Terumah: Anatomy of a Dwelling
A Telling: The Treasure in the Stove (a Jewish folk tale about a man who dreams of a treasure hidden under a bridge in a faraway city, but ultimately finds it buried under his own stove at home)
So often what we go so far to seek is right here at home, right here in the heart.
This week’s Torah portion Terumah – an offering freely given from the heart – the portion concerns itself – in great detail – with the elements and construction of a holy house, the portable tabernacle that traveled with our great, great, grandparents as they journeyed through the wilderness after leaving 400 years of slavery in Ancient Egypt.
The tabernacle was a portable home, a moveable sanctuary for sacred meeting and so we as asked this week to contemplate how this image of the tabernacle, its construction and details might inform our spiritual practice.
Symbologists tell us the tabernacle as microcosm for the world. Later it served as a prototype for the great temple of Jerusalem. You will recall that the temple itself became the microcosm for an ideal and orderly and beautiful universe. Its location is both sacred and central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
You will also recall that the temple’s heart, its center – the holy of holies — is located on the spot where two brothers embraced in love, generosity and kindness. The Holy of holies is any place of meeting where love, generosity and kindness prevail.
Along with the temple the physical holy of holies was destroyed in the year 70 CE by expanding Roman Empire which sought to quell any sense of native empowerment in Judea. The Talmudic rabbis tell a long tale about the back story of the destruction, which, to be to brief, occurred because of an argument that started with an insulted, uninvited party guest, escalated to naming calling, revenge, and the settling of scores.
So whether it was militaristic expansionism or, as the rabbis say, sinat chinam (baseless hatred) – or both – either way, the Temple fell and with it the physical place of sacred encounter called the holy of holies.
But every year when we reach the Torah portion, we rebuild its tabernacle prototype in the place of our minds, intellect and sacred story. No longer in a fixed place in Jerusalem, the holy of holies – the tabernacle’s descendent – is now the place of the human heart.
It was known as the inner shrine in the temple days, the most intimate, private place of meeting with the numinous. At the same time, it is said that prayers sent from the holy of holies should embrace the whole universe. Both Intimate, highly personal, and completely universal.
And so for us, on this day, we consider the anatomy of dwelling. That place that is at once both intimate, personal and completely universal resides not in distant space but in the place of your heart and mine.
Put another way in Equations of Eternity, by David Darling:
You are roughly 18 billion years old and made of matter that has been cycled through the multimillion degree heat of innumerable giant stars. You are composed of particles that once were scattered across thousands of light-years of interstellar space, particles that were blasted out of exploding suns and that for eons drifted through the cold, starlit vacuum of the Galaxy. You are very much a child of the cosmos.
And Albert Einstein writes:
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty.
Who are we? What is this heart? It is the place of greatest intimacy and the place of vital universality. This heart of being human, the living tabernacle of our being, can be accessed only with care and pacing. The keys to its doors are silence, patience, awareness, mindfulness.
We may find the ancient story of schlepping a tabernacle through the wilderness, or even the need for a divinely inspired place of meeting, a bit fanciful, even rudimentary, but in our sophistication, we still recognize the human need for places of gathering and for the time to touch into the silence, the universal, the most intimate part of ourselves: the holy of holies that is the human heart.We may no longer build the tent of meeting in wilderness, or need the validation of a holy of holies, but we do know the longing for touching into peace, loving kindness, stillness at the center in the midst a crazy world.
Like the pintele Yid who went wandering in search of a great treasure, we too return to find that the very peace, stillness, loving kindness we seek dwells right here in this human, living holy of holies, as the deepest self.
The Guest House, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they\’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Public Domain
