Powering Down

While riding the T the other day, I caught sight of an intriguing advertisement:

Power down. Log off. Unplug.
Have mercy on your thumbs.
Browse the world wide something else.
Send some not-so-instant messages.
Undo. Hit cancel. Be together.
Make face time. Dentyne.

As a call to slow down, to make time for loved ones and to break one’s dependence on the habitual routine of linear progress, the billboard strikes a chord with the underlying message of the winter season. And yet, another question lingers in the vicinity: how well do we power back up? What is the process by which we re-enter the demands of life? To what extent are we able to carry the centering peace and sustaining warmth of ‘powering down’ into the desolate realm of ‘powering up’?

Jeremiah 25:30-32

This passage includes a genre of biblical writing frequently referred to as oracles against the nations. In allowing the prophet Jeremiah to simultaneously condemn Israel for its failure to keep the Davidic covenant and the surrounding nations for their idolatrous practices, the biblical writers elevate Yahweh to the status of a god of universal history. This 6th century theological movement towards inclusivism, paired with the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 BCE, represents the emergence of a monotheistic Judaism in its inchoate stages. Interestingly, the experience of exile, documented so vividly in the Exodus narrative, served as the cornerstone of this new religious tradition. What does it mean to worship Yahweh in the diaspora? It is unsurprising that the priestly school, which favored ritualistic performance that could be followed beyond the limits of the Judean Temple, took hold in this era.

For religious practitioners today, the power of this exilic posture should not be lost. Rather, the experience of living as a stranger in a foreign land might very well serve as a useful foundation for the formation of the subject-position. What would it mean to view the self as an Other? How would our interactions with those we label foreign or unknown change, if we were to unsettle the comfort of familiarity that we experience in and around our homes?

A Candle of Joy and Sorrow

I light this candle in recognition of the many sorrows, fears, anxieties, disappointments, and pains that we carry with us during this season of light.

As the year shifts towards darkness, we gather in community to celebrate hope, to acknowledge the countless blessings that we receive and accept.

Let us not forget, however, the real struggles that we face in the present, and the lived hurdles that we shall soon be asked to overcome.

I light this candle as a prayer to God, as a prayer for those gathered, to spread light into the deep, dark gaps within our hearts, bodies, families, and communities.

Let us pledge anew to spread the holy trinity of reason, freedom and love.

Some Bearded Humor

(In a regular, anthropomorphically androcentric rhythm…)

"Our God, has an awesome beard
It's length, must be revered;
And though, you may find it weird
We love our God's long beard."

Unattachment

You, who are in all and greater than each –
Let me live in moderation, unattached to the transient bliss or testing bitterness.
Let me love in passionate fullness, unattached to the charming pull of blind dependence.
Let me learn in honest humility, unattached to the self-deception of ideological neutrality.
Allow me to foolishly throw myself into the world, involved but unattached.

Confession

An unnamed critic: “Wait a second, you have a theological and ideological agenda!”

Marx: We all do.

Skewed Theodicy

On the CBS Sunday Morning Show, Ben Stein offered the following theodical vignette (“it’s intended to get you thinking”) to bolster his defense of ‘ecumenical religion’ in the face of the atheist threat/myth:

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this (regarding Katrina) happen?' Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

As a Jew, Stein’s attraction to this ever-moving (entering and retreating from the world/history) God may be consciously or unconsciously grounded in a Lurianic Kabalistic understanding of God’s self-exile (through the exile of the Shekhinah) and withdrawal into God’s self (the original cosmic contraction of God’s essence, known as the tsimtsum). According to this line of mystical thought, humans do exercise a level of agency in helping the divine out of exile through good works.

Yet, this explanation is mere speculation. Taken at its word, the aforementioned theological justification for natural disasters and human catastrophe proves dangerous. In blaming the secularization of public space for suffering and tragedy, Graham vindicates the explicitly documented human failure to live out the religious message that she so nostalgically misses in the town square. Rather than focusing on what is said (or not said) in the pluralistic setting of a school classroom, Graham should spend more time considering what is done (or not done) to help the victims of such crises. God may have taken leave, but God’s absence should be attributed to the lack of human compassion and justice that scars such events. On Graham’s view, reinstituting a mandated time for prayer (or, perhaps even, the teaching of creationist ‘science’) would allow for a restoration of peaceful cohabitation. In contradistinction, I believe that the redemptive healing should be a voluntary outpouring of empathy and action. People of faith, at least in the Abrahamic traditions, find empowering sustenance in the provocative question: “Am I my brother’s/sister’s keeper?” God will always dwell in the affirmative response to this ever-challenging call to love.