When I was small, I spent a lot of time watching ants.
Hours in my backyard, intently focused on their comings and goings. Sometimes I would choose a particular ant and follow it about; sometimes I would stake out one of their hills. I was equal parts humbled and awed by their complexity and community, and aggrandized by my power over them. I wondered if my view of the ants, and my ability to destroy one of their hills with a single step, was how God saw us. I wondered if we were God’s ants.
I also spent a lot of time watching clouds. Lying on my back, with the grass tickling my ears, and an occasional ant wandering along the mountains of my body, I would stare up into the sky. For hours at a time. Watching the movement of the clouds. Sometimes choosing one particular cloud, seeing how it moved and transformed. Sometimes watching the whole panorama shift. It felt like flying. And swimming. I wondered if God moved like that, and if we could, when we were one with God.
I wondered a lot.
When I was small, my connection to God was natural and obvious. It just was. I had a lot of questions about how and why, but never about is. God was removed from me – a viewer of ants, a swimmer in the clouds – but always there. Watching.
As I grew older, I became aware that my family didn’t believe in God. We were Jewish, and that was mostly about holiday dinners, and giving back to the community, and going to services in hated, stiff new clothing and ill-fitting new shoes, just to see and be seen. But God, God was for weaklings and idiots. People who needed a crutch to lean on, or who were too dim to think with complexity and nuance. Certainly not for the intellectually-gifted daughter of the family.
I repressed my felt-sense that God was, and turned away from Judaism. To my adolescent and young adult self, Judaism was one big hypocrisy after another. There was no meaning in seeing and being seen at shul on the High Holidays. At least, not one in which I was interested. My father was not considered a “good Jew” by my Jewish Day School classmates, because he was not a regular synagogue attendee. Yet he was more involved in the community, giving more generously of his time and money, than many of the other fathers I knew; ones who showed up at shul and that was about all. But were they “better Jews?” We kept kosher at home, for my grandmother when I was small, and then when she passed, out of habit and for appearances. But we ate meat and seafood at restaurants. I couldn’t hold that as anything other than hypocrisy, when I was young. Any God who valued those things? The mean, jealous, vengeful God portrayed in the Torah? I wasn’t interested in that God.
And so I turned to science.
I got a Bachelors of Science degree, with a concentration in Animal Science. I continued asking questions, lots and lots of questions. I noticed that when I got far enough down, or far enough up, the answers disappeared. We know gravity exists. We know how to measure its effects. We know how to measure its change. But we don’t know what it is. Not really. We know about particles and waves. But we don’t know how they work. Not really. I was frustrated by lack of answers.
I became a mother.
Now the questions were accompanied by equal parts awe and despair. These wondrously beautiful, belovedly sweet, miracles of creation. These exhausting, demanding, terrifying responsibilities. I didn’t know how to mother. I was the youngest child in my family and had never babysat for infants. I’d never changed a diaper. Worse, I didn’t know or trust myself and my intuition. I continued looking for answers outside myself.
I was terrified. I had no faith. My youngest, favorite brother had died between the births of my daughters. I saw my mother grieving for her child and I wondered how I would ever survive such a thing. In my depression and fear I became convinced I would lose one my children, and then I became frightened I would cause that loss by being afraid of it.
I was a mess.
My middle brother had become Ba’al Teshuvah (born again, in “Jewish”) a few years before I became a mother; a Lubavitch Chassid. He was the brother with whom I had always had long, philosophical discussions. He was a lawyer, and I knew he had a bright mind. He was smart. He had faith. He found solace in his belief and in prayer.
I was fascinated. And envious. I wanted that.
Around that time I (supposedly) stumbled upon a contemplative weekend at the Jewish Renewal retreat center, Elat Chayyim, led by Sylvia Boorstein and Rabbi Jeff Roth. I was close to weaning my youngest, my son, and the retreat was not expensive. I had spent the previous eight years either pregnant or nursing, with little to no time for myself, and lots and lots of noise. Silent retreat sounded wonderful. Even though I didn’t really know what contemplative meant, and even though my only Jewish identity at that point came from my daughter’s preschool.
So I went.
I discovered, after many previous “failed” attempts at meditation, that I was actually a skilled meditator from way back. That my quiet, intensely focused awareness of the world could conceivably be called a type of meditation. I discovered Jewish chant and prayer that resonated, felt real and nourishing. Reb Jeff challenged us not to take his word for anything, but to try things for ourselves, which appealed to my science-trained mind. I went home and undertook a prayer experiment. It worked. I tried another. It worked. More to the point, I was coming to know myself. To trust my intuition. To be in touch with that realm of which I was always aware on some level, but to which I had given short shrift.
Two years later I joined the first cohort of Lev Shomea, the first Jewish training program for spiritual directors. Though I still wasn’t sure about my definition of God, I knew I was already acting as a spiritual director to several of my friends. Walking with others in that way comes naturally to me. During the training, I made the decision to use the dreaded g-word – God – for the connection I felt to “What Is.”
I learned to answer the question:
“Do you believe in God?” with:
“No. I experience God.”
The process of earning a Master’s Degree in transpersonal psychology at Naropa University gave me a regular meditation practice, the skills of inner inquiry, and non-theistic language for talking about the Divine. Useful, as I often work with people who identify as agnostic or atheist.
Chant leadership training through Kol Zimra awakened me to bhakti, or devotional spiritual practice. To fully embrace the Love I felt loved by, when the channels were open. It also awakened me to Torah in a way I had never experienced before, and Shir haShirim (known in English as the Song of Songs) became my text; along with Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), a text I fell in love with while studying at Naropa.
All three experiences – Lev Shomea, Naropa, and Kol Zimra – led me along the path of energy work. This is to say (in part) that I began learning the languages, and the feeling, of alignment with inner and outer energy. My current understanding of God has something to do with this energy, and with love.
My questions have moved largely from the physical to the metaphysical.
I still do a lot of wondering.
But now I understand it is in the wondering, and not in the answers, where meaning lies.