In the Silence of the Presence of God

Every year I fail to get beyond those opening words of the Torah we read on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, and it's not just because this was my Bar Mitzvah portion and I remember my father, whom I so much miss, teaching me. Here are those words: Thanks for reading Heart and Mind! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 'You stand this day, all of you, before the Sovereign, your God.' At this season of awe and beauty, and accounting, we deepen our awareness that we live before One who knows, that what we do and, especially, how we treat others, does not disappear into the amnesia of the past, but matters. It matters not because some deity in heaven is about to give us our moral grades. It matters not for our punishment, but, first and foremost, for our future conduct and our healing. Our liturgy expresses this in deeply evocative language. On Rosh Hashanah we pray to the One 'who remembers all deeds of old and visits every being formed in the womb.' On Yom Kippur we acknowledge that we stand before the One 'who knows the secrets of all time and the hidden depths of every life.' I imagine this as entering an inner place of profound silence. Perhaps that is how it was for the High Priest in the times of the Temple, when he went, with no company but his own thoughts, into the innermost sanctum, the deep quiet of the Holy of Holies. In that space, alone, yet not alone, because it is filled with the noiseless flow of infinite life, our conscience, heart and soul unpack themselves. We remember those we have loved, and those who love us. We are mindful of who and what has hurt us in life, and what and whom we have hurt. We acknowledge the cruelties of the world and the injustices, the raw harshness with which experience wounds so many. In that quiet, vital, sacred space our innermost thoughts and feelings reveal themselves, they speak out their depths to us. There we are then judged, but not, I believe, by an x-ray eyed, all-knowing, all-exacting deity. We are encouraged, and admonished, by the God of healing who cherishes all life, whose questions and observations we hear not from the vast beyond but from within our own heart: 'That hurt you? So how can you be brought healing? You caused hurt? So what can you do now to bring the healing? Life is cruel; what are you going to do to make it fairer and more compassionate?' I trust that the voice we hear in that place is not simply condemnatory, but gentle and wise, with the true guidance that comes from life's depths, from the love that makes all life possible. I believe that this quiet, personal Holy of Holies is a place for tears, shed for all life's griefs and wrongs. I believe it is a place ofchesed, of the faithful loving kindness that solicitously tends life's wounds. I believe it is a place of quiet wonder, before the beauty that life is, and that life can be. I believe that is where, and how, we encounter the presence of God, before whom all life stands. Thanks for reading Heart and Mind! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.