"What God asks of us is not always easy - in fact, it's usually not easy.
[...]
"And maybe most of all the Torah & that midrash remind us that Revelation-that encountering the Divine-is not only difficult, but it's dangerous. Meeting God is a life-or-death proposition.
"It defies every cultural story we have about "spirituality" as easy, good-feeling, a nice gesture towards self-improvement that's only slightly more difficult than placing aromatherapy candles around a bubble bath. Rather, it's absolutely petrifying.
"Seeing the gap between where you are and where you need to be--what you are and what is demanded of you--demands great bravery. And stepping into that gap requires more bravery still.
"It's terrifying to face the implications of "accepting Torah"-hearing what God is asking of us, hearing who God is telling us that we are. It's more than unnerving to realize how much hard, grueling work lies ahead for us in order to maintain this relationship.
"It's alarming, to say the least, to contemplate changing our actions and understandings of the world as a result of this encounter with the Ineffable, with no sense of what kind of long-term impact it may have on our lives and everything we know.
"It can feel a little like having a mountain hovering over our heads."
-- Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theradr), 2019-06-07
[A blessed Shavuot to everyone celebrating starting tonight!]
(no subject)
(no subject)
Understanding this type of thing is why I love Lois McMaster Bujold's Five Gods series. (Three books, some short / side stories: The Curse of Chalion is the first; Paladin of Souls is the second, not so much a sequel as the subsequent actions of a relative side character; Hallowed Hunt is completely distinct, set a couple hundred years earlier elsewhere in the land. There's a side series that's mostly been on ebooks, starting with, iirc, Penric's Demon. Tho apparently recently there's been talk of printing it, dammit, cause the reason I finally gave in and started reading ebooks was because LMB said this was not going to see print.)