[Jewish] [Mindful Torah] Psalm for Friday: Psalm 93, Verse 5

[Rabbi Steven Nathan]

Your witnessing is truly affirmed; holiness befits your house, God, for
all times.
The conclusion of this brief, but joyous, psalm reminds us of the
nature of holiness and godliness in our world. It is God that witnesses
the beauty, glory and complexity of existence.
We can affirm this completely because it is through us that God
witnesses the nature of existence. We are the eyes of God. We, One with
the Divine, have the eyes to see the world in all its splendor because
we are living and acting in eat day after day. If we pay attention, we
can see the splendor around us, even beneath the mire that sometimes
appears to be the reality.
What we witness when we look at the world with our souls, the godliness
within us, is the holiness that exists within everything. This holiness
fills the world, which is God's house. When we see the world in this
way we also connect with the holiness within ourselves.
The great 18th century hassidic rebbe, Nachman of Bratslav, made it a
habit to go out into nature every day to pray. Part of the prayer he is
believed to have composed includes the line "may all the foliage of the
fields, the grasses, trees and plants, awaken at my coming, I pray; and
may they send their life into my words of prayer..." The essence of
this prayer is that the godliness/holiness within the "non-human" must
connect with the godliness/holiness within us so in order to create
prayer. It is this connetion that enables us to see the underlying
holiness and to praise its existence. The prayer continues with the
acknowledgment that "I know that everything is one, because I know that
everything is You!" That is the ultimate Truth of which this psalm
speaks.
Holiness is indeed most befitting "God's house", the 'created' world
where/how we experience God. One of the most common names for God used
by the rabbis of the Talmud was המקום, the Place. As it is written, 'it
is not that the world is the place of God, but that God is the place of
the world.' Divinity contains the entire universe within it. We all
dwell within Divinity, just as we all are a part of Divinity. This
connection between plant, tree, animal, human, and all of nature is the
manifestation of the concept of God as the world's place.
The Oneness of the universe and the holiness that is within everything,
if we look hard enough, is the only constant in our lives. Uncertainty
and temporariness may be the only constants when it comes to the daily
lives which we live. But the reason we can live with all the
uncertainty, is because of the one true constant. The holiness of the
Divine, the divine-human-animal-nature connection of the world, exists
for all days, beyond any time frame that we can imagine.
This we can all witness and affirm, if we simply pay attention.

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Posted By Rabbi Steven Nathan to Mindful Torah at 5/20/2010 11:37:00 PM
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