Vayikra | Approaching Presence

 

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר׃ 

Eternally Present called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying:

Leviticus 1:1

 

The Book of Leviticus begins poignantly, with Moses called by Eternally Present to come closer to the special meeting tent the people assembled at the end of the book of Exodus. Presence calls to Moses now from within, no longer from a distant shrouded mountain. Torah calls this the Tent of Meeting. Moses is called into a Tent of Meeting.

Torah adds a new model for entering a place of meeting, for coming close to Presence. In the first sentence, Presence calls Moses, then speaks to him, then says what is wanted. Before you "instruct," come close. Approach. Get proximate. I open myself and call you to open yourself. This is the place of meeting.

This is the way of connecting  with Presence throughout the book of Leviticus. There are rituals of making offerings to the altar and then  instructions for how to act with each other to make a home for holiness in our midst.  The ritual offerings come first. Connection before  instructions. Even if you have been connected before, five minutes earlier or in previous lives, in the Garden. Reconnect, come close first.

Where was Moses, that Presence had to call him closer? Where do any of us go, in and out of presence, all day? How do we keep the thread of connection going in our most precious relationships, so that when we are called back, we can return to the quality of presence necessary for receiving the call and hearing the words?

When we return to full presence with the other person, we can really hear what is wanted. Does this person want us to receive a gift, or are they asking for a gift? What are they saying? I learned from Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication, that people only say either please or thank you.

When we come close and listen in that way, for please or thank you, we hear what is said as an offering from the heart. If it is a request to do something, and we hear it as a heart asking, our yes will come from the heart, rather than from a sense of duty or fear. We can respond wholeheartedly.

This Torah portion offers a similar map of communication. First, know what need of yours you want to communicate. Eternal Presence wants closeness, korbun. Then call out for the connection, so that the cry for closeness can be heard. Don't wait for the other person to read your mind. Eternally Present, in full power, takes 100% responsibility for asking for what is wanted.

Then choose words that are likely to be heard. Check in that there is willingness to be heard. “Is this a good time?” “I appreciate that you have come when I called.” In Nonviolent Communication, this is called: connection before solution.  Some call it, “Connect before you correct.” Many households in the Plum Village practice set up special listening rooms where people go to be fully present with each other without distraction.

After you have checked-in, that this is a good time, that both of you are fully available, then you are ready to ask for what will bring you closer.

דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם אָדָם כִּי־יַקְרִיב מִכֶּם קָרְבָּן לַיהוָה מִן־הַבְּהֵמָה מִן־הַבָּקָר וּמִן־הַצֹּאן תַּקְרִיבוּ אֶת־קָרְבַּנְכֶם׃

Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: When any of you presents an offering [korbun] of cattle to Eternally Present, choose offering [korbun] from the herd or from the flock.

Leviticus 1:2

The root of the Hebrew word korbun (offering or sacrifice are the common translations) refers to bringing close. Verse after verse of Leviticus continues with specific rituals to bring the people close to Presence. They are to bring animals, salt, fruits, all with specific qualities in specific combinations. Each offering leaves a trace that brings its own quality of sweetness. “An offering by fire of pleasing odor to God.”

When we listen in closely, we hear Eternally Present in search of a human connection that touches deeply.

How can we make meaning of these instructions so that they are offerings for our times? What are the actions we can take, individually and as a society, to bring a lingering harmony with what is?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, writes in Leviticus: The Book of Holiness, that the rituals of Judaism, “its choreography of small steps and everyday deeds,” create “a series of epiphanies” in ordinary life. In Judaism and Buddhism, we are encouraged to diligently practice ways of approaching each other, speaking to each other, so that we reinforce the core spiritual insight that our happiness is bound together, that we are connected by the source and web of life, sharing the same needs and resources.

Buddhists chant a daily sutra, Invoking the Name of the Boddhisattva Avalokiteshvara, to ritualize the practice of Deep Listening and Understanding. within us:

We invoke your name.

We aspire to learn your way of listening in order to help relieve the suffering in the world. You know how to listen in order to understand. We invoke your name in order to practice listening with all our attention and open-heartedness. We will sit and listen without any prejudice. We will sit and listen without judging or reacting. We will sit and listen in order to understand. We will sit and listen so attentively that we will be able to hear what the other person is saying and also what is being left unsaid. We know that just by listening deeply we already alleviate a great deal of pain and suffering in the other person.

— Plum Village Chanting Book

Approaching with Nonviolent Communication

What tent are you yearning to be called into? How can you get close enough to make the request that will bring you closer to this wonderful gift of inclusion?

Bring yourself nearer to someone before you ask them to do something. Make direct contact. Call them by name, let them know you value them, that they matter to you. Then, make your requests so specific that they will have clarity about what you’d like to happen to make life more wonderful for you.

Making requests with this amount of specificity makes it far more likely that what you want will happen. I remember hearing Marshal say in a workshop, “People don’t get what they want often because they don’t know how to ask for it.” He coached us to put in details: who do we want to do something, when, where, and what is the exact act?

We’re vulnerable when we are so specific. It’s helpful to remind ourselves that if we hear a “no” in response to our requests, we can find another strategy to make life more wonderful. The no we hear isn’t only a no. It’s a yes to something else. We are called to find out what that yes is; and then see if we can make a new request that will include what the other person is saying yes to.

This is using our power to find solutions that work for everyone, to resolving conflict, and creating partnership for a world where everyone’s needs are valued and included.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other
By William E. Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

 

— William Stafford, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by William Stafford. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press. Source: Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice (Norwood House Press, 2013)