Archive for Weekly Kavannah by Rabbi Yael Levy

High desert canyons,

Red walls reaching upward,

Streaks of yellow sandstone and Navaho white.

Sheets of rock formed,

And reformed by wind and water

By the passing of heat and cold.

These mighty canyons

Are sculpted,

Are fashioned,

Are made beautiful

By all that has been worn away.

By all that has been lost.

Walking among them one would be forgiven

For assuming these massive forms are forever.

But after leaning against a wall

Or seeking shelter in a crevice

We come away with the red dust

Of their passing.

Everything that is becomes something else.

Everything that will be, was.

May our hearts be strong and filled with courage

As the seasons pass and leave us

Raw and exposed,

And perhaps even more beautiful

For all that has been worn away.

All that has been lost.

Whose gaze am I willing to meet?

            Certainly the azalea bushes,

            Ablaze in yellow and red.

Absolutely the cherry blossoms

Whose pink and white petals remain luminescent even as they fall.

And the lilacs give me no choice

Their scent reaches out

Even before I approach.

            I turn aside to look.

But what about the man in the subway

Smelling of urine and weeks worth of grime?

Or the woman clutching her baby

In whose hand I place a one dollar bill?

            I avert my gaze and turn away.

Today I inadvertently lifted my eyes

First I saw a red wheelchair

And pants tucked around half a leg.

Then my gaze met another

            He smiled a wide, knowing grin

            And gave me a thumbs up as he rolled himself by.

The bush is always burning

Will I turn aside and look?

Tiferet, brokenness in beauty

            The cracks of Divinity

            That allow for the light to shine through

A radiant glory permeates all creation

Will I risk the pain and joy of a broken heart

To turn aside and look?

The Mystery calls, I take you out into the expanse, I deliver you because I desire you. psalm 18:20

The world is blooming.

Pink, yellow, white, purple,

Tiny green buds opening to the light.

Gracefully, 

Seemingly with joy,

The earth is revealing itself.

And this is what is asked of us.

To break through the hard packed ground,

To rise,

To open to the new,  

And bloom.

The world is waiting for your beauty, the Mystery calls,

And I desire you,

Your glory, your radiance, your truth, your love.

I am bringing you out into the expanse to shine.

What would it be like to truly believe

We are here to shine in beauty and love?

The soul might shout, But the world is filled with so much brokenness, so much pain.

All the more reason, the Mystery would reply,

For you to notice the beauty and shine your light with love.

This is the world’s greatest desire.

Tzav

“A fire shall continually burn on the altar.”

                                 -- Lev. 6:6

We are all called into holy service.

Keep the fires burning.

Lift up your visions,

Give voice to your passions,

            Don’t be deterred by fear or doubt.

Keep the fires burning.

Name your gifts,

Bring forward your beauty,

            Don’t be stopped by guilt or shame.

Keep the fires burning.

Listen deeply.

Open your hands.

Feel your feet on solid ground.

We are here to offer ourselves for the benefit of each other.

Keep the fires burning.

As the book of Exodus draws to a close, the work of the mishkan,

The sacred dwelling, is complete.

The mishkan is placed at the center of the community

And the kavod hashem, the Glory of the Eternal, emanates

From within its holy boundaries and from within each of us.

And the Glory calls to us with its presence:

    Be still, Stop, Pause, Reflect.

         This will keep the soul alive and supple.

     Be watchful. Be discerning.

     Acknowledge the confusion and the clarity,

         And the ways forward will appear.

     Keep the holy at the center of words and deeds,

        And vision will remain open and free.

We step into the wilderness, into the unknown, together.

May the spirit of love, generosity and wisdom guide our way.

Parasha Tetzaveh

As Aaron stepped into the Priesthood he was instructed to place upon his chest a breastplate upon which were written the names of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Underneath this breastplate were placed Urim and Thummim, openings to sprit, wisdom and clarity.  This sacred garment was worn to ensure that when Aaron stepped forward in service he would be mindful of the community that was in his care. He would remember that his actions should be for their benefit—aimed toward the highest good. The Urim and Thummim upon his heart centered his decisions in wisdom and focused his discernment toward compassion and peace.

We, a nation of priests, ask ourselves what words, phrases, teachings we can place upon our hearts to help us remember who and what it is we serve.

We ask ourselves what words, phrases, teachings can guide us in acting in wisdom and with compassion for the benefit of each other and for the sake of our entire community.

Having stood at Sinai

We turn and step forward into the beginning of new lives.

And the question rising on our lips:

Who and What do we serve?

For so long we served the Pharaoh,

We have bowed low to all that has oppressed us,

All that has keep our hearts bound and souls enslaved.

Now we are asked to choose.

To choose what we will declare as ultimate.

What we will give ourselves to.

What we will allow to draw us forward.

Serve me, the Mystery calls, Serve the unfolding of all things.

Lift you eyes to the unknown,

And be bold in your trust of who you can become.

Then commit yourself to practice.

Commit yourself to practices that will lead you to

Return again and again

To all that is true. 

Parsha B'Shallah: 

Leaving Egypt, Crossing the sea,

Our ancestors stood in awe

And bowed into gratitude and deep faith.

A moment later they were seized with fear,

Overwhelmed by doubt,

And they cried, longing for what had been.

The Mystery responded by giving them Shabbat. 

Six days you shall work and on the seventh day you shall stop,

You shall rest, you shall be.

Stopping will help you discover what gives you faith and courage. 

Pausing will help you discern which way to go.

Our ancestors sang of faith and courage, victorious arrival.

And they stumbled in bitterness, doubt and fear.

They bring us to the edge of the sea again and again,

Instructing us to pause in awe

And then step forward with fierce willingness

Into the hands of the unknown.

Va'era: And God appeared.

The Mystery is revealed and says,

I will show myself beyond anything that has ever been seen,

I will show myself beyond anything that has ever been imagined,

            That has ever been known.

And you will have no doubt,

You will feel it in your whole being,

And you will know it is me.

            The soul is unsure and it cries out in desperation.

            The heart is broken and it wails in fear.

The One answers, Reach for me where ever you are.

            You will find me as you open yourselves to each other,

            As you widen the circle and let each other in.

            You will find me in pain, sadness and despair,

            When you turn toward your fears you will see me and know.

And I will appear in freedom and hope and possibility

I will call to you with love.

The road is long, wide and narrow

The signs sometimes treacherous and frightening

But I am here,

And will be forever.

See me and Live.

Vayehi: And He Lived     The last Torah portion in the Book of Genesis

Towards the end of his life Joseph twice said to his brothers,

Don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid, I am not all powerful.

Don’t be afraid, our actions produce results

That are often different from what we had intended.

Life unfolds as it will.  And the mystery is always present.

Joseph spoke these words with kindness right to their hearts.  (genesis 50:19-21)

The book of Genesis ends with this message of forgiveness and love

And with a deep bow to the mystery that encompasses and calls forth our lives.

Each of us, all of us together,

Weave patterns of beauty and brokenness as we seek to

Create and understand why we are here.

Together with the trees, the birds, the sky, the water

Each day we enter into the world anew.

May we continually reach toward love and kindness,

And open our spirits to healing and peace.

Joseph was forgotten,

And Joseph forgets.

            Forgetting created and then helped ease the pain

Of loss and despair.

Forgetting enabled him to step forward and create a new life.

            But then Joseph was remembered

            And recognized for who he was

            And who he could be.

And the remembering was like waking up after a long sleep.

Slightly disoriented he came to awareness

            And his heart broke open

            With memories of loss and beauty

            Betrayal and love.

Joseph wept as he recognized

            Himself,

            The culmination of his past

            The open question of his future.

And Joseph wept as he recognized

That the broken heart,

The flood of tears,

Were pathways forward,

             Signs that on this side of remembering

             It’s not just anger and pain.

On this side of remembering is the hope of forgiveness,

And the promise of love.

Vayishlach

Alone by the river Jacob wrestled through the night.

As dawn approached he knew it was time to stop struggling,

But he could not let go.

He cried into the coming day-- I will not give up until I find the blessing in all this conflict and pain.

In that moment a voice called, What is your name?

Jacob, he replied. 

            The last time Jacob was asked this question he had answered, I am Esau.

            This time Jacob told the truth.

            And from truth flowed blessing.

Your name shall not only be Jacob. 

You will not only be the one who grasps, who holds on, who suffers because he wants things to be different than they are.

Your name shall also be Yisrael--yashar el,

The one who is directed towards God.

The one who has the strength to set his intentions, to follow them forward and to meet well what ever comes. 

Both of these capacities exist within you.  Notice when they occur, Be aware of who and what they serve

And discover how to use them well.

Jacob walked into the new day limping—

His vulnerability revealed.

And he named this place of

Struggle, Truth and Blessing,

Peni-el—the Presence of God. 

Alone by the river Jacob wrestled through the night.

As dawn approached he knew it was time to stop struggling,

But he could not let go.

He cried into the coming day-- I will not give up until I find the blessing in all this conflict and pain.

In that moment a voice called, What is your name?

Jacob, he replied. 

            The last time Jacob was asked this question he had answered, I am Esau.

            This time Jacob told the truth.

            And from truth flowed blessing.

Your name shall not only be Jacob. 

You will not only be the one who grasps, who holds on,

 who suffers because he wants things to be different than they are.

Your name shall also Yisrael--yashar el,

The one who is directed towards God.

 The one who has the strength to set his intentions,

To follow them forward and to meet well what ever comes. 

Both of these capacities exist within you.  Notice when they occur,

Be aware of who and what they serve

And discover how to use them well.

Jacob walked into the new day limping—

His vulnerability revealed.

And he named this place of

Struggle, Truth and Blessing,

Peni-el—the Presence of God. 

Knowing what it means to be the ultimate sacrifice

            Yitzhak became a digger of wells.

First he dug his Father’s wells.

Then he dug his own.

Undeterred by what he might encounter he reached into the rich, thick earth.

He dug through pain, through contention and strife and through his greatest fears.

He dug until he reached an opening.

Here he heard the Mystery call, With you, I am.  (Genesis 26:24)

Yitzhak stands at the place of transition,

            Guarding the passage, showing the way.

He says to himself and to us,

Dig deeply.  Don’t be stopped by fear.

Let yourself fall. 

Here you will discover what lives beneath the surface.

Through Yitzhak the Mystery reveals itself and we are returned to life again and again.

Reaching we rise.

In our struggles we are held in love.

And in each moment the Holy One calls,

Do not be afraid, wherever you are, with you, I am.

Vayera:

What would it mean to open ourselves to being seen?

To being seen for who we are

For who we are in our glory, in our beauty, in our brokenness

In our pain?

This week the Torah calls us to sit at the openings

            of our hearts

            of our awareness

And wait and watch for God.

Use your imagination, the tradition says,

And you will see that God appears

And as God appears, God sees us

And the experience is one of pure love.

We sit at the opening of the tent of being known,

Of being seen, witnesses by the Mystery,

And the experience is love.

As the beginning unfolds a warning comes:

            It is still so easy to go astray.

            To allow ourselves to be ruled by impatience,

            To be shaped by harsh judgments,

To become uninterested in the lives of others.

            Even with the best intentions,

            Even with the commitment to love,

It is still so easy to go astray.

But always there is an opening, a tzohar,

A way to see differently,

A way to let in whatever it is we need to keep turning.

To keep turning toward

            Alert, attentive, kindness

            Toward a curiosity and interest

That opens us to our reverent relationship with each other

And all the earth.

The light of Yom Kippur continues to shine as the soul

Journeys back from the heavens to the earth.

Having been stripped of much of its outer garments

The soul arrives tender, new, revealed.

Its inclination is to stay on high

To stay as close as it can to the One.

But hesitantly, it searches for a place to land.

For it heard in the last moments,

As the gates were closing:

Gather what you experienced,

Take what you now know,

And plant it in the ground.

In the place that is all change and impermanence

Turn and Live.

The Torah calls out:

Be silent and listen, today in this very moment, you are becoming a people

In relationship to the unfolding of all life (Deut. 27:9)

            Be awake to everything--the blessings and the pain,

            Remember that you exist in a context that is more vast than you can know,

            Cultivate compassion,

            Gather friends, create community,

            Open your eyes to beauty,

            Bow to the divinity that exists in all life.

Be silent and listen, in each moment creation is coming to be.

Step forward into the unfolding and let the light that you are

Shine.

From the place of glory the Mystery whispers,

Enter,

Come in.

Turn toward your relationship with Me,

Your relationship with all life.

Out of fear or habit

The soul hesitates

It cries. It hides.

There is too much pain.  There is too much uncertainty

I don’t want to go.

I will wait, the mystery responds.

I will wait for you to awaken,

I will wait for you to remember

            That you were born into this fragile existence

To let your heart shatter and shine.

What is the right thing to do?

Which is the best way to turn?

Our preconceptions shout one thing

Our longings, our fears another.

And inside the battle rages.

We don’t have to see all the way down the path

Only right here in front of us

And all we really need to do

Is take one step at a time.

Accepting solace where we can find it.

And letting each moment show us

The best way to go. 

Because.

Because nothing is separate.

Because every action has consequences.

Because we never know what the next day will bring:

            Live  with awe,

            Walk with integrity,

            Love well.  Be of service.

            And step forward into the mystery with all your heart and soul.

The fourth book of the Torah, B’midbar (Numbers), ends with an accounting of the Israelite journey out of Egypt and through the twists, turns and expanse of the wilderness. 

The retelling reminds us that the path forward is unpredictable and often unimaginable. And as much as we would like to know where we are going, it is difficult to see too far ahead. 

We live with the sense that we choose our path, we determine our destiny.  As the book of B’midbar closes, it suggests that often our paths choose us and our task is to do our best to respond to the twists and turns of our lives with kindness, grace, compassion and integrity. 

Here is an interpretive translation of the traditional t’fillat ha derechk—the Prayer for the Journey. It is traditional to say this prayer while standing after we have gone a little way down the path. 

Mindful of his own death, Moshe calls God by the name Eternal Breaths of all Flesh, and asks who should follow in his wake.

“Choose Joshua," God answers, "for the breath is in him."  Let Joshua stand before the entire community as you lay your hands upon his shoulders.  And give Joshua your awareness, your gratitude, your humility—this will ensure his voice will be heard and his teachings understood.”

May we be mindful of the breath, the spirit, that enlivens all creation.  And may gratitude, humility and awareness guide us as we bring our selves and our offerings forward.

Chukat

At some point
Each of us will die.
This is for sure.
But how we will live
Is an open question.
This is the dance. The song.

Water flows to us from the source of creation.
Nourishment for the heart of life.

May we call it forth with love and patience.
And when we don’t
May it bathe us with compassion
And grant us the ability to forgive.
This is the dance. The song.

On the other side of the mountain

I was looking for the thunder
I expected the lightning
Fast and clear.
The fire, burning up the sky.

But no, by the river,
barely a whisper,
almost an after thought

This is it,
This is all there is
This, right now
Is it.

I shrugged and looked away.

I slept most of the day and returned to the river 
In the light of early evening.
The woods were still quiet
Uneventful,
Calm.

Motzei Shabbat, under a tree, with a gathering of friends,
I realized,
OK. Yes.
This,
Right now, is it.

This is it.

And it seemed I could hear the One laugh…
You thought this wasn’t enough?
Your 15-year-old son standing by your side,
The pattern of green leaves framing the night sky,
The soft conversation between beloved friends.
The constant surprise of every single day
Isn’t enough mystery for you?
OK, OK.
This is it.
This is all there is.

On the mountain
Along side the river.

A soft bell, a tinkling, a lilt.

This, Right now
Is it.

I give thanks
I give great thanks.

This,
Is it.

parshat b’midbar

Enter into the wilderness, the One calls,
Leave your routines, your habitual responses,
Go forth from expectations and conditioned behavior.
Yes it is frightening. Yes it feels daunting.
But I will meet you there.

Remember the word for wilderness, midbar
Is the same word for speak, midaber

Out in the unknown, in the wildness of mind and spirit
God speaks.
Our task is to step forward and listen.

For Passover:

It is time, the Infinite calls, Come

V’hotzati, I will take you out
V’hitzalti, I will deliver you to a new place
V’ga’alti, I will help you be present
V’lachati I will take you into relationship

And you will know your beloved place amid the myriad of all life. (Exodus 6:6-7)

I can’t, the soul cries,
I am so afraid.

Of course you are, the infinite responds.
You have been in the narrow place for so very long

But I will lift you up,
So just for a moment you will see
The expanse of possibilities.

Then you will decide what is more frightening
To stay where you are
Or to step out toward what might be.

Metzora

Stretched over the light of our souls are garments of skin. (Genesis 3:21)

Strong and porous, this outer layer covers and protects while allowing

the radiance to shine through. There are times

this layer becomes clogged with debris, manifestations of misguided words, thoughts and actions.

Our perception falters and we get lost.

A way to return to clarity is through mindful speech.

We ask ourselves how am I using my words and silences?

Is what I am saying honest?

Is what I am saying kind?

Are my words necessary?

Are my words helpful?

Clear speech and attentive silence opens the way for our souls to shine.

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts keep us clear and true.
                                                                       
(Psalm 19:15)

Tazria

Separate yourself when creating something new.

It’s OK to step away

When in formation.

A seed needs all its energy

As it prepares to break through the earth.

Tender shoots need all their strength to defy gravity

And reach the light.

After delicate blades of grass crack open the concrete,

And some of the fruits of our efforts begin to emerge,

We will return to the community and raise up what we have learned.

May these tender offerings be received in love.

Tzav

“A fire shall continually burn on the altar.” Lev 6:6

We are all called into holy service.
Keep the fires burning.
Lift up your visions,
Give voice to your passions.
Don’t be stopped by guilt or shame.
Keep the fires burning.
Name your gifts.
Bring forward your beauty.
Don’t be deterred by fear or doubt.
Keep the fires burning.
Listen deeply.
Open your hands.
Feel your feet on solid ground.
We are here to offer ourselves for the benefit of each other.
Keep the fires burning.

    --Rabbi Yael Levy

As the book of Exodus draws to a close we take an accounting of our soul, an accounting of all the work we have done to create a mishkan, places within us and among us where the Divine dwells. We take a breath and notice the beauty coming forth from the natural world. We take a breath and notice the beauty created by generous hearts and open, loving hands.

Filled with this spirit we turn towards what will be.

“I am here to guide you,” the Divine calls, “Every day, in every moment. There will be times of clarity and purpose and moments of cloudy indecision and doubt. I am here in all of it. And I will show you the way.”

May we go forward with strength, with love and with faith.  -- Rabbi Yael Levy