the tzaddik and the vavlings

A tzaddik walks into a bar, and ...

I really want to start that way, only the Tzaddik didn't pick up the vav in a bar. The tzaddik has only been in a bar once in his life and that was when he was stranded (with a vavling, actually) in the middle of nowhere and the third game of the World Series was just starting and they couldn't make it home.

No, actually the tzaddik was minding his own business, just walking up the garden path, when he saw the lovely vav sleeping on the stone bench under the redwood tree, and surrounded by luscious ferns. What a vision! He walked up to the lad and leaned over him. The tzaddik tugged at his long beard a bit and examined the find. Jeans and a white t-shirt, though I'm not sure the tzaddik knew about 'jeans.' Long bronze curls upon his head. No keppeleh. Dirty bare feet, with a pair of tanakhim sitting carefully placed under the stone bench. The tanakhim put the tzaddik at ease (not just a lost sheep but a lost potential shepherd), and so he shook the boy's shoulder gently.

The vav awoke. Not startled at all, but as if he were maybe inside still his dream.

"Is this paradise?" he asked in English.

For what he saw was a real live tzaddik bending over him, surrounded by filtered light threading its way through the redwoods. The smell of the ferns and the nearby roses heady on his mind.

The tzaddik took the vavling home, of course. Made him to wash. Fed him. Mrs. Tzaddik took to him as well; he was a pretty boy. She would trap him with a cup of tea and hold him hostage with her higher intellect. But the vav had eyes (and ears) for the tzaddik only, and the tzaddik put him to work.

The function of the vav is to uphold the yud. The yud is the head, the king, inspiration, alchemical fire, the learned one. You can often see him wearing a crown upon the page. The vav is the heart and the spine — a connector — upholding the head as best he can. The vav (at his best) stands tall, but he knows his place. Alchemical air, he's got lots of ideas, but he just can't manifest. And here he was trying to do his job (uphold the tzaddik, his yud) but the upper hei maintained her relentless seduction. She was not subtle. He turned away.

This tzaddik was a lamed-vavnik, to tell the truth — one of the 36 concealed ones who roam this earth at any one time in times of trouble. This isn't just my opinion. People have come up to me and whispered it in my ear. Of course the vavlings would be drawn. How could they not? Max Weber would call it something else, of course. Charisma, he would say. That 'uncanny personal power to persuade' — but that sounds so terribly social science.

The tzaddik put the vavling to work. At first it was to paint the fence around the garden. And then it was the stairs themselves. And when the boy's mind had settled, he set him to selling the Encyclopedia Judaica to members of the tribe. With the boy's natural charm and humor, he soon lost most of his hippy curls and tattered clothes and now wore fine button up white linen peasant shirts tucked into better pairs of jeans. The sidelocks he kept.

The vavling began studying Torah and Talmud. He became captivated by the law.

Soon there were other vavlings drawn to the tzaddik, each with his own talent and capacity. They formed a corporation together, and called it Gan Eden. And so, from that small primordial garden, they set out to grow a paradise together.

All the tzaddik ever wanted was to watch the vavlings thrive. His face lit up in their presence. He did not touch them, despite the rumors. No, he merely reveled in their company. And they were loyal to him until the day he was laid to rest. The vavs did not transmute into yuds themselves. Funny, that. They did not become the tzaddik, nor did they internalize him, nor emulate him. No, they merely saw him. They could see the concealed one!

Not once in my life did the tzaddik ever look at me the way that he beheld his vavlings. What he gave to me was something else entirely. And that is the gift the lamed-vavnik brings: to give each what is his due, each his attention, each her protection. I did not need to be awakened like the tzaddik's first vavling in the garden. I was raised to this garden. I am the gardener. I need no awakening.

The vavs, they saw the tzaddik. They saw the lamed-vavnik. The concealed one, blessed be he. But they never saw the man himself. That was left to me.

on not wanting a 'conversation with god'

Last night, I had another tetragrammaton moment, where all the elements — the yud, the hei, the vav, and the hei — come together, alchemically bound and perfect in every way. Well, it wasn't that. There were only three of us, and I was the only hei, but never mind that. It's not what I wanted to say; it just made me remember what 'it' is all about.

A friend posted a link the other day to a piece called 'Conversations with God' and it was pithy and clever and delightful and even invoked one of my own personal divine beings, Isaac Asimov, for which I'll give it ten points. (Forget that. I just accidentally slipped into grading-mode)...

And because I had a delightful night, I woke up delighted as well. I also woke up knowing what my problem is with all this talking-to-God stuff. It's not that it's nonsense (I mean, even apart from the whole non-existence of God bit). No, I'm willing to go for metaphor, being in a good-tempered and generous mood at the moment.

I had an epiphany. Not sure if it's major or minor. And I'm not sure it's really anything new exactly, it's just that I understood it in another context.

Conversations with god/God are all about getting answers. We know that. All about trying to live with misfortune, getting comfort, or dealing with the anguish of not-knowing. And so we invent this all-knowing-God so we can ask, and if we're lucky, get some response. A response we can live with. And that asking is not really interesting to me.

Why take all the fun out of discovering things for yourself? Getting answers from an All-Knowing-God is just plain boring. And certainly not as compelling as, say, the scientific method and empiricism. Or just plain playing with possibilities.

But I think that's what 'most people' want: answers. And that's not the most interesting thing about 'God.'

Instead, why not focus on Creation? And Creation is something I know something about. I know, for example, exactly how it feels to grow a living creature from scratch and have it manifest into the physical world. I've done it. And not just twice (a boy and a girl), but over and over again. In my garden.

Which brings me back to the other concern (apart from getting all their questions answered) so many folk worry about when they think about God. Being 'good' enough to qualify to be a resident in some post-mortem garden. You want a garden, grow the damn thing yourself.

Go ahead. Create something.

Being the Gardener is so much more fun than waiting around till you're dead to live in someone else's Paradise (along with billions of others you don't even know). Remember 'heaven on earth'? Well, why not manifest it? Although, to be sure, being the Gardener also entails activating one's sadistic impulses (for 'the greater good' as Gellert Grindelwald would say). Come out of the supernal S/M closet, and go ahead and prune. Weed. Cut those limbs off, and rip those others right out of the Garden. Choose who lives and who dies, and who loses a branch or more.

Don't talk to God—be God. See what it feels like to have that kind of power. And just how judicious you have to be with that power to not risk ruining the Garden as a whole.

Pruning and weeding. Big difference. While pruning looks like a more major big deal, conceptually weeding is the more drastic measure. With weeding, we want that thing entirely out of our Garden. Right down to the roots (if we're being not lazy). Otherwise, the Garden might look like it's thriving, but it's just teeming with discord right under the surface. Pruning, on the other hand, might seem extreme, especially what I call 'radical pruning' but what we're doing is more akin to just plain good grooming. A major haircut, or better yet, having let it all grow, now it's time for a major waxing of the whole body at once. Ouch! But such a yummy good looking pain—that makes us glow afterwards.

The weeds, we know, will come right back. So what does our vigilance and care get us? It gets us the gift of being active in the garden. The gift of paying attention.

The ancient Near Eastern pantheons distinguish between two types of gods, the passive and the active. The passive gods are the Creators, who created the world and the living beings within it, and then lost interest. Like that guy (maybe you know him/maybe you are him), who, once he's come is dead to the world. The Creator gods are exactly thus. And the next generation of deities rebel, destroy them and replace them. They are the active gods, the gods who take interest in the world.

We Mothers know better. If you lose interest, your Creation is lost.

We Gardeners know better. Lose interest, and everything goes feral...

So. Conversation with God? Boring! Or just plain self-serving, and not creative at all. A conversation with God is kind of like a little kid wandering alone at ToysRUs. He's hit not only with sensory overload, but with a bad (and sometimes incurable) case of the gimme-gimmes—selfish, and impulse-driven.

So. My vote's for embodying the gods. Less talk. More action. And a whole lot more fun. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Oh, and PS— great to do in a group. Being part of a pantheon, being one-fourth element of the Tetragrammaton, for example, is even more fun than being a single-parent deity trying to work Creation out all on your own. Oh, and remember the lessons of those ancient Near Eastern Pantheons (from Egypt, to Ugarit, to Mesopotamia...) the passive gods get creamed in the end. Active Gods rule...