SING GOD A NEW SONG

Parashat Aharei Mot-K’doshim

Today I was having lunch with a new member here, and he was sharing what their family does on Friday nights.  They light candles, have a few moments of silence, and then they do a practice called “Rose, Bud, Thorn,” where they share one thing that is blossoming and beautiful in their week -the rose, one thing that is an emerging area that with care might bloom- the bud,  and one thing that isn’t going so well – the thorn.

I thought this was a beautiful Shabbat practice, and it fits with my theme for tonight which is “Sing God a New Song.”   The “Bud” is exactly what I was thinking of, so at lunch when he described this, I wanted to share it. 

The Psalms remind us over and over to “Sing God a New Song.”  Just in our Friday Night Kabbalat Shabbat service, two of the Psalms we read start this way:  Shir L’Adonai Shir Chadash.  This week I’ve been thinking about what that might mean to us as modern Jews, particularly as it relates to our spiritual lives.

Now, some of us might have absolutely perfect fulfilling, and deeply meaningful spiritual lives.  I know in my life, I’ve had times like that, but I’ve also had other times when my spiritual life is not so great, where either I knock, and no one is home up there, or more usually, where I just stop knocking at the door and go about my busy life without giving my spiritual life the attention it needs and requires to blossom.

Those of us that have a set of regular, even daily practices that we’ve done for years also have this experience, where it becomes rote, habit, and they don’t give us the same sense of meaning, of connection and spirit that they used to.

Others of us have just never really given our spiritual lives much focus, or time and energy, and it just doesn’t rise to the level that other things do.  Exhaustion, as it turns out, is not so spiritual. Things like child care, aging parents, work, or dealing with the house and gardens take up our time and our bandwidth.    Of course, those things can be spiritual, but to make them so requires we find ways to shape them into something spiritual.

So often as Jews, we talk about changes in our spiritual lives during the High Holy Days, but since today was such a gorgeous spring day, I want to suggest that now is a perfect time to consider tending our spiritual garden, to get more roses and fewer thorns.    It is a perfect time of year to try some new things to reconnect to God, to spirit, and to the larger community and planet on which we are blessed to live. 

Sing God a New Song.  Jewish prayer is famously fixed. It’s in the Siddur, and even at this Reform temple, the prayers we do are almost all rooted in the prayers that were done 2,000 years ago.  The order of prayers, the language of the Hebrew, all this has been fixed for a very very long time, but the rabbis said it was important not to make our prayers fixed, that we need to weave our regular prayers and spontaneous prayers into our religious practice.  We need to mix it up to keep it real.

So if you have a well-set prayer or spiritual practice, maybe this is a good time to think of trying something new and experiment a bit in order to keep the connection to the sacred alive and healthy.   Maybe instead of reciting the morning prayers, you could just sit and watch nature, listen to nature and breathe once or twice a week.   Maybe instead of your usual practice, whether it is yoga, prayer, chanting or meditation, you could try doing it differently and see what you learn from that. 

But if like many of us, you don’t have such a disciplined spiritual life, this would be a great time to try.  

Here are a few ideas:

·      if praying with words, especially Hebrew, just doesn’t work for you, try putting a tallit around you every morning and just breathe, listen to nature, and let yourself feel a part of the world around you and be grateful for the life you have.

·      If you are used to doing yoga, perhaps add a Hebrew mantra or chant to your practice.

·      If you are a person for whom spirituality comes when you are out in nature, hiking, walking skiing, think about making it a practice to stop for a bit, and take it all in, breathing deeply, allowing yourself to feel connected to the larger world and to nature, and then say the Shema, or some words of gratitude for being alive.

·      Maybe you could try hitbod’dut, the Chassidic practice of just out into nature to be by yourself and just talk to God, stream of consciousness, without worrying whether it makes sense or you fully believe it.  

·      Or maybe you should take “Sing a New Song” literally, and try just singing more in your life, and songs that are particularly meaningful for you.  Listening to Joni Mitchell or Alanis Morissette, or Joe Buchanan is certainly one of my most powerful spiritual practices.  More spontaneous dance parties at home make life better.

·      Or maybe your old song is one of complaining and negativity; try singing a more grateful, positive song in your life.

·      Maybe you focus on your eating and making sure eating is a spiritual practice, with time for being thankful, for mindfulness about what you are eating and what goes into it. 

·      Or maybe it is time to finally learn Hebrew so you can access the traditional prayers more fully. 

·      Or take the upcoming Mussar class, or my “Making Prayer Real” that I’ll be offering again in the coming year.

·      If you are a person who is just too busy for any of it, try the Rabbinic idea of saying 100 blessings a day, but let’s start smaller – say 10 or 18 blessings each day, and by blessings, I mean simply taking a moment an expressing your gratitude for small things in your life.  Maybe it’s remembering to be thankful for your soy latte at Starbucks, or maybe it’s remembering to be thankful that you have a home, a job, or children.  Maybe it’s stopping when you see a beautiful flower, or a rainbow, and saying a blessing like “Thank you God for making such beauty in this world.”

It matters less what you do to mix it up, to try something new than it does that you simply do something to refresh your spirit, because wanting a spiritual life that is full will not make it happen.  That requires you giving it time and space and a few practices, and I think for those of us who are Jewish, finding ways to infuse more Judaism into those practices will only deepen the experience and challenge us to connect to our tradition, and it will challenge our habits of tending toward disconnection, judgment, and loneliness. 

Of course, I want you all to decide coming to services here is what you need, but it matters more to me that you give your spiritual lives some time, energy, and attention – some Jew-Jew, so to speak, to take the buds, and even some of the thorns, and turn them toward becoming roses.

I want to end with a short poem by Anais Nin that came across my Instagram feed a few weeks ago and made me start thinking about where in my life I have buds pushing to open.  It’s called RISK and it reminds me that opening up to having a spiritual life is for many of us a profound risk, but that there is also something pushing us, through disappointment, exhaustion, and cynicism, to open up.

RISK

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.

Shabbat Shalom.