(...continued)

Ben steered with his oars and called out paddling commands from his perch above us on the back of the raft.  I expected we would go down the middle of the river, but he immediately takes us from one side to the other.  He then directed us to the first of the rapids.  I then realized it is not just how you go into a rapid, but from where you approach it.  The journey would be from dot to dot.  I could see the map in Ben's head as he plotted it out for us.  He knew this river.  He knew its moods.  He had to test out his crew before he knew how he could navigate us on this waterway he called a friend.

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This past week our family took another summer pilgrimage to a northwest mountainous location.  Our goal was to gain some rest, some altitude and perspective on life as we know it.  Our playground was the Glacier National Park region of northwest Montana.  This is one of the most magnificent areas of the country I've ever witnessed.  We scheduled several activities that let us get in touch with the land, air, trees, and water.  Most of our activities had an element of potential danger so we were under the good care of several guides along the way.  Early in the week we were guided up the winding path of the mountain landscape in a 30's style open-top red bus.  Later in the week we took a full trip down the middle fork river along the park with our white-water rafting guide.  We ended the week with two guides who took us on the 50mph+ zip lines through the forest, and finally a guided tour 70 feet in the air among the forest treetops along narrow suspension bridges.

Every time I meet the power of nature I am reminded of the memorable journies we've made along the rivers here in southern Washington, Oregon and Montana.   I learned some important lessons on that first journey down the White Salmon river a few years ago.

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Last week the days of the omer were coming to a close as we prepared for Shavuot, the marriage at the mountain.  Our sages tell us that when the Children of Israel came to Sinai, Hashem married his people and with the words of Torah as the Ketubah.  Our evening Shavuot service was followed by ice cream and cheese cake, but we were just getting started.   The men then assembled over at the beit midrash and we setup for an all night Torah study.  Through the morning we pondered the deep mysteries of G-d's creation, of the common patterns seen in scripture.  We studied the book of Ruth as the unlikely Divine orchestration to propagate the seed of Messiah.  After our Ruth study we decided to take a break.

We took a walk through the neighborhood around 3am and witnessed a magnificent meteorite coming down south west of us.  Most meteorites I've seen come in small and fast.  This one came in slow, was very large and gave off many colors as it broke up.  The signs were all around us.  It was fire from the mountain.

Meam Loez teaches:

In the Midrash, Resh Lakish said that on the day the Torah was given everything was fire. The Torah itself was written with letters of black fire on a "parchment" of white fire, as it is written, "From His right hand a law of fire to [the Israelites)." (Deuteronomy 33:2) The intermediary Moses was like a burning flame so much so that the Israelites were afraid to come close to him. The angels present at the event were also angels of fire. Even Mount Sinai itself was burning with fire.

Regarding this Moses later told the Israelites, "Upon the earth [God] caused you to see His great fire, and you heard his voice out of the midst of the fire." (Deuteronomy 4:36) On the day that the Torah was given, God allowed the Israelites to see His great fire, and His words could be heard coming out of the flames. This was a most awesome experience.

Also brought to mind was the flame of fire that came down on all the Chasdei Yeshua (Yeshua Believers) in Jerusalem on Shavuot (see Acts 2).  The flame separated and hovered as tongues of fire above the disciples heads.  They heard each one speaking in their own native tongue.  This moment with the Disciples in the Temple was another Sinai moment as we were immersed in the Ruach Hakodesh.

Meam Loez tells us of the original moment when the fire of Hashem's words came down on each Israelite

When the people said to Moses, "You speak to us and we will listen" (Exodus 20:16), they lost this power of memory that they had acquired. From then on, they began to forget what they had learned.

They went back to Moses and told him that they wanted God to speak to them once again so that they would remember everything. Moses replied, "Now this is impossible, but in the Messianic Age your request will be fulfilled."

This is alluded to in God's words, where He said that in the Messianic Age, "I will place My Torah in their innermost being, and I will write it upon their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33) At this time they will remember everything they learn, without forgetting a single word.

It is written, "God's voice hews flames of fire." (Psalms 29:7) The voice broke through the fire (on the mountain], and the Israelites were able to see each letter with perfect clarity.

Each of God's words followed every Israelite and said to him: "Will you accept me? See how many commandments and laws I contain. Be aware of the punishment for violating me." Hearing this, each Israelite responded positively. The word then kissed the Israelite on the mouth. Moses thus told the Israelites, "Be very careful... lest you forget the things that your eyes saw. (Deuteronomy 4:9) Do not forget that you actually saw God's words; not only that, but they even spoke to you.

After the word spoke to the Israelites and was agreed to, it was then engraved on the tablets. This was true of all the Ten Commandments.

Each word was engraved on the tablets and was heard from one end of the world to the other.

The second miracle the Midrash preserves is the voice of God speaking in every language known to man.

The Torah says, "And all the people saw the voices." Note that it does not say "the voice," but "the voices"; wherefore Rabbi Yochanan said that God's voice, as it was uttered, split up into seventy voices, in seventy languages, so that all the nations should understand. (Shemot Rabbah 5:9 quoting Exodus 20:18)

Rabbi Yochanan said: "What is meant by the verse, 'The Lord announced the word, and great was the company of those who pro­claimed it.'? - Every single word that went forth from the Omnipotent was split up into seventy languages." (Shabbat 88b quoting Psalm 68:11)

The School of Rabbi Ishmael taught the mean­ing of the verse: "and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces," just as a hammer is divided into many sparks, so too every single word that went forth from the Holy One, blessed be He, split up into seventy languages. (Shabbat 88b quoting Jeremiah 23:29)

The fire we saw in the night is a reminder of what the Torah from the mountain means to us.  The lesson of these midrashim is that though we were gathered as an entire nation at Sinai, Hashem approached each one of us with His revelation.  As we opened the ark on Shavuot morning and brought the Torahs out to everyone, it was our time to embrace the fire of Yeshua's presence, the Living Torah.  Jeremiah's verse "I will place My Torah in their innermost being, and I will write it upon their hearts" tells us that each flaming letter over our heads is there to etch eternal words of life and love permanently in our hearts.  May we hold on to it in our innermost being.

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It feels like the chagim(holy days) within our community are getting better and better.  Shavuot has just ended but I feel it so connected with our community Passover Seder.  Due to some limitations with our synagogue kitchen, it had been several years since we had a public Passover Seder.  This year we were blessed with a generous donation and some labor of love which enabled us to upgrade the kitchen to handle a larger crowd.  Our Passover was full of song and story, kids searching high and low in the shul for the afikomen, and an evening that got more and more joyous toward the end.  With stomping and clapping and a little dancing on the chairs, our joy was overflowing.  One member called the experience "off the hook."  No, it wasn't the four cups of wine!  The joy of a community at one with the essence of the Holy Day is a pure joy with only Hashem as the intoxicant.   Isaiah says, "with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."  Passover for us was an experience with Yeshua's overflowing joy as we dipped into his deep wells.

As we journeyed from Passover toward Shavuot these holy sparks were joined by the counting of the omer.  The two holidays represent our path from Redemption to Revelation and are linked by a 49 day march from Egypt to Sinai.  During that time our people ascended out of their oppression and were prepared and purified to recieve the Torah at Sinai.  This has been our journey.  The omer count represents a nightly reflection and anticipation of the event at the Mountain of Hashem.

During the time of the omer count as the Shabbat days got longer and longer, I watched as our community lingered at the shul on Shabbat afternoons.  After shacharit service and our oneg lunch, the community became a place of song and study, of lively debate, and Shabbat walks to the park.  The kids didn't want to go home.  The younglings, tweens, and teens also lingered together hanging out either at our beit midrash (a house next door dedicated to study and events), or the shul, or playing games on the lawn.   The days gaveway to night and were ended with the light of havdalah as the new week began.

Our community here in Seattle is over 40 years old and was founded on the vision of upholding a core community which makes Jewish life in Yeshua relevant in our modern day and the source of spiritual and emotional transformation.

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A little introduction

I do not like to write.  The thought of starting a blog brings me back to the horrors of my high school English classes.   At my very core I am an engineer who can solve a problem in a variety of computer programming languages, but who quakes when asked to be creative in writing.  At my very core I am also tasked with being a spiritual guide who is trying to help a small group of people navigate down a rather tricky river here in the northwest.  So I have to put these two things together so we can try to solve a few problems while we're here.

There's some conflict within....  Still hidden within me is a skeptical agnostic humanist with a zeal to see the pure ethics of life lived out to perfection.  But today, the dominant side of that dialectic is a person who can see beneath the mask of this world and find the Divine working in and through the fabric of the universe all around.  But alas, it is often the conflicted ones who might be able to bring sanity to this chaotic world.  I feel this tension helps me check myself along the way.  How is this so?  Every time I attempt to demonstrate a spiritual concept that can help a person down their path of life, I ask myself if this would make any sense to an outsider, to one whom I have not yet earned their trust.

So why am I writing? 

I am writing because the world I live in is experiencing a spiritual crisis.  The news lately has been highlighting how people my age and younger (Gen-X and Gen-Y) are dropping out of the religious establishment that their parents and grandparents took for granted.  Sadly, I don't blame them.  Religious institutions have failed us.  We see the rampant hypocrisy through leader's and follower's infidelity to the ideals they espouse.  We see institutions built on the idea that size and income define success and that belonging to such will bring to us personally more of the same.  These institutions are built so that people who don't really want to think for themselves can have a safe controlled place to belong and be justified in their own excesses.   That's not for me; it's not what I signed up for when I came to believe and rely on God.  That's not what God is about and I think that what I've read about Him shows that.

See article from ABCNews: 

Young Americans Losing Their Religion: New Research Finds Number Who Claim No Church Has Risen Sharply

So where are these young people going? Are they all turning into skeptical agnostic humanists, or is something else happening?  According to the data out there, they are not leaving the concept of "God," rather their practice, such as it is, is going behind closed doors.  If you ask many of these people if they are "religious" they will likely say "no, but I AM spiritual."  This is one of our clear indications that our religious institutions have failed this and many other generations.  There are an enormous amount of seekers out there, but they each are finding their way on their own path.   Don't get me wrong, this is an essential part of spiritual growth but I believe it is missing a few critical pieces to make it meaningful.

So what's missing? 

I think the primary thing is the dynamic of the shared journey.   My observation is that those who end up seeking connection with God only on their own terms won't be seeking Him long.  I've met a few exceptions to this, but not many.  We all need some level of accountability whether it is peer to peer or student to mentor.  In both these kind of relationships, we learn from each other and it makes both sharper.   But, you may ask, isn't that the purpose of organized religion - to create some system where we are all accountable?  Yes, that's true but there always seem to be egos that get in the way.  We start creating pecking orders and cliques and then the system fails its ideals. 

The true way to find "enlightenment" is to do it together with people you grow to trust.  The proper shared experience creates a community which humbly learns from the highest and lowest at the same time.  A healthy community is transparent and learns from its mistakes.

As you can imagine, I have a few more ideas about this building of community.  That's why I'm writing this blog.  I'd like to find a few more seekers out there who are interested in finding the Divine resources at our disposal to make our lives more meaningful.  Among the seekers already around me, I find their growth in our community quite inspirational.  It is a growth that none of us could accomplish on our own, but only when we come together humbly before the Creator searching for the meaning and purpose of our lives.

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