Welcome to Torah at the Intersection. This first post is emerging close to the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, a joyful holiday when the ending and the beginning of the written Torah intersect in a celebratory circle dance.
Come and dance!
Greet whatever comes as an invitation, a guide, to bringing greater peace and reverence for life into our world. Bring into the intersection, as I intend to do, what nourishes and uplifts your encounter.
Perhaps this is your first dance with Torah, or, like me, you have been dancing with Torah for decades, from ancestral stirrings before you were born, or from a discovery or calling from a Buddhist Monastery or a Sikh Temple.
Perhaps you are drawn to the storytelling and the myth making. Or the possibility of deepening spiritual and ethical meaning and direction for your own life.
Perhaps you enter this intersection with simple curiosity about finding aliveness and relevance in an ancient book that inspires everything under the sun, from openness to rigidity, connection to disconnection, compassion to violence.
Perhaps you have been called to engage with Torah as a god-wrestler, one of the meanings of the word Israel, יִשְׂרָאֵל֙, one who wrestles with God to find a place in this world. Is there meaning, purpose, spiritual guidance, devotion, amidst the Torah’s recounting of violence, xenophobia, misogyny and abuses of power and privilege? Is it authentic and useful to bring the lens of Nonviolent Communication and Buddhism to the Torah?
Come and wrestle!
Perhaps you have been called to this intersection with Torah to illuminate your own inner life or find inspiration and wisdom to call your own tribe of people out of the trance of separateness.
Whatever has called you here, may it be an experience of letting in more light to your life and to our world.
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר
And Elohim said, let there be light and there was light
Thank you for entering this intersection of aliveness with me, of beginning and not beginning, of ending and not ending. It is where you and I can truly connect, know each other, and discover the intersections of Torah and the multitudes of spiritual paths we may walk, especially for me, the intersections of Judaism, Buddhism and Nonviolent Communication.
The Guesthouse
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
© 1997 by Coleman Barks. From The Illuminated Rumi.