The Wonderment

Food and Faithful Promises

Food is a big deal. How we nourish ourselves says so much about who we are and what we believe. Our food choices might reflect our natal culture or our aspirational culture, our spiritual or religious or non-spiritual culture, a delight in the world’s many cuisines and cultures, or a cherishing deeply of one particular home culture. Our food choices are defined by abundance and scarcity, for example when we live in food deserts where it takes great effort and often resources to acquire healthy, nourishing foods, or when we do not have enough to make sure everyone in our household or family can eat until they are replete and adequately nourished. Because we have to eat regularly to live, it isn’t surprising that practices around food and eating are common formative spiritual and religious practices, all over the world. 

 

This week’s Torah reading begins with Leviticus 9:1-11:47, much of which is concerned with what is clean and unclean to eat. Those who keep kosher are connecting themselves in an eating and food preparing lineage that reminds them in every bite whose they are and who they are in the world. Rabbi Ilene Schneider in her essay “Kashrut, Food, and Women” in The Women’s Torah Commentary, edited by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000) writes, “But traditionally, Judaism teaches that none of these rationales are truly relevant, for in the end, we observe the laws of kashrut because God has commanded us.” I’m Unitarian Universalist and not culturally Jewish, so I don’t observe kashrut. It isn’t my culture or tradition to practice (hello, appropriation), although these texts still have much to teach me. When I eat with those who do keep kosher, I do my best to support their faith practice.  As faithful people we recognize the ways we fulfill our faithful promises may be different, yet we are sharing the ground of reverence and the ground of being.

 

When I read these rules of separating what is clean and unclean what do they teach me as a Unitarian Universalist and person of faith? Firstly, I am reminded that our faithful communities have practices they share that designate what is good, what is sacred, and what is off-limits (both so holy as to be protected and so wrong as to be outside acceptable, healthy, or lawful behaviors). How long does someone have to participate in our faithful communities before they know all the practices? Before they won’t show their outsidership by not knowing what is taught orally directly and indirectly? I have been to a community where young people on their faith coming of age journey tend the sacred chalice (Unitarian Universalists often keep a flaming chalice as a symbol of our faith). It would be shocking and just not done if the chalice was kept a different way. What are the practices in your own faith community? How do you know what is good, what is sacred, and what is off-limits? If you have cookies after worship, who is allowed to eat the cookies, how many and for how long? (You might laugh, but I’ve witnessed communities struggle over this very practice of how to be together.)  How are those teachings and traditions passed along?

 

Secondly, the rules of Leviticus 9-11 cover some ground that sets aside so much of the world’s abundant life as off-limits from eating. There may have been lots of reasons for that to arise historically, but in today’s world of climactic change and scarcity, the only way for us to survive is to set aside much of our planet’s abundances as off-limits from consuming, whether we’re speaking about fossil fuels or reservoirs of plant and animal life on land and in the waters. Trying to do so based simply on logic doesn’t work terribly well when we have greater urgency and convenience in short-term results. Turning ourselves away from the short-term it-is-all-about-me-and-what-works-for-me as part of a great lineage of people is in part a turning toward the long-term, and to do that we have to remind ourselves regularly of what is beautiful and yes, holy, about this earth upon which we and all of life on this planet depend. Setting limits and observing them because those limits become part of our faithful promises of care for this planet, for ourselves, for one another, for every stranger and every being, calls us toward something much bigger than the bag of fried snacks we feel we need to drive fifteen miles to acquire. Setting limits and observing them because those limits are part of our faithful promises of care and nurturing equity and justice and compassion asks us to reflect upon and change consumer habits, supporting that which helps fulfill those promises. 

 

Thirdly, within chosen or faithfully accepted limits we have great freedom and we also develop great creativity. Sometimes too many choices lead us not just to more bad choices, but to struggling to choose at all, and so we more frequently default to what is convenient or habitual (habits being the chosen or accepted limits and patterns within those limits that we no longer question or consider). Most of us in this world don’t have unlimited pantries or resources for royal meals every day. Most of us around the world learn how to do with what we have, often very simple ingredients like lentils, plantains, potatoes, or oats, some seasonal fruits or vegetables, and some seasonings like herbs or garlic or salt. One thing I find amazing about humanity is just how we can apply our creativity and knowledge to develop hundreds of different amazing meals from five simple foods and flavorings, multiplied by the abundance of good foods that nourish this world and support it for the long haul. 

 

This week, may we stop and consider how we eat and how those choices embody our faithful promises. May we take time to reflect upon this sacred abundance of life on this planet and our responsibilities and promises to care for this life. May we spend time, touching the ground of being, giving thanks for this amazing abundant earth, and remembering we belong to and have responsibility for this holy ground. And may we spend time reverently, living faithfully with all the challenges and stretching and responsibility that entails, living with the Holy through all we do.

 

3 Spiritual Sieves: Kindness, Equity, and Justice

What we do matters. How we do it matters. Our intentions, our actions, and our results matter as we seek to cultivate our relationship with the Holy and to fulfill our faithful promises. 

 

Both Leviticus 6:1-8:36 and Jeremiah 7:21-8:3; 9:22-23, which might seem at odds with each other, agree that what we do, how we do it, and what the results are in living faithfully matter. Leviticus clearly and lovingly details types of offerings and how to make them the right way and the consecration of the priesthood. Jeremiah has some choice words to offer that seem to dismiss such offerings. I think that’s why Jeremiah 9:22-23 is tacked onto the end of the reading, so that we don’t fall prey to the temptation of those justifying dismissing most of Leviticus as old hat, rather than closely studying the questions embedded in the text. Each of these texts is asking the recurrent religious and spiritual question: what demonstrates our love for the Holy, for our neighbors, for the stranger and the vulnerable, and for this earth? Following Jeremiah 9:22-23 what is kind, just, and equitable? (I’m using the JPS Study Bible; if you’re using a different Bible translation, you may be looking at Jeremiah 9:24).

 

Leviticus is mid-exploration of delineating clear practices about how we give thanks, how we make sacrifices, how we consecrate religious leaders. In brief, how do we cultivate our relationship with the Holy? What does it mean to traverse this world with the Beloved? These are important questions related to our important faithful promises. Everyone who spends time in communal religious life recognizes that whether we are explicit or not, communities develop cultures answering these questions.  Solitary devotees also develop practices that try to answer those questions and usually settle into a set of practices that becomes quite comfortable.  We can be challenged by our ritual life and we are also known, at times, to change that ritual life to be more comfortable and less challenged, or more challenged and less comfortable. Particularly when we move through our spiritual practices without attention, heart, and intention, when we end up just going through the motions, we’re in need of refocusing our attention, heart, and intentions before we come up with dangerous and wrongful ways to practice. 

 

Jeremiah agrees, indeed, how we cultivate our relationship with the Holy matters greatly and we’ve been failing at that in choosing badly. The texts belong together because Jeremiah is a further explication of answering those questions asked in Leviticus, answered, in Jeremiah’s time, by some rather strange and offensive practices that upend the faithful promises that are supposed to help us traverse the world better with the Beloved.

 

The culture of how can sometimes become more important to us than the culture of what and why. I’ve participated in congregations that invite contributions only outside of worship (in worship feels less worshipful to these folks), that insist on offering plates, that insist on baskets, that use clean paint cans, that use bags, that use envelopes, that insist that cash and checks be visible to all, that only take annual commitments, that invite shared public commitment and sacrifice and that focus on personal private decisions and sacrifices. Some people feel they give too little, some people feel they give too much, some people really do give more than they can and that adversely affects themselves and their families, some people really could give more than they do.  Jeremiah in context teaches us that the what and the why both matter greatly, far more than the how. Jeremiah specifically calls out sacrificing their children to the Holy is specifically (7:30-31). Attacking the vulnerable and taking their lives is not what the Beloved asks from us. We might consider what practices draw us away from increasing kindness, equity, and justice in this world? What are our spiritual practices that we do and maybe even enjoy but draw us further from actually fulfilling our faithful promises? What are our spiritual practices that actively add to injustice, inequity, and hard-heartedness?

 

Jeremiah tells us the third attribute the Beloved is seeking from us is kindness (remember if you’re looking at some translations of the Bible, you may need to read verse 24). For fans of Micah 6:8 (do justice, love goodness, walk modestly or humbly), kindness may be a challenge to our spiritual practices. How does kindness inform how we worship? How we pray? How we give thanks? How we sacrifice? How we offer back to the world? The attributes of kindness, equity, and justice orient us away from being self-serving, super-comfortable, or lauded for how we live. Instead, the measurements of whether we are living with the Beloved faithfully are primarily social and communal. Yes, you can practice self-kindness, but it is difficult to practice self-equity or self-justice. Combine these three attributes and we know they’re standards for how we are to live this life, in religious settings and outside of them, wherever we are and wherever we go. 

 

How we fulfill our faithful promises matters as much as seeking to fulfill them at all. If we are committed to pursuing equity and justice and so address racism and nurture multicultural pluralist life together, then we ask: whose voices, cultures, and experiences are at the center? Whose comfort is consistently sacrificed or denied for others? When, persistently, white middle-and-upper-class voices and cultural practices, music, and leadership are centered, there may not be much sacrificing going on for middle and upper-class white members of the community, but quite a bit for folks with different cultural traditions trying to worship together. The answer is not segregation, although when one belongs to marginalized and historically marginalized groups time apart can be enormously helpful. But centering a diversity of voices, attentive to increasing equity, justice, and kindness, can challenge all of for the better. For members of the dominant culture, getting into the discomfort zone and learning to follow, learning from other cultures than one’s natal one, can be a way of cultivating greater love and bigger hearts. That brings us back to meaningful sacrifice: does this sacrifice, offering, or other spiritual practice nurture a more just, equitable, kind and loving world? 

 

Jeremiah tells us that a meaningful sacrifice or offering will celebrate life, not take another person’s life. Taking a person’s life need not be strictly about murder. Oppressive activity (as detailed more specifically in the section of Jeremiah omitted from this week’s reading) are ways of claiming and taking people’s lives bit by bit. When people turn to those of us living with disabilities and dismiss us as not good enough for leadership or for community life, or make it impossible for us to live genuinely decent lives because of stratospheric medical costs or barriers to participation and access, when cis-gender folk struggle to follow the leadership or live in community alongside transgender and non-binary folk, when youth voices and wisdom are denied, dismissed or undermined, the dominant culture is fulfilling its desire for glory and rendering the Holy in their own image, rather than embracing the diversity of human life as reflecting the Holy. Human beings are wonderfully different. We have differing abilities, differing strengths, differing gifts, differing stories, differing cultures, differing vulnerabilities. Yet we yearn for love, for dignity, for safety to be able to risk for meaningful reasons, for respect, for inclusion, for the regular experience of the message “you are enough, loved, lovable, and with love to give.” 

 

How are our offerings loving strangers, the vulnerable, our neighbors, and this earth with equity, justice, and kindness — and so tending our relationship with the Beloved? Is what we offer primarily for our own glorification? Is it to show off? Or to serve our immediate wants rather than our needs to grow and change and join in more equity, justice, and kindness? How are we considering to meet this world in every way for care, for equity, justice, and kindness? Just as when we speak, we hopefully pass our words through three sieves of discernment (is it true, is it kind, is it just?) when we seek to fulfill our faithful promises we ask ourselves about three spiritual sieves: how does this add to kindness, equity, justice? In other words, how does this protect and nurture and care for the vulnerable? Then we shall be able to answer how we’re living our lives alongside the Beloved, in promises that have meaning every day.

 

Someday, may we all be able to dance together under vines and fig trees and no longer be afraid. Until then, we have this amazing sacred life to live, tending our relationship with the Holy in very great part by tending our relationships with one another and this earth, for equity, for justice, and with kindness.

 

Offerings & Responsibility in Sacred Relationship

In any healthy relationship, we give and we receive. We recognize the goodness in the relationship. We renew that goodness in lots of tiny ways: daily greetings, hugs, showing up for an otherwise bad day, staying present through tough times, remembering the names of our loved ones, offering up a tiny gift in the other person’s favorite color, and so on.  This week’s reading (Leviticus 1:1-5:26) offers us a glimpse at how we tend our relationship with the Holy, which so often is about tending our responsibilities toward one another and this earth. The beginning of Leviticus focuses on first-fruits offerings and on peace offerings. These are the regular offerings of recognition, care, and renewal of our faithful promises with the Holy. Just because we’re not talking about a relationship with another human being doesn’t stop us from our human needs and how we cultivate relationships. Human beings are obligatorily gregarious primates: we need to spend a certain amount of time each day and over the course of the years tending to our relationships in tiny, middling, and big ways. That’s true for our relationships with the Holy, with the earth, and with one another.

 

First-fruits are offerings we make to renew our sense of the covenant with the Holy, the faithful promises we’ve made. We might feel very grateful and we might feel rather distressed — we have good and bad years in our lives, no matter how strong our efforts at fulfilling faithful promises.  But however we feel, we’re invited, regardless of how much we can give, to give something in recognition of this important relationship and renewing our faithful promises. The second section of this week’s reading focuses on peace offerings, individual or household gifts in thanksgiving, celebration, or seeking blessing. Please take some time this week to consider how you tend your relationships with the Holy, the earth, and with one another on a regular basis. How are you taking responsibility for these relationships to be blessings?

 

The third and longest section focuses on offerings of taking responsibility and focusing on repairing relationship and our faithful promises. Having processes for acknowledging when we have accidentally, unintentionally, or intentionally done something harmful supports social health and well-being. There are rules, there are laws, there are expectations, and while intention does matter, a break in relationship still calls us to tend it, whether that break was deliberate or not. What are some of the kinds of trouble Leviticus figures we might slip into?

1. Individually we do something inadvertently against the 613 commandments (mitzvot), that is, we make a mistake. Recognizing that mistake, we take responsibility and turn to nurturing our relationship with the Holy more intentionally.
2. The community of Israel makes a collective mistake. This way back to right relationship is laid out, recognizing that people individually and collectively make mistakes.
3. A leader makes a mistake. Leaders often have the power to make colossal mistakes that cause far more damage than a household or individual. We need leaders to be thoughtful about the power they have and how they’re using it. We need leaders to take responsibility for their choices and their mistakes.
4. Someone testifies falsely, which of course does great damage to society’s trust in policies and laws and the processes of bringing about justice. Tell enough falsehoods, especially at the highest levels of leadership, and it is possible to so corrode trust and hope for justice that society struggles to carry on and not dissolve into civil conflict. 
5. Acting wrongly toward holy things. In our pluralist society, acting wrong toward holy things is a way of increasing divisions between people, increasing fearfulness, and causing folks to spend significant resources trying to protect themselves and their holy things. That’s exactly what happens every time someone physically attacks a house of worship or a house of study, attacks and defaces someone else’s religious writings, and seeks to deface and destroy sacred spaces and the people who care for those sacred spaces. As with testifying falsely, acting wrongly toward holy things can fray the fabric of society (whether pluralist or note) and lead to civil conflict.
6. Intentionally doing wrong and violating the mitzvot. Intention does matter. Human beings have choices. We can choose for greater good and we can choose for greater ill. We can refuse to choose, which is a choice, and thereby empower others choosing, frequently for greater ill. Mistakes happen. Choosing is a free act of responsibility and can, therefore, create even more problems. For example, choosing to refuse to care for to protect the stranger makes society extremely unsafe, as who is in the circle enough to protect and who is not must be made very obvious, and that is impossible to do without oppressing more and more people. 
7. Lying, cheating, and stealing are especially bad choices. Again, they undermine how to be together, trust, and social well-being. 

 

To be a free people, we need practices of responsibility for when we mess up. We need them as individuals, as households, and as communities. We need our leaders to understand and practice extra levels of responsibility, honoring the power they have that can cause so much damage. Today, we’re not sacrificing animals or grain or honey to demonstrate our acknowledging we’ve messed up. Instead, we are asked to make a different kind of sacrifice: to put ourselves vulnerably out there, acknowledging that we’ve chosen badly or made mistakes, attending to the damage we’ve done, and then working to try and address that damage. That reparation work may involve offering our gifts in particular ways, or wealth redistribution to nurture a greater social good or our time to nurture different and more caring relationships. 

 

Part of being human is sometimes failing, sometimes making mistakes, and sometimes choosing badly. We are unreasonable and hard-hearted if we expect ourselves or others to never make bad choices or mistakes. We also keep failing one another if we expect that we can or others not to have to face our or their bad choices and mistakes. Our relationships with one another, with this earth and with the Holy call us to responsibility. Responsibility isn’t always fun, and sometimes can be quite challenging to who we believe we are when we hurt one another living out those beliefs. But true freedom doesn’t exist without responsibility. A world without responsibility is a world where we don’t have choices, where we can’t make mistakes, where our creativity and our gifts and our relationships are stifled. That’s not a world I want, and it isn’t the world Leviticus envisions either. In describing the troubles we can create and the first stages of acknowledging and beginning reparations, Leviticus sets up a way of being that explains what it is to be free and so to be responsible. May we take the time this week to consider how we are responsible, how we tend our relationships, where we may need to nurture relationships (who’s a stranger in your world, where do you have sour relationships), and how we go about accepting responsibility and following through on our faithful promises after bad choices or mistakes.