June, 2020 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
“Now our Sages, of blessed memory, have taught us that the human being was created only to find delight in HASHEM and to bask in the radiance of God’s Shekhinah, for this is the true happiness and the greatest of all possible delights.”
So wrote the RaMChaL—Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzatto—in The Path of the Upright in 1740.
I haven’t been doing very much basking lately—in radiance or in my yard—what with sheltering in place, and feeling bad about complaining about sheltering in place when so many people have it so much worse, and then trying to figure out whether sitting outside with a friend, chairs six feet apart, is still sheltering in place, and if it is, is it okay to offer them a cup of tea, and then worrying about things beginning to open up, and then worrying about the xenophobia of talking about tourists like they are vectors of death while secretly fearing that they are.
Oh, and my computer and the blender and our water pump and the headlight in my car and then the new computer all decided to go sideways at once. And the kitchen sink dripping relentlessly. And my intermittent cough.
Still, in the middle of all this noise, I occasionally remember for a flash that life is more than dripping sinks and Apple techs, and I feel moments of homesickness for the Shekhinah (the feminine immanent aspect of the Divine.). So today—a beautiful spring Sunday, Donna Montag’s AND Bob Dylan’s birthday, both computers working fine, water flowing, and not flowing, from the tap like it’s supposed to—I try to remember God, if not to bask, at least to recall.
During the past few Shabbat morning services I’ve read this gorgeous meditation on the Amidah by my brilliant pal, Maggid Jhos Singer. Its seven contemplations echo themes from the Amidah prayer. In the third one, Jhos asks us to consider: “What is holiness? And then: In what way am I holy? And then: What is holy about my name?” Each week I’ve paused here for a funny moment: what is holy about my name? Margaret? I don’t know…. My parents liked the name.
This is a riff on the third blessing of the Amidah, which says, “Holy are You and holy is Your Name.” What is holy about God’s name? (Or is it, “Name?”) God doesn’t even HAVE a Name. Or rather, God may have many Names, but we are not permitted to say them, or even really, fully to know them. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies and says the Name, and we prostrate ourselves and sing, “Baruch Shem Kavod.” “Blessed is the Holy Name.” In the Kaddish prayer that we say at the end of every section of the service, we proclaim over and over that “God’s Name is beyond all words and prayers and songs and praises and consolations that can be said in this world.…”
Beyond. That’s a good name. All. I like that name too. Unknown. Mystery. And maybe, borrowing from the RaMChaL, “Delight” and “Radiance.”
I’ve been noticing ambient noise lately. I’ll be hustling around the house, and then sometimes I’ll just get quiet for a minute and listen. Right now I hear the super-loud tick of my office clock, chickens gabbling next-door, occasional distant car sounds, the hum of my computer, the high-pitched tone that I think is my brain. I just heard Mickey take a breath up in his loft. I think of the house as quiet, as empty of sound, but it’s not, not at all. There is a fullness here surrounding me. Fullness. I like that name too. Also Quiet. Also Emptiness.
I’ve been living with Mickey for something like 30 years now (it’s not quite clear when we started living with each other; it was kind of limb-by-limb for the first couple years). In these quiet days of sheltering in place, I feel like I am getting to know more of him, like more of his nature keeps unfolding as we negotiate these strange times together. Unfolding. Knowing More Of. I like those Names.
I’m sure there is more. More. I love that Name! But for now I am struck by the fullness of life, the resonance, even in what seems empty. Fulsomeness. I think that’s a Name.
Here’s a little memory that just arose as I’ve been thinking about all this: many years ago a friend of mine, both of whose older brothers had died some years before, made an off-the-cuff comment that she was glad that her brothers’ deaths had enabled her financially to go to grad school. I don’t remember the financial arrangement, just the comment.
I must have responded with something along the lines of, “That’s a weird way to talk about your brothers’ dying.” And she said, “Grief has a lot of texture. It’s not all just one thing.”
Everything has a lot of textures. Nothing is just one thing. This time that we’re in—and every other time that we have ever been in or will be in the future—is replete. Fulsome. More than we can possibly say with all our words or know with all our years. And unfolding as we live and listen.
This to me feels radiant.
