very different persons of faith, they share a broader vision that shifts (in the case of the Baptists) and maintains (in the case of the Episcopalians) the direction of these two denominations toward the left.

Now, don’t get too excited. Rev. Page and his Southern Baptists are not about to vote for gay marriage, something Bishop Schori supports, but the obsession of the religious right with bashing the liberal left may be waning.

Does this mean that the War on Christianity is over and the Civil War among Christians is underway? I doubt it. As American Jews know, feeling hated and oppressed is a great marketing tool. It is easier to raise money from followers who feel attacked, then from followers who feel victorious. So I doubt the War is over. But at least there may be a new front opening: more liberal (relative to the establishment) leaders are coming to the fore bringing the teachings of Jesus to bear on the issues that really mattered to him: poverty, injustice, exploitation of the common people by the religious and political elites, rather than abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research.

I for one am heartened by these two elections. What Christianity, Islam, and Judaism need is their how Dalai Lama. We are no where near this at the moment, but maybe we moved a bit in that direction this past week. Let’s hope so.

Making a Mess of Mass

Religious ritual is theater. Its power rests on its use of music, symbol, and liturgy to open the heart, mind, and soul of the worshipper to the presence of God. Mostly it is bad theater, primarily because the people in charge of worship refuse to treat it as theater. Case in point: the newly proposed changes to the American Catholic Mass.

In the new version the standard exchange between priest and people: “The Lord be with you”/”And also with you” will now be “The Lord be with you”/ “And with your spirit.” This is supposed to better reflect the Latin from which the English Mass comes. That may be. My Latin is limited to E Pluribus Unum and Biggus Dickus. But it is bad theater.

The repetition of “you” in the two phrases links the priest with the people. We could bless one another as equals. Now the people are asking that God be with the father’s spirit. But what about the rest of him? This splitting of body and spirit is both false and unfortunate. A church still reeling from child abuse scandals should know this most of all.

The second change deals with Communion. Prior to taking Communion Catholics used to say, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.” Now worshippers will say, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” What were they thinking?

Taking the Body and Blood of Christ into oneself is the center of the Mass. This is a moment of integrating God and wo/man. No one is worthy of this, and thus it is a sign of God’s love that it is offered to you. But to shift from receiving God to having God under one’s roof misses the point completely. God isn’t entering under your roof; God is entering your mouth. Even if the liturgical writer was thinking of the roof of one’s mouth when he made this change (which I doubt), it is a terrible change.

I have been to many Communion services. I have seen the power of this intimate in-taking of God. It is moving and stirring. This new liturgy can only take away from that.

These changes reflect the error at the heart of organized religion. Rather than work to deepen our experience of God’s presence here and now, organized religion focuses on conforming to some historical experience there and then. These changes to the Catholic liturgy are just the latest example of how religion misses the mark.

True worship should have elements of continuity with the past, but should not simply imitate the past. Imitative worship cannot open us to God, unless the god it presents to us is also imitative. Indeed that may be the problem. Religion is all about the second-hand. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob rather than the God of you and this moment. Even if you add the matriarchs to the mix—Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah—you are doing nothing to shift worship into the present.

When I go to a worship service I want to moved to let go of past and future and awaken to what is here and now: God manifest. I guess that is I why I rarely go to services.

Soylent Green is People (Chinese People)

Remember ice cream trucks? Where I grew up in Western Massachusetts the ice cream truck was a summer staple. Everyday, though we never new just when, we would hear the jingle as the gleaming white van made its way through the streets of our neighborhood. As the jingle got louder we knew the van was getting closer. We would practically mug our mothers for change, and then wait anxiously at the curb for the arrival of the truck.

The truck drove slowly down the street so as not to kill any potential customers. As it pulled up in front of us our eyes scanned the myriad signs plastered on the side of the truck announcing just what was inside the coolers that day. Popsicles, Push-Up Pops, Creamsicles, Fudge Bars, Ice Cream Sandwiches, the list seemed endless. And the guy dressed in white pants, shirt, and sailor-like paper hat was the master of ceremonies. He worked efficiently, never loosing his cool. I wanted to be that guy.

My cousin Bob actually drove an ice cream truck for a while. The envy of many of my friends, but his route was far from our neighborhood, so having a family member in the business did nothing to lower our personal ice cream expenses. He loved that job. I bet he would do it again, given the chance.

I read today that the Chinese have something similar. Or not so similar. The twist is that, in China, they are not selling ice cream, they are killing people. The Chinese van, which looks just like the ice cream trucks of my childhood, is a deathmobile that comes to your neighborhood to inject convicted criminals with lethal chemicals and then cart away the bodies in the back of the truck.

Critics of the idea say China uses the trucks to increase their harvest of body parts to sell on the black market. Not a bad idea. If we did this profits could offset the costs of trials, or be given to the families the criminals have harmed. In fact, we could harvest body parts from living criminals. We could offer a reduced sentence to criminals who would give up a lung or kidney or eye.

I am thinking about writing to the Chinese embassy to suggest that they could get more out of the vans if they let the drivers sell ice cream out of the back of the trucks. They already have coolers to keep the newly harvested organs fresh, so why not start the day with the coolers filled with ice cream. Rather than sitting around waiting for a criminal to kill, drivers could cruise neighborhoods and sell ice cream, stopping for an occasional lethal injection, and careful not to mix the deadly serum with the butterscotch topping.

I am not saying we should have deathmobiles, or that the Chinese should sell ice cream. It isn’t my place to tell other people what to do. It is just that if we did do it maybe my cousin could get a part-time job driving one of the trucks in my neighborhood so I could get a free hot fudge sundae now and then.

Dear Rami

Dear Rami,

I just found your website (www.rabbirami.com) and read most of what you had posted there. It was very irritating. I know you say you are a rabbi but I am not sure. I think you should stop using the title rabbi. Then we won’t have to take you seriously anymore.

X

* * *

Dear X

You don’t have to take me seriously, but I worked hard to become a rabbi, and I have no intension of dropping the title.

In fact I love being a rabbi, just as I love being a Jew; though I admit to pushing the limits of both. And in the spirit of doing just that, let me share a couple of thoughts your email sparked in me.

A rabbi is a master of Torah, God’s revelation to Moses and through Moses to the world. The heart of that revelation is what I call the Jewish Creed:

Hear O Israel, YAH is our God, YAH is one. Love YAH with all your heart, with every breath, with all you have and are (Deuteronomy 6:4-5); and Love your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and the stranger (Leviticus 19:34) as yourself.

[I use the Name YAH (as in Hallelu-YAH, praise YAH) rather than Adonai/Lord to avoid the patriarchal and hierarchical dualism associated with the more classic LORD. The Hebrew is best understood as the verb TO BE. God is the is-ing of reality.]

A Jew is someone devoted to this Creed who continually strives to deepen her capacity to listen and love, and uses the tools Judaism offers as her primary means for doing so. A rabbi is someone whose life is devoted to facilitating this deepening in both others and him/herself.

Of course these are not standard definitions, but they work for me, and I thought I would share them with you. Thanks for the opportunity to comment on this. Feel free to ignore my thoughts if you wish.

y-K-v-K

“We report to a Higher Authority” is a very successful marketing slogan for kosher meat producer Hebrew National. It suggests that kosher products are holier and therefore healthier. That may be true for Hebrew National, and I have no evidence to the contrary. But it is not true of all companies who call themselves kosher.

AgriProcessors, a major kosher meat producer selling its products under the Aaron’s Best brand, has been under fire for mistreatment of animals since December of 2004 when an animal rights group shot video of the plant’s slaughtering processes. At the heart of kosher is the principle of “tzar baalei chayyim,” sparing animals from unnecessary suffering. Not so at AgriProcessors. Of course since meat eating itself is unnecessary, and God’s prescribed diet in Genesis is clearly meatless, one could (and I do) argue that true kosher is vegetarianism. But the suffering of the animal is not the only issue; of equal importance is the treatment of workers.

Exploiting laborers renders products, both food stuffs and other goods, treif, unfit for human consumption. A new study of AgriProcessors’ labor policies reveals that on this count too they are decidedly treif. Workers are often undocumented, underpaid, poorly trained, and overworked. (see the Forward, May 26, 2006).

“Aaron’s Best” is really what is best for Aaron, and seems to bear little resemblance to anything remotely holy. Yet religious Jews continue to buy their products. Why? Because law is God and God is law in so much of what passes for Judaism. But this is not Judaism; this is idolatry.

Judaism is not alone in making idols. Every religion offers up a lens (it is really a mirror, but that is for some other time) through which to view God and in time begins to worship that lens as if it were God. That people don’t see this amazes me. Religion is too often bullshit from a sacred cow (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor).

I take kosher very seriously. I think that doing your best to only consume items that do as little harm to animals, people, and the environment as possible is what kosher is all about. I am a kosher Jew, and while tuna, salmon, and halibut consider me a Nazi, cows and chickens think I am Gandhi. Mea culpa to the fish; my kosher is a work in progress.

The fact that a company that causes needless suffering to animals and workers can still be kosher simply reinforces my sense that orthodoxies of any sort are corrupt to the core.

What Judaism needs, what all religions need, is a prophetic voice standing in the marketplace of ideas and speaking truth to power. Jesus may have been the last Jew to do this for Judaism, and look what happened to him— they turned him into God! There is no better way to avoid the message then worshipping the messenger. How terribly sad for us all.

160 Nation*

For some technology is the enemy. For me it is a seductress. I love the latest gadgets and gizmos. I am certain that in among the pile of “must have and don’t need” items touted in the pounds of magazines and newspapers I wade through every week, there is at least one item that, if used creatively, can turn the spiral of human consciousness up a notch toward God-realization. Today I think that technology is text messaging.

I can remember not very long ago reading that the computer was going to ruin our children’s capacity to write. Yesterday morning’s USA Today (Tuesday, May 30th) tells us that IM-ing and text messaging have given writing a new cache, and frets that text messaging will ruin our children’s capacity to speak.

I am not much of a fretter. If people are communicating more and more through text messaging over computers, cell phones, BlackBerrys, etc., I want in on it. I want to bring them the Word along with the word. But how?

The Word I care about is the Word high jacked by John 3:16. What John imagines as Jesus, God’s Son, was originally Chochma, God’s Daughter (see Proverbs 22:8). I want to share her teachings, the teachings of the world’s perennial wisdom literature, with people. Wisdom speaks through proverb, parable, and koan— written forms perfect for IM-ing. In Proverbs she sends her apostles (all of whom are female) to call to us from the towers and invite us to the feast of wisdom, the feast that is this life lived with justice, compassion, humility, grace, and humor. Today these towers could be cellular towers, and the feast and the way to it have not changed.

This is my calling (pun intended), but I don’t know how to answer it. I have written about Wisdom in my book “The Divine Feminine,” and I am working on creating a Wisdom Academy to study her teachings during five-day retreats. But I suspect that something more immediate and simple is called for. Something using today’s communication technology and the already ingrained custom of text-message communication. I want to reach the IM generation with the timeless wisdom of Wisdom.

I will wrestle with this and see if something is given to me. If you have any ideas, let me know.

* 160 characters is the maximum text message length.

Borderline Insanity

Both Israel and the United States are debating border issues. In Israel the talk is about building a wall separating Israel from Palestine. In the US the talk is about building a wall separating the America from Mexico.

I don’t have a problem with either wall. While some liberals use President Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall” (referring to the Berlin Wall), to turn us against wall building, they have allowed rhetoric to trump reason. The purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep East Germans in, not to keep West Germans out. The walls in the US and Israel are not meant to keep people from leaving these countries, but to keep people from entering them illegally. The difference is huge.

To be pro-wall, of course, I have to address the three major obstacles that building such walls present. Here they are:

1. OBSTACLE: cost. SOLUTION: sell the wall as advertising space. In Israel one side would advertise in Hebrew and the other in Arabic. In the US both sides would advertise in Spanish. I am certain both walls would pay for themselves within a year or two.

2. OBSTACLE: tunnels. SOLUTION: Whack-o-Mole. It is true that enterprising people will build tunnels as they have in Gaza and Arizona. My solution is to build a giant Whack-o-Mole game that would slam massive hammer blows on any head that pops up on our side of the wall. The hammers would run on high speed magnetic railroad tracks, the kind the Japanese use to move people, and be triggered by sensors that would pick up the sounds of people digging toward the surface. People could access the Whack-o-Mole via the internet and bet on where the strike will take place and how many will be hit. 75% of the monies bet will go for prize money similar to state lotteries. The rest will be used to train English and Spanish speaking Americans to speak Chinese. A similar Whack-o-Mole would be built in Israel. This Whack-O-Mole solution will have the added benefit of encouraging Americans and Israelis to experiment with new high speed train technology, which might be used to alleviate traffic and pollution problems.

3. OBSTACLE: human casualties. SOLUTION: faith and manifest destiny. When the walls are completed, there will be tens of thousands of Israelis on the Palestinian side of the Israeli Wall and millions of illegal aliens on the American side of the American Wall. What do we do with all these people?

The Israelis are contemplating using their military to forcibly remove the West Bank settlers. As we saw in Gaza, this is very dangerous and emotionally painful. The US is considering making the “wrong siders” felons, but that would clog our courts and jails even more then they are now, a very bad prospect. I have a better idea.

Israel should complete their wall and withdraw their army to the Israeli side. Don’t even try to move the settlers. Simply announce that the army will no longer be used to protect Israelis who choose to live on the Palestinian side of the wall. Most settlers will suddenly find reasons to move to Israel, and those who insist God wants them in Palestine will have to rely on God to protect them. They have tried this before, and it doesn’t work, but that is their problem.

Solving the population problem in the US is just as easy. We can’t forcibly repatriate eleven million illegal aliens, and even if we could they and tens of millions more will continue to seek illegal entry into the United States. So rather than build the wall along the northern Mexican border, I suggest we annex Mexico and build it along the southern tip. This will have tremendous benefits.

First, the wall will be much smaller and cheaper to build.

Second, all those Mexicans who want to come to the US will suddenly be in the US without having to leave home.

Third, all those Americans who want to hire Mexicans to do jobs that Americans won’t do, can now simply send buses to pick them up—and the “them” will be Americans. This, of course, may cause a new problem.

As soon as these Mexicans become Americans they too will no longer want to do those jobs, so we may have to build the wall further and further south until the whole hemisphere is American and no one will do those jobs and we will be forced to live without all the goods that illegals make which will reduce us to a third world country encouraging most of us to move illegally to Switzerland in order to find work doing jobs that Swiss won’t do for themselves. I am not sure what these jobs may be, but I for one am practicing shouting Ricola into a huge horn just in case.

As Frost said, good fences make good neighbors. Of course he was being sarcastic, but no one ever reads the whole poem, so don’t let that fact bother you.

ID and Evolution: Variations of Dumb

I was on retreat in Alabama with fifty faith-filled Christians this past week. I had a wonderful time, as I always do when hanging around people of faith. One afternoon I found myself in a discussion on Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution. I was expected to defend evolution, but I couldn’t. Both ID and evolution are variations on the same theme, I said. They both argue that the world is dumb, and I just don’t agree.

Evolutionary theory tells us there is no plan or Planner to the universe. The universe just does what it does and then repeats what it does if what it does survives to do it again. Mutation happens randomly, and when a given mutation makes survival easier, the mutant reproduces. Which is how we got X-Men III.

Intelligent Design argues that life is too complex to be random. There has to be a Designer behind it all pushing tab A into slot B to create something new. Who this Designer is, of course, the ID folks refuse to say. If they did they would have to admit to being closet Creationists and forced to live in Kansas.

I never argue with Creationists, by the way. I always agree with them that God created the universe. My only fossil of contention is Who this Creator God is. They say Jehovah, I say Krishna. They pull out the Bible; I pull out the Bhagavad Gita. They try to sell me salvation; I try to sell them incense. It makes for interesting conversation. That is before the yelling starts.

Anyway, I am not a Creationist and only trot Krishna out to make a point. The point being that the classic notion of a Creator, whether Jewish or bluish, makes the creation dumb.

Evolutionists say life is stupid, the result of chance and time. Creationists and ID folks agree that life is stupid: without God blowing life into adam, humanity is just a lump of clay. I find the notion of a dumb universe to be, well, dumb.

I think the universe itself is intelligent and striving to be more so. Why? There is no why. Reality, as the Chinese language tells us, is what is of itself so. Asking why misses the whole point. It is like asking a baby why it babbles and coos. It does it because it's fun. The universe is forever dancing on-off-on-off-on-off just for the fun of the dance. This is the binary code of reality. Ones and zeros playing out in seemingly infinite variation. And it does so for the sheer joy of it. If there is a Creator he isn't sitting on a throne, she is dancing on air.

Life is not stupid. Life is and has always been intrinsically intelligent, and driven to become more so (see Amit Goswami’s “Self-Aware Universe” for the math). At the moment we humans may be the most awake of all species on our planet. I doubt that the dance ends with us, however. I think that our purpose is to reach a point of consciousness where we can melt the polar ice caps with greenhouse gasses. In this way we will be reduced to a small island-dwelling sideshow while dolphins inherit the earth, which is what Jesus told us two thousand years ago. After all, who is more meek that a dolphin?

I Believe

During one of my weekend seminars, I facilitated an exercise where people are challenged to articulate their answers to ultimate questions as clearly and as succinctly as possible. To model what I was looking for, I invited people to ask me 10 questions. I had fifteen seconds to respond to each one. I am sharing them with you here as a way of suggesting you try the exercise yourself. Don’t get hung up on my answers, seek instead in formulate your own.

1. What is God? God is the source and substance of all reality. Whatever is, is God.

2. Do you believe in evolution or intelligent design? Evolution is intelligent design. I don't believe there is a designer behind the design, I believe the design is itself intelligent, conscious. It is God exploring ways to know itself.

3. Does God care about you? Does God have a plan for your life? That's two questions, but yes to both. God cares about me the way a tree cares about its branches. God’s plan or all life is to manifest beings complex enough to realize that all is God. God’s plan for my life is to move toward that realization.

4. Which religion is true? All and none. A religion is true to the extent that it leads us toward the realization of God as all, and teaches us to live justly, compassionately, and humbly. A religion is false to the extent it does anything else.

5. Is Israel the holy land? No. God is not a realtor. The universe is the holy land. Israel is for some the motherland, for others just another tripwire for the apocalypse.

6. What happens when you die? You stop pretending to be other than you are: God extended in time and place. Death is the great awakening. But it is more fun to wake before you die.

7. Are you a Jew? Yes, but not exclusively. First I am human, adam from adamah, an earthling arising the earth the way a bud arises from a branch. Then I am a male, and an American. These are all givens from birth. I am also a Christian, Muslim, Sufi, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Atheist, Humanist, Taoist— the more I know myself the more I know myself to be hyphenated.

8. What scares you most in the world? Ignorance and the fear, greed, anger, and violence that ignorance breeds.

9. What is the purpose of life? Life has no purpose; life is purpose. To suggest that life has a purpose is to make life a means rather than an end. Life is the end; the purpose of life is to live; to live with the awareness that all life is God.

10. What is the one question you cannot answer? That’s it.

Tubes

I am flying from Nashville to Los Angeles. Something I ate in Nashville is disagreeing with me over Dallas. The roar of the jets is masking the sound of this disagreement, and I have the overhead fan blasting full to diffuse its perfume, but one can only mask so much. My seatmate is asleep, and I image his dreams are a bit more dark than they might be had he been lucky enough to sit next to someone else.

The Sufi poet Rumi wrote that we humans are hollow reeds through which God plays His music. I always found that image compelling. Today I know it to be true. But why this particular sonata, Lord?

Think about it. Are we more than tubes through which air passes? Yesterday I sat next to someone whose lunch proved painfully sour to all around him when he belched in the meeting room we were using. So it doesn’t matter which end of the tube through which the air emerges, there is a good chance it will be foul.

Some of the air we move, of course, is shaped in ways we find more pleasant: words, musical notes, sighs of sorrow and relief, moans of pleasures, squeals of joy. Others are capable of cutting us like a knife: There is a baby in the back of the plane whose screams are of such a pitch that the ears of her neighbors will soon rupture and bleed. I thank God for my Bose noise canceling headphones.

I find it somewhat amusing that all of us tubes are hurling through air in a larger tube, itself propelled by sucking in and shooting out air. I am on my way to push some air at a few dozen tubes who have paid for the privileged of having me do so. I will be sure to leave them time to blow air in my direction as well, and I will do my best to honor their wind with a bit more of my own.

This may depress you. We long to be so much more than mere tubes, yet even Genesis has us as inert clay tubes until God blows air into us. The first air that emerges from Adam is used to name the animals, who are themselves tubes unable to name themselves. Maybe that is the point. We are the Tubes That Name, the tubes that make meaning by naming our fellow tubes. Not a bad designation, as designations go.

I know this may sound absurd; we long to be so much more. But at the moment I just cannot imagine what that more might be. So for now I will simply enjoy the moment when air emerges and the tube relaxes, and hope that most of what comes out of me does more for those I meet then it has for my seatmate whose nose, I pray, is twitching for some other reason.

National Prayer Day

Last Thursday was National Day of Prayer day. I missed it. Not on purpose, mind you, but simply out of ignorance. Unless there is a specific Hallmark card or retail sale associated with a special day I tend not to notice it.

The theme of this year’s National Day of Prayer (which was established in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman) is “America, Honor God.” Not a bad theme as themes go. As a retired congregational rabbi with 20 year’s of Bar and Bat Mitzvah experience, I consider myself somewhat of a theme expert, and, honestly, honoring God would be a unique idea when it comes to such events.

My problem is not with the theme itself, but with how one is to understand it. After giving this some thought, I came up with two options.

First, we might take our cue from Deuteronomy 7. Speaking of all the peoples that the Israelites will encounter as they seek to occupy the Promised Land, the Bible says that they are to “utterly destroy them… make no covenant with them, and show them no mercy” (1-2). Since for many America is the new Zion, and Christians have replaced Jews as God’s favorite, and since the Second Americans have succeeded in honoring Deuteronomy’s God by basically wiping out the First Americans, maybe we can continue to honor God by using National Prayer Day as a call to show our latest enemies no mercy.

The second option we might choose is to honor God by doing what the prophet Micah says God requires of us: do justly, love mercy, walk humbly (6:8). Then we could use the Day of Prayer to focus on ending injustice, cruelty, and imperialism. A very different day than that of Deuteronomy, which is the problem we face when it comes to honoring the Judeo-Christian God. The Guy suffers from multiple personality disorder. Maybe that is why Congress suggested we pray to “the God of our understanding.” This way we can all pray to our own god, i.e., the god that turns out to want for us just what it is we want for ourselves.

Since I missed National Prayer Day all together, let me off an idea for next year: Next year let’s hold city-wide prayer workshops inviting liturgists, poets, artists, and musicians from every major faith tradition to share with the community how they pray, and to engage the community in prayer in these many modalities. People would spend the day praying in multiple languages using multiple images of and metaphors for God. It would be one huge cacophony of God-song so powerful and prayerful that for a few moments we might forget the egoic and imperialist gods that drive us to war, and find ourselves falling together into the arms of the One God who calls us to love God by loving one another.

Now that would be a really NATIONAL day of prayer. Of course if there isn’t a card to buy or a sale to shop at I will still miss the event, but, hey, that’s just me.

If Money Didn't Matter

I was listening to financial guru Dave Ramsey on the radio, and heard him ask one of the most subversive questions one can ask in a capitalist, debt-driven society: “What would you do if money were not an issue?”

This is different than asking, “What would you do if you were rich?” Dealing with being rich continues your focus on finances. Ramsey’s question shifts that focus from wealth to happiness. Happiness is not a capitalist value. Happy people are harder to manipulate, harder to sell to. Ramsey was asking his listeners to think about what they want rather than what they are worth.

Try it. Imagine you did not have to think about money at all. Imagine that your basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, insurance, retirement, etc. were taken care of. What would you do with your life?

I have thought about this for several days, and I discovered I would be doing pretty much what I am doing now. I teach and I write. Sure, if I had no monetary worries I would live in a nicer home, drive a hybrid car, and never worry about the financial woes of illness or retirement, but I would not change what I do. I would simply do what I already do without beating myself up over that fact that I am not making enough money doing it.

Alan Watts, talking about the same issue some three decades earlier, urged his audience to live as if money was not an issue. His reasoning was this: you will never have enough money to do what you want, so you will always be enslaved to doing what you don’t want, in the vain hope that someday you will be able to do what you do want. This slavery makes you miserable. Since you are going to be miserable, anyway (either because you don’t have enough money or because you are forced to work at a job you hate), why not do what you want and just give up the illusion of financial success? Be miserable over your finances rather than over the fact that you are never going to do what you want. At least you can feel good about what you do even as you feel miserable about how poor you are doing it.

I will never make any real money teaching and writing. Adjunct professors like myself are a dime a dozen, and we are paid that way. My book sales, while solid, still don’t put food on the table. And as far as retirement goes, I can neither afford it nor do I desire it. After all, since I am already doing what I want, why would I want to retire?

I am happy doing what I want even if society isn’t willing to pay me what I am worth. There was a time when I made what I was worth but I didn’t like what I had to do to earn it. So, for now at least, I am willing to give up what I am worth in favor of doing what I want.

How about you? What would you do if money were not an issue?

Religious Progressives

What is a religious progressive? That was the topic at a conference I attended this weekend in Nashville, TN. Most of the participants drew their insights from Jim Wallis (“God’s Politics”) and Michael Lerner (“Left Hand of God”), two wonderful thinkers who find in their respective faiths (Christianity and Judaism) a politics of compassion that surpasses the fear-based religions of the Religious Right.

I could and did nod in agreement. There is little if anything that either Jim or Michael says that I cannot support. But I have a contrarian streak; I need to stand out; to say something different. This is a psychological disorder, I am sure, but it is mine nonetheless. So when asked to define “religious progressive” I suggested that a religious progressive is someone who has progressed beyond religion.

At the heart of religion, or at least at the heart of the three Abrahamic religions, is the illusion of scarcity. God chooses Jews not Christians or Moslems; saves Christians not Jews or Moslems; and gives the one uncorrupted revelation to Moslems not Christians or Jews. Because God’s love is scarce, the religions that compete for that love share a zero-sum theology: for one to win, the others must lose.

Of course there are liberals in all three faiths who have outgrown this, but that isn’t enough. We have to name it and openly reject it. We have to own the fact that scarcity infects all three Abrahamic faiths in a way that makes them intrinsically fear-based and violent, and then we have to reinvent our respective faiths from a position of God’s infinite and timeless love (ahavah rabbah/ahavat olam, to use Jewish terms).

A true religious progressive is one whose faith is not in religion, but in God; not in the known but in the Unknowable; not in this or that belief but in the realization that belief is simply the projection of ones own ego.

The religion of a religious progressive is the religion of radical humility, hospitality, and holiness: admitting to not knowing the nature and mind of God; welcoming all to God’s feast regardless of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, etc.; and using justice and compassion toward all beings as the standard by which to measure the value of any creed or system of belief. Religious progressives can be Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, etc. What matters is not the label but the ability to hold it lightly, and to transcend it in the greater reality of the One Who is all.

Let us religious progressives stand for that, and we will stand for something invaluable.

Condom-nation Versus the Army of God

Today the Army of God invaded my campus. Armed with giant photographs of aborted fetuses juxtaposed with those of murdered Jews, blacks, Cambodians, and Rwandans, these culture warriors sought to redefine choice as murder and abortion as genocide. While they also passed out a large pamphlet explaining why they were right, they knew better than to rely on rational argument. Theater is what counts and their posters were good theater.

The Army of God faced off against an ad hoc group of students with slogans written on their bellies who shrilly chanted, “This is what democracy looks like; this is what democracy sounds like.” I assume they meant that their bellies and chants were what democracy looks and sounds like, but the truth is that for this to be a real democracy you need competing theatrics. So the Army of God was the necessary antagonist in this drama.

Politics is theater, and the Army of God had the better theater. When the news cameras come to film the event, the calm and pictorially armed Army of God will make the antics of the students look silly.

I raised this with some of the students who asked me to I join their protest. I refused. It would blur the drama. The Army of God had no students on their side, just some older adults who used their First Amendment Rights to get on campus. The student protest should be just that, a student protest. But I did make a suggestion.

You need to have a better theater when the cameras arrive, I told them. Go get condoms and distribute them to students right after they get the pamphlet from the Army of God. Don’t attack the Army directly. Agree with them that abortion is not our first line of defense against unwanted pregnancy. Abstinence and condom use could make abortion very rare. The Army of God hates condoms, and handing them out while piggy-backing on their message would be a brilliant move, and work better for the news crews who would have to talk to you about safe sex rather than slogans on bellies.

I offered to pay for a couple of cases of condoms, but the students thought the infirmary would make them available for free. I left before the delegation sent to get the condoms returned. I hope they can pull this off. The key to changing minds in this country is theater, and that would be great theater.

The Ralph of God

A woman interviewed at the White House Easter Egg Roll was asked about the large numbers of gay and lesbian parents in attendance. She said, “It made we want to vomit. It made God want to vomit.”

While I felt bad for her digestive distress, the idea of God vomiting was far more disturbing. To find out more about this I contacted E. C. Homo an expiring in the Ralph of God.

“Dr. Homo, does God vomit?”

“Vomit is mentioned ten times in the Holy Scripture, but not in relation to God. There are passages that deal with God hating the stench of sacrifice, burnt offerings and the like, but even this does not cause Him to vomit.”

“If God did vomit, what would that be like?”

“It would be very bad.”

“Worse than Noah’s flood?”

“Oh, yes, much worse. Vomit contains chunks of food and that would rain down upon the earth like a giant meteor shower. Pieces that made it through the earth’s atmosphere would most likely kick up enough dust to blot out the sun and kill off most plants and trees. Human life could not long survive a Divine Ralphing.

“What if God was drinking and simply vomited up liquid? How bad could that be?”

“Think global tsunami. If God vomits, regardless of what God vomits, the result of that vomit hitting the earth would be end of life as we know it.”

“Do we have any defense against God’s vomit?”

“The best defense is, as they say, a good offense. So we should be clear as to what makes God vomit and then do our best not to do that in the first place.”

“Do homosexuals make God vomit?”

“There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that they do. God detests homosexuality, but that is not the same as saying homosexuals make God vomit.”

“Do you think the woman at the Easter Egg Roll who said that gay and lesbian parents make God vomit knows something about God you don’t?”

“Of course that is possible. The study of the Divine Digestive System is a specialty and there are intricacies of which I may be ignorant. Vomitheology has become something of a specialty among certain people of faith for whom God’s vomit is central to their own sense of self-righteousness. So I don’t want to judge this woman’s credentials without knowing more.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your time.”

“My pleasure.”

So, that is that. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves from the Ralph of God. It is just a matter of time. At least we know whom to blame.

Second-Hand Prose

Language betrays us. It is the menu to the meal that is reality. But its betrayal is contingent on our insistence that it be other than it is. When we insist that the map be the territory, that the word be the thing, then we are fooled and foolish.

But language betrays us another way as well. It conditions our thinking and leads us to see things that aren’t there.

For example, “It is raining.” We say this often enough, but what does it mean? What is the “it” that is raining? There is no “it,” there is only raining. Or when we say, “It is nice out.” Again, what is this “it?”

The “it” is what Alan Watts calls a linguistic ghost. Its function is to maintain the illusion that there is something constant in the universe, something other than what is happening. “It” is raining, “it” is snowing, “it” is breezy. The it is what matters, and it is permanent, constant. But there is no “it,” there is nothing constant. There are no nouns in nature, only gerunds; only raining, snowing, clearing, shining, etc.

Or take the phrase, “You’ve got to straighten yourself out.” What a horrible idea! Go out into nature and see if you can find anything that is really straight. You can’t. There isn’t anything straight at all. Everything is crooked. To straighten yourself out is to be completely unnatural.

And then there is “Pull yourself together.” Even if you could be asunder, who is the “you” that could pull you together? The implication is that you are other than the you that is asunder, but if that is so, then why bother with the sundered you at all?

Religion falls for this trap all the time. We are urged to empty ourselves, to surrender ourselves, to humble ourselves, etc. Yet who is the self that is to do these things? Can the self empty itself? The logic is lacking. The self can pretend to be empty, but a truly empty self would be selfless and, even if the self could suicide itself, once gone, it would be incapable of knowing it was selfless.

Our reality is so tied up with words that they easily manipulate us. Blasphemies of any sort are simply crimes against words. You are convicted of saying some words that other words say should not be said. And you can die for this. How odd!

Is there a way out of this trap? I think so. Practice silence. Learn to be at home in wordlessness. Then when you speak or when you listen you will see the game for what it is: the endless echo of second-hand chatter.

The War Against Pesach

Once again the Christian bias of this country and its theocratic administration has shown its ugly anti-Semitic face. I am referring to this Sunday’s Easter Egg Roll at the White House. Some sixteen thousand Easter celebrants will converge on the White House lawn to roll colored eggs in honor of the resurrection of Jesus. While I do not begrudge these Christian holy rollers their day on the lawn, I find it repugnant that there is nothing similar for Jewish Americans whose Passover holy day falls at the same time.

When I contacted the White House and inquired about this I was told that Jewish Americans were welcome to roll eggs along with everyone else. This was a thoughtless and repugnant response. I explained to the administration official that we Jews don’t roll eggs. While the word “roll” is found twelve times in the Hebrew Bible, the word “egg” is not mentioned even once. She not so humbly explained to me that while the Bible may be egg free, the Talmud tells us that Rabbi Abaye (280-339 CE) was famous for his ability to juggle eight eggs (some sources, she admitted, say only four eggs). While I admitted that she was right about Abaye, I reminded her that he did this at Sukkot not Passover, so it her point was irrelevant.

Getting nowhere on the phone, I sent an email to the White House outlining four events that could be held simultaneously with the White House Easter Roll. All they had to do was pick one, and I would be satisfied. Here is what I suggested they consider:

1. THE WHITE HOUSE AFIKOMEN HUNT. The President would hide a piece of matzoh somewhere in the White House and invite thousands of Jewish kids to tear through the place to find it.

2. THE WHITE HOUSE MATZOH BALL ROLL. While clearly derivative, thousands of Jewish families could come to the White House and roll matzoh balls alongside their Christian egg-rolling neighbors. The challenge here would be get matzoh balls that are hard and solid rather than soft and flakey. I suggest the President ask Jewish women to submit sample balls in advance of the event to find those that would serve this purpose.

3. THE WHITE HOUSE MATZOH FLY. Rather than copy the Christian event, Jews could be invited to the White House to toss whole matzoh squares like Frisbees from one end of the lawn to the other. If there is no room on the lawn for this event, or if the President fears that the sharp cornered matzoh squares might take someone’s eye out, the event could be retitled the GREAT AMERICAN MATZOH SKIM and held at the reflecting pool on the Mall where matzoh would be skimmed like flat rocks on the water’s surface.

These are just three ideas that would give Jewish Americans equal standing with their Christian neighbors. Unfortunately, the President has chosen to ignore my suggestions and make it clear that this is a Christian Egg-rolling Nation. I, for one, am very disappointed.