Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Spirituality of the Wilderness

Cultivating a "Spirituality of the Wilderness": A Gentle Challenge for the Week of Parashat Bemibar.

When was the last time you spent at least a half hour outdoors, without speaking to anyone? That's my "homework" for this week, the week of beginning the book of Numbers (Bemidbar). View this week's video message for an elaborate introduction to the "assignment."

L'Shalom,
Rabbi Jonathan Blake

2 comments:

  1. Rabbi Blake, you may not be provocative enough to get Kathy’s Danish... :) ...on second thought, no fair running off with the whole pastry...

    I figured with all the talk about living Torah, I’d go beyond simply reading and studying about the Wilderness and get out and commune in it a bit. But, hey, rather than just stepping out into the backyard, I’ll take your homework assignment seriously to heart.

    We’ve been making an annual expedition for 20-30 years with about 12-20 of our closest friends up to a very rustic old fishing camp on Lake Champlain, about 1 hour north of Burlington. This place is so beMid-bar that we’re lucky to get even one-bar on the cell phone every couple hours when the signal decides to float through “town”. While you folks are making intellectual and spiritual waves on Shabbat morning, I hope to be conducting a very placid census of the Bnei Nemo in the Lake, religiously checking fins and scales as I go...

    Over the years, this place has seemed ageless in its natural wonder. Our group of friends is getting older--single college grads morphed into college friends with dates morphed into newlywed couples morphed into young families morphed into a new younger generation as tightly bound to each other as their parents--but, the place of meeting remains agelessly gracious offering us ample opportunity to commune with deep truths...and sometimes not so deep truths... Those who underestimate the power of this natural Wilderness are in for a rude surprise. The Lake is big and very deep; the weather is highly changeable; and, the water temperature is very cold at this time of the year. We have sadly witnessed what can happen--Shemini like--when a man doesn’t accord Nature its due respect.

    I have always found the Wilderness to instill wonder; but, I am unclear about “radical amazement”. My experiences with the Wilderness up there over the years have always had order and some predictability. When we all go about our busy, daily lives, we almost seem constant in a rapidly changing world. When our group of close friends make this annual pilgrimage, it is the place of meeting that is unchanged. The “perpetual surprise” is that we, the periodic wanderers into this beautiful Wilderness, are the parties that are gradually transformed.

    I’ll miss our study together. But, nothing matches an early morning “census taking” on a glass-like lake, occasionally visited by a pair of loons. If I don’t return next week, worry less that I capsized; worry more that I waxed overly spiritual and was thrown overboard by my fishing buddies...

    Shvuayim tovim,

    David

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