We’ve had a week of heartbreaking events.

Where, where is God? On the banners of one or another army? In acts of comfort, rescue, or shared grief? In the hope that inspires people to take risks for peace?

Where is the place of God’s glory?

On this Shabbat morning, as on every other, Jews in synagogues all around the world will chant the Kedushah (holiness prayer).

Three versions of the Kedushah appear in the traditional Shabbat morning siddur (prayer book). Instead of choosing only one, many synagogue communities chant all three.

The Kedushah is a poetic dialogue between angels, woven from two distinct prophetic visions. Isaiah hears fiery angels call to one another, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole world is filled with God’s glory!” (Isaiah 6:3). Ezekiel, in his vision, hears a loud noise that sounds like “Blessed is the glory of God from God’s place!” and seems to be made by the sound of wings and wheels (Ezekiel 3:12). The Kedushah invites worshippers to imagine themselves in God’s heavenly throne room, calling out these verses just as the ministering angels do.

For nearly ten years, just like the ministering angels, I worked on Shabbat. My contract required it; I was a synagogue rabbi. But week after week, the voices of the ministering angels pointed to hidden facets of the work.

During the Shabbat prayer service, week after week, my mind meditated deeply on logistical details. Have the Torah readers arrived? Are the leaders staying within the allotted time for their sections? Does the child-minder downstairs need any help? Did the greeter leave his station at the front door early again?

And each Shabbat, for three magical minutes, the worries ceased. The high drama of the Kedushah altered my consciousness. Week after week, I imagined myself standing in directly in God’s presence, chanting in angelic cacophony, “Holy, holy holy!” During those three minutes, I enjoyed a deep dialogue with God.

One Shabbat, we were running so ahead of schedule, it looked like we would reach the Torah service fifteen minutes early…and none of the Torah readers had arrived. So I began meditating deeply on what sort of spiritual activity I might improvise to engage the congregation as we waited.

While I meditated, the Kedushah began around me. Called suddenly to awareness, I snapped my legs together in a posture of attention, and burst out laughing. Because I could not stop thinking of vacuum cleaners.

As a child, I was taught: during the Kedushah, we stand with our legs together. We are singing the songs of angels, trying to sound like them,and be like them. So we stand with the angels, keeping our own legs together like a single strong leg, because angels have only one leg.

As an adult, I understand that we do not know what angels look like. We do not even agree on what “angels” are, and we use the word in many different contexts. We do know that Ezekiel reports a vision of heavenly beings with four faces and four wings, whose “legs are a straight leg” (Ezekiel 1:7). These beings rush around, each propelled by a single, multifaceted wheel at its base (1:15-20).

Forgive me, Lord. I’ve truly tried hard all my life to imagine a straight leg propelled by a wheel at its base, and all I can come up with is an upright vacuum cleaner. For years, I have wondered why we don’t rush around the room like vacuum cleaners as we chant the Kedushah.

That’s why I burst out laughing on that special day. I imagined my fellow worshippers and me rushing around the room, upright on our little wheeled bases, singing at the top of our lungs, in a powerful angelic cacophony.

Forgive me, because it’s not so alien to the text of the Kedushah. In one of the three versions, the angels ask one another, “Where? Where is the place of God’s glory?” If you simply read the words, the angels seem to ask only once. But many musical settings suggest that they ask over and over again; in fact, the whole of their existence is devoted to the question.

In that devotion, aren’t they just like human spiritual seekers? We devote our whole lives to asking, “Where can God be found?” And then we rush around like holy vacuum cleaners following leads here and there. Wherever we go, we soak up traces, and – sometimes with no clear direction – search for more.

We are like beings with multiple faces, propelled by multifaceted wheels. And this is our strength, if we dare to use it. At our best, we will never be content with a static answer, even if a whole group declares it in unison.

Where is the place of God’s glory?

Wherever we pause to wonder if we really have the right answer. Wherever we concede that our knowledge may only be partial. Wherever we realize that reality has at least four faces.

Blessed is the glory of that place, wherever it is.