Proverbs 9.6 [JPS Tanakh 1985]
Today I want to talk about some things "in the present". Things that have happened these last few days. Before I forget.
You know I have a penchant for bits of oddness in my life since I started down this path-- It seems I collect the odd or unusual. When it appears in my life, I observe it and then upon reflection, I find the "message" it brings.
G-d can speak that way sometimes.
If you choose to listen.
It's like the bug.
I live in a nice old high gable cottage built in 1937. It has wood floors and a wood fireplace. It has a partially finished attic. In fact, the original builder of the house had plumbing put in for a bath up in the attic but they never finished it. The house is old but comfortable like a favorite pair of slippers.
It has an old oil heater chimney that is set in the very center of the house. It has a flue for downstairs and for upstairs. The attic has become my "living space". It is filled with techno-junk and books and flotsam that has floated up from the rooms downstairs.
I keep my musical instruments up here. It is where I make recordings with my digital audio workstaion. It's where I've placed my reading chair and keep my collection of "important" books. It's where I write this. It's comfortably disheveled in a neo-post-industrial anarchist's warehouse kind of way. Wired and orchestrated by a sense of functionality over "beautiferous form".
So last Thursday [July 13, 2006] I was getting ready for work. I moved something on one of the work tables and a bug jumps up out of somewhere and lands on the old heater chimney. I look at the bug and the bug looks at me. We know one another. We met about nine weeks ago.
Do you remember the messenger I spoke of a few posts ago?
He had come back but he has grown up.
Now He was a two inch long, bright green , Katydid. Now mind you I don't know how he got in here. Or what he's been living on. For all I know he appeared on the spot to remind me of something. Which is, of course, exactly what he did:
"I have commanded you today to love God your Lord, to walk in His paths, and to keep His commandments, decrees and laws. You will then survive and flourish, and God your Lord will bless you in the land that you are about to occupy." Deuteronomy 30.16
"Okay I've heard that." I say to myself. "But my friend I don't have time to stay and talk I've got to get dressed and out the door to work."
How many times do we turn away from a sacred moment because we feel "compelled" to do other things? Speaking for myself I know it is far more often than it should be.
But I took a moment and decided I'd try to figure out why a two inch Katydid was sitting on my chimney looking at me. What was his message?
So off to my browser and typed into Google: "Dream symbolism Katydid"
The first hit is: Glamour Magazine
Glamour Magazine has a dream synbolism dictionary? Who knew?
And here is what it said:
"Katydid - To hear its song predicts the renewal of an old friendship."
Okay so the messenger wasn't singing but his message certainly was.
I finished my preparations for work then stopped. A word popped into my head: Glamour.
Ha Bahir
Sefer Zohar
Shekinah
*Bingo*
Message acknowledged.
Alright so I survive the weekend software installation at work and a party for my brother-in-law on Saturday night. Now it's Sunday and I am getting pleasantly toasty at my Sister-in-law's house while watching my wife happily cheat at Ma Jongg.
We had a traditional Jewish Sunday evening meal: Chinese Takeout.
After dinner I picked up a fortune cookie and broke it's shell.
It's another message.
On one side it says:
LEARN CHINESE - PORK = Zhu-rou
Figures.
I wonder how they translate Treife?
On the other side it says:
"One that would have the fruit must first climb the tree."
I laugh aloud. A Kabbalistic Fortune Cookie!
The tree of course is the tree of Life. It's the tree of the paths.
"I have commanded you today to love God your Lord, to walk in His paths, and to keep His commandments, decrees and laws." Deuteronomy 30.16
We talked about this before. Okay so you've said that already: "Walk in His paths".
I'm listening.
Well at least I think I am listening.
So last night I was reading "Stalking Elijah" by Roger Kamenetz, Jewish Lights 1998.
On Page 199 I read:
"It's like you're going down the countryside in the middle of the night," he said, "and suddenly you see the entire landscape, then it disappears. Thats the nature by which you can unserstand the four worlds, that's the way you can understand mystical knowledge altogether. ... The flash goes through all four worlds, it cuts through everything."
"I knew my strong desire to command and understand mystical knowledge ... Was I trying to catch lightning with my hands? ...
"The infinite light hides itself. And this hiding is absolutely essential because it makes space for us to be. Just as a pause in converstaion allows the other person to speak.
"The secret is hidden in giving forth: the elusivenesss of God is on purpose. Our light is punctuated by darkness. The first immense act of creation-- which is the very image of creativity-- is not expansiveness, but restraint. In the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria [The Ari] this restraint or contraction is call tzimtzum."
The night and the lightning made me I think of a lyric I wrote in 1978:
"Seeing so deeply
Across the quickening night
Reaching to hold the Infinite Light
That flows with the tide
To this bleak and rocky shore
Calling me to Love
Deeply, Once more."
© Copyright 1978 dvusMedia All Rights Reserved
So what are the four worlds he mentions? They are described as follows.
atzilut = "nearness" = spirit = yod
beriyah = "creation" = knowledge = heh
yetzirah = "formation" = feeling = vov
assiyah = "doing" = action = heh
The process of creation is described in some ancient Jewish mystical texts as "like that of a lightning bolt."
Do I know anything about this?
Yes and no: I've been on the receiving end of some of those lightning bolts. I make no claim to be a spiritual master. Mostly I suffer from profound ineptness when it comes to consistant spirtual practice. My ego gets in the way of my ability to listen. but sometimes...
I look away from the book.
He's back.
But what is up with the bugs, already?
My friend the messenger has returned.
He's a June bug. A June bug in difficulty. He's in danger of falling on his back and he's desperately trying to keep from doing so. I help him to right himself and set him on the arm of my chair. For the next forty minutes he sits beside me as the perfect meditation master. I feel His presence. I look at him every so often as I read and every time I do I smile.
Why?
Have you ever just noticed that the world is happening as it should? That within you and around you there is peace and joy and love?
That was His message. To know:
"I was with Him as a confidant, A source of delight every day, Rejoicing before him as all times, Rejoicing in His inhabited world, Finding delight with mankind." Proverbs 8.30-31
How often do you do that?
How often do you stop to notice the goodness in the world and in ourselves. How often do you bless those blessings and the source of all blessings? I know I don't do it enough.
Eventually, my friend decides he'd like to leave. I helped him to crawl on my finger and I walk him downstairs and out into the warm, humid southern night.
I smile all the way back up the stairs. The messenger has delivered His message.
Jewish family life is very educational. Next time I'll you about the fight I had with my sister-in-law.
HaGedi
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