I met Maxine at a workshop called Alternatives to Violence. She was one of the oldest participants, in her late sixties. Maxine spoke with a sonorous voice as she spoke of family she lost in the Holocaust. Early in the weekend workshop, we brainstormed a long list of different types of violence. Each of us was asked to indicate which form of violence hurt us the most. Maxine stood erect, nearly six feet tall. Without a word, she walked to the list and circled “white male oppression.”
Later in the workshop, Maxine, I, and three others formed a group for an activity. We each received three or four cardboard shapes. The goal was to trade pieces in silence until all five of us formed our own square. Only one solution existed. The catch was that we could only give pieces. We were told not to ask for a piece or to help another with their square or to take another’s piece. I am adept at problem solving with shapes, and I quickly recognized what needed to be done. The next five minutes seem like an eternity. I used hand motions to try to Judith who had all the pieces she needed. Judith pushed her pieces to me. With two quick movements, I formed her square. She whispered to me that she would not have figured it out all weekend. My hands continued to flutter around to help others. Maxine looked at me with a frown and pleading stare. She put up her hands. I saw the gesture telling me to stop but it did not register. My frenetic gesturing continued.
Maxine was the last in our group to finish. Judith exclaimed, “Alan, I’m so glad you helped me–I’ve never been able to see shapes.” Maxine remained quiet and motionless. She said quietly “I did not want help. I often feel like I can’t solve these types of puzzles. In this activity I thought I could, but I needed time. I wanted to do it myself. You made me feel slow and inadequate. I even put my hands up to get you to stop.” In a very soft voice, she said, “when you did that, you made me angry.”
As we circled up to process as a whole group, I felt terrible. I just demonstrated blatant insensitivity to this woman who spoke so painfully about white male oppression, and did so by doing what I was specifically asked not to do as the rules in the game. In the large group she was quiet. If anyone was going to say something about my blunder, it would have to be me. I said, “I can’t believe I did that. I – I am sorry.”
At the break, Maxine and I spoke one-on-one. To my surprise, her words were warm and gentle. She assured me that although my action made her angry my willingness to listen and say that I am sorry made room for a much deeper connection of trust. I was awe-struck by the depth of connection, gratitude, and trust that resulted. I could have turned away from her, looked upon her with contempt for not accepting my help or pretended nothing of significance happened. She could have held a grudge against me for the rest of the weekend workshop and chalked me up to yet another insensitive straight white man who trampled on her voice and feelings.
This interaction occurred just a couple years after Lily Tomlin’s one person show was made into a movie: The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. There’s a line that has stayed with me, when her bag lady character said, “On the way to the play, we stopped to look at the stars. I felt in awe. And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something. Then I became even more awestruck at the thought that I was, in some small way, a part of that which I was in awe about. And I felt so good inside and my heart felt so full, I felt I would set time aside each day to do awe-robics.”
What would our world look like, what would your world look like, if you, I and all people took some time each day for awe-robics, intentionally opening up to wonder and to gratitude. It’s seem like an ironic thing to do given what all is going on in the world. But this is essentially what Rabbi Abraham Heschel did, even after fleeing Poland in 1942 and losing his sister, his mother, and many of his friends to the holocaust. A decade later he wrote a philosophy of Judaism that he entitled God in Search of Man, or if it was written today, it would be called God in search of humanity. He says “It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion–its message becomes meaningless.”
His thesis is that genuine religion springs from the wonder and awe of encountering mystery, that when we open up, radical amazement will be ours. My friends, it’s not just religion, it’s our entire culture that is dearly in need of awe-robics. As human beings, we are prone to take so much for granted and fail to see the many blessings in our lives. This is the season for wonder – it’s what the Advent Season is all about, but cultural forces pull us to focus on materialism, to strive to fulfill certain expectations, when what the Advent Season calls us to sing out with gratitude, and to share of ourselves such that we connect with the humanity of others. During what I imagine are very busy weeks for many of you, I want to challenge you to make space for wonder.
As Rabbi Heschel says, The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
I appreciate how the poet Denise Levertov expresses this in her poem,
“Variation on a Theme by Rilke”
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me–a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic–or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
My friends, we live amidst mystery. The mystery of creation, of beauty, of love and delight, of passion and meaning. And the mystery of suffering, inhumanity, evil. We live in a time of great uncertainty, a time when many of our cherished values appear to be spurned by not only many people abroad but many people in this nation.
We also live in community. And when we forget that we live in mystery, we are inclined to believe that we have all the answers. Mystery reminds us of our own humility. Whether amidst mystery or in community, we participate in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. There are people we in relationship with horizontally and we participate in a larger reality or mystery which is the vertical dimension. What calls us to reach out beyond ourselves? That is the vertical dimension.
This past week I struggled with a request that the congregation publicly endorse opposing federal legislation calling for draconian measures against people seeking asylum which goes against international law. It raised questions that must be addressed not only from our horizontal views but also what is morally just that this congregation will affirm?
Do you want to be a congregation that participates in the public wrangling of policy for the sake of our shared values to be pushed. Do you want to be a congregation that talks to one another about what is moral and make a statement? Do you want to be a congregation that recognizes a wide range of political stances gather here and refrain from quick endorsements? Do you want to be a congregation that avoids the conflict that inevitably comes when asking such questions, in the name of comfort?
What does our faith in the vertical dimension suggest? I hear some of you questioning this interconnected web as you express deep anxiety about the state of the world and our nation. I hear you saying it seems like the very fabric of our civic bonds are fraying amidst the intense polarization of our country. Cynicism and distrust are at all time highs. Idealism often looks naive and ridiculous. But we cannot afford the luxury of despair.
I find it telling that Rabbi Heschel, the Holocaust did not shake his faith in God—it shook his faith in humanity. He did not ask how human beings could hold faith in an all powerful God but instead how could God keep faith in human beings after the atrocities we have committed? For Heschel, God is not hidden; God is hiding.
For me, personally, I cannot hold faith in an all powerful God or deity. I cannot affirm a supernatural divinity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t my faith is devoid of the vertical dimension. It’s through wonder and awe that deep wisdom emerges. And it is in community, where I can have real interactions like the one I had with Maxine, where I am changed through the relationships I cultivate. Truly, I believe the divine emerges in genuine engagement with others.
As your transitional minister, I urge you to reflect on the relationship between the vertical and horizontal modes of being. For this is what underlies the idea of covenant. We make promises to one another how we want to be together within what ultimate context? What holds this community together? What is the commitment to participating in the wider world?
This is the power of authentic religious community. We all are invited into a wild journey in which we come to see both our potential and our flaws. We learn where we need to grow to engage the heart of reality more truly.
For Rabbi Abraham Heschel, these questions led him to march with Martin Luther King Jr at,, where he said he realized he needed to pray with his feet.
Today as violence claims the lives of ever more Palestinian children, and here in New England, over Thanksgiving weekend, three Palestinian students were shot, it is easy to lose faith.
If Maxine and I were in an alternatives to violence workshop today, I imagine what would have been written on the board was not white male oppression but white male supremacy. It’s real and it often gets promoted unconsciously, sometimes by well intentioned people. And it gets promoted by violent, hateful people, with horrifying consequences.
So how do we relate to the vertical dimension, especially if we don’t affirm a supernatural God? What can be our stance? I love how Denise Levertov declares,
God then encompassing all things, is defenseless? Omnipotence
has been tossed away, reduced to a wisp of damp wool?
And we, frightened, bored, wanting only to sleep till catastrophe
has raged, clashed, seethed and gone by without us, wanting then
to awaken in quietude without remembrance of agony,
we who in shamefaced private hope
had looked to be plucked from fire and given
a bliss we deserved for having imagined it,
is it implied that we must protect this perversely weak
animal, whose muzzle’s nudgings suppose there is milk to be found in us?
Must hold to our icy hearts a shivering God?
So be it.
Come rag of pungent quiverings, dim star.
Let’s try. if something human still can shield you,
spark of remote light.
May me make space in our lives to recognize that mystery and blessings are all about us and that we are participants in this beautiful yet broken world and when, in community, we can forge ever more beauty, connection, and shared awe.
May me make space in our lives to recognize that mystery and blessings are all about us and that we are participants in this beautiful yet broken world and when, in community, we can forge ever more beauty, connection, and shared awe.
Blessed be. Amen.
