 | The first two weeks of our Omer journey from Passover (liberation) to Shavuot (revelation) were themed to calibrating our character capacities around love (hesed) and strength (gevurah). These weeks were about balancing our willingness to love and be loved, our soft-hearted courage to face the future, and our boundaries lest we be either rigid or doormats easily abused. This third week we focus on balance (tiferet), which is about much more than aligning or a "Golden Mean." |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
This seven-week series of posts about the Omer journey maps to our "Soul Stretch" mini-series on Tuesdays 8:00pm - 8:30pm through Shavuot. Each week's post summaries themes covered in the prior Tuesday's session.
During the first two weeks of Omer, we looked at love (hesed) and strength (gevurah) as character qualities and spiritual callings. Our purpose has been to cultivate awareness and seek balance.
In this third week of counting Omer (May 7 - May 13, 2024), we focus on balance (tiferet) itself.
Balance, by definition, is an elusive concept. Meditation practitioners and Eastern wisdom traditions both know that the best way to lose balance is to seek it too intensely. Like clutching sand at the beach, holding balance too tightly only causes it to escape.
Important as balance can be, even balance can be... well, unbalancing. If we hew too tightly to balance, we can cease aspiring for the important things in life that only come when we put balance aside temporarily for something more important – like love or the strength of courage for a cause. But without balance, our lives can become unstable and cause us to lose our footing altogether.
In the inward sense of Jewish character development, some things are core – and the things that Judaism deems core are telling. One of them is beauty. Jewish mysticism teaches that life, our world, ourselves, each other, our souls – we're naturally wired to see them as beautiful, if only we and our sometimes negative attitudes can stay out of our own way. We should aspire to see this beauty and take it in. Without beauty, life can be gray and ordinary, and thus so is any sense of balance we might achieve. But neither do we achieve true balance by fetishizing the exceptional.
Jewishly speaking, another core matter is spirituality itself. The teacher of my teachers, R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z"l, taught that much as sunflowers are heliotropic, naturally inclining their faces to the sun, so we are "theotropic," naturally inclining to seek meaning (or, for some of us, to seek God). Spirituality – as I define it, the sense that all of us and life itself are more than our routine awareness might suggest – is hard-wired into the human spirit.
But even spirituality can go out of whack. "Too much" spiritual practice, without healthfully balanced boundaries (that's strength/gevurah) can become ungrounded, disconnected from day-to-day life and actual people. Jewish life prizes this life – this messy, jumbled life – and therefore urges us to immerse in it. "Too much" spirituality can lure us away from living in this world as our best, most loving and ethical selves: we can take refuge in spirituality in ways that disconnect from the world we live in. On the other hand, "too little" spirituality limits us to routine awareness, which tends to disconnect us from what's truly important. (Consider, for instance, how much more we are, see, feel and can do when we toss routine aside for love.)
Consider how your own character tends to relate to balance, beauty and spirituality – and how your best you can emerge with some loving attention to them. Dedicate some time, energy and heart to them this week in particular.
Next week will be about resilience (netzah).
This seven-week series of posts about the Omer journey maps to our "Soul Stretch" mini-series on Tuesdays 8:00pm - 8:30pm through Shavuot. Each week's post summaries themes covered in the prior Tuesday's session.
During the first two weeks of Omer, we looked at love (hesed) and strength (gevurah) as character qualities and spiritual callings. Our purpose has been to cultivate awareness and seek balance.
In this third week of counting Omer (May 7 - May 13, 2024), we focus on balance (tiferet) itself.
Balance, by definition, is an elusive concept. Meditation practitioners and Eastern wisdom traditions both know that the best way to lose balance is to seek it too intensely. Like clutching sand at the beach, holding balance too tightly only causes it to escape.
Important as balance can be, even balance can be... well, unbalancing. If we hew too tightly to balance, we can cease aspiring for the important things in life that only come when we put balance aside temporarily for something more important – like love or the strength of courage for a cause. But without balance, our lives can become unstable and cause us to lose our footing altogether.
In the inward sense of Jewish character development, some things are core – and the things that Judaism deems core are telling. One of them is beauty. Jewish mysticism teaches that life, our world, ourselves, each other, our souls – we're naturally wired to see them as beautiful, if only we and our sometimes negative attitudes can stay out of our own way. We should aspire to see this beauty and take it in. Without beauty, life can be gray and ordinary, and thus so is any sense of balance we might achieve. But neither do we achieve true balance by fetishizing the exceptional.
Jewishly speaking, another core matter is spirituality itself. The teacher of my teachers, R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z"l, taught that much as sunflowers are heliotropic, naturally inclining their faces to the sun, so we are "theotropic," naturally inclining to seek meaning (or, for some of us, to seek God). Spirituality – as I define it, the sense that all of us and life itself are more than our routine awareness might suggest – is hard-wired into the human spirit.
But even spirituality can go out of whack. "Too much" spiritual practice, without healthfully balanced boundaries (that's strength/gevurah) can become ungrounded, disconnected from day-to-day life and actual people. Jewish life prizes this life – this messy, jumbled life – and therefore urges us to immerse in it. "Too much" spirituality can lure us away from living in this world as our best, most loving and ethical selves: we can take refuge in spirituality in ways that disconnect from the world we live in. On the other hand, "too little" spirituality limits us to routine awareness, which tends to disconnect us from what's truly important. (Consider, for instance, how much more we are, see, feel and can do when we toss routine aside for love.)
Consider how your own character tends to relate to balance, beauty and spirituality – and how your best you can emerge with some loving attention to them. Dedicate some time, energy and heart to them this week in particular.
Next week will be about resilience (netzah).
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