I am burning up, burning up and burning out. Again.

Divine energy. Yes, it’s directed. Yes, it’s contained. But there are so many containers, too many to carry and something is breaking.

Janet Dallert says,

The energy of divinity is rarely where we expect it to be. We find it where we feel it, and we often feel it in people, places, objects, and events that we deem too trivial, contemptible, threatening, irrational, or just plain odd to take seriously.

Torah says this too. Pay attention. Pay attention.

Genesis 1: By way of beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. By way of beginning, pay attention. Pay attention to trees, crows, ants, flowers, rain, wind, summer’s 17 hours of light. Pay attention.

Psalm 1: The happy person is occupied with God’s Torah day and night. Read, study, understand, apply, question, read, study, understand, apply and question. Pay attention.

Psalm 150: Praise God with trumpets, strings, drums, cymbals, breath! Music is everywhere. Listen. Listen. Pay attention in the elevator, on the phone, the café, all over the city. Pay attention.

Genesis 28: He dreamed…here was God was standing over him. Pay attention.

Deuteronomy 4: Your God is a consuming fire. Pay attention.

This morning I dream of

an island, on fire. A round muddy island, its edge gradually trailing off into shallow waters. Burned out shells of historic buildings stand closest to the water. Each building is a circle of blackened sticks, evenly spaced, like the columns on Rome’s classical Pantheon building. Armed soldiers in grey combat fatigues swarm the island. Buildings close to the middle are still burning. Peeking out from the fire’s core is a rock cone I remember from an earlier dream. In that dream, the cone stood at the end of a long challenging hike, a hidden reward of unearthly beauty.

I am floating by the island, a passenger on a flat bottomed ferry boat. I insist that the captain circle back and pass the island again. It seems urgent that everyone aboard see and really grasp what is going on.

Pay attention.

At the Grind Café this morning, I glance at the weekly horoscope column Michelle has posted by the cash register. Rob Brezny writes:


”My soul is a fire that suffers if it doesn’t burn,” said Jean Prevost, a writer and hero of the French Resistance during World War II. “I need three or four cubic feet of new ideas every day, as a steamboat needs coal.” Your soul may not be quite as blazing as his, Aries, and you may normally be able to get along fine with just a few cubic inches of new ideas per day. But I expect that in the next three to four weeks, you will both need and yearn to generate Prevost-type levels of heat and light. Please make sure you’re getting a steady supply of the necessary fuel.

Rob Brezny is also an Aries. He knows.

I’ve had lots of fuel lately, too much.

At the Or Shalom retreat, we hiked outdoors, studied Torah, made wild music, lit the fireplace, and dreamed during the few hours of sleep we allowed ourselves. We paid attention.

When I came back, I spoke at an interfaith forum. “What does Judaism say about how to know God?” the organizers asked. “Through multiple interfaces,” I answered. “Through nature, sacred text study, music, self-reflection, and more.”

Our women’s group prepared to lead the Shavuot celebration. Have no other Gods before me, says the Torah. “How could we possibly have any other Gods,” we asked, “once we have been filled with this one?” Do not make any images, says the Torah. “No images,” we echoed, “for no one interface can contain the energy – no name, no description, no sculpture, no painting, no theological theory.” We know our mystical theology, but we did not speak of it. The entire world is Divine energy, everything is God in disguise, no moment exists in which we are not knowing God.

On my day off, I relaxed by reading Jungian studies. The soul is an organ of perception with which we perceive God. Pay attention. Notice moments of synchronicity between psychological events and events in our sphere of life. Pay attention.

No wonder, no wonder I came down with a fever.

Pay attention.

Image: Burning Man, squarenomore.blogspot.com