The Scent of a Rose

I love the fact that Judaism has a prayer for everything. A prayer for waking up, a prayer for going to sleep. A prayer for meals and a prayer for drink. A prayer, even for a snack. There are prayers for things, and prayers for feelings, for intangible things like events. And it's wonderful, because those are the times when your soul seems to want to say something, and you just wish you could put the words to it. Judaism has those words. But the odd or paradoxical thing about it is that the moment you go to say them - or at least for me - when I say the prayers, or do some ritual thing like eating an item off a seder plate, I am whelmed, perhaps under-whelmed at not the sacredness of the moment or a mystical feeling (which I might get, say, walking silently in a grove of trees) but rather at an almost banal, profane aspect of the moment. Suddenly, instead of focusing on what's inside, I am focused outside, on word, speech action. Maybe I'm not "doing it right." But I don't know that there is a "right" in Judaism. There is certainly "the way things are done." But ultimately, the way you do it, if you do something consciously, is right. This is the way it is for me. This is my experience. And I don't think it means the moment isn't sacred. Maybe it means that it is.

I just got back from my first Rosh Chodesh women's seder. I was invited by a friend that I met in San Francisco, but it was held in the East Bay, not too far from where I live. So I went, and there were about ten of us. I was thinking about prayer, because I was thinking about sacred space, and the space was sacred. At a few points during the seder, I wondered, what would an outside person, maybe a neighbor standing just outside the window, think, if they heard our mumbling in unison, with candles in front of us. It all seemed like, maybe from the outside, it was some mystical, cultish thing. But from the inside, it was just normal. We were just people, sitting around, with candles, saying things and sharing thoughts, stories, experiences.

The theme of the meeting was Tu B'Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, since that holiday is coming up next weekend. On the table were mandarin oranges, dates, strawberries, cinnamon sticks and a bowl of red rose petals. There were four sections, and at each section we would take in the scent of one of the items. The dates we ate afterward.

The rose petals were beautiful, bright, and velvety, but they had very little scent. Not at all like the rose that seemed to bloom just for me on the day that I left my little house in France. I clipped that rose and took it with me, but then I wished that I had left it. It looked so beautiful on the tree where it was. And of course it didn't bloom "for me." But it seemed to. It seemed to salute me. And when I saw it there, I buried my nose in it's petals and smelled the sweetest scent of rose I've ever smelt.

In the last section of our seder, we read a guided mediation, where we were supposed to be walking somewhere (wherever we went in our imagination), and were distracted by a scent. Then we would turn to see what the thing was giving off the scent, and were told that this was the scent of our soul. We were supposed to interact with it in various ways, and then finally leave the place and continue on our way. We were to first just take it in. Then find out what kind of "nourishment" it needed, and then ask it for a gift.

I was doing the reading, so it was hard to concentrate until I put the paper down and closed my eyes. In a hurry, I jumped right in and found myself on a dirt path in a forest of low trees, maybe pines. they were fairly dark. I was on a larger, gravel path, but a smaller dirt path opened up to my right. And even though I was supposed to be drawn by the scent, I saw first before I smelled that there was a bright red rose on the periphery of my vision. Before I turned, I thought, maybe this is a mistake, it's supposed to be something else. Maybe I'm just thinking of this because we just smelled rose petals. But even so, I decided that if that was the case, this was still what was coming to mind, so I was going to go with it. And the rose was very bright and deep, the color, and its petals still fairly tight, just starting to bloom.

It wasn't very far off the path, and it was growing in a clearing. What did it need? It needed what all plants need. It needed water. So I gave it some water. And it seemed to thank me. Then I realized that behind it was a stone well. The rose was growing right at the edge of it, with two long stems. One had the larger, opening rose, and the other, a little bit below, was a bud, red, but not open yet.

The well was the one that we used to play on in the church yard. I will never forget it. It was low, with a wide lip of stone, and cherubs carved on the outside. It was no longer functioning, and there was only a metal grate covering a gravel bottom on the inside, where we would go in and sit. But once it must have been a working well, because there was a rusted iron pulley above it on a wrought iron arch. My friend T. painted it once in one of his paintings.

In my vision, it was a working well, though. Even though I didn't look in, I knew that it was filled with water. I gave the rose, which was there to represent my "soul" some water, and it gave me the well in return. I didn't even have to ask. It just gave. It knew that was what I needed.

And so, I spent a few moments with the rose, and decided that I didn't want to leave. But after I thought that, I turned and left and walked back out to the main path.

A burning bush in the Wilderness

This past Shabbat's parsha was Sh'mot, the first book of Exodus. In services this week, we had a guest preacher give the drash. And he really was a preacher, from the Church across the street. He had something very powerful to say about how African Americans can relate readily to the story of the Exodus, because the memory of slavery is still a fresh one in many of their minds.

He had a lot of other interesting things to say, too. One comment had to do with the burning bush. He drew attention to that, and to the wilderness as a place in which to meet God - where God meets us, in fact, and speaks to us. And He uses signs to grab our attention. In this case, it was a bush, consumed by fire, but not being burned.

Here is the text from my copy of the JPS Tanakh:

An Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn't the bush burn up?" When HaShem saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: "Moses! Moses!" He answered, "Here I am."

And once I read the text more closely, I got a lot more out of it. For one thing, at the beginning of the section, it doesn't say that God is there - it says "An Angel of the LORD appeared." But we know that "Angel" means messenger. So in this case, the "messenger" is the blazing fire. This is like God's handwriting on the world. Or God sending a text message by way of his wireless, languageless device - the Universe. Or maybe, this wasn't the text just yet, but rather the beep, buzz or ring tone that lets you know you have one.

The thing is, with cell phones, pagers, emails or anything, you have the option to answer or not. You can ignore it. Save it for later. Maybe you're just too busy right now. You don't want to be bothered. But Moses says, Hey, what's this?

I love Torah - you have this ancient text, supposedly about people who have little in common with us, in terms of their daily lives, and yet, they're just people. This is basically how any of us would respond. Like rubberneckers on a highway. Whoa, what happened here? Only here is Moses, out in the wilderness, with no one to corroborate what he is seeing. He is the only one who can describe this vision, and who knows what he was really looking at? Was it a bush? Was it really on fire? Was it something else? Or does it even matter? Because, whatever it was, it got the message across.

So first, you have the bush. And presumably, this bush was not right in front of Moses, because he said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight." So Moses shifted his gaze. He saw something out of the corner of his eye, and he went out of his way to look. He didn't know that God was calling to him. In that moment, he was simply aware of his surroundings, and willing to give something a second look that didn't seem to jive with his usual understanding of the world, i.e. that when bushes are filled with fire, they normally burn up.

And then it says, "When God saw that Moses had turned aside, he called to him out of the bush." And that may seem like a throwaway line. It's what you expect. Moses sees the burning bush, and the next thing you know, God is calling to him out of it. Simple right? But that line is loaded. It says God saw. So what that line is really giving us is a glimpse into the Mind of God. And it also gives us a little kernel of doubt. God sees everything, right? So if Moses had NOT turned to look at the bush, He would have seen that, too. So God was sitting on pins and needles for a while there.

Here is this guy, Moses, out in the wilderness with a flock of sheep, and God wants to call to him and make him the liberator of the Jewish people enslaved in Egypt. So God has to figure out a way of getting Moses' attention, and when he does this, by way of the burning bush (you could make an argument for a better way, but maybe that's all God had at the time) He can't even be sure if Moses is going to look at it, never mind respond. God sends the text, and the beep goes off, but what if Moses doesn't hear it? So there is God, watching to see what Moses does. When he sees that Moses has turned to look at the burning bush, then He speaks to him out of it. Not before he gets Moses' attention. He doesn't speak to get his attention. He only does it after the attention is given.

He says, "Moses! Moses!" And he answers, "Here I am!"

Not, What do you want? Not, Who are you? Just, Here I am.

And I'm thinking, what does this say to me? What does this mean in my life, right now? The pastor, who gave the drash, made a good point that when we get a call from God, or from our neighbors, we should pay attention, and think about what it means to answer, and what it means to Act. I really appreciated him saying that, because action is important to me. It's one of the things I love about Judaism - that it's not a religion of passively sitting by and imbibing philosophy, knowledge or belief, but one, ultimately, of action, and preferably action that benefits an entire community, and/or one's own life and of those close to us.

But I also wondered, and thought about later, what are the burning bushes in my life? What are those things, items, phenomena, dancing in the periphery of my vision that I should be turning my gaze toward and saying, Hey, what's this? I'm going to check this out. What are those things that aren't happening the way they are supposed to that are demanding a closer look? And if I don't look, maybe I am going to miss an important message. If Moses hadn't looked at that burning bush, the entire story of Exodus wouldn't have happened. Or at least Moses wouldn't have been a part of it. Maybe Moses wasn't the first one. Maybe God had tried to reach dozens of other men, or even women, and all of them had been too caught up in their own lives to pay attention to the message God was sending.

So if we don't pay attention to the messages in our own lives - to those burning bushes, those outliers of experience that make us say, Hey, hang on a minute, that's not quite right - we're missing a big piece of the action. We're missing the opportunity to not only have a conversation with God, but to liberate ourselves and possibly many others from the negative forces that are enslaving them.

Shavuah tov.

Drash on Joseph

There was a Bat Mitzvah at services this week, and this girl had one challenging parsha to write a drash on.

Va-Yehi - And He Lived.

Jacob lived. For better or for worse, 147 years. (I still want to know why they lived so long in those days, when we think so much of our medical advances now - but that's a discussion for another day.) Jacob, who, with the help of his mother, conned his way into getting his father's blessing while Esau was out doing just exactly what was expected of him. And for this, he was forced to flee his homeland and live in exile, even if he did become extremely wealthy because of it.

Now Jacob and his family live in Egypt, and he is dying. So he summons Joseph, his favorite son, to him, to instruct him not to bury him in Egypt, but in the tomb of his own ancestors. Then Joseph comes back to Jacob again, when he is very ill, bringing his two sons with him. Then he does a strange thing. Jacob blesses Joseph's sons. But not only does he place his right hand on the head of the younger, and his left on the head of the elder, he has to cross his arms to do it. So, despite his old age and weak sight, this is clearly a deliberate act. And it seems to recall his own life. Never mind Joseph's. Whereas it is expected that the elder sibling will always be favored, he instead favors the younger. It is like a tribute to his own experience, and the birthright he garnered, despite his less-favored position in his family.

And this, in some ways, is the tradition we inherit. I know it from another source. Because I grew up with the teachings of Jesus, one of perhaps, the most famous Jews of all time, who said, "and the last shall be first, and the first shall be last." In a similar vein, he also said, "And the stone that was rejected shall become the chief cornerstone." This is another way of saying, Don't trust what you've been given. Don't trust what looks obvious. What seems to be the stronger, more obvious choice, will not necessarily be so. What you at first reject may become the most important element of your life. And sometimes, being rejected, that is often the first step in the process of becoming something or someone truly instrumental.

But that isn't what I had planned to write about today. I wanted to write about forgiveness. Radical forgiveness. Which, to my mind, at least in this case, is not forgiveness at all, but rather, an extremely whole and sensible point of view.

Because, while the story starts with Jacob, it becomes a story about Joseph. Joseph was certainly the favored of Jacob's twelve sons. So favored, in fact, that they hated him, tore up his clothes and threw him in a pit to die. Joseph was saved, was taken to Egypt, where he became wealthy and saved the land from famine by way of his dreams. And after this, he saves his own family from the famine as well - the same family that tried to kill him.

Now, I may think I have it bad sometimes, but at least my siblings didn't try to kill me, in a literal sense. Or even figuratively. My parents didn't try to kill me. They did other things that upset me, but not that. It gives you a little perspective when you realize someone else's life is worse than yours.

After Jacob dies and Joseph buries him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah are buried, the brother's get together and say, "What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for the wrong we did him?" Fair enough. They should be concerned. After all, it seems they have a guilty collective conscience. They admit themselves that they wronged their own brother, and now, of course, they have been brought to shame because in end he saved all their hides.

I was told, during the service, that the bat mitzvah girl is the daughter of a child psychologist. And this was somewhat evident in the fact that she spoke about the way we inherit our parents' bad behavior sometimes, and this is all over the Torah - especially in Genesis. But I read a lot of psychology, too, and part of me is saying that, while I don't know why Jacob favored Joseph, and probably none of us will know why, there's a good chance that his doing so actually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell one child they are a good child, and one child they are a bad one, eventually they will both figure out a way to live out the designations you have made on them. (I knew a woman once who had two sons, and every time she would talk to one of them, she would tell him, "you're the good son." She did this with both sons.) In a way, we can even do this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy on ourselves. Or, as Henry Ford (and doubtless others have) said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are right."

So Jacob planted in Joseph the seeds of greatness, and in his other sons, the seeds of resentment. The next plan of the other 11 sons was motivated by guilt and fear. Rather than confront Joseph and say, Hey, you know, look, we were crap back there when we threw you in the pit. It really sucked and we're sorry. So we hope you can forgive us. Instead they make up some phony message from their dead father, which obviously can't be corroborated, saying that he (Jacob) had instructed Joseph to forgive his brothers.

Joseph is in tears, so we can only assume that he believes them. Or perhaps he takes this as their own confession of guilt, and sees through their hastily-constructed lie, even though he doesn't say it. Then they fling themselves down and offer to be his slaves. But Joseph refuses. And I love what he says:

Have no fear! Am I a substitute for God?
Besides, though you intended me harm,
God intended it for good,
So as to bring about the present result -
the survival of many people.

From there it is a short paragraph to his death at the age of 110 years. But in this statement alone is an enormously valuable legacy.

I mentioned that I read a lot of psychology. I read a lot about cycles of abuse and bad behavior and bad thinking, and about how these things become perpetuated, both within ourselves, and with other people, by constantly responding to the abuse, the fear, and the pain. The message is always the same: the only way to break the cycle is not to respond to the abuse. Don't acknowledge the fear. Don't let the pain drive your actions. As soon as you've done that, you've lost the battle. But it's one of the hardest things to do when you think those are your only options. When everyone you have ever known has abused you or treated you badly, it is really easy to want to do the same thing. And yet Joseph refuses. He refuses to be caught up in that cycle.

But it is not through his own power, or his own perspective that he is able to achieve this enormous sense of - probably unjustified - forgiveness. Because he not only forgives his brothers. He, in essence, thanks them. He says, If you hadn't done that to me then, I wouldn't be where I am now. Talk about heaping coals. But heaping coals was when he saved their lives. Now he is on a whole new level.

Now he is on the level of God - seeing the Big Picture. He doesn't respond to his own feelings of pain, of hurt, of betrayal and abandonment. He has accepted his past, and he is grateful for it. Because even though he knows he can never really "know" the Mind of God, he can see how circumstances have led him to where he is, and get past what would be simply a knee-jerk reaction and instead see how a negative experience became a positive one for him. He doesn't say to his brother's a lame, "It's okay, guys, let's move on," either. He acknowledges a higher power, a greater plan. He humbles them again, indirectly pointing out that even their most vicious intents were no match for the Mind of God. And maybe he believed in himself, maybe he didn't. Maybe he just lived his life with his eyes open, and wasn't willing to "take an eye for an eye." Because he, like Ghandhi, realized that that would make the whole world blind. But in the end, by being able to step back, to step out of his own experience and look at it with the cool eye of reason, he was able to stop the cycle, giving his brothers nothing to feel guilty for, nothing to be angry about, and putting responsibility exactly where it belonged - in God's hands.