We begin in Kadesh, there was no water for the community and the people assembled against Moses and Aaron. They said, 'Why did you bring us here in the wilderness to die? Why did you take us from Egypt in order to bring us to this evil place? There are no figs or wine or pomegranates. There is not even water to drink.'
Moses and Aaron went to the Tent of Appointed Meeting and fell on their faces. The glory of God appeared to them. God said to Moses, 'Take your staff and assemble the community. Then you and your brother Aaron speak to the rock before the people’s eyes. You shall then bring forth water from out of the rock for the people and their animals.'
Moses and Aaron then gathered the congregation before the rock and Moses said to them, 'Listen now, O rebels, shall we bring forth water for you from this rock?' Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock with his staff twice and abundant water came forth and the people and their animals drank.
God said to Moses and Aaron. 'Because you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me before the eyes of the sons of Israel, you shall not bring this community into the land the land I have given them.' They made a life altering choice or acted emotionally and changed the course of their own future.
This Torah portion, Hukkat, can be viewed as a narrative about the Jewish people and water. Water--in Hebrew, mayim--is mentioned 22 times. The portion begins with God's command to mix water with the ashes of a red cow for purification. Next, Miriam dies, and the well which provided the Israelites with water disappears. The Jewish people quarrel with Moses, complaining (Numbers 20:3), "There is no water to drink!" Moses and Aaron strike the rock and God brings forth water.
Next, Moses asks the Edomites to pass through their land, with a promise not to drink their water, or alternately, to buy it from them. Then the Jewish people travel by way of the Sea of Reeds--where God had split the sea for them--and on their desert journey complain again about lacking water. They arrive in modern-day Jordan and sing an exultant song about their appreciation to God for water. Finally, the Torah portion ends with them encamped on the eastern bank of the Jordan River.
What is God teaching us through the Torah's water narrative? The Jews' experiences with water in the desert can be understood as a spiritual training to cultivate appreciation for God's goodness. God takes the essential, tangible resource of water and gives it to us in environments where we do not have it.
We learn to appreciate water and to know Who really provides it through the process described here of taking water for granted, losing it, and then being given it by God. In an ultimate sense, water does not nourish us. God does. Water is one of the chief means by which God provides life to us every day. The see-saw experience of having water and then losing it is the means to develop the spiritual muscles of appreciating God.
Yet, always being on the positive side of having water leads a person to take it for granted. Today, piped water is incredibly convenient; it relieves us from carrying our water from streams and cisterns to our homes. Today, many of us tend to lack an appreciation of where water comes from, and we end up wasting it and polluting it. Where appreciation ends, misuse begins.
Environmental problems at their root are spiritual problems--they stem from a lack of awareness of the Source of all Existence. Once we come to that awareness, we can address environmental problems in very different ways. Since beneath every environmental problem is a spiritual problem, awaiting every environmental problem is a spiritual solution. Drop a stone in the pond and the ripples will reach far beyond you.
The Torah is our blueprint for spiritual living on this planet. It enables us to transform our daily, mundane ways into holy acts. If we can preserve our connection to God's sustaining power in our world of great abundance, we can transform our lives and the world in holy ways.
The great Sage of Talmudic times, Rabbi Tarfon, teaches that "The day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the Master is pressing." I might add: the climate is changing, the seas are rising, the glaciers are melting, and now the Gulf is filling up with oil.
We can address environmental issues at their roots if we live according to the Torah's call. And when we get at the roots, we're going to deal with many of the branches as well. When we finally embrace this path as a people, our spiritual problems masquerading as environmental problems will make their way down the drain. This world is God’s gift to us and we are its stewards. The news of the last two months from the Gulf might question our ability to steward the world righteously.
An online petition from the Summer Institute at Duke Divinity School's Center for Reconciliation urges Christians to observe an oil fast on Sunday (June 20), the two-month anniversary of the spill. The Sabbath observance includes abstaining from motor vehicles, adopting a local-food diet, and "reflecting on the aspects of our lives that are so entrenched in the oil economy that we cannot even quit them for one day."
Nature-based religions welcome this growing recognition that caring for the environment is a spiritual calling, and that the oil spill is "a wound in the earth." Selena Fox, a high priestess at Circle Sanctuary, a Wisconsin-based pagan resource Center said, she has been meditating and conducting outdoor prayers several times a day, lighting a pentacle of ritual candles to channel her energy toward five areas: stopping the leak, helping the cleanup, healing the impact, learning from the disaster, and hoping that people become more respectful of the circle of life.
Prayer is an important part of the response, particularly for distant viewers who feel helpless about the images of tarred beaches and frightened fishermen, said the Rev. Mitchell Hescox, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, which is leading a prayer walk through Gulf Coast communities directly impacted by the spill. "The first thing we have to do is pray for the people, pray for the engineers and technicians who are trying to figure out how to stop this mess, then pray for the nation to find a way to find renewable and clean energy," he said.
In the Buddhist worldview, the livelihood of a human being must be based on one basic criterion -- do no harm. The more complex the economy of our world becomes -- and the more fragile its environment -- the more vital it is for individuals to personally adopt this ethical outlook and this way of living. When trapped in a system of quarterly profits and immediate demand, individuals of vision must take action and carve a legacy rather than wait for one to be written for them. How will our children, and their children, and their children generations beyond remember us if our greatest defining legacy is that given all the facts we had on the table about the environmental consequences of our actions and our lifestyles, we continued on as if nothing was wrong? Remember … Do No Harm…
But more than this, it means adopting the basic worldview that is the only real hope that humanity has -- the fundamental recognition of the fragility and interconnectedness of all life and the compassion for it that is a by-product of that recognition. Only when individuals commit to do no harm can corporations and governments follow suit. Only when you truly grasp that it is not in your best interest as a human being to put other life in harm's way can real change be made.
Finally, There is a midrash (Rabbinic commentary on the Bible) which Jewish environmentalists are fond of quoting:
“When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: “Look at my works! See how beautiful they are—how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, 1 on Ecclesiastes 7:13)
In our siddur, there is a prayer called Aleinu in which we ask that the world be soon perfected under the sovereignty of God (le-takein ‘olam be-malkhut Shaddai). Tikkun ‘olam, the perfecting or the repairing of the world, has become the major theme in modern Jewish social justice theology. It is usually expressed as an activity, which must be done by humans in partnership with God. It is an important concept in light of the task ahead in environmentalism. In our ignorance and our greed, we have damaged the world and silenced many of the voices of the choir of Creation. Now we must fix it. There is no one else to repair it but us
Every one of us is responsible for our own course in life, and each of us determines our own moral and ethical guidelines. Some of us accept the basic rules of religions without question. Others determine our own version of what is and what is not acceptable in order to help us sleep at night. No one -- yet -- is going to force us to adopt individual ethical and moral standards. It is up to each and every one of us.
Let us learn the lesson that God chose to teach about the gift we were given and our responsibility not only to preserve the gift for the generations to come, but respect and honor the giver with our daily actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment