Yearnings - A Great Book for Advent

I am savoring Rabbi Irwin Kula's book Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life for the third time in as many years. It's a terrific mix of reflections on Hebrew Bible characters, Jewish wisdom traditions and contemporary life.

(I first read it a few years back as a part of my fall discipline of reading Hebrew Bible stories, wisdom and prophetic literature (in and beyond the Protestant canon) as well as contemporary Jewish authors. Through this study discipline, I prepare myself for advent by immersing myself in the social and religious experiences of my faith ancestors, at least those who lived in the few centuries before Christ's birth. I am reminded of the key themes and characters, as well as the pride and pains of the Jewish people who so yearned for the kingdom of God, and the Messiah who would inaugurate it. This year, I've re-read Daniel, Sirach and will read Isaiah next...)

Anyway, here are a few lines from early in Kula's book:

"Keep two pieces of paper in your pockets at all times. One that says 'I am a speck of dust.' And, the other, 'The world was created for me.'" -- Rabbi Bunim of P'shiskha

"These traditions are meant to be lived, yet much of ther wisdom is buried under centuries of dogma...the need to be right is winning out over the search."

"The quest for self is the contemporary search for God."

"Jewish wisdom encourages us to be sacred skeptics. Many think skepticism is paralyzing, hopeless, cynical; but it's the opposite. Skepticism inspires us to know more. Skepticism can be revelatory. When we both hold and question our truths we become lifelong learners rather than absolute knowers... not seduced by certainty, we can be open to the truth."

"All new understandings take time to emerge and blossom. The word "Israel" means "wrestling with God." In other words, discovering again and again the truth, reality, God -- whatever we chose to call it -- stretches and deepens our lives and enlivens and expands our moral universe. New truths may challenge us or make us uncomfortable for a while but they always bring us to the next level of understanding. After all, there is no final arrival in life, but rather a series of arrivals..."

Why does Kula's book touch me so? I think because it humanizes our faith journeys - individually and collectively -- in ways that I and so many others need. He writes about our yearnings for truth, meaning, the way, love, creation, happiness and transcendence. In looking to scriptures and his own messy, beautiful life, Kula guides us in the task of taking our own places within the Searching Story (that's my capitalization there). Along the way, there's so much beauty, fragility, gift, brokenness, mystery and providence. And grace. It's a Graced Searching Story. That's where I want to be when I greet the good news of the Anointed One I welcome in Advent...