Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Forgiveness


“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  (The Gospel of Luke 23:34)

Grace:
In “The Lord’s Prayer,” Christians beseech God daily to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  How difficult, for any human being, is the second part of this petition, especially when the trespass is betrayal, when hurt turns so naturally into anger and perhaps even desire for revenge.  On Good Friday of this Holy Week in Christianity, I will be compelled to gaze upon the Mystery of humility in the face of humiliation and the redemptive Grace of sacrificial love. Many Christians will speak of “Atonement” in the sacrifice of Jesus’ life for love of all humanity; I will meditate on the “at ONE ment” that I believe happens when persons of all faiths humble themselves before God in the midst of heinous crimes, horrid persecutions, and hideous curses, to pray through the heartbreaking agony that only God’s love can heal: “Father, forgive.”

Tziporah:
Before I read your reflection, Grace, my mind wandered from the verse in Luke to events unfolding around the country.  The words, “for they know not what they do,” while spoken genuinely and recorded in this passage, can seem like an attempt to excuse the many wrongs we commit.  Claiming the consequences of our behavior to be unintended, we humans hurt each other in unforgiveable ways.  I think that one reason human beings struggle with forgiveness is that we often hurt each other wittingly and willfully.  While God’s forgiveness extends to our unintentional sins—because only God knows what true repentance lies within our hearts—our intentional trespasses against one another must be acknowledged, and we must reconcile with each other before we can find forgiveness.  In Jewish tradition, we pray for God’s forgiveness on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we are “at one” with God.  But we are only able to atone if we are already at one with each other.

Yasmina:
Like Christians, Muslims seek God’s forgiveness for their faults and weaknesses every day, during and after prayer, and strive to reach a complete state of purification during the month of Ramadan and the period of the Hajj. A Muslim also seeks to emulate the example of the Prophet Muhammad [Peace and Blessings be upon Him], who embodied the teachings of the Quran. In the following verses, the Quran describes forgiveness as an honorable response to hurtful actions, while allowing for the uniqueness of people and recognizing that not every individual is actually capable of reaching this status:
And not equal are the good deed and the bad. Repel [evil] by that [deed] which is better; and thereupon the one whom between you and him is enmity [will become] as though he was a devoted friend. But none is granted it except those who are patient, and none is granted it except one having a great portion [of good]. And if there comes to you from Satan an evil suggestion, then seek refuge in God. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Knowing.”(al Fussilat 41:34-36)
To me, although adopting this attitude of forgiveness can be challenging, it helps me focus on overcoming tests as a way of purifying my own heart and soul.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Journeys

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. 
I am the LORD your God.
(Numbers 15:41)
Yaira:
This verse appears at the very end of the Sh’ma, the prayer that observant Jews recite twice a day. One of the central stories of the Jewish people is the Exodus from Egypt—the move from slavery to freedom—and, on one level, the story preserves a collective memory. On another level, though, we can understand it as a metaphor for other kinds of liberating transformations. The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, can also be translated as narrow straits. The move from Mitzrayim to liberation mirrors my move into Judaism—from a narrow place in which I had all but given up on finding religious grounding, to the liberating gift of a tradition that offers me deep sustenance and a clearer relationship with God than I had previously thought possible. It is as though I passed through a narrow channel into a vast expanse of possibility. In this verse, God is doing the speaking and acting, in order that God may be known and in relationship with people. On its own, this is such a beautiful statement about the love and deep partnership between people and God. As a metaphor for my personal journey, the idea that God brought me out of narrow places in order to be known and in relationship evokes waves of wonder, joy, gratitude, and amazement—making it difficult, sometimes, to get those last few words of the Sh'ma out of my mouth.

Amanda:
Yaira’s comment about God ‘delivering’ her through her personal spiritual journey reminded me of my own ongoing journey along the ‘straight path’ of Islam to reclaim my purpose as a created human. In Islam we are taught that the inherent state of all creation is that of a muslim, literally, one who submits to God. The natural world exists in this state; babies are born in this state of submission. However, due to cultural and other profane influences, humans deviate from this state during our lifetimes. The purpose of Islam is to create a path on which we strive to reclaim our innate state of being—our natural state of submission to the Creator. It is not a forced existence with spiritual hoops to leap through, but a way of being fully human. In this verse, I noticed that the delivery of the Israelites from slavery was for a specific purpose. Speaking to the newly delivered Israelites, God says that He “brought you out of Egypt to be your God.” So, their freedom from subjugation to the Egyptians was replaced by freedom to serve God. This is our natural stateour “muslimness.” One final thought: when we pray for deliverance from the things that are oppressing us, we need to consider that true freedom does not mean lack of submission, but rather submission to our true purpose. As Bob Dylan so famously said, “You gotta serve somebody.”

LeeAnne:
Like Yaira and Amanda, I came to my current faith tradition as an adult. I was raised in an agnostic household and spent my childhood and young adulthood searchingyearningfor something that I could not define. I found a spiritual home in Christianity, and with it, a sense of freedom from doubt and fear. When I hear the words “I am the Lord your God,” I think of God’s enduring love for all people, God’s mercy, and God’s deliverance. I also think of God calling us to be better people as we attempt to live according to the promise of our being made in God’s image. Amanda’s articulation of the inherent state of creation in Islam is a nice parallel to the Christian concept of grace. It is through faith that we access the power of grace to do what God requires of us, which is “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8) We respond to “the Lord our God” by seeing ourselves bound in duty, love, and gratitude to keep all of God’s commandments.
 
Meet Guest Bloggers Yaira, Amanda & LeeAnne on the About Us page!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Last Prophet


“And a prophet did not rise again in Israel like Moses, whom God knew face-to-face.”
(Deuteronomy 34:10)
Tziporah:
As I begin to prepare for the holiday of Passover, I am reminded of a tension in Jewish tradition regarding Moses. In the Torah itself, Moses is described as the last, great prophet of Israel; in the Haggadah,[1] he is never mentioned by name.  The rabbis who compiled the Haggadah added countless interpretations of the text yet consistently left Moses out, and focused solely on God’s role in the redemption of the people.  I understand their editorial choice: no doubt they were reacting to the primacy attached to leading men in other religions, namely Jesus and Moses.  Nevertheless, removing the human protagonist and leaving only an unknowable hero—to whom we offer lengthy praise both before and after the meal—the rabbis made the story less accessible to modern Jews. I am thinking about how best to add Moses’ voice to the retelling of the story at my Seder this year. I would like to imagine what Moses saw in God’s face, what Moses felt along the arduous journey from Egypt to the edge of the Promised Land. How can Moses be our role model for knowing God?

Grace:
What a provocative question, Tziporah!  What would Moses’ voice tell us?  Perhaps about how God can take an impetuous, doubting, and argumentative anyone[2]—someone like us—and show him or her how to lead others who fail repeatedly to trust a God who never fails.  As our Jewish friends prepare for Passover, Christians now near the end of a 40-day Lenten journey when we remember the Exodus in our own lives, times when we too have wandered in a wilderness, afraid, confused, and prone to forget God.  In those hard and awful experiences, when we see the run-together godisnowhere, our eyes may first tell us that “God is nowhere;” until we confront God ourselves, in a burning bush or through the gentle, outstretched arm of one who will part the waters for us. Then we discover the reality that “God is now here” and that we, too, stand on holy ground.

Yasmina:
Since the story of Moses [Peace and Blessing be upon Him] is recounted in the Quran in more detail than that of any other prophet, I am lost in a multitude of choices: patience, trust, courage, dedication and perseverance are but a few of the many honorable qualities Moses displayed to the people of his time and to us today. However, I will focus on another aspect of Moses’ character. In the Quran, God asks Moses—although He knows the answer, of course—why he hastened and left his people to head to the mountain. Moses says: “and I hastened to you, my Lord, that You be pleased.”[3] I find these words deeply touching; to me, they epitomize Moses’ contentment and happiness of sharing an intimate connection with God, as well as his deep understanding of pure intention. Moses’ eagerness to respond to God’s commands, his sincerity and his devotion are characteristics I seek to emulate.


[1] The Haggadah is a book that is used to retell the story of the Exodus at the Seder, the ritual meal held on the eve of Passover.  There are many different publications of the Haggadah; most recently, Jonathan Safran Foer edited the New American Haggadah.  Corey-Jan Albert, a contributor to She Answers Abraham, wrote a version in script format titled Diaspora Journey.
[2] Peter in Christian scriptures
[3] Ta Ha, 20:84