Is G-d Listening?

I have long had an intimate relationship with ‘the G-d of My Understanding’  as portrayed in 12 step recovery in various and sundry forms. Raised in a home with Jewish values, I said the Shema each night (at age 65, I still do), attended synagogue and Hebrew school until I was 16, and practiced tzdedakah, gemilut hasadim and tikkun olam. My parents modeled all of these things but not in a preachy way. Rituals included lighting the Shabbos candles and putting money in the pushke. I had many Christian friends and my parents allowed me to go to church with them and learn about their religious practices, but my mother would say, “Just remember who you are.” That was shorthand for “Don’t convert.”  I have not.

I note the difference between religion and spirituality; with the former being the box, structure, format, and framework around the contents into which we pour the latter. Spirituality is about the direct connection between our hearts and whatever we perceive the Divine to be, without need for an intermediary. My foundation was the former, my current existence and practice is the latter. I now say that love is my religion and G-d is too vast to fit into any one box.

In childhood and adolescence, I experienced a liturgy which had me imagining that the G-d of the Old Testament was a ZZ-Top-bearded mercurial old man sitting on High, judging us; not quite hurling lightning bolts like Zeus, determining if on Yom Kippur, we would be ‘written into the book of life for a good year.’ He (always He, never She) was jealous, angry, vengeful, AND loving. What a paradox. Blessedly, this was not what was reinforced in my home.

My experience is that God (also referred to as Good Orderly Direction in the recovery community) is so many things as is articulately expressed in the song God Is In by Billy Jonas.

“God is in your strangest pleasure…some say God is into leather.”
“God is in the Buddha’s chair, saying “Don’t just do something…sit there.”
“God is in the Christian house; bread and wine and Holy Cross.”
“God is  in the Hindu way. Jai Bagwan, Namaste.”
“God is in the Jewish home, Shalom, chaverim, Shalom.”
and my favorite line “God is insatiable, so sing and dance way past full.”

Daily, I have what I call ‘G-dversations’ in which I have a dialogue with the Divine. Not formal prayer, but more a familiar interaction that often has me asking a powerfully spiritual question, “WTF?” It happens when I ponder why unfair, unjust, immoral, unethical, violent, hateful acts are permitted to happen. I wonder why people that commit these horrible acts are in positions of power or even seem to thrive. I consider how a loving G-d could allow and not stop war, abuse, rape, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia.

How could a loving G-d have permitted the Holocaust to occur?
I wonder if G-d is listening.
Are things beshert…meant to be or do they occur at random? 

When I pray, there are times I ask for specific outcomes and sometimes surrender to whatever is for the Highest Good. As much as I love the Serenity Prayer which expresses, “G-d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference,” I still want to change the things I can’t accept.

I have a hard time accepting that two long time friends are now in hospice, facing end of life from a cancer diagnosis. I have a hard time accepting a situation in my own family that involves the wellbeing of one of our members. I have a hard time accepting that, despite his stated intention to do harm, voters still support a certain political candidate. I pray that people have a wakeup call and change their minds about him. I know that  G-d doesn’t choose sides in sporting events, but does the Creator and Sustainer have a stake in our choices that could make of this Earth a place of peace and beauty or a barren wasteland coated with the blood of battle?

Many years ago, when I was employed as a social worker at Horsham Clinic (a psychiatric hospital outside of Philadelphia,) I was walking on the grounds, deep in mental meandering about why certain aspects of my life were not as I wanted them to be. At that moment, a truck rumbled by on the nearby road with the name emblazoned on it. Guaranteed Overnight Delivery. (the acronym- G-O-D). I doubled over with laughter. The message came through, “Have I ever dropped you? Have things ever not worked out better than even you, with your vivid imagination could concoct?” I had to sigh and surrender. 

I am not at the point where, like the REM song, I am losing my religion. I sometimes have a tenuous hold on faith in the midst of personal and global events. There are moments I am uncertain that the ruler of the Universe is really is listening or if S/He is, there doesn’t seem to be justice in the response. Is faith tenuous and nebulous or is it solid and embraceable?

The Tanakh says “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” (Psalms 56:3, Misheli 56:3). That will be my guide in times of doubt.

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