Dedication
In advance preparation for Hanukkah, today’s sermon (December 11, 2011) examines two possible motivations for starting over: finding meaning and expressing love.
The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah is coming up in about a week and a half. The eight-day festival begins on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev, which this year falls on December 20. With the elementary religious education class studying Hanukkah today, it was a good excuse to look around our house, find the dreidel, and polish the kids’ menorah. Between that and stocking up on potatoes for holiday cooking, we’re getting ready for celebrating at our house.
There are several different threads of history that get woven into the story of Hanukkah. The version in the deuterocanonical books of 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees says that the 25th of Kislev, around 165 BCE, is when the Jews were able to re-light the altar fire in the ancient temple after re-claiming it from the forces of the Seleucid army. One explanation for the origin of the word “Hanukkah” is that it means, “dedication,” as when the Temple was re-dedicated following its desecration. According to the traditional story, Antiochus IV had invaded Jerusalem, looted the temple, put an altar to Zeus there, ordered pigs to be sacrificed at the temple, and banned circumcision. That’s what the Maccabees were fighting. The picture is one of oppression and redemption, of cleaning up and starting over by re-establishing the center of community and religious life.
Rabbincal sources from the sixth century CE (Shabbat 21, in the Gemara section of the Talmud) add that the first lamps of re-dedication were lit with the last bit of ritual olive oil that had escaped looting. As this version of the story goes, an amount that would normally have lasted one day, instead lasted eight days. This gave the Jews enough time to press new olive oil to keep the lamps burning. Some authors note that Hanukkah occurs at the time of the new moon that is closest to the winter solstice, the darkest nights of the darkest month of the year. Perhaps there are agrarian origins to the holiday, lighting fires against the darkness in anticipation of the turning of the season. (I enjoyed an essay on this topic, “I Chope you Chave a Chappy Chanuka” by Steven Posch, in Green Egg magazine, Vol. 27, No 107, Winter 1994-95.) Through a variety of re-tellings, Hanukkah is a holiday of increasing light, of energy sustained beyond reason, as well as a holiday of hope and freedom.
So, every year in our interfaith household, we re-dedicate. We clean up, we re-create sacred spaces, we re-orient ourselves to what sustains us. We celebrate abundant oil for frying potato pancakes and doughnuts. Like the community in the Talmud version of the story, pressing new oil for the lamps, we use those eight days to re-fuel. We light flames of hope, starting over with one candle on the first night of the holiday every year.
It might seem more logical to add more candles every year, to save some up and add them to the treasury. We start with one. For me, this is a reminder that transformation always starts with one: one act, one person, one positive intention. Having a spiritual life offers us regular opportunities for starting over. We all need the practice. Starting over, beginning with zero or one, isn’t easy. What motivates people to begin again, to re-dedicate themselves to a larger purpose? I think the main things that draw people forward are finding meaning and sharing love.
Finding Meaning
I did some reading about Hanukkah and Jewish wisdom in preparation for today’s sermon. I found that it was nearly impossible to get very far in modern understandings of Hanukkah without reflecting back on the Holocaust. Numerous children’s books about Hanukkah involve the memories of survivors, passing along the flame of hope to children. Partly, this theme is present because we still have a lot to learn and process from the Holocaust, so it’s going to come up in any exploration of modern Jewish culture. In addition, I think the Holocaust is the closest analogy in 20th century Jewish experience to the time of the Maccabees. Having all of the sages, the centers of learning and community, the families, the freedoms, and the dignities of everyday life systematically decimated has something in common with the devastation caused by war in the second century BCE. The Hanukkah story is about starting over after destruction, and I can see why re-telling that story was especially important after World War II.
One Holocaust survivor who made a tremendous impact by telling his personal story was Viktor Frankl, a psychotherapist who discovered hope in the midst of despair. He developed a counseling method called logotherapy. (Please excuse the gendered language of his time.) He wrote:
“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (From Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl)
Frankl explained that finding meaning might involve, for instance, creating a work or doing a deed, or by telling the story of our life in a way that changes our attitude about unavoidable suffering. I want to add here that we are not necessarily capable of this work alone all the time. Clinical depression, for instance, inhibits someone’s ability to re-frame their own story without help. This makes it all the more important that we search for meaning together. The point is that the choice of how to interpret the events of our lives is a freedom that human beings hold on to long after everything else has been taken away. From Frankl’s perspective, it seems that the strength of that freedom comes from the way our individual selves are connected to that which is larger than ourselves. He wrote:
“In the last resort, man should not ask, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ but should realize that he himself is being questioned. Life is putting its problems to him, and it is up to him to respond to these questions by being responsible; he can only answer to life by answering for his life. Life is a task. The religious man differs from the apparently irreligious man only by experiencing his existence not simply as a task, but as a mission.” (From Frankl’s book, The Doctor and the Soul)
Frankl’s definition of religion in this case, the perspective that we have a mission in life, is one that I think we can work with as Unitarian Universalists. We may have a variety of spiritual beliefs, yet we are united in meaningful action in our search for truth. Deciding how to tell stories—mythic stories, our own stories—is part of the freedom and responsibility of our shared journey.
Perhaps what moved the Maccabees to re-dedicate the temple after the desecration, and what drew some of the survivors to tell their story after the Holocaust, and what inspires people to still light a menorah each Hanukkah, is the desire to re-frame their story in a meaningful way. Starting over on a regular basis gives people a chance to make choices about how to understand the past and the present.
I’m going to make some guesses about how this year has gone. It would not surprise me if everyone in this room has had to start over in some way during the past year. Together, we’ve experienced job changes, injuries, losses, new people in our families, moves, illnesses, and recoveries. I am willing to bet that we have all had an occasion in 2011 to re-dedicate ourselves during a turn of events. How do we want to tell those stories? How can we take what we have learned from starting over and apply that to our mission in life?
As many of you know, I started over this fall with beginning a counseling internship at a private school in the city. It’s been years since I had the title of “intern.” For at least the first month, I had very little patience with myself for making rookie mistakes. It was hard to adjust to being back at square one, with so much to learn. Reading Viktor Frankl’s words about the search for meaning helps me to understand my story of starting over in larger context.
I believe that my mission in life is to help sustain the world as a fit dwelling place for the Divine. I believe the Divine is already here, infused within all things and extending beyond all things, and I feel that the Holy is a guest that inspires hospitality. The visitor may have been here yesterday and last week and last year, yet I still want to offer food and fresh towels today. Hospitality for the spirit begins anew in every moment. I believe that we make the world a fit dwelling place for the Divine by transforming society toward justice, by creating beauty, by practicing stewardship of the earth, and by opening our hearts to compassion. The space that is created between and among people in a circle of care is sacred space.
Starting over has been hard. Beginnings generally are, even positive beginnings. If I tell the story of square one as part of my spirituality and mission, the purpose of being challenged seems to make more sense. The world is always being created. In a way, expertise is an illusion that may hide the potential story being born in this very moment. Offering hospitality to the Divine within other people means beginning anew, because people are always changing and growing.
Sharing Love
The idea that relationships create sacred space is not something I invented. Among the many other people who have expressed this theology is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. (Sir Jonathan Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth. I will refer to his book, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility. I know some of us are theists and some of us aren’t. Rabbi Sacks speaks as a Jewish leader and a theist. I think what he has to say can translate beyond his own tradition.) He writes that the Hebrew Bible “repeatedly emphasizes that we cannot see God face to face. If follows that we can only see God in the face of another.” He goes on to point out an interesting detail in the description of the ark of the covenant in the ancient temple:
“Above the ark were two figures, cherubim. The Torah says that ‘their faces were turned toward one another (Ex. 25:20).’ … It was between the two cherubs that God spoke to Moses. The message of this symbol was so significant that it was deemed by God himself to be sufficient to outweigh the risk of misunderstanding. God speaks when two persons turn their face to one another in love, embrace, generosity and care. God’s presence is everywhere. But not everywhere are we ready to receive it. “
[Paraphrasing Martin Buber, he continues.] “When we open our ‘I’ to another’s ‘Thou,’ — that is where God lives … God lives in the between that joins self to self through an act of covenantal kindness. That is hessed, the physical deed in which soul touches soul and the universe acquires a personal face.”
I want to bring up Rabbi Sacks’ articulation of the holy in human compassion by way of saying that loving kindness is one of the things to which we dedicate ourselves in spiritual community. When the Jews returned to the ruined temple in 165 BCE, the cherubs face-to-face would have been waiting for them in the holiest of holies. Whatever had gone on in the hard years of exile from the temple, lighting the fire of re-dedication was a chance to claim space for people in relationship. They were moved to begin again, start over with worship and learning, even as the struggle continued outside. Hanukkah re-creates an experience of drawing people together, it is a re-enactment of starting over in hope.
I remember one Hanukkah celebration with the Jewish congregation we belonged to in San Francisco. The congregation had started out as a self-organized student group for the Jewish High Holidays at UCSF. By the time we found them, they had grown from there to being an occasional gathering to being a regular potluck and study group that met in someone’s living room. That Friday night during Hanukkah, we packed the garage to overflowing. We sang joyfully and admired the menorah through goofy party glasses.
The congregation kept changing its size and needs. We met a couple of times in a loft South of Market, we rented the social hall of the Ba’hai temple for a little while, we had a good run of several months in the multi-purpose room of a school. As the congregation moved from place to place, it retained its center as long as there was a core group of leaders who cared about each other and nurtured a vibrant, creative spiritual community. I am still amazed at how many times the power of love got us to start over.
It seems to me that loving kindness is one of the most potent forces that can call us forward. The act of re-dedication, of beginning anew with positive intentions, takes a lot of energy. That’s fine, because love provides a lot of energy. When I listen to people tell their stories in Joys & Sorrows and in Discussion & Sharing, I hear a lot of love in that to which we dedicate our lives. I hear about dedication to family, to professional works of compassion, to the animals who share our lives, to the communities that sustain music, to kids at work or at home or in the neighborhood. That to which we dedicate our lives is evident in word and deed, and, for a lot of us, that purpose comes down to love.
Here at UUF, gathering each week creates a container for the spirit of love. We share fellowship, food, and words of sympathy. We join together in compassion and generosity with our larger community. We exhibit passionate love and curiosity for this world, learning what we can and sharing the search for meaning. May we give thanks for our spiritual home in this season of re-dedication.
Conclusion
Re-dedication is ultimately an act of creativity. Starting over works best with positive motivation. When we find ourselves at square one, with forward being the most obvious direction, it’s time to listen for our calling. Whether that calling sounds like a search for meaning or an invitation from the spirit of love, may we find the words to name our mission and tell our story. May we know that each one of us has a gift that the world needs for its re-creation. May we offer each other gratitude and compassion as we move ahead.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
