The Ceremony
I didn’t intend it to be a ceremony, but it became a ceremony. I did it with my
Wednesday night class after the Tuesday election.
We began with a good breath and a tune. I sang only the last verse of Adon Olam with an expansion of the breathy Ahhhhhs that works in the version I sing. I explained only that in my estimation the last stanza is of different nature than the other stanzas. It is personal, having moved south from the head to the heart, and this from the tone-poem Adon Olam, Master of the Universe:
Into Your hands I entrust my spirit
When I lie when I rise up
With my spirit my body too
G*d is with me I shall not fear
You led with mind
Followed with heart.
Once we had settled into our skin a little deeper (I didn’t rush it), I turned to the subject of grief.
What Does It Mean
What does it mean? It’s a good question, but not the only question.
Attached to meaning is the silent heart of grief that precedes
the what it means question.
The world cracked.
Hate corrupts love repairs we know this.
But the first response is always the silent heart of mourning
which is opens onto the heart of wisdom.
Some time into the future
It may not be the long future
We will respond by knowing what to do.
For now open a moment to the silence of grief.
Pray for peace in the grandest and most individual ways
the peace of the near and the peace of the far.
And healing for the expectations
and some sort of comfort for us all.
Amen.
I added a few pieces from my most recent book Vigil:
How G*d Created the World
Like an architect
Checking the drawings
I built it with substance and form
Like a poet
I poured over scrolls
Until words scampered off the page
Like a designer
I took the supernal forms
And built them into my creation
Like a composer
I made a chorus for singing
Also something hidden from slogans
I don’t know how I created the world
It didn’t measure up
There was a pillow of comfort
To fall back into
And determination
To fix it
And into the headwaters of Grief:
You feel depressed but you’re not depressed
It’s Grief.
You feel it’s permanent
It’s not permanent
It’s Grief.
You appear dark
Comes an opening
Grief.
You try to circle
There is no circling there is only center
Grief.
The future
Who knows
You find your silence
You listen you remember
You Practice what you’ve been taught
You’re determined
You Learn something new
You Give it away
You call this grief.
We were ready for the main course, a piece from the Talmud (b. Sanhedrin 97b),
advertised this way in our online communication:
Roundabout Way
Rav and Shmuel arguing: what if there isn’t enough righteousness? What then? They are mentioned together 250 times in the Babylonian Talmud. What did they talk about?
Everything.
Rav was waiting for the world to transform itself with a complete transformation, and Shmuel was waiting, standing in his grief over what is not, without expectation for what is supposed to be.
He was open to whatever God or nature or human beings or whatever it is he believes in to disclose the next chapter.
God led us by a roundabout way (Rashi on Gen. 13:18), said Shmuel, willing to be led.
A waiting without attachments. No expectations. A roundabout way.
From the Talmud
We then looked at the passage from the Talmud that introduces the idea of how much righteousness does it take to sustain a generation, and the question (in the white fire) what if there is not enough righteousness or goodness? What then?
Then comes the conversation between Rav and Shmuel, two heads of their Yeshivot (Academies).
. . . .Abbaye said, “there is not less than thirty six righteous persons in each generation who receive the Shekhinah [the inner presence of G*dliness], as it is said, ‘fortunate are all who wait for him,’ and the word for him [lo] has the numerical value of thirty six.”
– Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97b
And the conversation at this seam in the text responding to what if there is not enough righteousness, what then?
Rav said, “all the ends have passed, and the matter depends only on transformation [teshuvah] and good deeds.”
But Shmuel says, “it’s enough for the mourner to stand in his mourning.”
Rav and Shmuel appear together in the Talmud 250 times.
Rav was waiting for the world to transform itself with transformative deeds, and Shmuel was waiting, standing in his mourning, in his grief, for what is not, without expectation for what is supposed to be. It sounds so contemporary, this voice from 2000 years ago. He was open to whatever God or nature or human beings or whatever it is he believes in to disclose the next chapter; God led us by a round-about way. Shmuel is always waiting, willing to be led.
It is an exceedingly holy place to be, a waiting without attachments. No expectations. A round-about way.
I am waiting, too, God says. Surprise me. Get to work.
Then this piece:
Truth That Mangy Dog
The truth is a mangy dog, once it is unleashed it respects no boundaries. You cannot set it free on the streets of St. Louis and keep it out of Chicago. The truth will follow you everywhere. You cannot unleash it on your sweetheart and muzzle it against yourself. The truth is a mangy dog, it goes everywhere with you, barking at your heels. You cannot turn it on your neighbor without turning it on yourself. The truth is a mangy dog, and it always comes home.
When we look hard at our expectations, when we grieve the "supposed to be" that never was, we are accompanied by that lone servant, a human being's best friend, truth. This is what it is, not what it is supposed to be. Truth is there sniffing out the what-it-is.
Truth loves you, of course, just the way you are. You love truth too. You love truth because only truth will set you free from your expectations. When you relinquish the expectations, you relinquish control, and you enter the cosmic float on the surface of the great sea which is reality. The way-it-is is a great sea that ebbs and flows in some ineffable way that has not much to do with what you do or what you want or how you think it is supposed to be. It just is. This is a sea you do not swim, you float. When you learn to float, you wonder how you did anything else.
Here we have come to the end of this piece, I leave you here: floating on your back on the great sea, up and down the gentle cadence, reliable, infallible, beyond expectations, the rhythm of life's ebb and flow, accompanied by that trusty beast, that mangy dog, Truth, who follows you everywhere.
We opened up the meeting to the participants then, for comments and responses, a variety of responses, some voiced some written (Chat).
Ready for the work, I read this piece:
Big Hands
Big Hands gather us up
We are good held by them
And then we are waiting
Good waiting
And righteous
Because we stayed
And because we stayed
Something happened around us
That would not have happened
If we weren’t so Still
And yearning good --
We are full with hunger.
And the spiritual optimism in this piece, for the Next Phase:
Walt Whitman Prays for Our Country
I sing you
Celebrate what you have made
There is not a blade of grass that does not now mourn
This descent on the arc toward dissolution.
The stores are full of goods
And more goods are intoxicating
Resist
There is no substance
Though we are in love with it.
Go to the river and be naked
Undisguised
Be mad recovering your sanity
The smoke of your breath
Beating of your heart
Is hope.
Have you forgotten to read?
The falsifiers will bring you to ends
There was never more beginning
Than now.
Procreating urge of the world
Always lifting up
And the soul is
Sweet and proof
We are better.
We closed quietly with the Prayer of the Hands:
Prayer of the Hands
Close with a moment of quiet
Remembering our teachers inspirations influences
All our relations
Our beloveds
Take your thumb now and run it up and down your heart-line
Now take your hands and bring them to your chest like anjali mudra
Then take your left hand and set it within your right hand as in the Zohar
Hold them to your chest
Feel your physical and spiritual union at your heart-line
Spend a moment there with your gratitude
Hold your hands away from you in a posture of blessing
Palms out
Spread your fingers
Now turn your palms up like the five petaled rose
The opening intention of the Zohar
You may drop your hands
Leave a moment for the silent expectation for peace
Peace of the near and peace of the far
The upper worlds and lower worlds will find each other
But don’t leave us alone
Take a deep breath on the exhale
Say Ah – mein.
It was wonderful. I really needed it.