Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Yichud & Kavanah

Another two month hiatus from blogging, no promises, but I really need to be writing more. I've had something more specific to direct my writing to (ie my long-distance relationship) And so I begin this process with hopes that I will write more regularly, and hopefully more interestingly. At least until I have a job. Also, I need to get back into something I used to do all the time, which is write movie reviews. Those are available here.

Mentioned briefly in Shaping of Things to Come by Frost & Hirsch, these two principles in the title of this post are really co-essential, and they jumped out at me from the page (not just because they were italicized). Kavanah means "to pay attention, to direct mind and heart in order to maximize levels of intentionality in our actions." Yichud referes specifically to the Shema, and the oneness, or unity of God, and points to the principle of us unifying our lives under this God who is charactierized as being "one".

Many people have said it, but Rob Bell said in one of his books or Nouma videos that if anything is important to God, then Everything is important to God, because he's big enough to care about all that. To unify our lives is not to sort life into categories, Important and Trivial, Sacred and Secular, Humans and Sparrows. God cares about it all.

I have wrestled with the idea of Sunday morning church events, and how we call that worship, and there's a temple-centric, time and place oriented approach to God, and the worship of God. I have concluded that really just reinforces my cognitive dissonance between what God says and what I do. I am really bad at the principles described above. The worship center is not a large acoustically tuned room with a sounds system. The worship center is staring back at you in the mirror.

To be God's image, as we were created is a 24-7 thing, and as we approach life with Kavanah and Yichud, we don't become ascetics, or get untold health and wealth. We don't just walk on water and we don't just sink. Jesus promised life to the full. That's everything life on earth, beautiful and fallen, includes; triumph and heartache, boredom and anxiousness and complete engagement and intensity.

My only real purpose in writing this is to realize in part how seriously AND joyfully God has created this world, and how there is no change in my demeanor that is required. Only in my beliefs, in identifying the lies I believe, and in my actions, to correct those decietful practices, to do justice and treat all others with the dignity not of their actions, but of their image, which is also God's image.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm really impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Anyway keep up the excellent quality writing, it is rare to see a great blog like this one these days.

Here is my web-site Resistor Power