My Freedom
Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law. Proverbs 29:18 NASB
Unrestrained – “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Of course, that doesn’t mean I want no one around (well, sometimes I really don’t want to have anyone around). What I mean is that I don’t want your interference. I want my version of freedom. In Hebrew this is called para. It’s an interesting word. In one form it means, “to act as leader, to lead.” In another form it means, “to let go, to cut loose, to act without restraint.” That makes sense. Everyone knows that the leader does what he wants. In fact, if I add a final aleph to this word, I get another word that expresses my desire to do what I want without question—pharaoh. The one who lives an unrestrained life. The little god.
When we no longer see (experience) the awe and majesty of the one true God, YHVH, we live like little pharaohs. We become our own gods. We cut loose from delighting Him. We no longer act according to our apprehension of His power and might. As Oswald says, “We cast off” all kinds of practices and provisions that belong to the Kingdom of heaven while we create a kingdom on earth—and discover, only too late, that we are enslaved to our own desires. My version of freedom is bondage to myself. No army in the world can overcome that force of habit. I don’t fail in my efforts to reform and become a “good” person because I lack some prophetic word. I have all the words that I could ever need, collected in a nice leather bound book on my shelf. I fail because I no longer experience the awe of YHVH in my daily existence. Without a sense of majesty, my world collapses into the little kingdom of pharaoh and I spent my day taking care of my own needs.
When Heschel says that a man’s vision must exceed his grasp, he does not mean that we need to set goals for bigger houses, faster cars and yachts. He means our view of life must include what is beyond this life. It must include the vision of God’s purposes, experienced as a present reality in my choices today. Without this perspective and experience, I will have little motivation to deny those pressing emotional needs in order to serve a greater good. I will let go of the heavenly bonds in order to have earthly freedom. I will enter the prison because its walls protect me.
Solomon’s wisdom informs me that happiness is found in keeping Torah. Happiness is not the product of unrestrained living. Pharaoh (and all like him) was not happy. He was “free” to be enslaved to his own ego, but that is a far cry from “happy.” This verse uses the Hebrew ‘eser, “blessed, happy” as the proper description for someone who has discovered that Torah living means walking in the wide open spaces where God and Man commune in peace. We prodigals take steps toward the rushing approach of YHVH when we decide today to be happy in the commandments. Pick one. Do it. Feel the wonder. Day 20.
Topical Index: unrestrained, para, Pharaoh, ‘eser, happy, Proverbs 29:18
Free to be me. Free to love. I must be free before I can worship Him. To move in 360 degrees – to have all my choices returned to me – IS freedom: is power, love and a sound mind. In the middle East there is a Sufi sect of Mohammedanism called the Whirling Dervishes, who are devoted to ecstatic meditation which includes whirling. The act of whirling, as far as I can tell, is an attempt to leave the ego behind and create the experience of love, which is freedom of movement equally in all directions. (It looks like really hard work to me!)
Evil, as seen through the looking glass, is an attempt to create love in the flesh. Evil is not about hate: evil is not about fear: evil is about lying. In fact, evil would be telling the truth if it told us that it was about those things. No, all evil lies to us and we fall for the lie because it holds out the illusion that we can recreate love on our own: we can have all the accoutrements and advantages and attributes, even, of love, but we can leave the Lover behind, and create another one to take His place. So we extend the right hand of fellowship – which is the hand that should have been exclusively His – to devils. We would have been better off if we had cut it off, y’all!
“Without a sense of majesty, my world collapses into the little kingdom of pharoah and I spend my day taking care of my own needs.” This sentence sums up perfectly why the world is suffering! What have we lost? First and foremost, we have lost that sense of majesty, which is the experience of purpose, and which is also the place I must be in before my ego is able to relax. (I think of the ego as a little hyper alert system that gauges whether or not I am correctly experiencing love: a most necessary little instrument, and one that is much abused and maligned, I would have to say!) We were created in the image of G-d, which is to say we are to be an expression of purpose: a determiner of reality; a channel of super-connection that ties the rest of it together. This is why the rest of creation as we know it looks to us to be a steward to it. A steward gives purpose; determines meaning, if you will, to what he or she is serving. We are the crowning act of creation because we are to provide majesty: when we show up on the scene, we are to be the embodiment of the Majesty of heaven to the rest of creation. We are to serve, or be able to provide function – and therefore meaning – to it. All creation waits to do our bidding. Our choices must therefore remain free – remain POSSIBLE – in all directions. Why? I think it is because at any moment, at any point, the Lord of the dance may step literally ANYWHERE, and we need to be able to keep up!
So if I am not supposed to serve my own needs: if I was created to serve the needs of all the rest of creation instead, then how are mine going to be met? Here lies the true beauty of the system. What do I need? ALL of my needs are rooted in the need to love and be loved. In the act of continually reaching out to the Source of love for the purposes of obtaining the love necessary to carry out the injunction to be that steward (this is the essence of the dance), I am freeing up a flow of love that is tremendous enough to satisfy all the rest of creation. When I am lined up correctly in obedience of Torah, I have placed myself in the right place for that Love to pour through me on its Way to everything and everyone else. This is the purpose for which I have been made in the image of that Source: I was made to be a little, or, derivative, source for all else. When you look at it like that, it is like asking whether I would choose to be the beginning and the end for just me, or whether I want to be that for everything and everyone else. The differential is staggering. No wonder our egos are suffering! They are screaming out for that huge flow: that non-ending stream of Love that is necessary before we are fulfilling our true function. Serving my own needs? That is a joke! What we really desire is to manage the World Bank! No wonder the ego is insatiable! Perhaps we would do well to start listening to what our egos really have to say.
Laurita you never cease to minister to me. And that IMO is the outpouring of love that fulfills all my needs. I get great satisfaction in serving others. But it never fails that when I am in need it is my Torah keeping brothers and sisters (and many that haven’t seen the need for Torah) that run to meet me in my deepest need. This also is the beauty of the system. When we all seek to meet each others need everyone’s needs are met. Such a simple reality and so hard to grasp.
Skip, when is the word para used in a leadership sense? Do you mean Pharaoh or are there more times it’s used in that sense?
Wow, little pharaohs. I intend to pass this on to the little pharaohs in my house. I wonder what the response will be. Thanks.
So, this could exactly what I’ve been in search of. Not a place, not a state of mind, but actions done and formed within the guidelines of torah.
I’ve pretty much looked at obedience as something I had to do or that which I should strive for. Instead, I will find life and all its wonder in the act of doing torah in all its realm. Peace comes, delight comes and rest comes in snuggling up to YHWH via living rightly in his mitvos. A simple truth and profound realization.
If I want to know YHWH I choose to rid myself of all that hinders proximity to him. How? Persevere through the daily challenges of “breaking through all the barriers that separate me from YHWH.” (The Path of the Just) Walk torah. Do torah. Doing so aligns us with him.
Living IN Torah is a preview and taste of what lies ahead, the world to come. Preparing on the sixth day in order to eat on the sabbath. Preparing and using this world to form his image in us by walking in torah now arrive fully and properly formed in the world to come.
Gonna have to dwell on this a little more. It seems to be a game changer for me.
Thanks, Skip.
Michael our little Torah group prefers to think of keeping Torah as a great “get to” privilege. We don’t “have to” do it, we get to!
🙂
I understand.
I guess I just haven’t really grasped the idea of the world to come as the goal. I am far too short sighted. The “I’ve got a ticket” mentality is firmly in there, I suppose. However, I can now see how taking Sabbath-keeping serious would help build a picture of the world to come. It just hasn’t permeated my life yet. Onward.
Mitzvos
Sorry for the typos
“I fail because I no longer experience the awe of YHVH in my daily existence. Without a sense of majesty, my world collapses into the little kingdom of pharaoh and I spent my day taking care of my own needs.”
This is so good (in the sense of challenging), so inspiring, and so accurately describes ME! I am reading Abraham Heschel’s book ‘Man is not alone’, and while I have to re-read parts of it (not a bad thing), I’m beginning to appreciate wonder, perhaps truly for the first time.
Many years ago I saw a magnificent almost semicircular rainbow while walking in an easterly direction as the sun was setting. The street was quite crowded, and I pointed out that glorious sight to many of them. Only a few seemed to see it for what it was – a manifestation of the glory of God. (Of course, if some twit stopped me to point out something that didn’t interest me, I might react as some of those people did.) It was far more than a cognitive event, it was an experience of His beauty.
And out of that experience came two books about the beauty of nature as revealed by mathematics, and the beauty of mathematics as revealed in nature.
That sense of wonder has faded over the years. I have sought it in vain, but perhaps today is the day I will start to find what I had lost – a sense of His majesty in the daily round.
Mr. John Adam, how or where could I go to find your books? Would they still be in print? I would like to read them!
Laurita – I wasn’t trying to publicize my books, merely to signify the impact that sense of wonder made. But to answer your question, yes all are still in print, and probably cheapest on Amazon. But if you want to read about them first, here are the links from the publisher’s site (and I include two other book links also). In the first book I placed a topically-relevant scripture verse as an epigraph for each chapter, and suggested that the reader seek out the Biblical context also. That brought some cries of foul from some readers on the Amazon site! Clearly by so doing I had pushed some buttons…:-)
Mathematics in Nature: http://www.pup.princeton.edu/titles/7686.html
Guesstimation: http://www.pup.princeton.edu/titles/8625.html
A Mathematical Nature Walk: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8864.html
X and the City: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9663.html