interests meme

[davidfcooper]

LJ Interests meme results

1. asthma:
   would take my breath away (but for medication).
2. democrats:
   care about people; republicans care about property.
3. history:
   Know where you've been to know where you're going.
4. jazz:
   is my favorite musical genre, the meeting place of the intellect and the senses.
5. judaism:
   To quote at length from Rabbi Goldie Milgram:
   
   

   Judaism rests on three things: God, Torah and Israel. How do you currently understand each of these?
   

   God
   

   For me God expresses the oneness of the evolving Cosmos. God is that to which I cry out when I am in pain. God is a direction for my praise of the stunning creation of which we are a part. God is that which you and I resemble..........in both our creative and destructive nature.
   God is everything unfolding, seeking all possibilities, becoming what it is becoming. God is the encoded consciousness of the cosmos which is aware of Its needs and deploys every one of us as an important part of the present and future.
   God is the cosmos's ability to interact with us...........our choices shifting its realities, its unfolding realities impacting upon our choices. God is as vast and inconceivable as infinity and as intimate and familiar as love and death.
   God is our sensation of the deep structure of matter through which evolving Jewish rituals encode ways of achieving healing, connection, loving-kindness and peace.
   There are at least 360 degrees in all dimensions of possible God experience. Some are diametric opposites, such as feeling abandoned or betrayed by God or feeling loved. Humans are complex beings and we can contain opposing experiences as meaningful without requiring any specific on to be proven or true by the methods of linear thinking. I have heard both Rabbis Marcia Prager and Jane Litman individually articulate a very important version of this idea as follows: "When people ask me if I believe in God, I answer 'no.' And then they continue by saying, 'I experience God.'"
   

   Torah
   

   Torah is our people's recording of our people's mythologized memories as well as our foundational holistic tract for living one's life. Torah serves numerous valuable functions in the life of Jews: The characters and stories are sacred archetypes that we hold as national treasures. Each week, as we let our individual souls become a prism for the reading of the text, we expand the Torah of our lives by what comes into our awareness about ourselves and others. This is what I call "revelation."
   The cycle of reading Torah helps us with our personal and collective growth. Torah helps us realize that when we make a difficult decision, like leaving our personal Egypt to give up a form of enslavement in our lives, that we don't arrive straight into the promised land of our hopes. Suddenly, like the Israelites, we find ourselves untrained to live in the bewildering wilderness-like place that our decision places us. Like the Israelites we must reformat so that we can grow into our hopes and dreams. Even Moses, one of the all-time great CEO's, becomes frustrated and challenged by trying to manage people in the midst of radical change. Like him, we too find times in our lives when we feel like we are climbing mountains. How comforting to have Torah stories which teach us to anticipate this reality and feel supported while we are moving through it.
   Christians often mistake the Torah for being all there is to the Torah of Judaism. They are unaware that it is our sacred starting point, from which we have evolved for several thousand years. We have developed profound tools for interpreting and modifying the impact of those verses which reflect the values we have outgrown. Without an awareness of Talmud, Midrash, the Responsa literature and other more contemporary Jewish religious texts, it is possible to greatly misunderstand Judaism and the Jewish people.
   There are also troubling passages in our sacred texts. It became an essential revelation for me to notice that Judaism holds midrash as an important source of sacred learning. Midrash occurs when we notice lacunae - gaps or other strange moments in the text that give us opportunities to fill in the text or ask it our own questions. Our religious imagination in every generation has interacted with the text raising questions and ideals appropriate to the times. Sometimes I teach that the story of Abraham's experience of God asking him to sacrifice his son strikes me as being a tale about misguided faith which, when applied, led to severe, traumatic child abuse. Previous generations usually found a very different message in this text, that of the importance of acting on faith. I experience the story of Sarah instigating Abraham to throw Hagar out into the wilderness as an example of unacceptable behavior in a family, many see this as an essential act of creating the family of inheritance for the Jewish future. Today Jewish women search for the voice and names of Lot's wife, Noah's wife, Rachel and Leah's mother (or mothers), Abraham's mother.........earlier generations only rarely noticed the absence of such details.
   I am passionately interested in perpetuating the sacred dialogue among the generations of our people, so that while we might respectfully disagree we can remain on the same page. New commentaries are emerging which include the voices of Rashi, Rambam and other great luminaries of prior generations along with those of contemporary commentators, including among others, women and Jews of all denominations. This is true Jewish continuity, putting the Torah of all our lives into the tradition. Consider putting your own voice into the dialogue and onto the page!
   

   Israel
   

   To me Israel first means the Jewish people. We are one of the longest continuously existing forms of human organization on the planet. I consider it absurd for us to believe that anything other than the needs of Cosmos could lead to our extinction. Not intermarriage under the Greeks, the Babylonian Exile, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, or even the Holocaust have succeeded in eradicating us. Creation clearly has an intention to maintain our presence for the time being and at different points in history we seem to be needed in differing numbers across the face of the planet (and no doubt, throughout the accessible Cosmos, when human colonies come to exist in space.) Numbers are not the criterion for survival or significance, look how important a little bit of baking soda is to the success of a cake!
   Like most organisms in creation we are diverse, we Jews, this is a well-documented survival mechanism for species which tend to evolve adaptively in response to the niches in which they are found. Let us regard our diversity with awe and respect - as we would any other aspect of creation. It is likely we are important to creation's unfolding, given that against all rationally apparent odds we continue to exist. May we continue to practice, treasure and fine tune our diverse, yet Jewish ways of being, which it seems, are part of our covenantal contribution to the Great Unfolding.
   Then there is the land of Israel. Our relationship to this land, its stories and governance is one of the many organizing structures of a Jewish person's sense of meaning and identity. It may be like the nucleus of a cell, or some other structure - important to the organism (the Jewish people) of which it is a part, yet not comprising the entire organism. For me it is a positive place of wonder, history, spirit and exploration, while the shadow side behaviors of Jews inside and outside of the land challenge me to grow and help with forging new models for the moral, compassionate co-existence of peoples and perspectives.

   
   

6. literature:
   I write poetry but read fiction and enjoy drama as well. I appreciate a combination of insight and skillful wordplay.
7. marriage:
   is my greatest source of happiness. I have indeed been lucky in love.
8. movies:
   I enjoy a variety of genres but especially psychological dramas.
9. nygiants:
   Despite the loss to the Chargers Big Blue is off to a promising start for the 2005-06 season.
10. poetry:
    One of my few skills and areas of accomplishment, and an enduring pleasure.

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