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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
A phrase I encountered this week that momentarily stopped me in my tracks is that one of the biggest challenges we face as a society is the systematic elimination of daydreaming.
I don’t know if all generations experience this, or if it is just those of us who have a close and personal relationship with our phones — our phones which are, in fact, barely phones anymore, but rather portable, powerful computers that we carry with us wherever we go, that can connect us to worlds of entertainment and work and distraction with a few swipes of the finger. For those of us who have such a relationship, which is most of us, there is a real question of whether, slowly but surely, without our noticing, over the last twenty-some years since the invention of the smartphone, we are losing our capacity to wonder, to muse, and to daydream.
I can tell you that one space which has not lost the art of the daydream is Judaism, and, in general, spaces in which spirituality is fostered. The author who coined the phrase, “the systematic elimination of daydreaming,” is Chuck Klosterman. He was raised Catholic and mused that one of the benefits of religion is that “it forces people to be bored.” He said, “I used to go to Mass, and I would sit there. I would just have to sit there for an hour or whatever, and it was good… to be bored. It was good to just space out and let your mind go.”
So, to the extent I have ever facilitated your boredom in a Shabbat service, you’re welcome!
Jewish tradition believes in the power of stillness.
As many of you know, one of my rabbinic heroes is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel — and not only because he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King (although that is extremely cool). He is one of my heroes because of the clarity with which he wrote about God and about prayer.
For Heschel, stillness is a precursor to prayer, and out of that stillness, we find ourselves capable of aligning with holiness.
Sometimes, Heschel writes with a tone of deep concern. His concern is that we are risking what he calls “our stake in God,” squandering an opportunity when it comes to our relationship to God and to prayer. Here is one such example:
“Is not listening to the pulse of wonder worth silence and abstinence from self-assertion? Why do we not set apart an hour of living for devotion to God by surrendering to stillness? We dwell on the edge of mystery and ignore it, wasting our souls, risking our stake in God.”
Fortunately, he says, there is a slow but sure entrance to prayer in the midst of this stillness: “the opening of our thoughts to God. We cannot make God visible to us,” he writes, “but we can make ourselves visible to God. So we open our thoughts to God — feeble our tongues, but sensitive our hearts.”
He continues, “mindfulness of God rises slowly, a thought at a time. Suddenly we are there. Or is God here, at the margin of our soul?”
In conclusion, Heschel writes that “to pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live.”
A few years ago, I read this passage — “why do we not set apart an hour of living for devotion to God by surrendering to stillness?” — and I re-asked myself, “yeah why don’t we?” Or at least, “why don’t I?”
Jewish tradition has long laid out for us the tradition that we pray three times a day — tradition says that our ancestor Abraham established the morning prayer; Isaac, the afternoon; and Jacob, the evening. There are words in the prayerbook for us to say during those moments, or we can rely on the notion that our ancestors’ prayers preceded the printing press, preceded the codified, fixed version of an established liturgy. Some of us find beauty in that liturgy; it’s a launching pad for our hopes and dreams, for our connection to God; for others, we need to start from scratch to just offer up whatever is on our minds and on our hearts, opening our thoughts to God.
When I read Heschel’s passage, “why do we not set apart an hour of living for devotion to God by surrendering to stillness?” I set for myself the goal of most days, surrendering to stillness for an hour a day: 30 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the afternoon, 15 minutes in the evening, using a blend of traditional liturgy and silence. I fail as often as I succeed. I can’t tell you how often I don’t feel like slowing myself down in this way. How often my to-do list beckons to me, my Gmail inbox calls out to me, the palms of my hand, through muscle memory, reach for my phone.
And yet repeatedly, when I commit to it, I feel the gift that comes from this practice, from this devotion.
Sometimes, as we think about prayer — or about meditation, another form of stillness — we think about all the “should’s” and “supposed to’s”.
“My mind keeps wandering,” we might say. “I keep getting distracted. I’m not doing it right.”
To that, my teacher, Rabbi Jacob Staub, responds that “when ‘distractions’ arise during prayer, one should pray with one’s distractions rather than shooing them away… The thoughts that arise out of left field,” he continues, “however unpleasant or unwelcome, often come from places buried deep within us, almost as if they are a gift from God, an invitation to look directly at them. It is as if they are a reward for getting our minds to settle down sufficiently in prayer, thus having allowed them to emerge from the shadows.”
“The opening of our thoughts to God. We cannot make God visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to God,” Heschel writes. “So we open our thoughts to the Divine — feeble our tongues” — we don’t think we know how to meet the moment of prayer — “but sensitive our hearts” — as long as our hearts are responsive to what we encounter, we’re doing it.
The systematic elimination of daydreaming. It is a concern. Fortunately, “prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live.”
I invite you to join me. Wishing you a Shabbat filled with prayer and joy.
