The Transcendent Brain
Posted: March 23, 2023 Filed under: Books, Science, Spirituality Leave a comment
The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science
Alan Lightman
Pantheon (March 14, 2023), 209 pages
Kindle edition, $13.99, Amazon hardcover $23.40
This is the second book I have read by Alan Lightman, the first being Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine. In both books he talks about his experience of spirituality, and in both books he insists that he is a materialist.
In The Transcendent Brain, Lightman writes in the introduction about watching the comings and goings of ospreys at his home in Maine. He describes how two young ospreys made their first flight after leaving their nest, and how they made eye contact with him. Lightman writes, “Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant.” Throughout the book he talks about spirituality, but he insists that “the universe is made of material stuff, and only material stuff.”
Lightman writes about a philosopher named Moses Mendelssohn who argued for the existence of the soul. He then discusses the Roman philosopher Lucretius, whose work I read in the original Latin when I was a classics major at Pitzer College in Claremont. In De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) Lucretius offers a sort of natural history, in which he states that the whole world is strictly physical in makeup and there are no gods to intervene with our fate. He wants to tell us that we need have no fear of their wrath. This was in contrast to Plato, who conceived of a soul separate from the body.
The author then discusses scientific research on the nature of consciousness and argues that all consciousness can be shown to come from strictly material sources. He writes about a debate in which he participated with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in which he described some of his transcendental experiences. Dawkins, Lightman reports, responded by saying that he would not let Lightman out transcend him. In the end it appeared to me that there was not really much disagreement between the two of them. It’s just that Lightman is tolerant of people who have religious beliefs and Dawkins is not.
Ultimately, methinks that Lightman doth protest too much. His insistence on the material seems forced and perhaps a tad desperate. I might wish that he accept his transcendent experiences at face value and leave them at that. For reading on the awe and wonder of nature, look elsewhere. Many of Loren Eiseley’s books are out in reprint editions, available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book. You will not be disappointed reading Eiseley.
All Saints’ Day
Posted: November 1, 2022 Filed under: Episcopal thoughts, Liturgical calendar, Music, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
For many years on All Saints’ Day I wrote about our beloved beagle-border terrier mix, Tasha. That’s because we brought her home from the shelter on All Saints’ Day in 2005. We lost her in February of last year. She was a big part of our lives and we still miss her.
So today I thought I would write about the music of All Saints’ Day. There are two songs that Episcopalians tend to sing on All Saints’ Day. The first is hymn # 293 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal: “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.” One of my former rectors when I lived in Gilroy really loved the song, and my current rector is quite fond of it as well. It speaks of one’s aspiration to live a life like the saints. The three verses end as follows:
they were all of them saints of God—and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.
I can’t relate. The song does not resonate with me. While I strive, as we say in the confession in the Book of Common Prayer, to: “delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name,” I don’t think sainthood is something I am capable of.
I much more closely relate to hymn # 287: “For All the Saints, Who from Their Labors Rest.” I like to give credit to Ralph Vaughan Williams, who composed the music, but it was William Walsham How who wrote the words. Verse four begins:
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine
That’s much more my speed. And yes, I do know that the next line reads:
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
If you observe All Saints’ Day, may it be to you whatever brings you the most meaning.
an Episcopalian reflects on Yom Kippur
Posted: October 4, 2022 Filed under: Religion, Spirituality Leave a commentTonight at sundown the sacred Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur begins. The day always gives this Episcopalian pause to reflect.
I have long had a deep affinity for Judaism. When I was in the fifth or sixth grade my Methodist Church Sunday school class took a field trip to the synagogue in Palm Springs for the festival of Sukkot. I was in the front row for the rabbi’s presentation. After my senior year in high school one of my favorite teachers taught a summer school course in Old Testament history, which I took even though I had graduated. We took a field trip to a synagogue thirty miles from Hemet where I was totally engaged.
At Pitzer College I became involved with the chaplain’s office, which served all the Claremont Colleges. I was as interested in what was going on with the Jewish community as I was in my own Protestant niche. My senior year at Pitzer and after graduation when I stayed in Claremont, I had a serious crush on a Jewish woman named Julia, with whom I went out once or twice. Sadly, my inept social skills prevented anything from coming of that.
After graduating from Pitzer in 1975 I worked at B. Dalton Bookseller, and in my ambition to become a store manager I moved to Laredo, Texas where I opened the first B. Dalton Bookseller in South Texas. After a year in Laredo I got a store in Oklahoma City to manage. I became involved in the Unitarian Church there, and that is where I met Ruth, a Jewish woman seven years my senior. We developed an intense relationship and after moving in together to a house in Moore, Oklahoma, an Oklahoma City suburb, we decided to get married. We wrote our own vows, but the rabbi at the Reform synagogue in Oklahoma City performed the ceremony in our backyard under a homemade chuppah, the ceremonial canopy under which Jews marry, that Ruth had put together.
We moved to California in 1985 and developed the practice of observing Shabbos on Friday evening. Ruth did the traditional prayer to greet the Sabbath and lit candles, while I read the appointed Torah portion, and we drank an appropriate Israeli wine. When we had Ruth’s two kids over the summer it was an especially meaningful time.
Ruth died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1989. Her graveside service was in Oklahoma City, officiated by the Conservative rabbi of her mother and stepfather’s synagogue. It was Passover, Jewish law stating that if burial can’t happen within twenty-four hours after death it should happen as soon as possible thereafter. The rabbi said, “Because it’s Passover we can’t have a eulogy, but we can teach.” He then delivered a beautiful eulogy. (Ruth had a thing about Passover in life as well as in death. She told me that in her first marriage where they were “more observant than the rabbi,” she had a nervous breakdown one Passover because it all became too much to handle.)
But before we left Oklahoma City, and before Ruth became furious at the rabbi for some disparaging remarks he made in a Shabbat sermon about New Age practitioners (of which Ruth was one), after which she no longer allowed us to attend the Friday evening services that I loved, I had the opportunity to attend one, and only one, Erev Yom Kippur service. It was a cold, blustery evening in Oklahoma City, and the synagogue was full (just like a Christian church on Easter). The Kol Nidre moved me deeply, just as it does today when I watch it via YouTube.
So here I am, an Episcopalian since 1997 in the most Trinitarian of Trinitarian denominations, and yet I continue to question why I need a Son and Holy Spirit to mediate between me and God.
On this Day of Atonement 2022 (5783 in the Jewish calendar), as my eyes fill with tears listening to the Kol Nidre, I say to my Jewish friends:
May your fast be easy.
Between the Listening and the Telling
Posted: August 26, 2022 Filed under: Books, Spirituality Leave a comment
Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us
Mark Yaconelli
Broadleaf Books (August 9, 2022), 207 pages
Kindle edition $16.59, Amazon hardcover $22.16
This is a rather unusual book. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to read it, but I saw that Anne Lamott wrote the introduction, and I have the greatest respect for her. Lamott tells us that it’s important for us to tell our stories, and that Yaconelli can show us how to do so.
Between the Listening and the Telling is part memoir and part instruction manual. Yaconelli writes about his own background and how that led him to his vocation. He also describes his process for enabling people to tell their own stories.
Yaconelli tells us that his father took on a variety of roles, one of which was part-time volunteer minister. Shortly after he became a minister himself Yaconelli had a friend whose brother was killed, and the friend asked Yaconelli to conduct the service. He turned to his father, who told him to simply let the mourners tell their stories.
However, Yaconelli’s relationship with his father had its rifts. His father left his mother and ran off with his secretary. His mother, meanwhile, was seriously mentally ill, at times a real danger to herself and others. No one seemed willing to do anything about this, however. Later, Yaconelli tried to reconcile with his father, taking time at an Episcopal retreat center to talk things through. The mission almost failed, but in the end was successful.
Yaconelli explains how he tried to set up a storytelling event at a local bar, where individuals could tell their tales of love and loss. The event got off to a shaky start, as the biker locals did not like their space being violated. All turned out well in the end, however.
The author describes how he was called upon after a mass shooting at a community college in Oregon. He recruited volunteers so the community could share their stories of loss, either by vocal recording or in writing. He was soon called on the carpet as the relatives of the victims were not given a voice in this project. Yaconelli realized his error and quickly adjusted the process.
Yaconelli’s book is neither profound nor groundbreaking, but it is an important reminder about the importance of our being able to tell our stories.
Celebrant’s Flame
Posted: June 27, 2022 Filed under: Books, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection
Bill Wylie-Kellermann
Cascade Books (April 26, 2021), 214 pages
Kindle edition $9.99
Although Cascade Books published Celebrant’s Flame in April 2021, The Christian Century gave it an extensive review in its 2022 Spring Books issue.
I don’t question the importance of keeping Daniel Berrigan’s legacy alive, but I found this to be a rather odd book. The chapters are a strange mixture. Some chapters are the author’s reflections or material Wylie-Kellermann has published previously. Some chapters are letters that Wylie-Kellermann solicited from those who knew Berrigan, asking for their recollections, while others consist of Berrigan’s own words.
It was difficult for me to follow the book as there were no consistent chapter headings to indicate the contents of a given chapter. Sometimes a footnote provided the information and the chapters that contained letters often made the name of the writer clear. Sometimes I had to read into the chapter to figure out that it was Wylie-Kellermann’s own commentary. Because the book draws from multiple sources there is also a lot of repetition; there is no forward-moving narrative.
The book paints a picture of Berrigan’s life as an activist that seemed to me to be unbalanced. For example, Berrigan spent just over eighteen months in prison for his part in destroying draft records. But some sections of the book read as if he were incarcerated for twenty years. After his conviction Berrigan went underground, but Wylie-Kellermann gives no explanation for Berrigan’s motivation for doing so. When agents finally arrested him at the home of peace activist William Stringfellow he surrendered without resistance.
One enjoyable aspect of the book is the picture it gives of members of the religious community involved in social activism. Thomas Merton frequently appears in the book as does Thich Nhat Hanh. Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker communities are important figures in the movement. And, of course, Berrigan’s brother Philip plays a central role.
Bill Wylie-Kellermann is not an objective observer. He was a young seminarian when he met Berrigan, right after Berrigan’s release from prison. He became a Berrigan follower from there on. I assumed that Wylie-Kellermann was Catholic, but it was only when I got to the author credit at the end of the book that I learned he is a Methodist pastor.
Celebrant’s Flame is not page-turning reading, but it represents an important archive documenting Daniel Berrigan’s life as a social activist.
Wild Woman
Posted: May 5, 2022 Filed under: Books, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
Wild Woman: A Footnote, the Desert, and My Quest for an Elusive Saint
Amy Frykholm
Broadleaf Books (August 3, 2021), 217 pages
Kindle edition $13.74, Amazon hardcover $14.10
The Wild Woman of the title is Mary of Egypt, a little-known saint in the Christian church. Amy Frykholm first discovered Mary in a book she stumbled across while verifying the footnotes in a book she was completing. It was only several years later when she heard the name mentioned at a writing conference that she felt drawn to pursue Mary.
Our primary source for Mary of Egypt is a life written in Greek by St. Sophronius, whose life straddled the fourth and fifth centuries AD. He tells the story through the eyes of Zosimas, a monk who encountered her in the Judean desert. As the story goes, Mary left her family in Nubia, in the north of Egypt and traveled to Alexandria, where she lived a life of offering sexual favors. In Alexandria she saw people boarding a ship headed to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Holy Cross. Without money she again offered her favors to gain passage, an offer the ship’s crew accepted. Once in Jerusalem she attempted to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but an invisible force held her back. She encountered the presence of the Virgin Mary, repented of her lifestyle, and was allowed inside the church. From there she crossed the river Jordan where she lived the rest of her life as an ascetic.
Frykholm was so drawn to the life of Mary that she set out on her own journey to visit the places where Mary would have walked. Her mother and her husband sharing different segments of the journey, she visited Nubia, the Monastery of St. Anthony in Egypt, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and the Judean wilderness.
The author describes her visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where she learned that there was supposedly a chapel dedicated to Mary. She was frustrated in her attempts to find the chapel. She was told that it was closed, or that it was only open one day a year. The Copts told her that the Orthodox were responsible for it, and the Orthodox told her that the Copts were responsible. Finally, with the help of a local who had connections with the community around the church, the Orthodox archbishop found the key and let her in. She was disappointed that there was little associated with Mary there.
Frykholm then crossed the Jordan and visited an archaeological site that had an association with Mary, a place that was once a hostel for pilgrims. From there she made a trek into the Judean wilderness to understand the terrain in which Mary supposedly lived. She saw a dragonfly chrysalis in which she felt the essence of Mary.
Interweaved with her own story, Frykholm writes about her best friend Ali, an Episcopal priest, and Ali’s struggle with cancer. Ali parallels her quest with Frykholm’s.
The author was so engaged with the story of Mary that she asked her father, a scholar of the Greek language, to help her learn Greek, which he did via Skype. The two of them then created an English translation of Sophronius’s work, which appears as an appendix to Wild Woman.
Frykholm’s own journey is every bit as engaging as the life of Mary. She continues the sojourn in an eight-episode podcast for The Christian Century called In Search Of. She interviews some of the people she mentions in the book, and others who have helped her with her mission to understand Mary of Egypt.
I had never heard of Mary of Egypt until I learned of Frykholm’s book, but as it happens Mary appears in the 2018 edition of the Episcopal volume Lesser Feasts and Fasts. You’ll find her on April 3, with her name in brackets, meaning that she’s there for trial use.
I am grateful to Frykholm and to Mary of Egypt for enriching my own spiritual journey.
Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul
Posted: March 31, 2022 Filed under: Books, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World
J. Philip Newell
HarperOne (July 6, 2021), 285 pages
Kindle edition $13.99, Amazon hardcover $21.28
I can’t think of anyone better qualified to write about Celtic spirituality than J. Philip Newell. He was, after all, once the director of the retreat center on Iona, and continued (in pre-pandemic times at least) to lead pilgrimages there. Newell does an impressive job of discussing several individuals who were instrumental in furthering the cause of Celtic Christianity.
The author begins his survey with Pelagius, who was a contemporary of St. Augustine. Pelagius believed that human nature was not inherently sinful. He also believed in teaching women. For this and other (in the church’s eyes) heresies, the Roman church condemned him more than once. Newell then discusses St. Brigid. Brigid, of course, has pagan routes. Once source said that she was a Druidess. The Celtic Church, however, heartily embraced her.
Newell goes on to discuss John Scotus Eriugena, who lived in the ninth century. Eriugena saw the sacred in all the natural world. The author then gives a treatment of the life of Alexander John Scott, a Scottish minister of the nineteenth century. Scott’s teachings got him into trouble and very little of his writing has come down to us. Newell, however, believed that Scott’s teachings were important and chose to write his doctoral dissertation about him. While his advisers were dubious Newell was able to resurrect enough source material from contemporary sources to resurrect his legacy.
The author discusses both John Muir and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Muir, the son of a Calvinist preacher, had a spiritual side we rarely hear about. Teilhard believed the divine existed in the material. I had often seen him referred to as a paleontologist, but Newell states that the church sent him into the field because of his writing. (Other sources, perhaps closer to Teilhard, say his paleontological work influenced his thought.) The Catholic Church banned his writing, but he signed all of his books over to his literary assistant who was able to publish them after his death. Newell also writes about George MacLeod, who was responsible for the modern incarnation of Iona as a retreat center. Clearly Newell has a great fondness for MacLeod. Finally, Newell devotes a chapter to the poet Kenneth White, who had a Celtic mentality and wrote poems about the sacred journey.
Newell devotes a chapter to the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Celtic poems and songs. A man named Alexander Carmichael, who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gets credit for compiling many of these. These pieces were originally written in Gaelic, and Newell writes that the Gaelic spoken in the Hebrides Islands of Scotland is related to Sanskrit. He says that one can find in these works the same sense of the sacred found in Sanskrit poetry.
Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul is an excellent introduction to or review of Celtic Christianity.
Wholehearted Faith
Posted: February 15, 2022 Filed under: Books, Faith, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
Wholehearted Faith
Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu
HarperOne (November 2, 2021), 229 pages
Kindle edition $13.99, Amazon hardcover $22.99
I was unsure whether I wanted to read Wholehearted Faith, Rachel Held Evans’s final book. Evans died in 2019 at the age of thirty-seven due to complications from a strange infection. She left a body of writing on her computer that she intended to develop into another book. Her husband gave her frequent collaborator, Jeff Chu, access to those writings and Chu formed them into the book that was published as Wholehearted Faith. After listening to Krista Tippett’s interview with Chu on her radio program and podcast On Being I knew I needed to read the book.
I knew of Rachel during her lifetime, but I regret that I never read any of her work while she was still alive. In December I listened to the audiobook version of Searching for Sunday, which she read herself. Although we come from very different backgrounds, in reading that book I shared with her the quest to discover what, exactly, my relationship is with the church. It is a complicated and nuanced question.
Evans grew up in an evangelical home. Her father was involved in Christian education and the family attended a conservative evangelical church. As a child she was passionate about her own beliefs and made herself into the best evangelical she could be. She won the Best Christian Attitude award in her parochial school four years running, a streak that was only broken when her family moved and put her in public school. At her baptism by immersion as a teenager her primary concern was that the white baptismal gown clinging to her maturing body might lead a boy in the congregation to have impure thoughts.
As an adult she began to be bothered by the prejudice and intolerance in her evangelical tradition. She was unhappy with the secondary role such churches gave to women and their condemnation of LGBTQ+ individuals and those with other alternative lifestyles. She came to believe that it was all right to doubt and to debate and discuss the Bible.
She starts the first chapter with a series of paragraphs that begin, “On the days when I believe…” For example, “On the days when I believe, I feel enfolded in a story so much greater than my own. It’s a story that knits together a thousand generations of saints.” After those positive and joyful paragraphs she writes, “And then there are the other days.” She goes on to write about how she copes with those other days. Rachel says that when she doesn’t have the words for her own prayers she can return to the ancient prayers in the Christian tradition.
Rachel writes, just as I have experienced, “Early on I sensed a profound disconnect between what I was supposed to believe and what I actually believed.” She admits, as do I that, “My so-called spiritual journey still continues to meander.”
Although she moved in her own direction as an adult she is not bitter or angry about her parents, her pastors, or her childhood churches. Rather, she states they allowed her to become the person she turned into as an adult. In the face of harsh criticism for the content of her blogs posts and her tweets she developed a mantra of “Thick skin, tender heart.” Rachel writes about people with other lifestyles and states, “I thought God wanted to use me to show queer people how to be straight. Instead, God empowered queer people to show me how to be a better Christian.”
Jeff Chu includes a passage in which Rachel writes about how she and her husband were building a new house. She says that like in her old house her study would be in the basement, but that, unlike the old house, the new study wouldn’t have 1970s wood paneling and would have windows out of which she could watch her children playing in the back yard. That she never got to experience that house and her new study brought a tear to my eye.
Near the end of the book Rachel riffs on John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…” She provides several iterations starting with that phrase including this one: “For God so loved the world that God empowered us to love even our enemies, even the worst person on Twitter, even those who seem incapable of love themselves.”
Damn. That’s hard. It’s true; I know it is. But I struggle with that more than nearly any other aspect of Christianity. I’m supposed to love the guy with the orange hair who incited the insurrection at the Capitol building? Really? But Rachel does not shirk from laying out the hard stuff for her readers.
It’s a huge loss that we no longer have Rachel Held Evans with us. I am grateful to Jeff Chu for giving us one last book from her.
Searching for Sunday
Posted: December 29, 2021 Filed under: Audiobooks, Books, Faith, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
Rachel Held Evans
read by the author
Thomas Nelson, April 21, 2015
$20.96 for Audible members, more for non-members
purchased with an Audible credit
I had long known of Rachel Held Evans when I read of her hospitalization in 2019 with a strange infection, and was, like so many others, saddened by her subsequent death at a time when we needed her wisdom and insight. I had, however, not read any of her work.
I was interested, therefore, to learn of the posthumous publication of a new book entitled Wholehearted Faith. Her husband discovered she left behind extensive notes and unfinished writing on her computer, so he called on her writing collaborator, Jeff Chu, to craft what was there into one final book. When looking at her books, however, I was attracted by an earlier work of hers, Searching for Sunday. She writes about her own spiritual path; it seemed to me to have parallels to my own.
She divides the book into seven sections, corresponding to the seven sacraments: baptism, confession, holy orders, communion, confirmation, anointing the sick, and marriage. (The Episcopal Church considers communion and marriage to be sacraments, while it calls the remainder sacramental rites.) Within each section she writes both about her spiritual path and her reflections on church and society. A couple of the chapters amount to her own liturgical litanies.
She writes about growing up at the evangelical Grace Bible Church in Tennessee and being baptized there as a teenager. The pastor at Grace later presided Rachel and her husband’s wedding, and they attended the church until leaving when the doctrine there became incompatible with their own beliefs. The members of their church and others in their small town made this a topic of conversation. When someone emailed Rachel telling her she had heard that Rachel had become a Buddhist, Rachel responded, “I’m not disciplined enough to be a Buddhist!”
She and her husband did some halfhearted church seeking, but she admits that on many Sundays they ended up television binge-watching. When the former youth pastor at Grace decided to form a mission church in Dayton Rachel and her husband joined in. The mission didn’t last, and after its closure she and her husband didn’t spend a lot of time in church search. Rachel’s weekends were busy meeting with church groups and attending conferences resulting from the popularity of her first two books. (I’m sorry to say that her California hosts could not convince her of the sacred nature of the In-n-Out burger.) She writes about a stay at a monastic retreat house, where the guestmaster was completely accepting and her lunch table-mate was taken aback that Rachel had doubts (and that she wasn’t Catholic). Ultimately, Rachel and her husband found an Episcopal church a half hour away from their home which they attended semi-regularly.
It was delightful listening to Rachel tell her story in her light Tennessee accent. She makes you think she is the kind of person with whom you would like to have a long after-dinner conversation. Not that everything is upbeat and pleasant about the church for Rachel. She suggests that the church should be a place where a person feels safe but not necessarily comfortable.
It is a tragedy that Rachel Held Evans is no longer with us, but if you have ever had doubts about your own spiritual path get the audiobook and listen to Rachel’s comforting voice. You will feel better about your own struggles.
Judaism for the World
Posted: December 15, 2021 Filed under: Books, Religion, Spirituality Leave a comment
Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love
Arthur Green
Yale University Press (September 22, 2020), 481 pages
Kindle edition $14.99, Amazon hardcover $25.99
I have long felt that my religious inclinations are closer to modern Rabbinic Judaism than to Christianity. That is odd, since I’m a practicing Episcopalian, but it’s true. I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around the Trinity and I’ve been told I don’t understand it. I like the idea of a direct relationship with God, and I’m not sure why we need a Son to facilitate that.
In fact, if things had been slightly different I might have converted to Judaism. My first wife, Ruth, was Jewish and the rabbi at the local reform synagogue married us in our backyard. We were members of the synagogue and attended Friday night sabbath services, which I loved. One year I had the privilege of attending the Erev Yom Kippur Kol Nidre service, which I found deeply moving. I felt a real resonance with the liturgy.
At one Friday sabbath service, however, the rabbi came down strong and hard against new age practitioners in his sermon. This was a bit of an issue in that Ruth was a new age practitioner. His comments, understandably, seriously ticked her off. I tried to defuse the situation, but without success. The conversation went something like this.
Me: “He was just trying to say…”
Ruth: “No!”
Me: “He was only making the point that…”
Ruth: “No!”
Me: “He simply wanted to suggest that…”
Ruth: “No!”
As you can imagine, we did not return to Friday evening services. But I had a strong affinity for Judaism long before I met Ruth and I have maintained that affinity in the decades after her untimely death.
It’s no surprise, then, that when I saw Judaism for the World reviewed it got my attention. Arthur Green is a rabbi and a trainer of rabbis. He has had a long career and Judaism for the World includes a variety of his writing over a period of years. He is a student of Gershom Scholem, and as such takes a mystical approach to his religion. He is conversant with Kabbalah and its primary written work, the Zohar, as well as the teachings of the Hasidic rebbes. He is also a scholar and well-versed in the Law.
Green takes seriously the history of the Jewish people having been slaves in Egypt and is therefore critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Green is highly ecumenical in his approach and respects the validity of other religions. He writes, “Religions acting together, in common quest for God—or the One, or Being, or the great Nothing—and fulfillment of the divine purpose in existence, can be a great force for good.”
One of the most interesting passages in the book is Green’s recounting of his own spiritual path. His mother died when he was eleven, and his father was an atheist. However, Green found a great deal of meaning in the small synagogue his maternal grandparents attended. His father sent him to Hebrew school to prepare for his bar mitzvah. The bar mitzvah was not something the father wanted but agreed to it in order to make Grandmother happy. He told the young Green that he could drop out if he didn’t like it. Much to his father’s consternation Green loved Hebrew school and was delighted to receive his bar mitzvah. As a college graduate he nearly declined to be ordained as a rabbi, citing inconsistency and hypocrisy in the religion. Ultimately he realized he could do more good from the inside than from the outside. The rest is… Well, you’ll see what the rest is from the essays and speeches in this book.
Judaism for the World reinforced for me my understanding that part of me is quite Jewish.
my point being 