Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [16]
“Where are you?” calls out to us in three distinctly human dimensions. The first of these is mental or intellectual: “Are you stretching your mind to move forward, to carry on the evolutionary process in the realm of understanding, as we think in ever more sophisticated and refined ways about the nature of existence and its unity?” Evolution does not end with the emergence of humanity. The process continues unabated, reflected in the growth of societies and civilizations over the millennia. The imperative to stretch the mind includes scientific thought, the ongoing attempt to understand and unpack the mysteries of our universe. But it also embraces the humanities and the arts, the expanding of human consciousness in more subtle ways. Some of the highest manifestation of this ongoing evolutionary process are to be found in our ideas and images of God, as we move from primitive tribal gods and local nature deities through classical polytheism (the pantheon of gods), on to primitive monolatry (there is but one god worthy of worship), into true universal monotheism, and then toward greater abstraction and depth of thought. All of these are stages on the road toward that total comprehension of Being in its oneness that lies somewhere in our future. We will trace some of this process, as seen through a Jewish lens, in the following pages. In our own day this quest takes place both in the scientific community, in the search for a contemporary understanding of the life-force or a unified field theory, and in the growing interest in monistic philosophies, including those rooted in Vedanta or Buddhism, that have begun to take root in the postmodern West. “Where are you?” Are you stretching your mind to its fullest to know the One?
The second way in which this “Where are you?” calls out to us involves a stretching of the human heart to become more open, more aware. If you believe as I do that the presence of God is everywhere, our chief task is that of becoming aware. But that job is not only an intellectual one; it involves heart as well as mind. God is everywhere, but we build walls around ourselves, emotional walls, barricades of defensiveness, because we are too threatened by the oneness of Being to let ourselves be open to it. “Where are you?” demands of us a greater openness to our own vulnerability and dependence on forces beyond ourselves than our frail ego is willing to accept. The walls behind which we barricade ourselves are the illusions of our strength and individual immortality, the sense that there is nothing more important than our own egos and the superficial pursuits toward which most of our lives have somehow become devoted. Liberation into the life of the spirit means doing the hard work of breaking through those self-created protections and coming face to face with the ultimate frailty of our lives and the great religious question that hovers over us. Only as we face this challenge do we begin to let go of that which separates us from the totality of Being or the all-embracing presence of the One. The spiritual work that each of us has to do consists primarily of letting go, allowing that presence to enter our consciousness and transform us. In the course of this process we enable ourselves to become givers or fonts of blessing in the grand economy of existence, rather than consumers who simply take all for ourselves without giving back to life.15 “Where are you?” Are you stretching your heart to open as widely as it can?
The third area in which “Where are you?” calls upon us is that of the human deed. It is not enough to reach forth with mind and heart; these alone will not transform the world.