Ember Letter: Lent 2012

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno,

I hope this Ember letter finds you well during this season of Lent. I have been trying to prepare my heart and soul for the celebration of the resurrection by fasting once a week and feasting on the words of Anglo-Catholic author Evelyn Underhill.[1] I have been thinking a lot about preparation this season as I prepare for Holy Week as well as other upcoming events.

The main event that I am looking forward to this year is a summer school program in the Netherlands. Theologian James Alison encouraged me to apply to the program, which will study the works of French philosopher René Girard in Leusden with other students and scholars from around the world. I followed his advice and was accepted into the program and now hope to deepen my understanding of Girard’s Mimetic Theory, a theory that offers insight into the anthropological roots of violence in order to find paths of non-violent reconciliation. My girlfriend will also be presenting a paper at the International Conference for the Society of Biblical Literature in Amsterdam, so we look forward to making a month-long trip out of our excursions. I especially look forward to revisiting Taizé, France for a week or so before my summer school program begins.

The work I accomplish in Leusden will contribute to my doctoral work as well as to my ministry. In fact, I am currently teaching an adult education class at my Field Education site, in which we are reading the Gospel of John in light of Girard’s insights. The parishioners really seem to be enjoying the new ideas and the lively discussions that have emerged. The class also involves reading the Gospel of John in light of Second Temple Judaism, and even Rabbinic Judaism, which brings me to the next significant event for which I am preparing…

During the last week of March, I will be presenting a paper at an academic conference at Boston College on comparative theology. I will be sharing insights gleaned from my experience co-teaching comparative theology with Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski at CDSP last semester. Our class focused primarily on comparative theology between Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, which will also be the focus of my paper. I am particularly looking forward to reconnecting with my old friend Rev. Won-Jae Hur, who will also be participating in the conference. Our friendship has deepened over the years since we first worked together at Church of Our Saviour.

I am also preparing to lead a parish retreat at the Bishop’s Ranch in Healdsburg, CA in early March (around the time of my birthday) and, after concluding my adult education class, I look forward to returning to the pulpit. A couple weeks ago, a parishioner approached me and told me how the last sermon that I preached on silence invited her to create a safe and sacred space with her son, who was seriously thinking about dropping out of high school.[2] Although she usually likes to fill the silence with her words, she decided to sit silently with her son in his room, with my sermon “as her mantra.” In response to the patient and open silence, her son began to cry and then opened up to his mother and the two of them stayed up late into the night, having a long and heartfelt conversation. Deeply encouraged by this story, I also hope to practice patience and silence during this season of preparation, knowing that profound conversations lay ahead in Healdsburg, Boston, and the Netherlands and that joy awaits in the celebration of the resurrection on Easter morning.

Blessings to you, Bishop Bruno!

Yours,

Daniel DeForest London

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[1] I am reading Lent with Evelyn Underhill: Selections from Her Writings edited by George M. Belshaw (Harrisburg PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1990).

[2] You can read the sermon here: http://deforestlondon.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/evangelizing-in-gods-first-language/

Beholding the Lamb in the Eucharist

This is a concluding reflection for the class “Beholding the Lamb” (John 1:29-39), part of the Lenten series “Beholding the Lamb, Being Held by the Shepherd: Exploring the Question of Suffering in the Gospel of John” taught at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church on Sunday February 26, 2012.

When we understand that Christ enters into our system of violent scapegoating as the forgiving victim and dismantles our violence with his forgiveness, we can begin to see and experience the Eucharist in a new way. We can start to see the Eucharist as the sacred space where Christ continues to prune away at our violence, where Christ the “Lamb of God” continues to take away the sin of the world. At the Eucharist, we can bring to Christ whatever inner violence we are holding onto, whatever anger or frustration we have, whatever pain and confusion we are experiencing in this world of suffering. As we remember and even re-enact Christ’s death in the Eucharist, we can give Christ all of our anger and violence, we can give him the darkest parts of ourselves, knowing that he will hold us lovingly in it and through it. Christ will receive our anger and violence just like he received the hyssop and the role of the “Lamb of God.” Christ will receive our need to scapegoat and our need to blame by becoming our ultimate scapegoat and the ultimate target of our blame.

A classmate of mine recently shared with me her visit to an Anglican church in South Africa. As the only white person there, she sat in the back and then observed all the parishioners standing and shouting.  Initially she wasn’t sure what was going on. They were shouting in Zulu and she had only learned a little bit of the language. After listening to several minutes of hollering, my friend eventually picked up enough of the Zulu to learn that the shouting parishioners were actually in prayer, ranting at God. It was an open time of prayer before the official service began. Many of these South African Christians had a lot of things to be angry about and they brought all their anger to God in prayer before the Eucharist, knowing that God would hold them in it.

I cannot imagine many Episcopal churches doing this; however, I have silently expressed my anger to God during the Eucharist. There is a subtle violence in the simple act of breaking bread, especially when we understand Christ as the Bread of Life, as the Bread we eat, as the Bread we break. When the priest breaks the bread, I sometimes let that serve as an expression of my anger towards God. And then I hear the words “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” and I fall back into his love for me. And I am reassured that Christ will take whatever frustration I give him, even to the point of death.

And then I keep the feast. I receive his love and forgiveness in the bread and wine. And I know that even if my anger were to kill him, Christ would come back from the grave to feed me and forgive me and invite me into a deeper relationship with him.

And through this process, I experience Christ the “Lamb of God” taking away my anger (and my sin) by absorbing it and transforming it with his love and forgiveness. And as I behold the Lamb who receives all my darkness and violence even to the point of death and loves me still, I sometimes experience that peace which passeth all understanding. And I begin to understand more personally that ancient prayer to the Agnus Dei, who takes away the sin of the world: “Dona nobis pacem.” “Grant us peace.”

 

Abiding in the Love that Prunes Away Violence

This is a concluding reflection for the class “Throwing Branches into the Fire: Confronting Anti-Judaism in John and Anti-Semitism in Church” (John 9:1-7, 38-41), part of the Lenten series “Beholding the Lamb, Being Held by the Shepherd: Exploring the Question of Suffering in the Gospel of John” taught at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church on Sunday February 19, 2012.

“Abide in my love” (John 15:9)
Luther’s biographer Richard Marius points out that his treatise On the Jews and Their Lies was written within two months of the death of his beloved daughter Magdalena, who died at age 14. As she was dying, Luther held her in his arms and said to her, “Magdalena, darling daughter, is it not true that you would like to stay here with your father, and yet you want to go to your Father above?”
“Yes, dear father,” she responded, “just as God wills!” And she died in his arms.
As Luther gazed at her in her coffin, he exclaimed, “Dear baby girl, thou shalt rise again and shine as a star, nay, as the sun.” His biographer Marius writes, “Afterward his grief was intense, and he spoke feelingly of the terror before death while affirming his trust in Christ. This combination of woes may have driven him to lash out at someone, and the Jews were there, testifying to his worst fear, that Jesus had not risen from the dead, and that Christians would enjoy no victory over the grave.” Although there is no excuse for Luther’s virulent words against the Jews, I still feel a tug on my heartstrings when I read about Luther’s tragic loss. His daughter’s death was deeply troubling to him and the beliefs of the Jews (whom he initially respected) had forced him to question the one source of comfort he had left in the face of such loss: that is, the hope of the resurrection. “This combination of woes” according to Marius, “[had] driven him to lash out at someone.”
When we experience great tragedy in our lives, a very human response is to “lash out at someone” or at some group of people, to cast the blame, to scapegoat. I know this is the case for me whenever I experience great difficulty or loss. From a psychological and emotional perspective, I think that a lot of Christian anti-Semitism has sprung (and continues to spring) from the human need for someone to blame. Because the Jews can easily be read as the “bad guys” in the New Testament, they quickly became the target of Christian blame whenever difficulties arose. It is no surprise that pogroms and expulsions against Jews were more frequent during times of crisis. Like Luther, Christians experienced a combination of woes that drove them to lash out at someone, and the Jews were there as an ideal target.

The need to find someone to blame and scapegoat is human but the act of actually blaming and scapegoating others is the “branch” that our divine vinegrower seeks to throw into the fire and burn. The divine vinegrower does this by inviting us to direct our anger and frustration towards him. God invites us to blame and scapegoat Him! This is how we abide in God’s love: by directing our anger towards God. And in doing so, we are like little children throwing punches at our parent, who holds us lovingly through our violent outburst, until we finally melt into his arms. Through this process, God gradually prunes away our violence and our need to blame and scapegoat others.

This is what it means to both “behold the Lamb” and to “be held by the Shepherd,” to lash out all our anger and violence at the same one (the Lamb) who holds us with pastoral compassion (the Shepherd) while gently saying to us, “Abide in my love.”

Asking the Question with Julian of Norwich and the Buddha

This is a concluding reflection for the class “Asking the Question” (John 9:1-7, 38-41), part of the Lenten series “Beholding the Lamb, Being Held by the Shepherd: Exploring the Question of Suffering in the Gospel of John” taught at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church on Sunday February 12, 2012.

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2)

The disciples’ question about suffering serves as an invitation for us all to bring our questions to God in Christ through our prayer. Although many of us petition the Lord and offer thanks (which is meet and right for us to do), I wonder how many of us ask questions, especially around the subject of evil and suffering, like “God, why did you let my best friend die?” or “What did so-and-so do to deserve that horrible disease?” or, more generally, “Why is this world full of so much suffering?” Job and the Psalmists asked these questions to God in prayer, along with many other Christian saints and mystic. There is an invitation in the disciples’ question for us to bring our own questions to God in prayer and furthermore, to expect a response. In her text “Showings,” Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English Mystic and anchorite, brings her questions about suffering to God in prayer. Although she did not receive the kind of answers we might expect or even hope to receive, she did receive profound “revelations of divine love”, which poets and theologians still find comforting and challenging today.

Although not part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a young Indian prince named Siddhartha Gautama observed suffering when he left the palace grounds. He saw an elderly person, a sick person and a corpse and, like Jesus’ disciples, he wanted to know the origin and cause of such suffering. He asked this question to the universe and then waited for a response by fasting and meditating. He eventually found an answer, which woke him up, thus giving him the name “Buddha” which means the “Awakened One.” His answer became the foundational teachings of Buddhism, which of course still thrives today.  His answer came in the form of The Four Noble Truths: 1) Life is suffering. 2) Suffering comes from desire. 3) If you extinguish desire, you extinguish suffering. 4) You can extinguish desire by following the Eightfold Path (Wise Attention, Action, Concentration, Speech, Intention, Livelihood, Understanding, Effort). Although these ideas are way outside the scope of this study, we will be talking about desire and how it is deeply related to suffering and violence when we discuss mimetic theory….

But the main point of the Buddha’s story in this context is that asking the question of suffering and expecting an answer can have radical and life-changing (even world-changing) consequences for us. By asking this question of God through the Christ whom we encounter in the Fourth Gospel, we may find ourselves “waking up” to some truth that we have been missing. Although we might not become Buddhas, we may very likely become more enlightened, which would be very much in line with Johannine theology, which sees Christ as the true light who came to enlighten everyone. (1:9)

From Bashful to Bold

This is a draft of a paper to be presented at the Engaging Particularities Conference (“Engaging Particularities X: New Directions in Comparative Theology, Theology of Religions, Interreligious Dialogue, and Missiology”) at Boston College on April 1, 2012.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, the current president of Yeshiva University in New York, tells of a time when he was a student and his teacher asked him to summarize the approach of the Tosafot to a passage of the Talmud that the class had been studying.^[1] Young Norman Lamm thought he would impress his rabbi by repeating the explanation of the passage that his rabbi had taught the class the previous day. But instead of being impressed, the rabbi said to Lamm, “I know what I am saying. I do not need you to tell me. What do you think?… The problem is that you check your evil inclination (yetzer hara) outside the classroom door and come in with your good inclination.^[2] Next time, bring your evil inclination with you, and leave your good inclination outside.”^[3] This idea of bringing your evil inclination with you into the classroom is summed up in the words of Rabbi Hillel, who said, “A bashful person cannot learn.”^[4] This aphorism along with its following adage that the “impatient person cannot teach” generated considerable thought and discussion in the class “Comparative Theology as Spiritual Practice,” which I co-designed and co-taught with Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley CA. Throughout the course, I emphasized the spirituality and transformative nature of comparative theology. Upon further reflection, I came to see teaching comparative theology as a spiritual practice, bearing fruits of patience for the teachers and fruits of courage for the students. This presentation will explore how engaging the particularities of another tradition’s pedagogy and spirituality enhances and enlivens the pedagogy and spirituality of one’s home tradition.^[5] The class in which we compared a Jewish text with the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Gospel of Matthew will serve as a basis for this reflection.

The Jewish text we read was Pirkei Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”), a collection of wisdom sayings from rabbis ranging from 200 BCE to about 200 CE. As the class read Pirkei Avot in depth, Hillel’s assertion that “a bashful person cannot learn nor can an impatient person teach” served as an effective catalyst for us as we engaged texts from the Christian tradition, helping us to see the same themes of boldness and patience in learning and teaching in the Apophthegmata Patrum [Sayings of the Desert Fathers] and the Gospel of Matthew. Our exploration of these themes inspired the more “bashful” students to speak up while inspiring the teachers to practice patience in response to questions and critique. Moreover, our exploration of these themes invited us to see our relationship with the divine as a teacher-student relationship that can also deepen and grow if we move from bashfulness to boldness in our prayer lives.

From Bashful to Bold in the Classroom

In the spirit of comparative theology, we first delved deep into the outside tradition by spending several class periods studying Pirkei Avot. We even had the students practice the Jewish approach to reading Talmud called chavruta (which means “friendship” or “companionship”) in which we had the students break off into pairs and study individual mishna, mostly by having them ask questions about the text and argue and debate with each other about possible answers. The class was made up of mostly Christians: several Episcopalians (priests and lay), a couple Catholics, a couple Lutherans, one Jesuit, one Sufi and one Buddhist. There were no Jewish students in the class and therefore no one who had any former experience with the Jewish practice of chavruta, which requires students to bring their “evil inclination” with them, their courage and chutzpah to ask questions and to argue. Many of the students in the class found this practice particularly challenging since they were more accustomed to agreeing with one another rather than arguing and debating. Also, their limited knowledge of Judaism, the Mishnah and Pirkei Avot made them feel less confident and less qualified to assert their arguments, ideas and interpretations. As I visited these chavruta study pairs, I noticed “bashfulness,” fear of argument and an eagerness among the students for me to tell them what to think. When we reconvened as a whole class, Dan and I tried to subvert their “bashfulness” by inviting them to ask whatever questions they had about their particular mishna, assuring them that all questions would be welcome. The students’ “bashfulness” slowly dissipated as they learned that all their questions were being welcomed and appreciated. We continued this strategy in a second class meeting in which we started to read Pirkei Avot mishna by mishna by first asking any questions that each mishna aroused. We purposely held back from answering any of the questions in order to allow the students and ourselves to be creative, courageous and uninhibited in our asking. After interrogating several mishnayot, we finally attempted to answer the list of questions that we had created. At this time, Dan and I were encouraged to see that the confidence, which we awoke in inviting questions, continued into our discussion of answers. Some of the students who were shy during the chavruta began to offer answers while also challenging other people’s answers, including those of the professors.  The students were finally bringing their “evil inclination” with them to the classroom and we began to see some of the fruit of our patience as the questions and challenges of the students opened us all up to new ways of thinking about the mishnayot of Pirkei Avot. As a young professor, I found myself practicing patience not only with the students whose questions and challenges sometimes seemed unhelpful but also practicing patience with myself as I tried to find the right words and right way to communicate my ideas and interpretations to the class. I quickly learned to appreciate the atmosphere of question and challenge that we created in the classroom as it pushed me to clarify or even modify what I was attempting to teach and communicate. My teaching experience reminded me of a story in the Talmud that colorfully illustrates Rabbi Hillel’s mishna that “a bashful person cannot learn nor can an impatient person teach” (2:6). In tractate Bava Metzia 84a (which is in the same Order as Pirkei Avot: Nezikin), a story is told about Rabbi Yochanan of the third century and his student Resh Lakish. The two studied together for several years until Resh Lakish died and Rabbi Yochanan grew severely depressed. Other rabbis tried to cheer him up by sending him a brilliant student, but the plan failed since the student never challenged his teachings. Whenever Rabbi Yochanan opined, the student would say, “I know another source that supports what you are saying.” Eventually, Rabbi Yochanan said to him, “Whenever I stated an opinion, Resh Lakish would raise twenty-four objections to what I was saying…He forced me to justify every ruling I gave, so that in the end the subject was fully clarified. But all you do is tell me that you know another source that supports what I am saying. Don’t I know myself that what I have said is right?” (Bava Metzia 84a).^[6] Like Resh Lakish, the students had grown out of their initial bashfulness enough to challenge us professors, forcing us to justify and clarify our teachings.

From Bashful to Bold in the Desert

Most associate desert spirituality with silence, solitude and humility. As we read the Apophthegmata Patrum, these themes took on a new texture as they reminded us of Rabbi Shimon from Pirkei Avot who said, “All my days I have been raised among the Sages and I found nothing better for oneself than silence.”^[7] However, more than that, our reading of Apophthegmata Patrum was enhanced by our prior engagement with the particulars of Pirkei Avot, which served as an effective catalyst for us to reexamine our tradition and its texts and notice themes, which we would otherwise overlook.^[8] With Rabbi Hillel’s mishna echoing in our minds, our eyes were peeled for a similar call to boldness in learning and patience in teaching in the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers.

The words of Amma Theodora on patient pedagogy leapt out from the page when she said, “A teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire for domination, vain-glory, and pride; one should not be able to fool him by flattery, nor blind him by gifts, nor conquer him by the stomach, nor dominate him by anger; but he should be patient, gentle, and humble as far as possible.”^[9] The call to boldness in learning was less apparent to us in our readings of the Apophthegmata Patrum since the desert literature is so drenched with exhortations to humility and self-deprecation. However, our more careful reading revealed a similar call to boldness in learning, especially in the disciples’ persistent demand for answers to their question. In one saying, the disciple Zacharias sees Abba Silvanus “in ecstasy with his hands stretched towards heaven” for more than four hours. Zacharias asks Abba Silvanus, “What has happened today, Father?” The Abba responds, “I was ill today, my child.” At this, the disciple seized the Abba’s feet and said, “I will not let you go until you have told me what you have seen.” The Abba then said, “I was taken up to heaven and I saw the glory of God and I stayed there till now and now I have been sent away.”^[10] The disciple Zacharias boldly demanded a sincere answer from Abba Silvanus and was not content with his initial response. If Zacharias was not bold in demanding an answer he would not have learned the truth of Abba Silvanus’ mystical experience.

Another saying in the Apophthegmata Patrum shares a similar call to boldness in learning by showing the tenacity of another Abba: “[Abba Sarmatus] was often alone for forty days. He completed this time as though he had done nothing special. Abba Poemen went to see him and said to him, ‘Tell me what you have seen by giving yourself such great hardship.’ The other said to him, ‘Nothing special.’ Abba Poemen said to him, ‘I shall not let you go till you tell me.’ Then he said, ‘I have discovered one simple thing: that if I say to my sleep, “Go,” it goes, and if I say to it, “Come,” it comes.’”^[11] In the desert literature, the disciples and students are not the only ones who show boldness in learning. Even the abbas have to put aside their humility and holy bashfulness in order to learn insights from their fellow practitioners. If Abba Poemen did not boldly demand a more thorough answer from Abba Sarmatus, he would not have learned about the abba’s mastery over sleep.

Both of the above sayings include the phrase “I will not let you go until…” which is clearly a reference to Genesis 32:27 when Jacob, while wrestling with a divine being, boldly says, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Although in the above sayings, the phrase is used between either a disciple and his abba or between two abbas, the desert literature also shows this same phrase of tenacity being used between an abba and God in the abba’s prayer for his disciple: “Abraham, Abba Sisoes’ disciple, was tempted one day by the devil and the old man saw that he had given way. Standing up, he stretched his hands toward heaven, saying, ‘God, whether you will, or whether you will not, I will not let you alone till you have healed him,’ and immediately the brother was healed.”^[12] Here we see the teacher displaying compassion for his student through a patient and persistent prayer of boldness. Abba Sisoes shows patience and compassion to his student by practicing boldness in prayer. Although the desert literature mostly advocates profound humility in relation to others and especially in relation to God, the literature also describes abbas who lay aside their holy bashfulness by boldly “clinging to God”^[13] and, in one case, even arguing with God.^[14]

By first reading and reflecting on Rabbi Hillel’s saying that the bashful person cannot learn and the impatient person cannot teach, we began to see similar themes of boldness and patience between students and teachers in the desert literature, which we may otherwise have overlooked. Moreover, we began to see a similar boldness between the abbas themselves and even between the abbas and God as they boldly clung to and argued with God in prayer.

From Bashful to Bold in Christian Discipleship

We also read the Gospel of Matthew in light of Pirkei Avot and once again the disciple-teacher relationship came to the forefront in our discussions. Throughout the Synoptic Gospels, we noticed how Jesus often asks his own bold questions as a form of teaching. We recalled that in Luke’s Gospel, “[Jesus’ parents] found [young Jesus] in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46) and that Jesus continues to ask questions pedagogically throughout Luke. We also noticed how Jesus himself prays boldly to God in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking for “this cup” to pass from him (Matthew 26:39). After this petition is denied, Jesus continues to pray boldly to God, even on the cross, saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  (27:46).

So throughout the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus teaches his students by boldly asking questions while also showing what it means to be a student of the heavenly Father by boldly asking questions of God.

Jesus also invites his disciples to boldly ask questions when he said, “Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives…” (Matthew 7:7). And furthermore, Jesus describes his role as teacher as one of gentle patience, when he said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart” (11:29).

In John, Jesus still asks questions, but more frequently tends to offer profound and sometimes esoteric answers to questions that he himself is asked by his disciples (John 9:1-3 for instance).

 

From Bashful to Bold in Prayer

            The above reflections caused us to consider how these insights from Pirkei Avot, the Apophthegmata Patrum and the Gospels may impact our own spiritualities and our own relationship with the divine Teacher. The invitation from our readings was to move from bashfulness to boldness in our own prayer life while opening our eyes to those aspects of our tradition, which encourage and exemplify that movement. As disciples of Jesus, many of us learned to accept that we are invited to bring our own questions to God boldly in prayer. And if we want to learn and grow in Christ, we ought not be bashful in our prayers. The words from the Epistle to the Hebrews resonated with fuller meaning in light of our reflections: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace” (Hebrews 4:16).

For her final paper, one student delved deeper still into this theme of boldness before God in exploring and comparing the Genesis passage in which Abraham “barters with God” to spare Sodom (Genesis 18) with a story in the Islamic Hadith in which Muhammad “barters with God” via Moses about the number of prayers Muslims must pray each day. The student initially approached the Genesis passage with “fear and trembling,” deeply disturbed by God’s violent judgment of Sodom even after Abraham’s bold bartering, wondering why God would even indulge Abraham at all if God already knew the outcome. However, after comparing the text to the story in the Hadith and reading a homily from John Chrysostom, which emphasized the long-suffering patience of God in Genesis 18, the student came to a profound conclusion. She wrote, “We look for a comparative moment in comparative theology. My moment came early on when I started to change my question from, ‘did God know in advance that there were not ten righteous souls in Sodom?’, to ‘why was God so patient with the prophets?’ God gives us every opportunity to follow the Law, the Gospels, and the Qur’an. My parting gift is the belief that God is indeed long suffering as described by Chrysostom and Allah is Most Compassionate as described in the Qur’an.”^[15] The student’s conclusion helps us to see God’s patient response to our bold questions. My own reflections on the class and our readings urged me to see God as also patient in waiting for us to lay aside our bashfulness in prayer in order to engage with God more boldly and therefore learn and grow.

By engaging deeply with Hillel’s words in Pirkei Avot and the Jewish practice of chavruta we began to practice less bashfulness and more boldness and patience both as students and teachers. As a result, we began to see how our own tradition encourages and exemplifies the movement from bashfulness to boldness both in learning and spiritual growth. Pirkei Avot acted as an effective catalyst to help us re-examine our own tradition and to see the call to boldness in learning and prayer in desert literature, in the Gospels, in the Torah and even in the Hadith. As a result, we were urged to not leave our evil inclination outside the door of our prayer closet, but to actually bring our evil inclination (our boldness) with us to God in prayer. We even began to imagine God as Rabbi Yochanan inviting us to be like Resh Lakish, prodding us to bring our evil inclination to Him in prayer, just as Dan and I patiently prodded our students to bring their boldness and questions to class.

In this age of easily accessible information, the teacher-student relationship is clearly becoming more than a passing on of knowledge. By engaging with a particular teaching outside of our tradition (a specific mishna of Pirkei Avot), we were able to experience the teacher-student relationship as something much more than a passing on of information. We began to experience the relationship as one that inspired boldness in the students and patience in the professors while also urging us to see our relationship with the Divine Teacher in a new light.

 

 

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^[1] Tosafot are medieval commentaries on the Talmud

^[2] The yetzer hara or yetzer ra,  the evil inclination or evil impulse. All humans are born with a yetzer ra (physical needs that can become evil: hunger can become gluttony, sexual desire can become sexual abuse…). According to Avot of Rabbi Natan (a homiletical exposition of Pirkei Avot), girls acquire the yetzer tov at age 12 and boys acquire the yetzer tov at 13. According to Genesis Rabbah 9:7, “without the yetzer hara, a human being would never marry, beget children, build a house, or engage in trade.”

^[3] Norman Lamm, “Knowing vs. Learning: Which Takes Precedence?” in Susan Handelman and Jeffrey Saks, Wisdom from All My Teachers (New York: Urim Publications, 2003) p.18 n.7.

^[4] Pirkei Avos and Bircas Hamazon: Ethics of the Fathers and Grace After Meals, commentary by Rabbi Meir Zlototwitz (New York: Mesorah Publications, 1999), p. 17, v. 2:6.

^[5] Although students came from different home traditions, no one’s home tradition was Judaism…

^[6] Joseph Telushkin, Hillel: If Not Now, When? (New York: Random House, 2010), 157.

^[7] Pirkei Avos, p. 15, v. 1:17

^[8] Daniel Sheridan, Loving God: Krsna and Christ: A Christian Commentary on the Narada Sutras (Dudley, MA: W.B. Eerdmans, 2007), 2.

^[9] Amma Theodora Saying 5, p. 83-84.

^[10] Abba Silvanus Saying 3, p. 222-223.

^[11] Abba Sarmatus Saying 2, p. 225-226.

^[12] Abba Sisoes Saying 12, p. 214.

^[13] Abba Timothy Saying 1, p. 237

^[14] Abba Moses Saying 13, p. 141.

^[15] Maura McKenney, “When the Bargain is Naught? A Comparative Study of Abraham and Muhammad’s Dialogue with God” for “Comparative Theology as Spiritual Practice” GTU SPHR 4705, taught by Professors Dan Jolsyn-Siemiatkoski and Daniel London, December 12, 2011.