COMMANDING AND OFFERING

I’ve been thinking about these two metaphors, particularly in conjunction with views of divinity, the universe and my style of teaching.

The God of the Hebrew Bible is a God who commands us to do various things. Follow what I command and good things, largely rain in season, good crops and animal fertility will follow. Don’t do what I say and bad things will happen, drought, famine, exile. There’s room for interpretation because the application of the commandments is often either too harsh (stoning people for adultery) or ambiguous. But even in the context of interpretation it is a very top down process where people are supposed to listen to sanctioned interpreters (Rabbis) and do as they say.

This hasn’t ever worked for me. I used to think that maybe there was something wrong with me that I wasn’t willing or able to find a teacher and follow him (or her, but the vast majority were male) and do what they said. I lived with that sense of wrongness for a long time.

Now I think of my resistance to a transcendent commanding deity as an expression of my Animistic world view. I don’t believe that there is a being outside of the system who can command beings inside the system. My Animism means that I hold that beings are ontologically equal while being differently bodied and thus differently abled. I can do things that a rock can’t do, and a rock can do things I can’t. I’m no better or worse than a rock, not higher up or lower down on some kind of cosmic ranking of species.

I was thinking about all this during my morning prayer practice which includes something that is heterodox but Jewish. I’ve been searching for the right language to describe my encounter with a being during my vision fast. Did he command the practice I’ve been engaging in since 2017/5777? But that was not quite the right word. And this morning I realized that he had offered a practice and I had said yes to his offer. In effect, he had said, try this practice for a sustained period of time, and I said OK, I’ll do it for a year.

It's the same thing I try to do as a teacher and a parent. I offer suggestions and it is up to them how they take them on. Maybe I would be a more successful parent if I simply said do this—my daughter would certainly prefer for me to tell her yes or no and not say “here’s my concern” But just as I am not receptive to commandments, I’m equally reluctant/unable to command. For what it is worth, that reluctance/inability was equally present in how I led my business.

I hope that you engage with what I write as an offering. Take what works, ignore what doesn’t. It is my offering, an offering rooted in my conversation with the world, particularly my ancestors and the wide range of different beings who provide the context of our human lives.

                                                                                                                                                      INDIGENOUS OFFERING