What It's Really About . . . .

(Picture note: In a discussion of G-d, one might as well show a picture of the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee. There must be a connection there somewhere.)

It is not particularly easy to give up a comfortable image of "God." The bearded-one in the sky may to some extent be a straw-man used by some to denigrate those that are perceived to have a less sophisticated spirituality. I am pretty sure that I may have even done that a few times, but I am not sure any more of my own wisdom enough to mock anyone else's definition. I cannot personally agree with a personal father/savior anthropomorphism, but I also can no longer throw quite the same stones.

This is all merely a long and drawn out introduction to say that the struggle to re-allow spirituality into your life when years ago the concept and trappings both were given up for dead is in many ways a semantic struggle. Since most of us think in words we formulate most of our spirituality in words and are therefor forced to limit G-d to the words that we can think of to describe such a concept. If G-d is something infinite and universal, I think that we can all agree that there is a problem here, as language may be pretty nifty, but it is neither infinite nor universal.

As a, for lack of a better term, panentheist,(not to be confused with pantheist) my "short-answer-that-can-never-do-justice" is that I believe G-d to be beyond the realm of description of human words, yet the embodiment and the infinite sum of an expanding universe matched with an unknowable something (called Ayn Sof -- without end-- in Judaism) behind all the laws and processes and manifestations of the universe that makes these laws and processes positive and forward moving with "purpose," if still unknowable.

As a future member of the clergy, however, I recognize that at the same time it is a little hard to bring comfort to the sick or morning with a philosophical treatise on the nature of a panentheistic G-d. One concept that I have used in the past to address this semantic divide became a reality this evening that I wish to share . . .

I have written before about the community here at Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem. Sure, we are all stressed with intense studies and know each other well enough now to sometimes be a little less polite than we were to each other at the beginning. We get frustrated, but in some ways that is simply the result of becoming even more close-- we are acting more family-like.

This morning we were all informed that the grandfather of one of our fellow students passed, and this student sent out an email that he was planning a memorial minyan for his grandfather this evening. Now to fully appreciate the context, we are all studying for finals and the average stress and time commitment level is, well, you can guess. Yet as the first communal singing began tonight in the student's tiny living room, the floor was packed with over half the students of the program here. There was no question, there was no burden -- it was simple: If you were able, you came.

I listened to the voices join together in singing simple songs of an evening prayer service, and then the poignant words of memory, and the universal love and support given and offered. One can be cynical about a lot of things but please hear me when I say that this was not show-- this was true community offered, despite what some philosophies might challenge, freely and without guile.

I thought of when I was still living in Philadelphia and two grandparents passed in little over a year how my community consisted of an empty apartment, two cats, a tea light, and a glass of wine to toast a memory. I felt alone yet more I felt how profoundly lonely life without interconnectivity is. Tonight I witnessed interconnectivity in its beautiful reality and choose to call that an attribute of G-d.

This G-d as Universal Concept is not a comforting G-d for me to offer the world. But the manifestation of seeking to find meaning within tradition, any tradition, and being honest enough to know that the seeking never ends and a final answer is unattainable may just find themselves experiencing aspects of G-d that are comforting-- the G-d that dwells among open hearts and the places where the very human hands connected with those hearts do the very real work of healing the world through such actions as consoling the bereaved. None of this is meant to be an answer-- I have none. But I came closer to G-d tonight in the gathering of community that I ever experienced when I thought I had all the answers.