Bread & Flesh

nourishment for prophets in hiding

Elijah went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.
And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning,
and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.
1 Kings 17:5-6

Starting a new monthly series here, sharing selections from what I’m reading devotionally as well as what turns up in my research for sermons, writing, lectures, or whatever. I’m praying it can be a little provision for you, as it has been for me.

Ralph Chessé Elijah and the Ravens 1945

•••

Someone shared this dark gem of a Jane Hirshfield poem with me—“Late Prayer” (the title, needless to say, is crucial):

Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
It goes out to everything equally 
circling rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket, 
a single nail, a single ruby— 
all the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

We mustn’t read the first line or the last as fatalist. The poem is not confusing good and evil, grace and nature. It’s reminding us there’s a wider circle in nature, a deeper magic within and under the influence of which the wheel of predation turns (see the reversal in the third line). Just so, there can be within the human heart a holding together, a gathering of all that happens into a single sound. But what sound? A cry? A groan? A laugh? A prayer-song that contains them all—that’s why it must come late.

•••

I can’t remember what led me to it, but I somehow stumbled onto The Holy Fire by Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto. It is indeed a burning:

• “At first our relationship to God is on the order of ‘I am my beloved’s, and he is mine’ (Song 6:3): in response to our yearning for Him, He draws close to us. Now at first this divine closeness corresponds only to the measure of our ability to elicit such closeness. But as the Jew continues to give himself over to God, then God’s yearning for us is aroused, and that divine yearning is more than just reciprocal, more than measure for measure: it is greater than I am. Furthermore, since God’s yearning for me is in a measure larger than my self, then I grow to become a greater human being; I now overshadow my essence.”

• “Every Jew must work to assure that God speaks to him individually. The way to do this is through prayer, by saying ‘Thou.’ That effects a divine revelation to the individual, an encounter. At that moment, God speaks to him; God teaches him Torah individually. God too employs the word ‘thou’ in direct address. Each person sees and grasps his portion of the Torah, the part that God addresses to him and teaches him, which no one else can grasp…
  

  “It is also the case that for each individual, others grasp aspects of the Torah that he cannot. We find this idea in the holy work Ma’or va-Shemesh as an explanation of the verse ‘The secret of the Lord is with those that fear Him’ (Ps. 25:14): the study of Kabbalah alone cannot be considered esoteric wisdom. After all, since the teachings of Kabbalah are written in books and are available to be studied, what is really secret about them? Rather, the true esoteric knowledge is that realization of divinity which each individual attains, and which no other individual attains. When you achieve a certain grasp of the divine, and cannot communicate it to anyone else—that is the true esoteric wisdom!

  “Now this can be attained by means of prayer: prayer can make it happen that one stands facing God, addressing Him as Thou, and that God speaks to him personally with the word ‘thou,’ as we’ve explained. But in order for our words of direct address to effect a Presence, a divine revelation, the individual who is praying must first reveal his own self in the words of his prayer. That is, his essence must be present in the words. Then, ‘as in water face answers to face’ (Prov. 27:19), —in a fully reciprocal mirroring—this effects the revelation of His blessed presence. Even if this heartfelt, interior prayer is prompted by a calamity, God forbid, it nevertheless has the effect of eliciting a direct, personal revelation.”

• “Prophecy is impossible in the state of sadness.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Rabbi Shapira, here’s a place to start.

•••

I’m pretty much always reading Maggie Ross (an Anglican solitary in vows to ++Rowan Williams and spiritual director for Desmond Tutu). Lately, I’ve come back to these passages in Writing the Icon of the Heart on “beholding” because of something I’m hoping to share in my sermon for the ordination service at our upcoming convocation: