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Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson I’m finding God, these days, not in the Big Miracles, but the little things. Rather than cultivating visions of seas splitting or of mountains leaping like lambs, or straining for spiritual ascents to the seventh heaven, I’m discovering the sacred in the constant interruptions and distractions of being alive, of being a father. My children have given me the gift of the present. This awareness of the holiness of the moment isn’t my own discovery. The Buddhists call it "mindfulness," and Jews call it "kavanah." More an attitude than a skill, this consciousness reflects a focus on living in the world, blending thought and life experience. Focusing on what you are doing or saying at that particular moment demonstrates kavanah. I have two young children and they both constrain and cultivate a focus I didn’t previously possess. They teach me to give up my plans; they force me to let myself simply be. They shape my kavanah. God of Little Children Prior to having children, my spiritual life was primarily one of sacred scriptures and prayer. On Shabbat, prior to going to synagogue, I would wake early so I could study Talmud for a few hours. When I prayed I would try to meditate or read some poetry first, to get in the right mood. Sometime during each day, I tried to make time for an hour or two to read and to learn. Of course, since there were no children around, the house was always appropriately quiet for contemplation or for study. Interruptions were rare. Such an orientation bore rich fruit: my inner life was a bouquet of devotion and connection, what the mystics call hitboddedut, uniting with the Holy One. Solitude and persistence are the requirements of an inner spirituality; productivity and accomplishment are its results. Calm tranquillity and leisurely thought offered unimpeded room for spiritual growth and exploration. Now, I look at that inner spirituality as through a veil: there’s precious little lone time and far fewer completed tasks. The quiet is gone and I have no spare moments. I don’t set my alarm anymore; instead, I am awakened (early) by my children. The day offers a series of hurdles: endless needs to be met and those needs aren’t my own. As a result, I don’t have the time to sit down to read a book or to meditate on the marvel of life. Does that mean my spiritual life has atrophied? Does this busyness and responsiveness mean I can’t connect to the sacred? While my contemplative form of spirituality may be in abeyance, I’ve discovered (to my surprise) another spiritual form to take its place. Instead of an inner listening, a meditative stance, mine is now an engaged spirituality, a wrestling with little creatures who reveal themselves to be angels if I show sufficient tenacity. If I hold on long enough, I become witness to the flowering of God’s latest miracles: consciousness blossoms, speech finds a surer footing, character consolidates. Answering the Call When children call, I attend. I am obligated to them, true enough. But the compulsion comes from a place deep within me. "Nafsho keshurah be-nafsho, His soul was bound up in his soul" says the Torah about father Jacob and his son, Joseph. My children are a part of me. In their presence, surrounded by their noise, chaos, and demands,I feel grounded. That is where I am supposed to be. All this means that my spiritual life has been overturned completely. Silence is no longer haven. My children call, and through them, I am called. To be a parent, like being a Jew, means a willingness to live life in the light of that call: Someone wants me. Do I dare to respond? Kavanah of Kids Before there were children, I bound my tefillin alone. Now, my four year olds scamper into my study, take my tefillin bag and insist on "helping" me put them on. Once I’m properly garbed, they then want to davven with me, shuckling back and forth as I do. After a few minutes, bored, they begin to play in my study, while I, praying above them, no longer fight their energy, their chaos, and their din. Instead of fearing their uncontainable energy as disruption, I accept it as God’s bounty—limitless divine effusion of love, of health, and of life. My kavanah no longerfocuses on the words in the Siddur, but on the merging of ancient words of praise and boundless childish enthusiasm. This is an encounter with God: raw, unrehearsed, imposing. A popular American proverb holds that "life is what happens while we are making plans." I now know that God erupts in the guise of life, sheer exuberance, untrained zest, smiles, drippy noses, tears. Formless and endless, children are the vessels through which that Godliness becomes visible even to contriving adults. My children are the still small voice. My children summon me to put down my plans, set aside my studies, and live. It is in the distractions and interruptions that God is to be found. In the moment, open to what may come—bruised knees or child at play—we live. And our studies, our mitzvot, our communities, train us to be able to look to that moment and to see God in our children’s smiles, to hear God in their squeals and shrieks. They alert us, like map to terrain, of where the journey may lead, if we are only willing to stay the course and to follow our worthy guides: our children. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson serves Congregation Eilat, Mission Viejo, California, and is the author of It’s A Mitzvah! Step by Step to Jewish Living (Behrman House & The Rabbinical Assembly). [Top of Page][Making Connections Home]Meditations
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Rabbi Dayle A. Friedman My 46 year-old cousin has breast cancer, and is in the process of investigating treatment options, making childcare arrangements for her two young kids and reorienting her life to the sudden, shocking reality of life-threatening illness. In the midst of this, she wrote me an e-mail, which went something like this: What do you really think about praying? I’m not a religious person, and I am not at all sure what I think about God...I have some sense there is a Force beyond us, but what does it mean to pray to a Force? And anyway, isn’t it a selfish thing to ask God to heal ME? I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the questions my cousin raised. Through my work as a chaplain with very ill older adults, and through watching friends confront cancer, I have developed a special interest in the issue of healing and prayer.
I don’t claim to have certainty —only observations—based on my study of Jewish tradition and my own anecdotal experience in praying with sick people. I don't think prayer is necessarily about having a clear, unambivalent and fully articulated theology. Rather, prayer offers us a way to tap into a different dimension of our beings. Prayer forges connections and shatters the isolation of a person contending with illness. Through prayer we reach out to the Source of life, the Source of compassion, the One our tradition calls the Healer of broken hearts. Prayer fosters a bond between the one who is praying and the one who is prayed for. It links the ill person with all others who are ill, as is expressed in the traditional mi-sheberakh blessing for healing, which asks for healing for the ill person "along with all others among our people who are ill."
Prayer articulates hope, and that alone can be transformative. It also is a powerful way to express fear, anger, despair, all of which are inevitable points along the way of struggling with illness. Sometimes, despite our doubts, and despite the rationalism with which many of us were raised, we need to honor mystery and allow for the very possibility that prayer somehow shifts reality...that tapping into the spiritual, connecting with God, however we understand the Divine, may actually mobilize healing in and around the person who is suffering. We don't understand half of it, but that’s O.K., too. How do we pray for healing? Our tradition teaches us that prayer need not be lengthy or elaborate. After all, the earliest known Jewish prayer for healing was Moses’ petition on behalf of his sister, Miriam: "El na, refa na lah, God, please heal her, please." We can look to the daily prayerbook (siddur), where one of the blessings of the central amidah prayer states: Heal us, Eternal God, and we shall be healed, save us and we shall be saved, for You are our hope. Bring complete healing for all our afflictions, for You are the faithful and compassionate Sovereign and Healer. Blessed are You, Eternal One, who heals the sick among the people Israel. Accessing Prayer For some of us, fixed prayer may feel inaccessible. We can follow the advice of the Hassidic master, Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav, who suggests that each Jew set aside time each day to simply talk to God in his or her own words, expressing whatever is in his or her heart, even if what is there is a feeling of distance from or anger at God. Do this, says Rebbe Nachman, and you will find contentment. We might feel funny at first, but for many of us, beneath the skeptical voices within us is a naive and innocent soul which longs for nothing more than a feeling of connection to God. We may, in addition to or instead of the above suggestions, wish to gather dear friends and/or relatives for a kind of healing circle, or minyan. Such a ritual might make use of traditional or contemporary prayers for healing, or it might be a context in which those present could offer their own spontaneous blessings for the person who is ill. Our ancestors understood that prayer is powerful; we, too, can reclaim our tie to the Compassionate One, especially when our bodies or spirits are ailing. We don’t have to have theological surety or deep knowledge of Hebrew or tradition. All we really need to have is hope, or even the desire for hope, as the Psalms so beautifully express:
Dayle Friedman is a rabbi in the Philadelphia area and facilitates a monthly healing service at Germantown Jewish Centre in Mt. Airy. [Top of Page][Making Connections Home]
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Avot
(Our Roots)
Gevurot
(Power)
Kedushat
Hashem
thanksgiving.
Feel yourself immersed in a sea of blessings that have occurred
in your life, and for which you now offer thanks.
Prayer
as a Bond
Prayer
as Hope
Beginnings
Become
an active part of the Jewish Community
Jewish
prayer has always placed a greater emphasis on fixed prayer than on spontaneous
prayer. The rabbis felt that regular dedicated time for prayer made spontaneous
moments of insight and spirituality more possible. Think of prayer as
part of a regular exercise regimen; the more regular the workout, the
greater the possibility for development. Jewish tradition sets three times
each day for prayer. Begin by setting a time for your own prayer and reflection.
Think about finding a Jewish prayer book that you find meaningful and
make it part of your "active" library.
Study
is basic to understanding what Judaism is and what role it will play in
your life. Look around your community and you will easily find adult Jewish
education opportunities in basic Hebrew classes, Jewish texts, foundations
of Jewish holidays and traditions, Jewish mysticism, and more. You can
start by going to a bookstore and browsing through the Jewish book section.
See what interests you and let that be your guide.
Find
a teacher to guide you
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and more) please contact us: PHONE: 215-635-2877 FAX: 215-635-2344 E-MAIL: erivel@jopp.org |
Making Connections is a project of the Jewish Outreach Partnership of Greater Philadelphia in cooperation with area synagogues and Jewish agencies. Making Connections has been funded by a special grant from the Continuity Commission of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. | |
| Rabbi
Philip Warmflash, Executive Director, Jewish Outreach Partnership Kathy
Elias, Director, |
©1996-2001
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