Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon
A taste of fall here. 42 degrees right now and cool weather tomorrow, too. A soaking rain yesterday.
Step-son Jon took Kate and me out to Carra Viejta, a Mexican spot just off 285 at Windy Point. Kate’s birthday. Good food and good company. Jon’s in much better spirits these days as the divorce moves closer to resolution.
Kate and I drove over to Congregation Beth Evergreen yesterday for another session of mussar, led by Rabbi Jamie Arnold. Over the last three weeks we’ve been discussing possible texts to use as the basis for study over the next year. One more this next Thursday. The three texts so far are: The Palm Tree of Deborah, the Way of the Tzaddikim and the Way of the Just. These are completely unfamiliar to me, which makes them interesting.
I get surprised occasionally. Jamie said yesterday, “We’ll have to see what our ancestors saw in these texts.” Not my ancestors. It’s interesting to be in but not of the conversation, I like it. Also, when the conversation turns toward G-d, I stop internally. I have to engage in a reconfiguration of the idea. What does G-d mean to the author here? Does the idea bring anything unique to the conversation or does it serve as a placeholder for something like: This is really important; or, take this seriously, dude; or, this is the best we could do in figuring out why should we believe this; or, this idea links us to all those in our 5,000 + year history who have believed this.
My impatience with religions of revelation has not waned. Revelation, word and practices with the imprimatur of divinity, has created so much bloodshed, so much cocksure wrongheadedness, so much diminution of the other that it seems like the opposite of what it claims to be. If there were a devil, it would be a clever ploy to create texts reputedly authored by God and spiked with so much absolutism that adherents to the texts would consider themselves an exclusively correct clan.
Outside dogmatic adherence to the idea of revelation most religious traditions have also devoted a lot of thought and practice to the question of the good life. How might we live? What are behaviors that respect all of G-d’s universe? How can we navigate the often muddy waters of our inner life? This is mussar. And kabbalah. And lectio divina. And the Way of the Pilgrim. And meditation. And the four noble truths. And the Tao Te Ching. These approaches to life as we live it here and now are among the great gifts of the world religions. They distill the wisdom of generations of sophisticated and nuanced thinkers, practitioners. It feels good to be learning another one.
