That's a wrap!

Dear friends,

This will be the last post -- at least for the foreseeable future -- on this blog.

I have dearly enjoyed it, but have a clear sense that it is time to move on. Other creative pursuits are waiting!

What I have posted here was ultimately not about teaching; it was a about grappling with myself as a human being. The work goes on...

Thanks for reading.

Hindugrass

My new jam:

Women of the Wall

"You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence; and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman."
-James Joyce

Praying in Her Own Voice Film. Wailing Wall. Feminism. Judaism. Women. Jerusalem. - More free videos are here

my neighborhood

Joshu asked Nansen: `What is the path?'
Nansen said: `Everyday life is the path.'
-a zen koan

הִנֵּה מַה טוֹב

הִנֵּה מַה טוֹב וּמַה נָּעִים שֶׁבֶת אָחִים גַּם יַחַד


Hineh ma tov u’ma-nayim
Shevet akh-im gam ya-chad.

The Shabbat afternoon prayer service, called the minha, often ends with the song "Hineh ma tov," a song about humans doing the impossible.

It is usually translated in the following way:

How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in Unity.

Here's a translation that is closer to the literal meaning:

How good and pleasant it is for brothers to be sitting as One.

Tov, meaning good, is masculine, while maynaim, meaning pleasant, is feminine; achim, meaning brothers, is masculine plural (women are included). Yachad is the closest concept to a Jewish definition of God: perfect Unity.

The song is about transformations: the many become One, the human become the divine. None of it is actually possible... or is it?

The singing of Hineh Ma Tov fulfils its own hope: it is the closest anyone ever comes to Yachid. Singing the song serves as a reminder that we can only reach the eternal in the fleeting present moment. And in the Jewish worldview, we can only do so together.

I recorded a version today -- here.

BOMB, Bomb, Bomb Goes the Gong

O piece of heaven which gives
both mountain and anthill a sun
I am standing before your fantastic lily door
-Gregory Corso

I'm going to be writing an article on the subject of the nuclear bomb in theological imagination for the next issue of WREN Magazine.

If you have any resources you would like to share, I would appreciate them. :)

“Gor zeyer mis, meyn ikh zis”

I was reading this article about the origin of Jewish comedy in the Union of Reform Judaism magazine today, in which Dr. Mel Gordon of UCLA argues that Jewish comedy was born in 1661 when the leading rabbis of Ukraine and Poland met in Vilna to reform Jewish communities in response to Cossack massacres. They decided to outlaw all entertainer professions except for the badkhn, or lewd public jokster. Badkhonim made their careers out of using scatological humor and poking harsh fun at religious professionals (rabbis and cantors) and wealthy congregants.

Badkhonim in Eastern European Jewish towns and shtetls were similar to West African griots in their importance to preserving the oral history of the community and their roles as public entertainers. According to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, the tradition of joke telling centered around wedding celebrations as a mitzvah to entertain the bride and groom:

"Originally, this tradition was linked to fulfillment of the commandment to delight the bride and groom and dance with them on their wedding day. Badkhonim were also called marshelikes, leytsim, letsonim, narn, lustik-makhers, katoves-traybers, and freylekhe yidn, all terms evoking laughter, jokes, and comic songs. Some of the performers were simply jesters in the spirit of Jewish popular culture, appreciated for their humor, their gift for joke telling, and their clowning or comic improvisation. Others were poets or musicians, whose main function was to recite epithalamia (gramen zogn; lit., “saying rhymes”)—that is, poems in honor of the bride and groom. The badkhn was therefore a repository of Jewish religious culture and oral tradition, invested with the role of transmitting songs and music, moral messages, and wise counsel along with the fundamentals of Judaism."

Upon immigration to America in the early 1900s, badkhonim became some of the earliest vaudeville performers. To illustrate what Gordon describes of the Jewish American vaudeville tradition, here's a video of the very entertaining Willie Howard from 1941:

End of the Day

We live most of our hours in the realm of the mundane, between great moments. What are more important, the hours, or the moments?

I'm thinking of this as I am listening to my favorite album, Style Antico's Music for Compline, a set of compositions by 16th-century English composers for the compline, or final church service of the liturgical Christian day.





The Catholic prayer service, called The Divine Hours, or Liturgy of the Hours, was adopted from the Jewish tradition of an ordered daily liturgy. Like the Jewish prayer service, it makes heavy use of the Psalms. In the Catholic tradition, there are three major hours services (middle of the night, sunrise, vespers) and four minor services (mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, evening).

The Hours Services promote devotion and mindfulness of God, but are also reminders that mundane hours are sacred, even those when we are so very tired at the end of the day.

In pace, in idipsum dormiam et requiescam.

In peace and into the same I shall sleep and rest.


Good night!

Release

What do we have to give up to be free, to be truly ourselves? 

Recently, my office mate and I were discussing the Hindu concepts of samsara and moksha, and I realized something that I hadn't thought of before.

In Hinduism, samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth that we are trapped in, potentially forever. Moksha is the release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of all life. When one attains moksha, he is reunited forever with the eternal.

It's easy to think of moksha in terms of escaping, but I think it is better to think about it in terms of letting go.

Escaping the cycle of death and rebirth would be like trying to swim out of a whirlpool. The vortex is nothing of your own making, and all you can do is try your best to overcome the forces dragging you down.

In the Bhagavad Gita, however, Lord Krishna counsels that a person attains moksha after realizing his true self, which can only be done by letting go of all desire, ego, vanity, insecurity, doubt, ambition, and fear.

In my mind, this path to achieving moksha could be animated as an image of a hand opening and dropping the heavy weight it is carrying.

Not restricted to Hinduism, a similar idea is offered in the Tao Te Ching:

In pursuit of knowledge,

every day something is added.

In the practice of the Tao,

every day something is dropped.

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as encouraging believers to reject whatever binds them to the world just as a seasoned traveler would avoid packing a heavy suitcase:

“Be in the world like a traveler, or like a passer on, and reckon yourself as of the dead.”

Rather than being morbid, the injunction to be as the dead means to have no cares or burdens, which is a very zen way to travel through life...be it this one or the next!

darkness and light: (y = -1x/2 + 1)

Ah-ha!

I learned something in math class this morning that caused me to have a revelation about the Buddhist concept of emptiness and the Chinese concept of Yin Yang.

I'm not going to share it here because I think I'm going to write an article about it.... (the title of this post gives a little hint into what it's all about)

:)

Living Walls

Is a sacred text fixed, like a stone, or changing? Does it flow? If we observe it long enough, does it start to move? According to rheology, the science of the flow of matter, some things that appear to be solid are actually in motion -- or we could say, on a journey.

Religious traditions that are text-centered (Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism) tend to refer to their texts as "Living"; in other words, they breathe and move. (See John 1:1-14) This contradicts the image of sacred texts written on stone tablets (see Exodus 31:18), such as the Ten Commandments, but even those tablets are dynamic -- Moses shatters them almost immediately in protest at the unfaithfulness of his people.

Stones in the ancient world were especially useful in accounting. The Latin word for stone is calculus, meaning "reckoning, account," originally, "pebble used as a reckoning counter" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Artistic mosaics formed from pieces of tile, glass or stone called tesserae were ubiquitous in the Roman empire.  A tessera, or individual piece of a mosaic is also called an abaculus -- related to the word, abacus -- and both are derived from the word calculus. Mosaics are therefore beautiful creations of counting stones, or numbers.

The word "mosaic" calls to mind both art and religion. It has two distinct meanings that derive from the Latin words Musaicum, meaning "from the Muses," and from Mosaicus, meaning, "from Moses." Mosaic texts are the first five books in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch (Greek), or Chumash (Hebrew). In Jewish and Christian religious teaching, Moses is attributed as the author, or "conveyer" of this text, because God gave it to him.

Clearly, artistic mosaics are "from the Muses," and the Hebrew Bible is "from Moses." But the Hebrew Bible is arguably very much like a tile or stone mosaic. Here's why:

The Pentateuch could be described figuratively as a creation of counting stones (tesserae) because it is written in Hebrew, which is an alpha-numeric writing system. Hebrew letters are also counting numbers: Aleph = 1, Bet = 2, Gimmel = 3, etc. The text of the Torah can be read as a string of numbers, which inspired the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) to derive spiritual meanings from number combinations (words and phrases) in the text, a practice which is called gematria.

Here's a rabbinic tale about coffee in the Jewish Spirit Journal, vol. 1  by Yitzhak Buxbaum to illustrate the practice of gematria:

"Milk Or Coffee First?"

"Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev once visited the Seer of Lublin. The Lubliner brought him some coffee and wanted to pour the coffee into the cup first and then add the milk. The Berditchever, however, asked him to please put the milk in first, and then the coffee, since, he said, "when I drink milk with coffee, I intend mikveh," because milk, halav, in gematria is mem and the letter mem together with kiveh (coffee) equals mikveh.

When the Berditchever drank coffee, was he meditating on the mikveh somehow?"

A little background on the mikveh: it is a ritual purification bath in Judaism that represents re-birth. The water of the mikveh must come from a natural source, as natural water sources are primordial symbols of beginning. When a convert to Judaism immerses herself into the bath, she emerges from a new womb and takes on a Jewish identity.

In addition to being a mosaic of numbers, the Pentateuch is a mosaic of genres (history, poetry, law and aggadah, or myth) as well as text fragments from four distinct earlier sources. The source theory is well accepted by biblical scholars and is called the Documentary Hypothesis. The four major sources are called J (Yahweh), D (Deuteronomy), P (Priestly), and E (Elohim). 

Richard Elliott Friedman, in his wonderful book, Who Wrote the Bible? argues that the ancient redactors of the Bible, in bringing together multiple sources, gave us a new and complex picture of God -- a God that embraces paradoxes, who is both Kingly (Yahweh) and humble (Elohim); ineffable, and capable of grieving at his heart (see Gen. 6:6).

While Islam tends to regard its most sacred text, the Qur'an, as a monolith, uttered directly from God in one voice, not filtered through the lens of human interpretation, the Hebrew Bible is a fragmented whole. Nothing more visually symbolizes this textual difference than the most sacred sites in both religions: the Kabah, in Mecca, and the Kotel, or Western Wall, in Jerusalem. The Kabah is a cube, and it gives the impression of wholeness and impenetrability:

Kabah, Photograph by Jak Kilby (1991)

The Western Wall is literally a remnant, a fragment of the Second Temple period that was destroyed in 70 C.E.:

As a symbol, it is a place of sadness, but also of memory, hope and renewal. I had a Jewish professor who wouldn't fast on Tish B'Av, the fast day to mourn the destruction of the Temple, because he argued that the destruction of the Temple caused the development of Rabbinic Judaism, which was the best thing that could happen for the Jewish people. Unlike Israelite Temple religion based on animal sacrifice that was rooted to Jerusalem, Rabbinic Judaism was capable of enduring over space and time. The rabbis replaced sacrifices with textual study as the primary religious obligation, which could be done anywhere. Textual study produced commentary and interpretation, which many consider to be the crowning beauty of the Jewish tradition.

The vast interpretive Jewish tradition of the Torah is an example of a religious text that is on a journey. The next time you visit a synagogue on Shabbat, think about this as you watch the parading of the Torah around the congregation, encircling all who are present in its living walls. Both Judaism and the Torah, as we know them today, were re-born out of the rubble of the Second Temple. They are fragments that live.

Piecing together

The word "fragment" comes to English from the French, derived from the Latin verb frangere. It means:

"A part broken off; a small, detached portion; an imperfect part; as, a fragment of an ancient writing." (Wiktionary)

This is the same verb from which we get the word, "fraction."

Fragments abound in religions -- in texts, beliefs and practices. Religions are essentially wholes made from fragments; they are dazzling mosaics that offer new perspectives every time you study them.

I have lots of examples in mind of fragments (and maybe even fractions) that I am going to share soon. Stay tuned. :)

The Eternal Present

Taoism and Judaism tell us that when the first day was created, the eternal became elusive. As the story of Adam and Eve attests, we humans have always been on a quest to find it.

The day is the foundational unit of time in the Book of Genesis. Creation takes place over six days, and the Creator rests on the seventh. The boundaries around the unit are evening and morning, representing the prinicple of Yin Yang, or the balance of oppositional forces:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. - Genesis 1:5 (KJV)

But before the first day was created, what was the universe like? There were no oppositional forces, only oneness. It is hard to imagine, but a helpful description of this eternal present can be found in Chapter 14 of the Tao Te Ching:

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

This description fits well with the primordial as described in the beginning of the Book of Genesis,

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 1:2 (KJV)

A more interesting exercise, though, is to read the Tao Te Ching passage alongside the Gospel of Thomas. According to the Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical Christian text dating to 50 C.E. (earlier than the canonical gospels) the eternal present, called the Kingdom of God, is within the self.

Thich Nhat Hanh quotes from the Gospel of Thomas in his wonderful book, Living Buddha, Living Christ:

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

The imagery of the birds of the sky and the fish of the waters call to mind the first week of creation, but this story from the Gospel of Thomas moves in the opposite direction of the Genesis version, backward from the creation to the eternal. The geography of creation includes the sky and the sea, but the geography of the eternal is the unity of the life that is within us with the rest of the universe.

According to the Gospel of Thomas and the Tao Te Ching, the eternal is elusive only when we engage in self-denial. We have to return to ourselves in order to begin to understand it, and reap the benefits of that understanding.

From the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 13:
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

 

Tree on 14th St.

Whispers of Death

I was inspired tonight to make this poetic dialogue (read: mashup) between Whitman and Frost, about Death:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

(Whispers of Heavenly Death)

Whose woods these are I think I know.

Whispers of heavenly death, murmur’d I hear;   

Labial gossip of night—sibilant chorals;  

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here 

Footsteps gently ascending—mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

Ripples of unseen rivers—tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing;  
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?) 

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;  
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;  
With, at times, a half-dimm’d, sadden’d, far-off star,  
Appearing and disappearing.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

(Some parturition, rather—some solemn, immortal birth:  
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,  

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

Some Soul is passing over.)

And miles to go before I sleep.

Wheels of fire

"Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation."
-Thomas Merton, on Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night

Starry Night LEGO Mosaic, by Ed Hall

Farewell Rev. Peter J. Gomes

Rest in peace, dear Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a spiritual warrior for tolerance and justice:

"It is interesting to me to note that those who most frequently call for fair play are those who are advantaged by the play as it currently is, and that only when that position of privilege is endangered are they likely to benefit from the change required to 'play by the rules.' What if the 'rules' are inherently unfair or simply wrong, or a greater good is to be accomplished by changing them? When the gospel says, 'The last will be first, and the first will be last,' despite the fact it is counterintuitive to our cultural presuppositions, it is invariably good news to those who are last, and at least problematic news to those who see themselves as first."

— Peter J. Gomes (The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?)

Approaching the Infinite

"We live the now for the promise of the infinite."
-Mos Def

In my calculus course, I have been learning about limits, which as I understand them, are numbers that represent the infinite set of values of a function f(x) as x approaches some number. Leaving this complicated and perhaps incorrect definition aside, the study of limits has brought me to yet another concept of the theological imagination: approaching the infinite.

The infinite is an entity that defies form and understanding; thus, it belongs to the realm of the sacred. In both mathematics and religion, it is a concept that is necessary for making sense of the world, but limits are imposed. After all, mapping the dimensionless dimensions of the infinite is an impossible, if not psychologically dangerous, task for the human mind.

A more accessible and visually appealing way that the cosmic infinite is represented in mathematics is the Fibonacci Sprial, which comes from the Fibonnacci series of integers in the following sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc, where

The spiral is made by drawing arcs connecting opposite corners of tiles that have side-lengths of successive Fibonacci numbers. The center point from which the spiral begins to emanate is known as the "Eye of God."

The Fibonacci Spiral

Nautillus shell

  

The spiral continues to infinity, taking in the cosmos. In nature, the spiral is seen in galaxies, nautillus shells, flowers, and fiddle-head ferns. In sacred architecture, the staircases of Antoni Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, follow a Fibonacci spiral pattern:


Staircase, La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain


But are nature, mathematics and religion the only ways to approach the infinite?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her wonderful answer to the interminable debate over the question, "What is art?" would say no. She writes,

“What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?”

I like Browning's view of art as a spiral that pushes us toward the infinite. Certainly sacred art intends to do this, but Browning's reference is to Art in the macro, sacred and secular.

The Buddhist experience of attaining Enlightenment could perhaps be described in Browning's terms, as a sudden awareness of "The intense significance of all things..."

Perhaps it is no coincidence that spirals are important in Buddhism, where the footprints of the Buddha leave spiral markings. In Tibetan Buddhist temples, the Gankyil spiral represents the dharma (the teachings of the Buddha) and primordial cosmic energy:

Gankyil

Here's a photo I took at a Korean restaurant this evening...



In Korea, this symbol is known as the "Sam-Taegeuk"


While I enjoy the intellectual exercise of thinking about the infinite in an interdisciplinary way, I believe there is a deeper significance to these connections.  One meaning to take away from all of this is that the infinite, while impossible to grasp, is worth approaching.

Like the Buddha, who was lost for many years practicing austerities before finding the bodhi tree, it may take falling into a spiral to get to that enlightened place. Doing so, however, you will eventually emerge changed for the better, and with a new appreciation of your own limits.

In Silence

Tonight I would like to share this poem by the beloved Thomas Merton, who asks the provocative question, "Whose silence are you?" I have been turning this question over in my mind like a stone.

"In Silence"

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

Doc Case (Nov. 5, 1922- Feb 18, 2011), זיכרונו לברכה

He is released from the mouth of Death, having gained the lasting thing which is above the great, which has neither sound, nor touch, nor form, nor change, nor taste, nor smell, but is eternal, beginningless, endless. 
-from the Katha Upanishad

The Original Face

"What face did you have before your parents were born?"

This Zen koan is also called The Original Face. The meaning is that when you become awake, or enlightened, you meet your true self -- the empty self -- free of the baggage of years, of habits, and of unmet expectations. Gazing into the Original Face, the impossible is possible. Your parents become as your children, and you lose your name.

There are legends of Zen masters awakening to the Original Face. One sees it after looking at peach blossoms; another after hearing the splash of a frog jumping into a pond. A monk-in-training who eventually becomes known as the Second Patriarch, Shen-kuang ("Huike" in Japanese), sees it after cutting off his arm while standing in the snow. Whether blithe or excruciating, the way to the Original Face almost always involves experiencing spontaneity in nature.

Poet William Stafford writes,

"Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
you were like this once, there was air,
and quiet; it was by a lake, or
maybe a river you were alert
as an otter and were suddenly born
like the evening star into wide
still worlds like this one you have found
again, for a moment, in the open."

--from "Atavism"

Being "suddenly born like the evening star" glimpses the moment as it is understood in Zen, which is not unlike the opening lines of William Blake's poem, "Infant Joy":

"I have no name; I am but two days old."

An important message of the koan is that everyone has an Original Face, but that there is no "right way" to discover it. Just because one person found it in the peach blossoms doesn't mean you will find it there. In fact, if you try to find it, you won't.

How do you know when you have seen the Original Face? Zen teaches that you will know on a deeper level than you know most things -- that is something you have to trust.

Deborah and Yael

I've always been interested in the story of Deborah and Yael, two women in the Hebrew Bible whose lives intersect in a way that changes history.

Allow me to quote from Wikipedia, which (believe it or not ;)) does a good job of paraphrasing the story from the Book of Judges:

"God told Deborah (a prophetess and leader) that she would deliver Israel from Jabin. Deborah called Barak to make up an army to lead into battle against Jabin on the plain of Esdraelon. But Barak demanded that Deborah would accompany him into the battle. Deborah agreed but prophesied that the honour of the killing of the other army's captain would be given to a woman. Jabin's army was led by Sisera (Judg. 4:2), who fled the battle after all was lost.

Yael received the fleeing Sisera at the settlement of Heber on the plain of Zaanaim. Yael welcomed him into her tent with apparent hospitality. She 'gave him milk' 'in a lordly dish'. Having drunk the refreshing beverage, he lay down and soon sank into the sleep of the weary. While he lay asleep Yael crept stealthily up to him, holding a tent peg and a mallet. She drove it through his temples with such force that it entered into the ground below. And 'at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead'.

As a result of the killing of Sisera, God gave the victory to Israel. Yael is considered "blessed", according to the text, because of her action."

Driving a tent peg through someone's head is a gruesome act, and while it may give us pause, Deborah sings a song to celebrate it in the biblical narrative.

Rather than focusing on that part of the story, though, I'm more interested in the personalities of Deborah and Yael, and how they complement each other.

Deborah is associated with the sun and exterior spaces. She sits under a palm tree, a powerful position:

"Under a palm-tree Deborah sat and judged Israel."

She is a woman of action who speaks loudly and people listen. She has a direct connection to God, and she leads people into war.

Yael, however, is associated with an interior space -- the tent -- a place of mystery. She speaks in low tones, and calls no attention to herself. While Deborah issues proclamations and battle cries, Yael works in secret. Yet both are necessary for the defeat of Sisera.

I find it interesting that the glory of the victory goes to Yael. Deborah doesn't claim it for herself, and neither does Barak. Why?

Perhaps because opening her tent makes Yael the most vulnerable of anyone. She doesn't seek glory, and no one sees her perform her task. In the biblical worldview, such actions are considered devotional and are worthy of the highest praise.

While the narrative portrays Deborah and Yael as two distinct individuals, and it is interesting to think about their relationship, I like to see them as dimensions of the same woman. We all have aspects of us that are open and hidden, sun and shadow, and we have to decide how to use them in constructive ways. Sometimes we need to lead people into battle, and sometimes we need to withdraw. I believe that there are blessings in figuring out the balance.

The Night Sea Journey

I realize that many of my recent posts have focused more on exploring ideas found in religions than on classroom teaching. So I decided to try to think of something more concrete and usable for a world history or religion teacher.This could be applicable to any course with a mythology component:

I have been thinking about the archetype of the night sea journey, or dark night of the soul. We see it in ancient sacred histories such as the Egyptian story of Ra and the biblical story of Jonah, in the writings of St. John of the Cross, and in the narratives of the lives of Jesus and the Buddha. Like all archetypical stories, it reflects something about the human psyche.

Carl Jung writes,

"The night sea journey is a kind of descensus ad inferos--a descent into Hades and a journey to the land of ghosts somewhere beyond this world, beyond consciousness, hence an immersion in the unconscious." ["The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 455.]

While the night sea journey story may literally involve a dragon or giant fish, it may be a symbolic monster, internal demon, or watery place. In any case, the one taking the journey undergoes a temporary death in anticipation of a rebirth or renewal.

 

Dr. Thomas Moore, therapist and author of Dark Nights of the Soul, offers an interesting way of thinking about it for individuals who are experiencing it: 

"A dark night of the soul may feel amorphous, having no meaning, shape, or direction. It helps to have images for it and to know that people have gone through this experience and have survived it. The great stories and myths of many cultures also help by providing an imagination of human struggle that inspires and offers insight. One ancient story that sheds light on the dark night is the tale of the hero swallowed by a huge fish.....Because the story is associated with the sun setting in the west and traveling underwater to the east to rise in the morning, this theme is sometimes called the "Night Sea Journey." It is a cosmic passage taken as a metaphor for our own dark nights, when we are trapped in a mood or by external circumstances and can do little but sit and wait for liberation.  

"Imagine that your dark mood, or the external source of your suffering, is a large, living container in which you are held captive. But this container is moving, getting somewhere, taking you to where you need to go. You may not like the situation you're in, but it would help if you imagined it constructively. Maybe at this very minute you are on a night sea journey of your own....

"In your dark night you may have a sensation you could call "oceanic" - being in the sea, at sea, or immersed in the waters of the womb. The sea is the vast potential of life, but it is also your dark night, which may force you to surrender some knowledge you have achieved. It helps to regularly undo the hard-won ego development, to unravel the self and culture you have woven over the years. The night sea journey takes you back to your primordial self, not the heroic self that burns out and falls to judgment, but to your original self, yourself as a sea of possibility, your greater and deeper being."

I like Moore's explanation for potential use in the classroom because it is relatable and lends authority to the point that sacred histories reflect the human psyche and can be read symbolically, not just literally. If you are interested, click here to read a longer excerpt from Moore's book.

Oh, and on a totally unrelated topic... Go Duke! :)

Flow

Driving home from work today, I saw a license plate that said "WU-WEI"  (doing by not-doing). It's a paradox...but it means to do what naturally comes -- don't force anything, or try too hard. Instead, be like nature.

Wu Wei

There is a Taoist practice called "Aimless Wandering" to help experience wu-wei:

Elizabeth Reninger writes,

"The Taoist practice of "aimless wandering" through places of great natural beauty is a wonderful way to cultivate Wu Wei. As we practice, little by little we revive our capacity to move in the world with the kind of joyful ease and spontaneity that we see in young children. At the same time, we are nourished deeply by the elemental energies - by the plants, minerals and animals, the earth and the sky."

I am looking forward to doing some aimless wandering this week.

The Inner Voice of Love

What does it mean to love someone, and what is the relationship between loving someone and loving oneself? What does it mean to be a good friend?

These are questions we deal with throughout our lives -- our students deal with them, and so do we.

Buddhism suggests detachment as the ideal state of being. In such a state, close friendships are possible -- but like anything else, they will always lead to dukkha, or dissatisfaction, if a person is trying to seek personal fulfillment from them. The only way to peace and contentment is by realizing it within, not by trying to find it in others.This is symbolized in the lotus flower, which is also important in Hinduism and Jainism (see previous post).

The lotus is a challenging symbol for me because its cold beauty renders it unapproachable. While I struggle to think of it as an ideal for personal behavior, I understand and appreciate its importance in Asian religious traditions.

For another perspective on friendship, I am reading The Inner Voice of Love, journal of late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, which he wrote after the interruption of a friendship caused him to enter a period of severe depression. He describes it as a time lived in utter darkness.

"It seemed as the door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life. But this deeply satisfying friendship became the road to my anguish, because I soon discovered that the enormous space that had been opened for me could not be filled by the one who opened it. I became possessive, needy and dependent, and when the friendship finally had to be interrupted, I fell apart" (xv).

"The interruption of friendship forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life" (xvii). 

In his journal, he admits his failure to truly love himself as a cause of the brokenness of previous friendships: 

"Many of your friendships grew from your need for affection, affirmation, and emotional support. But now you must seek friends to whom you can relate from your center, from the place where you know that you are deeply loved. Friendship becomes more and more possible when you accept yourself as deeply loved. Then you can be with others in a non-possessive way" (80).

Acknowledging his need of encouragement to become the person he wants to be, he dares himself:

"Dare to love and to be a real friend" (81).

The conclusion of the book ends on a positive note, but not in a rose-colored glasses sort of way. It is his reflection eight years after keeping the journal. He writes of what he gained from the experience, including an increased self-awareness:

"I have also learned to catch the darkness early, not to allow sadness to grow into depression or let a sense of being rejected develop into a feeling of abandonment....What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love" (117). 

I don't know what happened to Nouwen's friendship that became "interrupted," because he doesn't write about it specifically in the conclusion. As far as what he does write, I am very much drawn to the sentence,

"I have also learned to catch the darkness early..."

I can relate to this kind of relationship to self much more than that of the lotus -- total detachment -- but some detachment is required in order to be able to perceive the "darkness" that he mentions.

I wonder what a Buddhist re-phrasing of Nouwen's words might be. Perhaps, "Become aware of your suffering early, in order to be able to free yourself from it." I don't think that would be too far off from what Nouwen is trying to say.

Elegance is refusal

What does it mean to be a woman born of lotus flowers?

Padmavati, or woman born from the lotus, is a goddess in Hinduism who is an avatar of Laxmi, goddess of wealth. She is a beloved of Lord Vishnu, repairer of the world, and like him, is often depicted as having ebony skin.

Padmavati

The lotus in Indian tradition is a symbol of self-detachment and sexual purity. It rises above its ecosystem and lives in the air, just as a person is supposed to abandon the search for personal gratification in her social environment.

Lotus flowers in Xuanwu Lake, Nanjing, China

The lotus flower is perhaps the opposite of the shakti, which is the devouring/destructive power that is the essence of the feminine divine in Hinduism. Women are penetrators by nature, with the capacity to destroy as well as produce, which is the foundation for the argument in dharma literature for them to be restrained.

In contemporary India, women's rights groups have re-interpreted shakti as the creative and powerful energy that women bring to the world.

How can one be both creative and detached -- a woman born from lotus flowers? Can you be a mother, an artist, or a teacher and still be detached from the results of your actions?

Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita counseled the soldier Arjuna to do his duty and fight on the battlefield (even against his kinsman), but to detach himself from whatever actually happened. Like the lotus, he was supposed to rise above the bloodshed, mud and debris of war with a pure heart and mind. He was to transcend a situation that was so absurd it should never have happened, and not let it destroy his soul.

As Coco Chanel said, "Elegance is refusal," and the lotus is just that -- something elegant fashioned out of negation. Something, perhaps, that has forgotten its roots. There may be an unreal beauty in letting everything go, but I continue to grapple with what that might mean for a person.

Fear the Vacuum

Maybe it is because my partner's Consumer Reports magazine arrived today and it features an article about vacuums... or perhaps because I have been teaching about the Churrigueresque architectural style in Latin America, but this evening I am interested in the topic of... Horror vacui. 

Horror vacui is a term meaning, "horror of the vacuum"...the fear of empty space, or negative space (as my high school art teacher called it). It is relevant to thermodyamics, art and human psychology. I'd like to think about its application to religion.

As Buddhist author Geshe Namgyal Wangchen writes of emptiness,

"The fully awakened clear state of mind that realizes the truth of emptiness - the emptiness of inherent existence - is the wisdom we seek. It is called prajna in Sanskrit. When we acheive this wisdom we are able to realize emptiness from the depth of our own personal experience, beyond intellectualization."

In Buddhism, emptiness is the reality of the universe, and of ourselves. To be afraid of it would be to fear the essential reality of our existence. Becoming aware of our emptiness is necessary for seeking Enlightenment.

By contrast, the Baroque architecture of the Counter-Reformation in Europe and New Spain is notable for its energy and excessive decoration of every available space:

Dome of Capilla del Rosario, Santo Domingo Church, Puebla, Mexico

While the Catholic Church of the 16th-18th century expressed horror vacui proudly to convey its power and glory, Protestants viewed such decoration as sinful.

Theologically speaking, Christianity's 3-in-1, or Trinitarian, concept of God is more complex than that of Islam and Judaism, but seems pretty un-frilly next to the thousands upon thousands of deities in Hinduism. A dizzying array of deities and universes exists in Mahayana Buddhist cosmology -- despite the Buddhist belief in emptiness as the ultimate reality.

Elaborate complexities exist within most religious traditions, despite how simple their theologies may seem. In terms of amor vacui, or love of emptiness, however, here is my favorite example:

Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, a 16th-century Jewish mystic and Talmudic scholar from Safed, Palestine, argued that for the world to be created, God had to withdraw himself. He taught the concept of tzimtzum, or self-extraction. Basically, God had to pull His radiant fullness back, so to speak, in order to leave an empty place for the universe to exist.

As Sanford L. Drob writes of tzimtzum,

"The doctrine of Tzimtzim gives expression to a series of paradoxical ideas, amongst which is the notion that the universe as we know it is the result of a cosmic negation. The world, according to Lurianic Kabbalah, is not so much a something which has been created from nothing, but rather a genre of nothingness resulting from a contraction or concealment of the only true reality, which is God. Like a film image that has been projected on a screen, the world exists in all its details and particulars only as a result of a partial occultation of what would otherwise be a pure and homogenous light...God's contraction, concealment, and ultimate unknowability are thus the greatest blessings he could bestow on the world and mankind."

In Luria's teaching of tzimtzum, the essence of reality is Ein Sof, or God's infinite existence. God obscured that reality in order to make it possible for there to be a material universe.This is an interesting contrast with the Buddhist view of reality as emptiness.

As the Yiddish saying goes, "You can always make something out of nothing," even a nice classroom discussion.

Religion & the Marketplace

I've been thinking lately about religion and business, and a question came to mind:

What if the Buddha, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad could have a dialogue about the relationship between commerce and the spiritual life?

That would be a pretty amazing conversation. I think the chips would really start flying over the issue of caravan trading.

The Buddha taught that there were certain professions that would not be suitable for a person genuinely seeking Enlightenment. One of those, he argued, was caravan trading.


Caravan traders, Egypt

If you know anything about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, he got his start -- thanks to his wife, Khadija -- in the carvan trading business. It allowed him to make important connections that he would later rely on in his spiritual ministry and political expansion, and allowed him to earn the title, "el-Amin," or, the one who is trustworthy. How would he react to the Buddha's condemnation of the profession?

Jesus's angriest moment occured in a marketplace, where he went on a destructive rampage against merchants who set up shop in the Temple in Jerusalem. He argued that making the Temple into a market desecrated the holy place:

"He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. He made a whip of cords, and threw all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers' money, and overthrew their tables. To those who sold the doves, he said, "Take these things out of here! Don't make my Father's house a marketplace!" (John 2: 14-16)

While Jesus may not have been against marketplaces in general, he was clearly against mixing business with the sacred.

In Hinduism, a more favorable approach to commerce is shown in the dharma literature (dharma means the order of things, or the 'proper' duties and obligations of individuals according to caste and gender), such as in the Laws of Manu. For the Vaishya, the merchant caste, buying and selling is a religious obligation. Included in that obligation is cutting deals in order to turn favorable profits. For this caste, there is no conflict in the duties to study the Vedas (sacred texts) and to lend money:

The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. (Chapter 1)

Vaishyas are also expected to derive benefit from other people:

Three suffer for the sake of others, witnesses, a surety, and judges; but four enrich themselves (through others), a Brahmana, a money-lender, a merchant, and a king. (Chapter 8)

I think it is really interesting to examine these examples beside each other, if possible. This kind of comparative activity could be between just a couple of examples initially, and then can be revisited later in the course as time and coverage permit.

Between worlds

And he said to himself

in a sunken morning moon

between two pines,

between lost gold and lingering green:

I believe I will count up my worlds.

-from, "Between Worlds," by Carl Sandburg


Transitional times in our lives -- sunken morning moons -- what can we make of them?

As times of loss and leaving, they have the potential to bring deep pain, as well as new growth. They are also times in which we can take stock of what we do have, and ask ourselves if that is enough.

I'm reminded of a song at the Passover seder called "Dayeinu," a holiday event every Spring marking the exodus from Egypt. Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover, means "crossing over." The purpose of the song is to affirm that had the transition of the Jewish people from slavery to freedom been harder with fewer blessings, it would have been enough.

The truth is that wandering for 40 years in the desert was often "not enough" for those wanting to reach the Promised Land. The subtext to the song is that "Dayeinu" is an ideal rather than a reality.

In ancient Egypt and Palestine, liminal places like doorways were considered spiritually powerful -- and were often inscribed with magical spells in order to protect the person walking through them. That might be the origin of the tradition of hanging the mezuzah, which is a parchment with verses from the book of Deuteronomy encased in a decorative covering and nailed to the doorposts of Jewish homes, synagogues and other buildings. For observant Jews, it is common to touch a mezuzah when walking into a house and then kiss the fingers that touched it as a way of increasing one's awareness of God's love.

Mezuzah at the Google office in Tel Aviv

A ritual verbal counting takes place on each of the 49 days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai). Symbolically it is a time for self-reflection as well as semi-mourning to remember the plague that killed the students of Rabbi Akiva. As a transitional time in the calendar leading up to the monumental event of the giving of the Torah, it has an air of solemnity.

There may be an ancient anxiety in the tradition of counting the omer. It is as if to say... OK, we will count, but can we really count on anything?

Not confined to Judaism, in-between times like solstices, births and deaths are heavy with ritual and prayer in religious traditions because they are reminders of our vulnerability and that, as the Buddha said, "Everything is impermanent."  

Zen Buddhist masters try to get their students to become aware that there is nothing in this existence that one can rely on -- not even language, meaning or sanity. In such a context, with everything stripped away, what is enough?

Walt Whitman had an answer:

"That you are here." 

That may not satisfy a Zen Buddhist master, but I'll take it... for now. :)

El Sagrado Corazon

"Your heart is greater than your wounds." 

-Henri Nouwen

How religious traditions deal with suffering is a question that always leads interesting places. While suffering is commonly depicted as a journey, it also can be a place with its own geography. Babylon, for example, is a place synonymous with suffering in the Hebrew Bible:

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137:1)

In Buddhism and Hinduism, the geography of suffering is internal, located in the human mind.

In Christianity, suffering is in the drama of Christ's passion before and during his crucifixion on the cross at Golgotha. As Miguel Rojas Mix (1987) has argued, in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation, blood-drenched Christs were "sacred actors in a human tragedy."

This week, while teaching about art in colonial Latin America, I came upon this painting of the Sacred Heart (El Sagrado Corazon de Jesus) from 18th century Mexico: 

Alegorías del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús y la Santísima Trinidad, 1747

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary dates to the life of 17th century French nun Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who succeeded in establishing it in her convent after years of religious visions. The heart represents Christ's compassion and suffering for humanity. Notice in the painting that it bears a marking of the crucified body of Christ (on left, below the crown of thorns).

As a symbol of intense feeling and pulsating energy, the heart of Christ is a baroque element that resonated with Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans whose indigenous religious practices centered around heart sacrifice as necessary means for keeping the universe in motion.  While those practices had long ceased by the 1700s, Nahuatl poetry preserved the importance of the heart as the seat of life and of the spirit:

"I sing so that I may rejoice the Cause of All, 

as the dawn approaches in the house of thy heart."

I am interested in how the Sacred Heart is an external representation of suffering using something so interior and vital to the human body. No longer hidden inside of the chest, the heart of Christ bleeds openly for humanity. It is raw, lacerated, and often covered in throbbing veins. Christ stretches out his arms to anyone who will come close to it.

Town of El Morro, Baja California, Mexico

The late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen argues in his book, The Inner Voice of Love, that we cannot deal with our suffering intellectually -- we must feel it deeply in our hearts. For him, the journey out of suffering begins with becoming aware of one's wounds and then opening oneself to feeling their intense pain.

Because suffering is central to the human experience, it is a great theme to deal with when examining religious traditions, comparatively or not.

However you may be dealing with suffering, much heart to you in your journey.

Karma Couture

The Zohar is a Jewish mystical text from 13th century Spain in which rabbis discuss the sod, or esoteric knowledge of the Torah. It is part of a larger literature known as the Kabbalah. I found a passage that I like very much, and wanted to share:

Come and see:

Abraham, who was pure, what is written of him?

'He came into days.' (Genesis 24:1)

When he left this world

he entered into his very own days and put them on to wear.

Nothing was missing from that radiant garment:

'He came into days.'

The metaphor of the garment reminds me of the Hindu concept of karma, or the fruits of one's actions. According to the Zohar, the righteous will be "privileged to wear a radiant garment of their days" in the afterlife, but those who have been wicked will not. Karma could also be conceived as a patchwork garment that is stitched together in one's lifetime, and as both burial shroud and swaddling, it is what one wears into the next life -- for better or worse.

Mary Ann Pettaway, "Housetop quilt"

It is interesting to think about one's life as an outfit, and I could get really distracted with considering all of the design possibilities. :) Thanks to Jewish mysticism for helping me procrastinate today!

Strange were my travels

Speaking of religious journeys (previous topic), I was reminded tonight of this quote I read a few years ago by Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang:

I tried to house my spirit within my body, but suddenly it disappeared outside; I tried to nourish my virtue by mildness, but suddenly it shifted to intensity of feeling; and I tried to wander in ether by keeping in the void, but suddenly there sprang up in me a desire. And so, being unable to find peace within myself, I made use of the external surroundings to calm my spirit, and being unable to find delight within my heart, I borrowed a landscape to please it. Therefore, strange were my travels.

- from The Importance of Living (1937)

If these walls could sing...

In my previous post, I discussed the game of Go. The maze-like iterations of a game-in-progress (below) reminded me of a question I have been thinking about:

When you get to the place you are going, what then?

This is a very human question.

There are a number of writers who have remarked that the journey is the most valuable part of going from points A to B, not the arriving.

There is a problem then, posed to the architects of sacred spaces, which are arrival points in religious life: how do you make them valuable? How do you make them places where meaning can be found?

Is there merit in making a sacred space that is more like a journey than a destination?

Glazed and painted ceramic on plaster in the Imami Madrasa, Isafan, Iran 

In Islamic architecture, geometric shapes and mazes abound. They are symbolic of the eternal and of the position of the Muslim (one who submits) as one who is lost (read: held) in the endless, unfathomable eternity of the One who created the universe, by that merciful One (Ar-Rahman). In the picture above, you have to stop and look up to see it -- staring at the ceiling of your destination, the mosque, you are reminded that your journey of faith continues.

Examples of Islamic calligraphy throughout the Muslim world -- found on walls, entryways, ceilings, etc -- serve as signposts on the road to the divine, beacons pointing the soul toward God via the sacred text of the Qur'an, considered to be God's own speech. These are not only signs along the journey, but also listening posts. The calligraphy of the Qur'an in its multidimensional form is also a beautiful chant when recited by a human voice. It's neat to think of these as walls that are meant to be sung.  

Qutb Minar, Dehli, India

In Christian architecture, labyrinths in Gothic churches offered medieval devotees the opportunity to undergo a spiritual journey in miniature. Divided into four quadrants symbolic of the universe and/or the cross, labyrinths have serpentine paths leading toward a center point representing God, faith, and/or forgiveness. The devotee could spend as much time wandering in the labyrinth as desired until reaching the arrival point in the center. This labyrinth has been in Chartres Cathedral since around 1200CE: 

What seems to be the message from these examples is that within these traditions, discovering that one is lost in the maze of this universe is the exact moment when one is no longer irretrievably lost, but is on the correct path toward the divine. According to the Tao Te Ching, the divine is the path, the Tao, the way of things. 

I'm interested in finding additional examples of "journeys" inside of sacred spaces, so if you have one, please share.

Stones

I've just started studying the game of Go, a 4000-year old Chinese game using black and white stones on a 19x19 grid. It is a strategy game in which two players work to surround and capture territory, but must do so with patience and a willingness to preserve harmony with the opposing side.

The game has been argued as having its origins in ancient Chinese shamanism, and the board representing the universe and the natural balance of yin and yang as echoed in the Tao Te Ching:

"The board must be square, for it signifies the Earth, and its right angles signify uprightness. The pieces of the two sides are yellow and black; this difference signifies the yin and the yang -- scattered in groups all over the board, they represent the heavenly bodies. Following what the rules permit, both opponents are subject to them -- this is the rigor of the Tao." 

-- Pan Ku, 1st century historian 

There are on the Go board 360 intersections plus one. The number one is supreme and gives rise to the other numbers because it occupies the ultimate position and governs the four quarters. 360 represents the number of days in the [lunar] year. The four quarters symbolize the four seasons. The 72 points around the edge represent the [five-day] weeks of the [Chinese lunar] calendar. The balance of yin and yang is the model for the equal division of the 360 stones into black and white.
-- from The Classic of Go , by Chang Nui (Published between 1049 and 1054)  

I like the beauty of the stones and the various patterns that emerge on the board as it is being played. I also like thinking of the game as the creative act of dueling artists laying a mosaic on top of the universe. The materials of the game, in the spirit of the Tao, come from nature -- a wooden board, and stones made out of slate and clamshell.

The relationship between the players is one of opposition, but they are holding each other in the balance -- mindful that they are building something together. According to Yasunari Kawabata, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,

"A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary."

That the game requires attention to balance and a natural give-and-take sort of dance between players makes it appropriate for discussion in lots of classroom settings -- and I especially like how it bridges mathematics with philosophy and religion. Students might like this clip from Hikaru no Go (a teen manga series based on the game of Go), which depicts the potentially serious psychological drama involved in figuring out one's opponent: 

Lacking my own board (hoping to get one soon), I have found a way to play online, and would welcome the opportunity to discuss and play this game with real people.:)

"There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery."
-Carl Sandburg

Religions, at their cores, are love stories. This is such a simple thing to say that I will lose some scholarly street cred for saying it. After all, religions are so complicated, internally diverse, impossible to essentialize, embedded in cultures, connected to political, social and economic spheres, etc.... right? In fact, what we can't really nail down about any particular religion is endless.

But what I keep returning to the more I study and teach about religion, is that within each major religious tradition, you will find an opportunity to grapple intensely with the concept of love. Devotion, in whatever form, is to participate in a love unfolding.

I am really interested in the eternal/ephemeral duality that the divine is portrayed as having in multiple traditions, and will take up this topic more in-depth in a future post. Mystics are especially attuned to this duality and experiencing and seeking the love of the divine, often at great peril to their own psychological and emotional stability. Some traditions, such as Jewish mysticism, hold that getting too near to this esoteric dimension of Divine love can be dangerous.

Love language abounds in the orthodox liturgical traditions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism in expressing the relationship between humans and the divine. Like ancient Egyptian love poetry, the Song of Solomon reflects an oral love poetry tradition in ancient Israel that has been interpreted by both Jewish and Christian theologians as symbolic of the relationship between God and His people, steadfast, but also full of longing:

"All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him."

"I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night."

Hindus experience the love of the divine gaze while standing in the presence of murtis and performing puja, and have a rich sacred history in which deities are capable of ardent, sexual love. The loving, peaceful gazes of the Buddha and Jainist Tirthamkaras -- not deities, but still arguably dimensions of the sacred -- imbue the spaces of Buddhist and Jain temples with a sense of divine love.

The Qur'an, unlike the Hebrew Bible, is stylistically more like a collection of fervent utterances of the heart, although I am not intending to personify the Muslim concept of Allah, without form and indivisible. Throughout the Muslim world, the Qur'ran (click here to listen) has been thought by many as having a beauty in Arabic that eclipses even the most beautiful of love poems.

Where I want to go with this is that religion in the public sphere and media is most often cast as something that fuels hatred and the ongoing culture wars, between liberals and conservatives in the United States and between the West and the Islamic world. Teachers of religion have an opportunity to present religions, (in all of their complexity, granted), as approachable, despite how alien to a student's own experience -- not to challenge a student's own beliefs, but to promote mutual respect and understanding.

Who doesn't understand the human need for love? When we can approach a topic from something a student understands, rather than just filling them with information, we have a better chance of creating a meaningful learning experience. And when it comes to religion, the world is definitely in need of us doing this work.