[Image Credit: NASA]
Faith as a Practice
Twenty-seven years ago, in the early years after we created the Jewish Spiritual Direction program for Reconstructionist Rabbinical College students, I was on a bit of a tour of congregational affiliates to explain why we had initiated a program never before offered to rabbinical students anywhere in Jewish history. Many of congregational members warmed to my explanation and to what they experienced in the brief exercises I offered them. Others, however, were puzzled, at best. What was “spirituality” anyway? And wasn’t introducing it into the rabbinical curriculum subversive to the Reconstructionist movement’s commitment to rationality and science?
After one such Friday-evening presentation, one congregational leader — let’s call him “Larry” — approached me respectfully after the service.
“This is all fascinating,” he began, “but when you talk about ‘discerning the Divine presence,’ how do you know whether you are discerning it or not? How do you know that there is anything to discern at all?”
I knew that Larry was a distinguished scientist at a nearby university, so I began by talking about the Enlightenment split between science and religion, and how contemporary anthropology and other social sciences had studied human experience scientifically. He wasn’t buying it.
“But my distinguished university colleagues in the social sciences are studying unverifiable, subjective human reports of their subjects. Even if they can replicate the reported experiences with some consistency, that proves nothing about the reality of what people perceive,” he debated.
I made three other attempts at responding to Larry’s question and finally resorted to my favorite philosophical metaphor: baseball.
“Think, Larry, about professional baseball hitters. They spend a lifetime of practice refining their swings, distinguishing between the spins of different kinds of pitches as the ball speeds towards them at 90 miles per hour, developing an almost magical sense of timing as they instantly, intuitively match their swings to the pitch. And as the result of all that practice, if they are lucky, they succeed in getting a hit one-third of the time. That’s the purpose of practice, Larry. None of us were taught to practice discerning the Divine in all the aspects of our lives, so we don’t think there’s anything there.”
He smiled indulgently. “But when a batter hits a home run, he knows the measurable outcome of his practice.”
“Larry,” I exclaimed,” that’s why it’s called faith!”
And we went off together to sample the rugelakh at the Oneg.
Spirituality is the ability to feel and know our indescribable connection to something greater than ourselves that is deep within us or way above us.
Building a Relationship
As I became more experienced as an ambassador for spiritual practice, I varied my attempts to explain it to the perplexed. Instead of baseball stars, I cited the development of human relationships.
“People become friends gradually. They spend time together, get to know more and more about each other, develop a mutual affection or love. If you feel that you can’t pray, that you don’t have a relationship with the One, with the cosmos, with God, you should not be surprised if you haven’t invested in developing a relationship with that which is beyond yourself. You develop a relationship by communicating, becoming vulnerable, pouring out your heart, enjoying times together. Spiritual practice is the practice of developing a personal relationship with a non-personal God.”
“How do you define ‘spirituality,’ anyway?” I would be asked. “There’s no Hebrew word for it, so it must be alien to the essence of Judaism.” (The Modern Hebrew term for ‘spirituality,’ rukhaniyut, was not widely known among American Jews, and besides, it was modern and therefore not considered by them authentically traditional.)
“Spirituality,” I would respond, “is the ability to feel and know our indescribable connection to something greater than ourselves that is deep within us or way above us; the ability to feel and know the inexpressible way that all things in the universe are interconnected; and/or, the ability to feel the infinite whole as it is manifested when we connect with other beings.”
That would often elicit a hush, but Larry’s query was never far away. To the questions, I ended up asserting that this kind of intuitive knowledge is davka beyond verification in a laboratory, because it is immaterial.
Maimonides’ God
And I usually concluded by citing Maimonides, the brilliant, most revered Jewish philosopher, who in his 12th-century work The Guide of the Perplexed, spent over 100 pages explaining that God’s definition was, by definition, beyond our cognition. All human language and concepts, he argued, are derived from this created, material world and therefore rest on the assumption that you know and define things by differentiation. (We know that dogs and wolves are different.) Given that God is an absolute, undifferentiated Unity, any literal application of characteristics — God is wise, just, eternal, loving, angry, etc. — reflects a belief that God is similar to humans. It is idolatrous — believing that God, who is a perfect Unity, can be defined the way created beings are defined, by separating them into differentiated characteristics.
“When we observe that God is beyond our ability to know, this is not unprecedented. Many rabbis and teachers have reached this conclusion over the millennia. Why then have they continued to pray? To believe in a God they can’t know?”
I would then explain what Maimonides called “Attributes of Action”:
“It all depends on what I mean when I say ‘God heals,’ for example, or ‘God loves’ or ‘God comforts.’ It’s not idolatry when I say ‘God heals’ if what I mean is that the effects of God’s causation are such that if a physician caused those effects, we would say the physician heals. We know the effects of a physician’s treatment that have meaning when describing a physician. We don’t know if or how God works in this world.
“We can apply the word “heal” by analogy, without making any claim to know God’s essence or definition, about which we can know nothing. That allows us to call God a healer or a parent or a protector without relinquishing our belief that we know nothing about God in Godself. That allows us to pray the words of the liturgy without assuming that God can be known.”
Positing a Listener who already knows what’s going on inside of me, deeper, buried truths tend to arise.
Trust
How does this work in spiritual direction?
Even if we don’t have faith in a God who hears, we can trust that we are not alone.
A few years into my now 28 years of monthly meetings with my spiritual director, I arrived so upset that I was unable to express myself clearly. I was in the middle of a contentious divorce, and a mediation session had been scheduled for the next week, with a judge presiding at the county courthouse. I was worried about my partner’s impossible demands, but mostly, I was terrified by their unremitting anger and hostility, and how I would respond, face to face.
After listening to me for a while, my director interrupted my confused monologue.
“Jacob,” she said, “you have to give it to God!” It was the only time in 28 years that she, a Methodist minister, employed her language rather than mine.
“Susan,” I replied, “I have no idea what that means.”
“I apologize. It means that you should offer up your troubles, letting go of your feeling that everything is up to you and asking God for help.”
“I can’t do that, because I don’t believe in a God who hears my prayers and responds to them supernaturally.”
Gently, she repeated her suggested several times, and I refused.
Finally, I managed to say, haltingly, “I need help. I can’t do this alone.”
And instantly, everything changed. My anxiety and terror dissipated. I was no longer alone. Everything was not up to me. I had wonderful friends who supported me. Loving children. A great attorney. The judge! Relinquishing the illusion that I was in control — that I had to be in control — allowed me to relax into a feeling of trust. I did not know how things would turn out, but I began to trust that whatever happened, I trusted that with the support of my people, I would be able to respond to whatever happened. And I could turn to God for support — not supernatural intervention, but rather, for the support to deal self-compassionately with my anxiety and frustration.
Spiritual practice is the practice of developing a personal relationship with a non-personal God.
Talking to a God Who Does Not Hear
My daughter-in-law has been known to say half-jokingly, “God is Grandpa’s imaginary friend.” From her perspective, as from Larry’s, that is probably accurate.
Hitbodedut (literally, being alone with God) is a Hasidic practice that has served me well on this “spiritual journey of a religious naturalist.”
You go out into an open field, set your timer for 30 or 45 minutes, and start talking aloud to God, without interruption. If you follow that instruction, you might find yourself filling the silences with a shopping list, a series of errands you have to attend to, a medley of songs.
But when I keep talking in the presence of God, even without believing that there is anyone listening on the other side of the call, important things eventually arise. It’s as if, positing a Listener who already knows what’s going on inside of me, deeper, buried truths tend to arise, and the session devolves into a confession in the presence of the trees and grass. Because I’m not hiding. Because there is no way to hide. Sometimes the feelings and insights that surface are cause for celebration. And sometimes, I find myself weeping, even heaving, but nevertheless relieved to have unburdened myself.
I hear the Maimonidean voice: I don’t know what God is or whether God hears my ruminations. But the effects of a hypothetical Creator’s causation, of the cosmic process that allows for human growth and equanimity, are such that if a friend’s or therapist’s accompaniment yielded such results, we would call them supportive and cathartic.
That’s what happens when I sit listening to someone for whom I am a spiritual companion. He says: “I am in an endless rut. No matter how I succeed, I hear the voice of my father criticizing me, asking why I didn’t do better.” She says: “I’m completely overwhelmed. I don’t know how I can possibly accomplish the endless list of my commitments in the next six weeks. I feel like I’m going to die, even though I know that’s ridiculous.”
My response is usually a variation on the same theme. They know that I sit nonjudgmentally and supportively, no matter what they say, so they are what we call “free for God.” They’ve met with me long enough to have practice in talking to God without believing that God hears. And I say, “Let me invite you to close your eyes in silence, take all the time you need, locate where in your body you are feeling blocked, and sit in God’s presence. What do you want to ask from God?”
And in one way or another, they ask God for support as they muddle through, for help learning to be more self-compassionate and patient, for accompaniment and equanimity. They never ask for Divine intervention. Insofar as they allow for the possibility that there is a Divine presence active in the world, they experience its activity as a healing presence.
It’s in the asking for help and support that they realize that they are not in charge, that they are not alone. I might suggest that they breathe deeply, imagining that the Divine, cosmic spirit is rushing inside of them and surrounding them, womblike. One of them remarked recently, “I don’t know if the divine is entering me or if I am healing myself with the aid of this contemplative practice.” Exactly.
Emunah is the Hebrew word we usually translate as “faith.”
“I believe,” for example, “with a perfect faith in the coming of the messiah.”
But emunah really is better translated as “trust.” What else can “faith” mean? Not that things will turn out all right in the end; that’s a bit of a stretch. We know that wars erupt, that people die of sickness or in random, meaningless accidents from which they do not heal or recover. What we can pray for is support — for the courage and trust that whatever happens, we will do the best we can to meet the challenge with kindness.
