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Showing posts with label Velveteen Rabbi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Velveteen Rabbi. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 December 2025
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
On Celebrating Pesach with the glory
from the blogpost by Velveteen Rabbi - Rachel Barenblatt
I always get caught up in the details of Pesach. The recipes, the matzah balls, the groceries, the cooking, the haggadah, the psalms, the songs. I always want to create a perfectly meaningful seder: for myself, for my family, for my guests. I love this holiday so fiercely that I want to share that love with everyone. I want everyone to come away from the table feeling nourished in all four worlds of body, heart, mind, and soul. I want to experience the spiritual peak of being magically swept up to the top of the mountain with God at Pesach -- so that as I begin the long climb back up to the spiritual heights of Shavuot, I'm inspired and enlivened by knowing just what joys await me once I get there again.
In my haggadah there is a poem by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, who is now a friend and colleague but who was known to me only by reputation when I first discovered her work many years ago. That poem speaks of the process of bedikat chametz, removing the leaven from our homes on the eve of Pesach. (Here's a short ritual for bedikat chametz, which also includes that poem: BedikatChametz.pdf) After we read that poem, at my seder, we sometimes go around the table and share an emotional or internal hametz which we want to relinquish as Pesach begins. Often, what I need to relinquish is my fantasy of the perfect seder -- my fantasy that I can create an experience which will sweep everyone up into ecstasy, which will wholly connect all who are present with our ancestors and our community and our God.
I want to experience the spiritual peak of being magically swept up to the top of the mountain with God at Pesach -- so that as I begin the long climb back up to the spiritual heights of Shavuot, I'm inspired and enlivened by knowing just what joys await me once I get there again.
This yearning for seder perfection, bumping up against the inevitable realities of the world's natural imperfection, is something I've wrestled with for years. And it is, if anything, even more true now that we are parents. I want to create the perfect seder -- and I know the odds are good that at some point during the evening, our three-year-old will have an entirely age-appropriate tantrum because his usual routines are disrupted, or because we won't let him watch cartoons during the seder, or because he's overstimulated and up too late. I want to create the perfect seder -- and I know that there is no such thing; that the childhood seders I've enshrined in memory weren't perfect; that even if I could fill my table with scholars and sages who love the tradition even more than I do, the seder wouldn't achieve perfection.
Far better to learn to find the perfection in what is, instead of wishing for a kind of perfection we can never attain. The seder isn't just about doing, although there are certainly a lot of things to do in order for the evening to be complete. (The fifteen steps from kadesh to nirtzah, the songs and prayers and psalms, the food rituals of hardboiled egg and matzah ball soup...) The seder is also about being. It's a chance to experience being free. To be in the moment, to be with friends and family, to be blessed by the light of the full moon of Nisan in 5773 which will never shine again after this night. It's a chance to be joyful even when the glass breaks, or the kugel burns, or the children don't pay attention. After all the flurry of work and preparations -- cleaning, cooking, studying, readying -- it's a chance to just be.
Chag Pesach sameach to one and all. May this holiday be whatever you need it to be.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Celebrating Pesach together doesn't get any easier in Christ either. But at this stage, periodically we hit a zapper of a seder. I think once Jews fully "get it" and Christians fully "get what it was" we'll probably continually have fantastic seders from thereon in. Each without the other is currently incomplete. A bit like the two loaves at Pentecost. Not only Israel and Judah were divided, like two original denominations or something, but Jews and Christians have been two divided houses around the same table, around the same God.
All we ever need to know about the "code" that unlocks everything are in the two passages...the original in Exodus 12 which describes the first flight from Egypt, and the second which is in the New Testament chapters John 13 through 17, and in particular John 15 to 17.
At the moment Jews are afraid to look into the second sequence because they think in terms of an angry God....if they get that far....usually long before that they have dismissed the Christian's God as another God entirely anyway and therefore pitched the necessity of ever looking into it.
If you speak to your average Jew on the street, it hasn't occurred to them that each and every one of the first ever disciples of Jesus IS EXACTLY THE SAME as everyone else at the second main Pesach. The Pesach that was really what the first Pesach was the mirror of. What do I mean?
Everybody. I mean everybody....except perhaps Jesus mother and John....upped and walked out on Jesus as he was condemned to death.If the whole thing had been staged in England now. Or the USA now. Or Russia now. The same thing would have happened. If God had chosen China to be the sovereign country carrying His Name in all the earth, then Jesus Himself as God the son had been Chinese....the Chinese would have been just the same.
Isaiah 53 and psalm 22 indicate that there was nothing different about the man Jesus. He just looked normal. He didn't look like Robert Redford or Brad Pitt.
Whichever nation God had chosen, and had they been expecting a Messiah, there is no possible way for anyone to make the leap of the imagination required from whatever a "Messiah" should look like and then how Jesus "looked". Which was pretty much as your next rabbi. And nobody aligned the suffering servant figure of Isaiah 53 with Jesus, and the concept of a Messiah. And Jews still don't. And secular people don't either.
But in the first church, every single leader had to face the fact that he had walked away from Jesus at precisely that time. That they hadn't done a thing to stop it all. Peter did initially. With a sword. Because Jesus was messing with his idea of a freedomfighter Messiah. But later, as Darkness squashed in....(much the same as later in Nazi Germany...when the lights went out of that once Christian nation) even Peter just tossed it all away. "Me...I never knew the guy". And he became the leader of the first church of Jesus Christ.
So we see that God is not an angry God. He was fully cognizant from the beginning that this would happen. He had to use a nation to demonstrate it. In the end it was Israel. But some nation somewhere had to be chosen to demonstrate the utter uselessness of religion to ever be up to the task of recognising a God who refers to Himself in the Old Testament scriptures in these words...
'Behold it says of me in the Book...."I come to do thy will....a body thou hast prepared for me".'
And David making a Trinity reference, well, Father to Son conversation..."The Lord said to my Lord..."
Every year the Pesach had been celebrated the same.
Every year Jesus had celebrated the Pesach in the same way with His disciples.
But the third year He changed the words. The disciples didn't really pick it up, but they remembered later.
This one time Jesus said...of the bread as He picked it up...This is My Body and of the cup...This is my Blood. Eat and drink of them.
And that was it.......
Within hours and precisely coincident with the Pesach as celebrated as usual that year, that was Jesus killed as the Lamb, a sacrifice for every individual that has ever lived. It had to be somewhere at some time...but really He was the Lamb slain from before creation....the only difference was now it was enacted in spacetime. The whole sequence really began when a man, completely by faith, called Abraham, picked up a knife and was prepared to slaughter his own son Isaac. The son he had believed for against all odds for decades. And now he was fully grown. And precisely at this instant of willingness, a snapshot in heaven of total faithfulness and submissiveness was created, and God through an angel called to him to say....OK...that's far enough...now I know I've got a man, after whom to pattern a people...called Israel.
"Stay your hand Abraham and slaughter that sheep stuck in the bushes!"
Why would God then having chosen Jews, then allow them to fluff it up so badly?
OK...let's answer with another question.
Why would the main logo for a people be a circumcised penis?
Because God's calling just isnt in the pride of man. It is birthed...in the flesh...
as a sign that we could never boast off. We LIVE the STORY of GOD, but we must never boast
in the STORY OF GOD. Like a freshly hatched chicken, we can hardly boast in the way we have come.
We stand by one wrecked chicken egg shell that we have just bust. Can we say...hey....look at
how beautifully formed was my eggshell! It was one of the best! Errr....oooops....I just smashed it
to smithereens escaping to tell you.
See, that is circumcision. No one can go to another man of another faith and show them the Jewish logo! Rothschild may have invented the hexagram to get around that one. But the genuine Jewish logo is just
not something to show people. The importance of God's story is not the emblem of the story as it has been written. As it says in scripture...."lest any man should boast"....and "that every mouth should be stopped".
For in the end, dear Rachel...
what remains is the glory of the seder.You are absolutely right.
True seder's are God events.
We had one once, at the wrong time of year for a Jew. But we felt to have one on one summer's day on the grass outside someone's farmhouse. The presence of God....all but the Shekinah of God, came down amongst us, and I had a German penfriend with me. His Dad was a Lutheran pastor but in those days of the 70s all the youth were so cut off from their parents that he was a total atheist. None of the youth could identify with what their parents were even thinking about, honouring such a man as Hitler, so every youth made sure there was a complete break in all their values. And as the Lutheran church had been so instrumental in welcoming Hitler, as had the Catholics...nearly nobody was a Christian anymore. And into his vacuum of belief, suddenly that afternoon, in our little Pesach,outside all churchianity, on a lawn in Chesham Vale,Bucks NW London, the glory of God came down and his whole frame broke.
Tears poured down his face. In that instance he knew this God, that had seemed so absent in a youth growing up in the shadow of 25 years previous, was real. He was the same God. Manifesting Himself in the same way, as countless years in Christian's breaking bread, and countless years before that among Jews in the seder. The same God. Faithful to His Word. Faithful to His promises.But the means by which we all got here...
the circumcised penis
the disciples' complete abandonment of Jesus
the rest of Israel being manipulated by chief priests in the crowd shouting "Let his blood
be upon us all our generations"
the complete fiasco of the church over centuries as Jesus prophesied it would be
in the parable of the farmer, and the rogue enemy sowing rogue seed...
all this total embarrassment of our "pride of life"....
but after all the shambles....the Presence of the Lord. And everyone just knows it's all OK.
I always get caught up in the details of Pesach. The recipes, the matzah balls, the groceries, the cooking, the haggadah, the psalms, the songs. I always want to create a perfectly meaningful seder: for myself, for my family, for my guests. I love this holiday so fiercely that I want to share that love with everyone. I want everyone to come away from the table feeling nourished in all four worlds of body, heart, mind, and soul. I want to experience the spiritual peak of being magically swept up to the top of the mountain with God at Pesach -- so that as I begin the long climb back up to the spiritual heights of Shavuot, I'm inspired and enlivened by knowing just what joys await me once I get there again.
In my haggadah there is a poem by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, who is now a friend and colleague but who was known to me only by reputation when I first discovered her work many years ago. That poem speaks of the process of bedikat chametz, removing the leaven from our homes on the eve of Pesach. (Here's a short ritual for bedikat chametz, which also includes that poem: BedikatChametz.pdf) After we read that poem, at my seder, we sometimes go around the table and share an emotional or internal hametz which we want to relinquish as Pesach begins. Often, what I need to relinquish is my fantasy of the perfect seder -- my fantasy that I can create an experience which will sweep everyone up into ecstasy, which will wholly connect all who are present with our ancestors and our community and our God.
I want to experience the spiritual peak of being magically swept up to the top of the mountain with God at Pesach -- so that as I begin the long climb back up to the spiritual heights of Shavuot, I'm inspired and enlivened by knowing just what joys await me once I get there again.
This yearning for seder perfection, bumping up against the inevitable realities of the world's natural imperfection, is something I've wrestled with for years. And it is, if anything, even more true now that we are parents. I want to create the perfect seder -- and I know the odds are good that at some point during the evening, our three-year-old will have an entirely age-appropriate tantrum because his usual routines are disrupted, or because we won't let him watch cartoons during the seder, or because he's overstimulated and up too late. I want to create the perfect seder -- and I know that there is no such thing; that the childhood seders I've enshrined in memory weren't perfect; that even if I could fill my table with scholars and sages who love the tradition even more than I do, the seder wouldn't achieve perfection.
Far better to learn to find the perfection in what is, instead of wishing for a kind of perfection we can never attain. The seder isn't just about doing, although there are certainly a lot of things to do in order for the evening to be complete. (The fifteen steps from kadesh to nirtzah, the songs and prayers and psalms, the food rituals of hardboiled egg and matzah ball soup...) The seder is also about being. It's a chance to experience being free. To be in the moment, to be with friends and family, to be blessed by the light of the full moon of Nisan in 5773 which will never shine again after this night. It's a chance to be joyful even when the glass breaks, or the kugel burns, or the children don't pay attention. After all the flurry of work and preparations -- cleaning, cooking, studying, readying -- it's a chance to just be.
Chag Pesach sameach to one and all. May this holiday be whatever you need it to be.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Celebrating Pesach together doesn't get any easier in Christ either. But at this stage, periodically we hit a zapper of a seder. I think once Jews fully "get it" and Christians fully "get what it was" we'll probably continually have fantastic seders from thereon in. Each without the other is currently incomplete. A bit like the two loaves at Pentecost. Not only Israel and Judah were divided, like two original denominations or something, but Jews and Christians have been two divided houses around the same table, around the same God.
All we ever need to know about the "code" that unlocks everything are in the two passages...the original in Exodus 12 which describes the first flight from Egypt, and the second which is in the New Testament chapters John 13 through 17, and in particular John 15 to 17.
At the moment Jews are afraid to look into the second sequence because they think in terms of an angry God....if they get that far....usually long before that they have dismissed the Christian's God as another God entirely anyway and therefore pitched the necessity of ever looking into it.
If you speak to your average Jew on the street, it hasn't occurred to them that each and every one of the first ever disciples of Jesus IS EXACTLY THE SAME as everyone else at the second main Pesach. The Pesach that was really what the first Pesach was the mirror of. What do I mean?
Everybody. I mean everybody....except perhaps Jesus mother and John....upped and walked out on Jesus as he was condemned to death.If the whole thing had been staged in England now. Or the USA now. Or Russia now. The same thing would have happened. If God had chosen China to be the sovereign country carrying His Name in all the earth, then Jesus Himself as God the son had been Chinese....the Chinese would have been just the same.
Isaiah 53 and psalm 22 indicate that there was nothing different about the man Jesus. He just looked normal. He didn't look like Robert Redford or Brad Pitt.
Whichever nation God had chosen, and had they been expecting a Messiah, there is no possible way for anyone to make the leap of the imagination required from whatever a "Messiah" should look like and then how Jesus "looked". Which was pretty much as your next rabbi. And nobody aligned the suffering servant figure of Isaiah 53 with Jesus, and the concept of a Messiah. And Jews still don't. And secular people don't either.
But in the first church, every single leader had to face the fact that he had walked away from Jesus at precisely that time. That they hadn't done a thing to stop it all. Peter did initially. With a sword. Because Jesus was messing with his idea of a freedomfighter Messiah. But later, as Darkness squashed in....(much the same as later in Nazi Germany...when the lights went out of that once Christian nation) even Peter just tossed it all away. "Me...I never knew the guy". And he became the leader of the first church of Jesus Christ.
So we see that God is not an angry God. He was fully cognizant from the beginning that this would happen. He had to use a nation to demonstrate it. In the end it was Israel. But some nation somewhere had to be chosen to demonstrate the utter uselessness of religion to ever be up to the task of recognising a God who refers to Himself in the Old Testament scriptures in these words...
'Behold it says of me in the Book...."I come to do thy will....a body thou hast prepared for me".'
And David making a Trinity reference, well, Father to Son conversation..."The Lord said to my Lord..."
Every year the Pesach had been celebrated the same.
Every year Jesus had celebrated the Pesach in the same way with His disciples.
But the third year He changed the words. The disciples didn't really pick it up, but they remembered later.
This one time Jesus said...of the bread as He picked it up...This is My Body and of the cup...This is my Blood. Eat and drink of them.
And that was it.......
Within hours and precisely coincident with the Pesach as celebrated as usual that year, that was Jesus killed as the Lamb, a sacrifice for every individual that has ever lived. It had to be somewhere at some time...but really He was the Lamb slain from before creation....the only difference was now it was enacted in spacetime. The whole sequence really began when a man, completely by faith, called Abraham, picked up a knife and was prepared to slaughter his own son Isaac. The son he had believed for against all odds for decades. And now he was fully grown. And precisely at this instant of willingness, a snapshot in heaven of total faithfulness and submissiveness was created, and God through an angel called to him to say....OK...that's far enough...now I know I've got a man, after whom to pattern a people...called Israel.
"Stay your hand Abraham and slaughter that sheep stuck in the bushes!"
Why would God then having chosen Jews, then allow them to fluff it up so badly?
OK...let's answer with another question.
Why would the main logo for a people be a circumcised penis?
Because God's calling just isnt in the pride of man. It is birthed...in the flesh...
as a sign that we could never boast off. We LIVE the STORY of GOD, but we must never boast
in the STORY OF GOD. Like a freshly hatched chicken, we can hardly boast in the way we have come.
We stand by one wrecked chicken egg shell that we have just bust. Can we say...hey....look at
how beautifully formed was my eggshell! It was one of the best! Errr....oooops....I just smashed it
to smithereens escaping to tell you.
See, that is circumcision. No one can go to another man of another faith and show them the Jewish logo! Rothschild may have invented the hexagram to get around that one. But the genuine Jewish logo is just
not something to show people. The importance of God's story is not the emblem of the story as it has been written. As it says in scripture...."lest any man should boast"....and "that every mouth should be stopped".
For in the end, dear Rachel...
what remains is the glory of the seder.You are absolutely right.
True seder's are God events.
We had one once, at the wrong time of year for a Jew. But we felt to have one on one summer's day on the grass outside someone's farmhouse. The presence of God....all but the Shekinah of God, came down amongst us, and I had a German penfriend with me. His Dad was a Lutheran pastor but in those days of the 70s all the youth were so cut off from their parents that he was a total atheist. None of the youth could identify with what their parents were even thinking about, honouring such a man as Hitler, so every youth made sure there was a complete break in all their values. And as the Lutheran church had been so instrumental in welcoming Hitler, as had the Catholics...nearly nobody was a Christian anymore. And into his vacuum of belief, suddenly that afternoon, in our little Pesach,outside all churchianity, on a lawn in Chesham Vale,Bucks NW London, the glory of God came down and his whole frame broke.
Tears poured down his face. In that instance he knew this God, that had seemed so absent in a youth growing up in the shadow of 25 years previous, was real. He was the same God. Manifesting Himself in the same way, as countless years in Christian's breaking bread, and countless years before that among Jews in the seder. The same God. Faithful to His Word. Faithful to His promises.But the means by which we all got here...
the circumcised penis
the disciples' complete abandonment of Jesus
the rest of Israel being manipulated by chief priests in the crowd shouting "Let his blood
be upon us all our generations"
the complete fiasco of the church over centuries as Jesus prophesied it would be
in the parable of the farmer, and the rogue enemy sowing rogue seed...
all this total embarrassment of our "pride of life"....
but after all the shambles....the Presence of the Lord. And everyone just knows it's all OK.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Rabbis without borders?
This post is from Velveteen Rabbi, and I comment at length at the bottom.(I am never sure how many comments get through to Rachel the writer, so today to make extra sure I signed in via Type Pad and Facebook. So I am not sure how justified my frustration is. ie could be me pressing the wrong buttons)
Rabbis Without Borders: Who is your Torah for?
For me one central question of the session came from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield: who is your Torah for? Over the course of his session, he said several things which resonated with me. He urged us to try to live in a way which acknowledges the need for walls, but keeps the walls lowered as much as we can bear. ("Walls keep us safe," he agreed, "but they can also become prisons.") He exhorted us to live in a mindset of abundance. To recognize that the spiritual and the material are always interconnected. To strive to live in a spirit of both/and rather than either/or -- and to bring the same compassionate both/and response to ourselves that we bring to the world.
We studied a short text from Talmud (tractate Avodah Zarah 2b-3a) about the question of for whom the Torah was meant. And R' Brad noted the fairly remarkable truth that although that text was written during a time when Jews were tremendously persecuted (and by and large had a lot of understandable anger and anxiety around that), the Talmud still presumes that the Torah is not ours alone, that access to God is not ours alone, and that anyone who studies Torah (in the language of the text, even an idolater) is as elevated as the high priest. Here are a few of the gems from that Torah study which I tweeted as it was happening:
The most iconic Jewish text we have (Talmud) was written not in Hebrew but the English of its moment: Aramaic.I think it's easy for people today who don't have familiarity with Aramaic to feel as though the Talmud is a kind of walled garden -- a Jewish treasure to which they don't have access. But R' Brad reminds us that Talmud was written in the vernacular of its day; it was meant to be accessible. It wasn't an ivory tower text designed only for the insiders. Beyond that, there's a thread in our texts, if we are willing to look for it and follow it, which reminds us that the wisdom we've been blessed to receive is not ours alone. This is the kind of post-triumphalism which drew me to Jewish Renewal, and which I also find in Rabbis Without Borders/Clal. R' Brad continued:
Talmud (Avodah Zarah 2b-3a) teaches: there's no boundary b/w Torah and the peoples of the world. ALL of them.
In my wished-for world, the full dignity of the ultimate outsider is affirmed along with the full dignity of the full insider.
Of course you teach the Torah you most need. But it doesn't end there.The idea that we teach the Torah we most need to learn is one which was already very close to our hearts. And so is the idea that the unfolding Torah of our lives is a sacred text -- different from the written Torah we find in our libraries, but also holy. And the idea of "using Jewish" to serve people -- bringing Jewish wisdom, Jewish tools, to bear on the work of serving God and serving humanity -- is also close to my heart. We were all asked to ponder, and to answer, the question of "who is my Torah for?" As soon as I heard the question, my answer arose in me.
The unfolding #Torah of our lives is also a sacred text.
I "use Jewish" to serve people. That's who my #Torah is for.
My Torah is for anyone who is thirsty.
Anyone who's thirsty for connection, for community, for God. Anyone who
wants to make their lives holy or to become more conscious of the
holiness in the everyday. Anyone who wants access to the rich toolbox of
Jewish wisdom and traditions and ideas which I am blessed to have as my
yerusha, my inheritance.And then I thought: that would have been my answer ten years ago when I started this blog, too. I started writing VR for anyone who was thirsty, as I was, for connection with God and with tradition. Maybe especially for those who felt marginalized, who didn't perceive that they had a place at the table but yearned to be welcomed in.
That in turn raises the question for me: has that changed? Should it have changed? In the last ten years I've gone from being an aspirant to being, thank God, an ordained rabbi. I've gone from being someone who felt that I was outside-looking-in to being someone who feels blessed to have access to these incredible riches of tradition.
But I think my answer is actually still the same as it was. Maybe this is integral to who I am. My Torah is for anyone who yearns. I have better access now to the tools my tradition gives me for helping to connect people with meaning, to connect people with God. But I still want my Torah to be for anyone who's thirsty. "Let all who are hungry, come and eat; let all who are needy, come and celebrate the Passover with us." That message from the Passover haggadah has long been one of my favorite things; and I think it shaped me more than I know. My Torah is for you who are reading this, whenever this is, whoever you are.
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Comments
David Waterman said...
This
Rachel is so true and I think that you live this out. There are
multitudes of blogs out there but yours does, I think, truly stand out.
You have a way of bringing insight from many aspects including Renewal
Judaism and kabbalistic influences so that we may study Torah through
the light of your teaching.
And the Torah is all of ours. Of that I am sure.
Thanks again
And the Torah is all of ours. Of that I am sure.
Thanks again
T Vinson said...
From a Christian perspective, ultimately Jewish of course:-)
All who are thirsty,
all who are weak,
come to the fountain,
dip your heart in the stream of life.
Let the pain and the sorrow
be washed away
in the waves of his mercy...
(by Brenton Brown)
Tom
All who are thirsty,
all who are weak,
come to the fountain,
dip your heart in the stream of life.
Let the pain and the sorrow
be washed away
in the waves of his mercy...
(by Brenton Brown)
Tom
Chris Welch said...
My
experience on here has not been good. Rachel indeed has walls. In the
world we are trying to create it is necessary to talk and maintain open
lines of communication. Jews at the moment have been so used to being
persecuted they are suspicious of too much cross border talk. In the
book of Daniel it talks of a world that is completely overrun by a dark
figure who uses manipulation to obtain total world rule. So we are NOT
looking for a world where people manipulate the idea of Unity to form
world government, we are looking for a world where that unity begins
genuinely within and expands to encompass everything. The first form of
government manipulates the Shiloh verse of the prophecy given to
David...."until Shiloh come", the true unity issues from the God of
Psalm 19,who without speech daily declares His truths,dreams,desires,
for those who are listening.Then adjustments will be made, that will
again come from within, not by coercion. So Buddhists will turn and
say....hey...you know what...those stirrings within while I was
meditating were really from the Real God... And the Muslims worshipping
Allah will realise that a lot of their prophecies about the End Times and
a False Messiah, were indeed true and already in the prophetic
scriptures of the Old Testament (And New ofcourse) and that the nature
of Allah is actually quite different, and loving , and in truth an Abba Father. And
so on through every belief system.... gradually crumbling round the base of the
false "New World Order belief system" to realise how life really works...
by faith
by faith Abraham received that Psalm 19 subterranean call and acted on it
but the promise was NOT given to manipulation via a servant to Hagar
and although Hagar then received her own prophecies ready for consummation in the end times...in other words God's Father heart is always there to carry up the effects of "manipulation", His original promises remain true.
But that is so, for every life on Earth, if they listen. The faith dreams will actually manifest if we carry on firm in our believing. It's not only Rachel and her Torah. Others indeed are allowed to share in this process of listening, hearing by faith and acting. This is just how life works. It's built into the fabric of this universe, whether people read it in a Torah, or Old and New Testaments, or any other book.
Rothschild may manipulate the Shiloh verse with his own trillions of dollars, but he is not hearing by God faith, because God has already declared who Shiloh is, and it isn't Rothschild's Shiloh.The Rothschild dynasty set up Israel, but they confuse the Isaiah scripture about Lucifer the lightbringer with the Mornng Star of the Messiah, and right there the inspiration behind everything they have done reveals itself. Is that a problem? No. Because God wrote it all thousands of years ago in Ezekiel 28. He writes about a King of Tyre. He writes that the first kingdom would be Sidon (Tel Aviv) and that this kingdom would be rebellious. But later
after calamity Israel will be properly formed and ruled from Jerusalem.
Now American Christians have it all lined up to do with a rapture...but did the God of the Torah say that?
What is clear and spelled out is that Israel and Jerusalem is the epicentre of interest for all the circling nations, and for God those lands are central to His Covenant keeping.But it His covenant keeping...NOT Rothschild's.
All this happened once before. The guy's name was Jacob. Which means supplanter,deceiver,usurper. Did that phase God? Nope. There was a wrestling match with an angel, or God in some human form at Peniel, and this usurper had his name changed to .....yup....Israel.
So is God phased by current Israel, the product of engineering ,usurping,manipulation on a world scale. Nope.
He wrote about it. And it is all dovetailed into the plan of waking mankind up, of tearing away his top surface blindnesses to see the One who is to be praised forever and ever. The One true vine, into whom has been engrafted now not one nation, but every nation. Not by manipulation,but because people want relationship FROM WITHIN.
by faith
by faith Abraham received that Psalm 19 subterranean call and acted on it
but the promise was NOT given to manipulation via a servant to Hagar
and although Hagar then received her own prophecies ready for consummation in the end times...in other words God's Father heart is always there to carry up the effects of "manipulation", His original promises remain true.
But that is so, for every life on Earth, if they listen. The faith dreams will actually manifest if we carry on firm in our believing. It's not only Rachel and her Torah. Others indeed are allowed to share in this process of listening, hearing by faith and acting. This is just how life works. It's built into the fabric of this universe, whether people read it in a Torah, or Old and New Testaments, or any other book.
Rothschild may manipulate the Shiloh verse with his own trillions of dollars, but he is not hearing by God faith, because God has already declared who Shiloh is, and it isn't Rothschild's Shiloh.The Rothschild dynasty set up Israel, but they confuse the Isaiah scripture about Lucifer the lightbringer with the Mornng Star of the Messiah, and right there the inspiration behind everything they have done reveals itself. Is that a problem? No. Because God wrote it all thousands of years ago in Ezekiel 28. He writes about a King of Tyre. He writes that the first kingdom would be Sidon (Tel Aviv) and that this kingdom would be rebellious. But later
after calamity Israel will be properly formed and ruled from Jerusalem.
Now American Christians have it all lined up to do with a rapture...but did the God of the Torah say that?
What is clear and spelled out is that Israel and Jerusalem is the epicentre of interest for all the circling nations, and for God those lands are central to His Covenant keeping.But it His covenant keeping...NOT Rothschild's.
All this happened once before. The guy's name was Jacob. Which means supplanter,deceiver,usurper. Did that phase God? Nope. There was a wrestling match with an angel, or God in some human form at Peniel, and this usurper had his name changed to .....yup....Israel.
So is God phased by current Israel, the product of engineering ,usurping,manipulation on a world scale. Nope.
He wrote about it. And it is all dovetailed into the plan of waking mankind up, of tearing away his top surface blindnesses to see the One who is to be praised forever and ever. The One true vine, into whom has been engrafted now not one nation, but every nation. Not by manipulation,but because people want relationship FROM WITHIN.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Poetry Break: Coatney,Velveteen Rabbi,Welch,Keys
WEANING
You push me away
and reach for the bottle.
Once in Scotland I parted
spongy turf with my fingers
and water welled up like sorrow
its source unknown.
In my childhood playhouse
the table was always set
for guests who never came.
Already my body is shrinking.
You settle like a little king
into the crook of my arm
one hand seizing
the plush belt of my bathrobe
the other splayed
across the warm cylinder.
Your lashes drift down
and your restless legs still
exactly as they did
when I was everything. Velveteen Rabbi
A Million Thoughts
When a million thoughts
go through your mind,
catch them like butterflies,
so the thinking goes,
bringing every thought captive.
What about those thoughts that
aren’t butterflies though?
Ah ha, to make them into such
takes magic we don’t have
but think we should,
if not to the end of what a soul is,
that butterfly catching and making
is not the doing of us doers,
but the being of the is-er.
This is-er, we find, doesn’t even
catch or take a thought, much less
a million , and morph them
into butterflies, or ask us to.
But in the mystery of the new mind,
not I but Christ, and His
silky, linen effortless way,
powdered wings float everywhere.
This might be in the midst of
all that is excruciating,
but simple it is, and sweet.
And there is where we meet.
Brian Coatney/9-26-10
Whimsical Muses or Musical Whimsies by Chris Welch 25/09/10
It's not the thought that thinks.
It's not the window that views.
It's not the spire that inspires.
It's not the wind that winds ... a clock
It's not the pterodactyl that pterorises
It's not the alone who are lonely
It's not the sandwich that is sandwiched...
It's not the moon that is a crescent
It's not the crescent that is a cul de sac
It's not the dead end that is the end
It's Life that is the end
after the dead end
has died.
Other Poems so far......
Bryan Coatney
Play
Chris Welch
Supposing I jumped in with both feet
New Privacy Settings
Martha Keys
Seeds of war and Seeds of peace
At the bottom of this post
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Ecumenism- a better definition, and Spiritual Gifts
I added a comment to The Interfaith Amigos, ecumenism, and Christmas blessings post.
Interestingly I was coming from the angle of belief in spiritual gifts. So I was very interested to read Dan's comment today too in the light of his first pastor's current opinions. (Staggeringly, this was the same pastor that used to drive Ern Baxter all over the country.)So I reproduce my comment then Dan's post.
=====================
"I think interfaith means being willing to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable walls that surround each of our traditions, to locate three things: the universals that transcend those boundaries, the things we really have in common... second, the particulars in each of our traditions that support those core teachings; and third, the particulars that don't."
Let alone "other faiths", Christians have a hard time talking with each other. And this was why the ecumenical movement began. But most of our agegroup who, like me were brought up in denominational churches, who experienced a real conversion in some revival or other, have found it so hard to achieve the above in ecumenical settings. For example, why would I discuss healing with a liberal theologian Anglican who does not believe that a miracle ever occurred...that in fact they were just exaggerated distortions that grew like Chinese whispers...why would I want to spend the time of day with such a man...save to try and describe how people have been instantly healed either when I have prayed for them or countless others have? What about one of those amazing Jewish war stories where an old man lifts a truck off the top of someone who is trapped underneath? I have seen and known this sort of weirdness...but in an ecumenical setting...what can you say without offending people...especially the English, where you run the risk of shattering their whole little world view, having been raised on Darwin,Bertrand Russell,and now Dawkins. The sooner we "add" to our Enlightenment world view over here the possibility of a God invading our time and space, the better. As I have been writing on my blog....Thank God for the weirdness of modern physics which shatters most of our beliefs of the last 2 centuries.
Well that's a private rant "inhouse". As regards the Jewish faith,anything Christians come up with HAS TO in some way be underlined by Old Testament writings. If we believe God is the same God...then we have to believe the way that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob broke through in their experience as humans, with this God, is somehow reflected in the Christianity we now live.I write about this here....oh and Dire Straits too....http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/10/world-famous-evangelist-mark-knopfler.html
====================
Disobeying Commands?
Something occured to me yesterday. Traditionally in the charismatic/cessationist debate, we charismatics are always accused of being "frothy" and "experience-obsessed" while cessationists pride themselves on honouring and being committed to "the Word". And in the debate is often based around; "I experienced this" and the response; "It doesn't matter - your experience is irrelevant - they've ceased".However there ARE a number of Scriptures that cessationists have never answered. If these Scriptures are to be read as they appear then many so-called "men and women of the Book" are being disobedient to the very Word of God that they claim to honour and revere. Here's two that spring to my mind;1. 1 Thessalonians 5:20; "Do not despise prophetic utterances".So does not Stanley Jebb's statement; "Calling silly remarks prophecy" come dangerously close to despising what actually may be prophetic utterances? That does not mean of course that "silly remarks" never happen - of course they do. But I would not like to put myself in the position of being guilty of despising this gift of the Holy Spirit and thus quenching Him.2. 1 Timothy 1:18; "This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight".Again to cite Stanley Jebb (only because he is the cessationist I probably most know and most read) - he writes; "So, since the final word has been spoken, such signs are neither necessary nor possible". Necessary? Possible? So how does this take into account this clear instruction from Paul the apostle (and writer of most of the New Testament) that there is a degree to which the gift of prophecy is ESSENTIAL for fighting a good Christian fight? Is this not a clear reason as to why the Word of God tells us not to despise prophecy?And finally - a verse that a former friend of mine and former blogger - Jesse Phillips - used to base a lot of his writing on;3. 1 Corinthians 14:1: "Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy".Of course love is our primary calling (lest cessationists accuse me of ignoring the context of 1 Corinthians 13) but what of this command - clear command - of Scripture to "desire earnestly" spirituals but ESPECIALLY that we may prophecy? When did you or I last hear from the pulpit a sermon exhorting us to eagerly desire the bestowing of spiritual gifts but especially prophecy?Just a few Christmas thoughts of mine. For me personally I want to ensure that 2010 is a year of heeding these commands of Scripture - that I honour prophecy and use them as a God-given grace gift to fight a good fight and thereby eagerly desiring especially prophecy.
Interestingly I was coming from the angle of belief in spiritual gifts. So I was very interested to read Dan's comment today too in the light of his first pastor's current opinions. (Staggeringly, this was the same pastor that used to drive Ern Baxter all over the country.)So I reproduce my comment then Dan's post.
=====================
"I think interfaith means being willing to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable walls that surround each of our traditions, to locate three things: the universals that transcend those boundaries, the things we really have in common... second, the particulars in each of our traditions that support those core teachings; and third, the particulars that don't."
Let alone "other faiths", Christians have a hard time talking with each other. And this was why the ecumenical movement began. But most of our agegroup who, like me were brought up in denominational churches, who experienced a real conversion in some revival or other, have found it so hard to achieve the above in ecumenical settings. For example, why would I discuss healing with a liberal theologian Anglican who does not believe that a miracle ever occurred...that in fact they were just exaggerated distortions that grew like Chinese whispers...why would I want to spend the time of day with such a man...save to try and describe how people have been instantly healed either when I have prayed for them or countless others have? What about one of those amazing Jewish war stories where an old man lifts a truck off the top of someone who is trapped underneath? I have seen and known this sort of weirdness...but in an ecumenical setting...what can you say without offending people...especially the English, where you run the risk of shattering their whole little world view, having been raised on Darwin,Bertrand Russell,and now Dawkins. The sooner we "add" to our Enlightenment world view over here the possibility of a God invading our time and space, the better. As I have been writing on my blog....Thank God for the weirdness of modern physics which shatters most of our beliefs of the last 2 centuries.
Well that's a private rant "inhouse". As regards the Jewish faith,anything Christians come up with HAS TO in some way be underlined by Old Testament writings. If we believe God is the same God...then we have to believe the way that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob broke through in their experience as humans, with this God, is somehow reflected in the Christianity we now live.I write about this here....oh and Dire Straits too....http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/10/world-famous-evangelist-mark-knopfler.html
====================
Disobeying Commands?
Something occured to me yesterday. Traditionally in the charismatic/cessationist debate, we charismatics are always accused of being "frothy" and "experience-obsessed" while cessationists pride themselves on honouring and being committed to "the Word". And in the debate is often based around; "I experienced this" and the response; "It doesn't matter - your experience is irrelevant - they've ceased".However there ARE a number of Scriptures that cessationists have never answered. If these Scriptures are to be read as they appear then many so-called "men and women of the Book" are being disobedient to the very Word of God that they claim to honour and revere. Here's two that spring to my mind;1. 1 Thessalonians 5:20; "Do not despise prophetic utterances".So does not Stanley Jebb's statement; "Calling silly remarks prophecy" come dangerously close to despising what actually may be prophetic utterances? That does not mean of course that "silly remarks" never happen - of course they do. But I would not like to put myself in the position of being guilty of despising this gift of the Holy Spirit and thus quenching Him.2. 1 Timothy 1:18; "This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight".Again to cite Stanley Jebb (only because he is the cessationist I probably most know and most read) - he writes; "So, since the final word has been spoken, such signs are neither necessary nor possible". Necessary? Possible? So how does this take into account this clear instruction from Paul the apostle (and writer of most of the New Testament) that there is a degree to which the gift of prophecy is ESSENTIAL for fighting a good Christian fight? Is this not a clear reason as to why the Word of God tells us not to despise prophecy?And finally - a verse that a former friend of mine and former blogger - Jesse Phillips - used to base a lot of his writing on;3. 1 Corinthians 14:1: "Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy".Of course love is our primary calling (lest cessationists accuse me of ignoring the context of 1 Corinthians 13) but what of this command - clear command - of Scripture to "desire earnestly" spirituals but ESPECIALLY that we may prophecy? When did you or I last hear from the pulpit a sermon exhorting us to eagerly desire the bestowing of spiritual gifts but especially prophecy?Just a few Christmas thoughts of mine. For me personally I want to ensure that 2010 is a year of heeding these commands of Scripture - that I honour prophecy and use them as a God-given grace gift to fight a good fight and thereby eagerly desiring especially prophecy.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
A Prayer for Rain - Velveteen Rabbi
This post is entirely lifted from here, where you can hear it spoken.
It is rich.
It has resonances reaching back into Judaism,
forward through Jesus at the Pouring Out of the Water in Jerusalem,
through the First outpouring in Acts 2,
through the 1906 Pentecostal outpouring,
the 60s Charismatic outpouring to
the Last Great Outpouring when the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. (Romans11) and again in Romans 10:19 First, Moses says, "I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.
Millennia ago, the earth was washed in water
connections sparked unimaginable across the water
the life we know begins cradled in water
each human being emerges in a flood of water
from ancient times we've prayed to God for water
not too much, not too little, just enough water
this year the landscape I first knew lacked water
grasslands parched, thirsting for drops of water
this year the hills where I live ran with water
seeping through roofs, swelling doors shut with water
to mark holy times we immerse ourselves in water
washing our old hurts away in water
in the city of gold rooftop tanks collect water
those who have and those who lack fight over water
in the beginning, presence hovered over water
mysterious and unknowable like deep water
the bodies we inhabit are made of water
our veins and tissues stay functional through water
we couldn't stand and offer praise without water
source of all, be kind to us: send water.
------------------------------
On the festival of Shemini Atzeret, in many communities, during the musaf repetition of the amidah (the extra iteration of the standing prayer), a prayer is offered which describes our holy relationship with God through the repeated motif of water. It's called tefilat geshem, "the rain prayer." That link will take you to a brief article about the prayer which also features the words of the prayer in Hebrew and, as a drop-down menu, in English.
From here on out, as we pray the amidah (the standing prayer which is central to our liturgy) daily, we'll replace the one-line request for dew with a one-line request for winds and rain. (At Pesach, we recite tefilat tal, the dew prayer, and thenceforth we daily ask for dew instead of for rain...until Shemini Atzeret.) The year oscillates between these two poles.
Many classical piyyutim (liturgical poems) take a form which looks to me, as a student of poetry, not unlike a ghazal. A ghazal is a Persian/Arabic/Urdu form which I first learned through reading the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, may his memory be a blessing. (Here's one of his poems, titled simply Ghazal.) Ghazals are written in couplets, and each line ends with a "refrain" word. A classical ghazal features meter, as well as a kind of hidden rhyme, found in the word which precedes the refrain word.
The classical prayer for rain recited on Shemini Atzeret is beautiful poetry, and I don't mean to supplant it -- rather to add to the body of liturgical poetry of which it is a part. In that spirit, I offer this "ghazal" (I'm putting that in quotes because I haven't fully lived up to the constraints of the classical Persian form), a contemporary variation on the prayer for rain spoken today, on Shemini Atzeret. May we all be washed with blessings like falling water.
It is rich.
It has resonances reaching back into Judaism,
forward through Jesus at the Pouring Out of the Water in Jerusalem,
through the First outpouring in Acts 2,
through the 1906 Pentecostal outpouring,
the 60s Charismatic outpouring to
the Last Great Outpouring when the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. (Romans11) and again in Romans 10:19 First, Moses says, "I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.
Millennia ago, the earth was washed in water
connections sparked unimaginable across the water
the life we know begins cradled in water
each human being emerges in a flood of water
from ancient times we've prayed to God for water
not too much, not too little, just enough water
this year the landscape I first knew lacked water
grasslands parched, thirsting for drops of water
this year the hills where I live ran with water
seeping through roofs, swelling doors shut with water
to mark holy times we immerse ourselves in water
washing our old hurts away in water
in the city of gold rooftop tanks collect water
those who have and those who lack fight over water
in the beginning, presence hovered over water
mysterious and unknowable like deep water
the bodies we inhabit are made of water
our veins and tissues stay functional through water
we couldn't stand and offer praise without water
source of all, be kind to us: send water.
------------------------------
On the festival of Shemini Atzeret, in many communities, during the musaf repetition of the amidah (the extra iteration of the standing prayer), a prayer is offered which describes our holy relationship with God through the repeated motif of water. It's called tefilat geshem, "the rain prayer." That link will take you to a brief article about the prayer which also features the words of the prayer in Hebrew and, as a drop-down menu, in English.
From here on out, as we pray the amidah (the standing prayer which is central to our liturgy) daily, we'll replace the one-line request for dew with a one-line request for winds and rain. (At Pesach, we recite tefilat tal, the dew prayer, and thenceforth we daily ask for dew instead of for rain...until Shemini Atzeret.) The year oscillates between these two poles.
Many classical piyyutim (liturgical poems) take a form which looks to me, as a student of poetry, not unlike a ghazal. A ghazal is a Persian/Arabic/Urdu form which I first learned through reading the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, may his memory be a blessing. (Here's one of his poems, titled simply Ghazal.) Ghazals are written in couplets, and each line ends with a "refrain" word. A classical ghazal features meter, as well as a kind of hidden rhyme, found in the word which precedes the refrain word.
The classical prayer for rain recited on Shemini Atzeret is beautiful poetry, and I don't mean to supplant it -- rather to add to the body of liturgical poetry of which it is a part. In that spirit, I offer this "ghazal" (I'm putting that in quotes because I haven't fully lived up to the constraints of the classical Persian form), a contemporary variation on the prayer for rain spoken today, on Shemini Atzeret. May we all be washed with blessings like falling water.
Comments section on Prayer for Rain
Chris Welch said...
This is so good. So good.I'm a bit nervous of even asking you for permission to copy this in case you are a bit shy as was Franz Kafka. Luckily Max Brod never obeyed his friend and we have his stuff.
October 11, 2009 at 04:56 PM
Rachel Barenblat said in reply to Chris Welch...
Thank you for the kind words, Chris -- I'm so glad you like it!
You are welcome to share this poem as widely as you would like. Please do keep my name and my URL attached to it -- either the URL of this post (http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2009/10/a-prayer-for-rain.html), or the URL of my blog more generally (http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/) or my website (http://velveteenrabbi.com) -- so if people enjoy it, they know where to find more of my work. And thanks for wanting to share it; I'm delighted!
October 11, 2009 at 04:58 PM
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This is another great article.
I hope you do not mind a long story. When evangalists knock at my door, I invite them in. Some prefer to sit on the porch. I tell them I'm happy to read from the "Old Testement" with them without serious commentary by anyone. I ask if it is ok to read the Parsha for the week. One time, two men in their 50's came by in suits and we sat at my kitchen table for hours reading and drinking coffee. They were fascinated by hearing the Hebrew and the translation.
At the end, one of them said, "Why don't Jews evangalize door to door." Without thinking, I said "I sit at home and wait for God to send people to me."
Heaven forbid God should send someone to Torah and I should be the one to stand in their way. All I ask from people with other faiths is we do not debate. We can read and enjoy each other's company. I never say anything against their faith when we read.
Shalom,
Gershon