The other day, between rain storms, I went kayaking with environmental artist extraordinaire Erica Fielder and several other friends, all wonderful visual artists as well. (What was I doing on that trip? Just lucky, I guess...) We were sitting on a little beach along the Ten Mile River, watching the grebes and loons paddle by while we ate our lunches, talking about life, art and global warming (that's what we were speaking of -- I don't know what the grebes and loons were discussing...) Erica was talking about a class she is currently teaching on environmental art and about her delight at having several scientists in the class. She described, in language more eloquent than I will be able to conjure here, the idea of a spectrum of ways of thinking, with scientific method at one end and imaginative thought at the other. Actually, she went on from there to say that this idea is itself too linear -- that ideas can have height and depth as well as breadth. But hey, I was still taking in the two poles and the territory in the middle. A big problem, she was saying, is that scientists communicate about nature in such a scientific way, and artists who communicate about nature aren't taken seriously. She is finding it exciting to help science students, with their method of hypothesis, test and conclusion, learn to think about the environment in broader, deeper, higher ways, incorporating the stuff of the ineffable into the ways they communicate -- so that all of us can understand, with our hearts and imaginations, as well as our rational minds, the crisis faced by nature and all of us within it.
This conversation took me flying sideways into the joy of my life these days, my immersion in the thought of Rabbeinu Bachya Ibn Pakuda, the twelfth century Spanish philosopher, theologian, wise teacher. Bachya's best-known book, and the only one I know anything about, is called Duties of the Heart. I've had a copy on my shelf for years, and I dip into it all the time. But I had never actually read it from the beginning until I had the brilliant idea to use Duties of the Heart as our textbook for the Class Formerly Known as Bar/Bat Mitzvah. You may have read my enticing little announcements of the class in the Megillah over the past few months -- which probably didn't make clear that I had never actually read Duties of the Heart cover to cover, still haven't, actually. But I'm working on it now...
I had the idea to use Duties for a textbook largely because over the past few years there has been an important and amorphous conversation about personal spirituality, which is revolutionizing the Jewish community. One part of this conversation (which has also spawned phenomena like a major Jewish foundation amply funding retreats for rabbis to do Vipassana meditation, but that's another column...) has to do with Spiritual Direction. The Christian community, particularly the Catholics, have been honing a process of counseling aimed at helping people intensify their own spiritual lives. Over the years some rabbis and other Jews have taken classes in Spiritual Direction and have been trying, in various ways, to translate the tenets of this process into language and process that makes more sense to Jews. I can't remember now if I ever wrote about my short career, a couple of years ago, in Spiritual Direction school. I have a number of Jewish friends who have completely loved and clicked with Spiritual Direction and are now deeply involved in it. But "It Ain't Me, Babe!"
The problem I had with my exposure to Spiritual Direction is that it asked you to believe several premises about the spiritual nature of life. One premise is that God is concerned for our own personal welfare. Another is that God always has good intentions for us. A third is that God is always actively trying to communicate those good intentions. Nothing in this is "not Jewish." We can find these ideas expressed in the prayerbooks and elsewhere. Many Jews find these premises to be deeply, powerfully true. But personally, I found myself writhing in my chair as I listened to all of this, thinking that it just all sounded so sunny and cheerful and not at all like real life, not even like my own real life, not to mention the really harrowing examples history sometimes offers of real life. I left the course after four or five sessions, knowing very little of the depth of what was being conveyed, I'm sure -- but confused and frustrated, still, that it seemed like you had to have a way sunnier outlook on the human condition than I have in order to have a spiritual life. Which I knew even then wasn't true.
Enter, a few years later, Rabbeinu ("our Master") Bachya. Bachya tries, in a rational, stark way, to describe a life of faith which is built on only what is demonstrably true. Now obviously you can argue with what he finds to be true. But there is something about the intellectual ruthlessness, particularly for a medieval rabbi, with which he enters the fray, which takes my breath away. He begins, in a very twelfth-century, neo-aristotelian way, by proposing that there is obviously a First Cause, a primary oneness which is fundamentally different than all things which come from other things. Okay, modern science may (or may not) have a different take on first causes. But listen to what else he says here: "The foolish and simple person will conceive the Creator in accordance with the literal sense of the Scriptural phrase..." But the wise know, he says, that God does not have human characteristics, which is to say, does not love, prefer, choose, want, punish or reward -- at least not in the ways human beings do. There's nothing wrong with using these phrases, as long as we realize in the depths of our intellect, that the First Cause is absolutely unique and unlike any of us compound creatures, and we don't know very much about It. Remarkable.
Then, Bachya instructs, look at our own bodies, at plants and animals, and we will learn something about the nature of the unique First Cause. We will see the magnificence, the wisdom, of what is and, in gratitude for the texture of life in its specifics, will place ourselves in humble service to this First Cause. Not because believing in God causes our life to be better than someone else's, but just for the fact of life, in all its morally neutral amazingness, we place ourselves in service to this mystery. We recognize our finitude, that bad fortune is not a betrayal and good fortune is not a reward. Serving the Creator is the natural and appropriate response to having life. We cultivate gratitude and humility in the face of it. We trust that what is, is enough, and we give thanks for all. We try to use our life wisely, to focus on the things that really matter and not distract ourselves with a life of materialism.
Torah and the rabbinic tradition are, in their picturesque language, the teachings of our tradition (and, Bachya would definitely say, of God -- an affirmation which doesn't necessarily fit with the rest of his system) which best instruct us in the specifics of a life of service and gratitude. "But the word which may be understood in a material sense will not hurt the intelligent person, since he (sic.) recognizes its real meaning. And it will help the simple, as its use will result in fixing in his heart and mind the conception that he has a Creator whom he is bound to serve."
In the end, at the twelfth "gate," or lesson, we arrive at the gate of loving God. But I haven't gotten that far -- not in the book, though perhaps I have in life. This is a spiritual life that I can imagine endeavoring to live, a life of gratitude for what is in fact true and without comforting delusion of what may in fact not be true. A life in which I don't know everything, not even very much, but try to love and serve still.
Which brings me back to the Ten Mile River beach and Erica's spectrum. What moves me so much about Bachya's teaching is in part its dedication to "scientific method," at least rational method, in service of the Mystery. I love his rigor, his dedication to sifting the truly true from the merely comforting or popular. And how, like good science (and good art), his rigor takes him to awe and eventually to love. I am so happy someone is finally saying this -- especially eight hundred years ago! Happy (and safe!) secular millennium, my dear community.
Copyright 1999 Rabbi Margaret Holub
(home) (calendar) (info) (articles) (sponsors) (links) (bios) (reviews) (travel) (recipes) (projects) (photos) (art)
Last updated 01/30/2000(rge)