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A first edition of this writing appeared on OneLife Jul 28, 2005. Now, engaging again some of the Jewish mystical tradition, I offer a new and expanded edition on this important practice of Jewish contemplation, along with its relation to Christian practice. Please give consideration to the concluding spiritual exercises, for OneLife is not just about getting more head-knowledge, but about spiritual praxis to become more devout servers and worshippers of our One God.
Likewise, this writing reflects continuing commitment to openness to how Christ, the Eternal Wisdom, manifests the Divine through diverse spiritual traditions, both within and outside the Christian faith. I do this at some risk. But, I do believe that a healthy pluralism offers us a gift to engage the other and be engaged, and, thereby, we can all be enriched and more humble about our faith claims. That is, pluralism is a move of the holy Spirit in our time.
Jesus is the center of my religious experience. However, the Wisdom He was and is, is not confined in any "faith." My love for Christ pushes me outward to seek to discern His Face and Word in the way other sincere, holy persons have sought and do seek God and the Living Word. I can do nothing else, and be true to the Divine Creator and my Best Friend, Jesus.
My heart longs, and has for many years, for the day that we all come to a loving compassion and willingness to be vulnerable to how God might appear in persons and places we were taught God could never show Presence and Holiness, and Love. My heart laments for all the Christian leaders who are so protective of Christian tradition that they ignore, disdain, and, often, blaspheme God showing the Living Word in other faith traditions and even some persons who might have never discovered a home in a faith tradition~be that good or bad, in human estimation. Indeed, heaven to me is partly the home of a religion-less Home, where the Divine is truly seen as All-in-all, and Love is the faith we all ascribe to. Without That, we have nothing, though we claim to have all things.
Therefore, I, a devout Christian pastor, in love with Jesus, send this writing out in honor of all
religious leaders who seek a sincere relationship with Divine Presence, one of love and kindness toward all creatures~these persons I honor are open to seek the Truth in the Other and other, they are in my faith and among others. They bear the Love of God to us all; they bear the burden of sharing the Presence of the WORD to the world.
Amen, Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, Come, Always.
Hitbonenut is a Hebrew term used by the Hasidim, a Jewish mystical sect. The sect originated in Poland in the 18th Century. The sect emphasizes joyful worship of an immanent God.
Hitbonenut derives from a root "to build, discern," notes Andrea Cohen-Kiener, teacher of Jewish meditation and educator ("Go to Your Self," in Meditation from the Heart of Judaism, ed. Avram Davis).
Cohen-Kiener typically renders hitbonenut as "long thinking." She writes that this means we sit with a sacred text, or a word or a letter of it, and open ourselves to its layers of meaning. "We find," she notes, "the riddles implicit in the text, and we personalize them. We enter the story of the text and the story enters us."
I said in a sermon on Scripture, "The primary question, for me, is not the historical question, 'Was the Bible inspired?' but 'Is the Bible providing inspiration now?'" Inspiration is directly related to a discipline of reading in the tradition of hitbonenut, "reflective, patient, receptive reading."
Hitbonenut, then, relates to the Jewish and Christian idea of inspiration. Yet, inspiration is a divine-human cooperative process, not merely a past act. Inspiration arises out of sharing between us and Divine Presence. Inspiration extends from the distant past, when the Divine was intuited by persons of religious faith, into the present, as you open to the outflow of the Wisdom of holy Spirit.
One way of understanding this receptivity-of-inspiration is from the kabbalistic Jewish tradition. In this thought there are four levels of the human Person; these correspond to the four letters of the Hebrew name we read in English as "LORD": yodh, heh, waw (or, vav), heh. The levels are interrelated and manifest Divine Being but to decreasing extents of intimacy to Divinity. I list them, in ascending order, with corresponding aspects of human experience. I mean by aspects means of worshipping and serving the Creator of all, Who is All:
1) Body. We have physical needs to sustain the matter-energy of the body. The aspect is doing, or action. Here, we devote all our doing to God and seek to serve the Divine through action. Have you ever noticed how a certain posture of body can lead you to a certain state of prayerfulness; say, like kneeling, folding the hands, are an upward glance into the sky. Remember, as embodied spiritual be-ings, all our experience of the Divine Order is communicated to us through the body, fully or chiefly through the brain and nervous system.
2) Heart. We have emotional needs, and this is clear from the need of touch by a new-born infant. The needs remain part of our growth toward wholeness. The aspect is feeling. Here, we listen to, worship, and serve God through our feelings, through affect. There is no unholy affect in religious devotion, as long as we are being honest. Just read the Psalms with the array of affect from loving attention to the Divine to angry accusation against God.
3) Mind. Divine Mind has given us the capacity of intelligence, the gift of reason, of logic. Religion, spirituality, and thought are of one gift. The aspect is knowing. There is no such thing as a spiritual and stupid faith. Faith is enriched, not threatened, by sincere seeking of truth and Truth. Faith is weakened by fear of learning; fear of truths and Truth, even a truth that would challenge a faith assumption, threatens the authenticity and integrity of our faith. Doubt is not in itself an enemy of true faith, but willed ignorance is.
4) Spirit. We have moved from the Lower World to the Higher World. Each of us aspires for Home, freedom from limitation of all within the Lower World. The aspect is intuition, or contemplation. Here, we know because knowing just is, is a gift, and is not arrived at through deduction or induction, but through communion. This knowing is Union.
Note, of importance is that there is nothing evil or wrong about any levels of Being. However, "density," so to speak, moving toward matter becomes less open to immediate-knowing of Pure Spirit. Spiritual practice lifts Lower World experience into Higher World intuition, so that the Tint of Spirit can be discerned in everything and everyone, even the person you would call your "worst enemy."
I share the difference between knowledge and intuition, in preparation to explore more hitbonenut. Knowledge, at mind, is thought-out knowing, by induction or deduction. Intuition, at spirit, is non-thought-out knowing, immediate knowing. This, in Christian tradition, is contemplative, or mystical, knowledge~what Christian contemplatives called from early~on gnosis or theoria.
I once sat in a College English class. The professor had us look closely at a picture. We shared together what we saw in the picture. Afterward, the professor began showing us what we had seen but had not recognized we had seen. He helped us see all the details that we had not noticed but that were as much a part of the picture as what we had focused on.
Hitbonenut, or reflective looking, allows us to see more and receive more. This can happen with a Scripture, a poem, a story, a hymn, or any form of writing. This can happen in reflection with Nature, also.
By this, we remain teachable to Spirit and learn by taking the time to look closely into a variety of written sources for the Living Word and see the principles that Nature teaches us—recall how often Jesus referred to Nature in his teaching. However, unless we can be still long enough, be quiet long enough, and be patient long enough, we will hear little of what Spirit wants to say to us. We will not learn to pass doing, feelings, and knowing to intuition, or face-to-face knowing.
This reflecting, entering into the Living Word in writing and Nature, is a Means of Grace. This is taught, for example, in the Christian practice of Sacred Reading, or Lectio Divina. If we are able to allow a sacred story, for example, to wash over and through us long enough, we begin to sense it being personalized for us. This is not so much a rational process~though a measure of reason is encouraged in some teachings on Sacred Reading~as being open to the wholeness of the text~what we see and will see, and the slow unfolding of layers of meaning holy Spirit applies to us.
However, how can we see deeply and hear deeply (or, live deeply) unless we can be still and quiet long enough? The Psalm 1.2 writer says to us, "… they muse on the teaching of God in the daytime and nighttime." The writer recognized that being nurtured through sacred texts is part of the spiritual path. He links it with being among the spiritually-blessed. And the word for "muse," or "meditate," in Psalm 1 refers, it appears, to the ancient practice of taking words of sacred text and repeating them over and over in a low tone, like a mild murmur. The Hebrew word is akin to the word for the moaning-like sound of doves.
Therefore, meditation trains persons in being able to endure quietude and stillness. Then, we learn to enjoy it. We, also, learn how to listen to the holy Presence through the Quiet. With ceasing the fevered push to get one more thing done, we enjoy sharing deeply with a sacred text and the sacred text of life, as well as with the sacred text of Nature. We have koinonia with the text, Nature, ... and Spirit through it.
The Christian faith, partly to protect against heresy, became over-reliant, or contortedly-reliant, on the Bible. This same occurred in Judaism, apparently beginning in the 6th Century BCE, in exile in Babylon~when the class of rabbinical sages was initiated~, and increased after the 1st Century CE fall and exile by the Romans. Without traditional structures of the faith, Jewish faith relied on written scriptures.
What do I mean by over-reliance, or contorted-reliance, on the Bible? Scripture itself speaks of holy Spirit speaking directly to us. Jesus himself addressed the same matter, teaching that Spirit would lead us into all spiritual Truth:
12I have much more to say to you, but right now it would be more than you could understand. 13The Spirit shows what is true and will come and guide you into the full truth. The Spirit doesn't speak on his own. He will tell you only what he has heard from me, and he will let you know what is going to happen. 14The Spirit will bring glory to me by taking my message and telling it to you.
*John 16.12-14, CEV
So, while we need to hold in high esteem Scripture, at the level from Spirit we open to direct connection with Spirit. We can receive directly from the Divine Word, Christ, by holy Spirit. This can come through Scripture, as well as any other means not in conflict with the spiritual teaching in Scripture. Any reliance on Scripture that excludes thereby openness to holy Spirit speaking to mind and heard through any other means Spirit can is over-reliance, or, again, maybe better, contorted-reliance.
This "connection," is where rightful esteem for Scripture and the Voice of holy Spirit (what Jewish mystics call, based on the Hebrew Bible, Bat Kol) join in on-going inspiration. Within Scripture, according to hitbonenut, is Living Word that arises to us in divine inspiration. Scripture is like a shell over this Truth. Christian faith teaches the same thing.
Yet, many in Jewish mysticism ascribe special and singular sacredness to the Hebrew letters themselves. They might not agree with speaking of Scripture being a "shell" for the Living Word. Likewise, some Christians maintain the words of the Bible are sacred in themselves, directly inspired by God.
I do not agree with the above conclusions. To take the Bible seriously and inspirationally, yes, devoutly, does not mean to take it literally. This literalism can easily become another mythic idolatry. Taking the Bible as an all-literal Word can block us from the inspiration of the ongoing, Living Word that cannot be put into human words, be they Sanskrit, Hebrew, English, or whatever.
So, it seems wiser to me to see Scripture as the Word of God not in some dictated way but in the sense of being means of that Living Word that, essentially, is the Truth. See, it is common sense that you cannot say Truth is more Truth through one means than another means. Truth is Truth, period. To be prayerfully open to Truth is to be open to Truth through whatever means holy Spirit communicates it to you.
Spiritual Exercise: Hitbonenut Practices
Before you engage one or more of the following exercises, recall that holy Spirit "speaks" in a number of ways. "Speak" or "say" does not mean you hear words, though a word or words might arise to awareness. The Spirit "speaks" through thoughts, inward urgings, imaginations, feelings, intuitive knowing, ... We practice listening to holy Spirit to learn how to listen.
1. Take a short Scripture, a hymn, or a poem; read it slowly through three times. On the next reading stop and reflect prayerfully on anything in the passage that speaks to you. Then, proceed to reading again from that point. ... When ready, rest in Silence.
2. Take a walk in Nature, even if in your own yard. Remain prayerfully open to what principles and processes that holy Spirit might teach you through the environment, or any Message that might be spoken to you through silent openness.
3. Take the following Prayer, close your eyes, and repeat it inwardly to God. Keep repeating it, letting it resonate in you and lead into the Silence of Communion with holy Spirit. When ready, rest in Silence, with a smile and grateful heart.
I am here,
I am open,
Spirit of Love.
*Brian K. Wilcox
4. Take an experience from your life. In your mind return to that time. Relive it prayerfully. Be open to any thing holy Spirit might impress upon you. Respond as you feel you need to. Then, rest in Silence.
5. In imagination return to a sacred place (church, synagogue, sangha, temple, chapel, wooded area, body of water, ...) where you once sensed Presence of Sacredness. Peruse the area, slowly, engaging all the senses possible. Be open to anything holy Spirit might communicate to you. Respond as you sense you need to. Then, rest in Silence.
* * *
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major booksellers.
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his two beloved dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, in Southwest Florida. He serves the Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in South Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a more intimate relationship with Christ. Brian advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons, along with empathic relating with other world religions, East and West. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry, for all spiritual seekers.
*For replies and biographical information, as well as booking retreats or workshops, fill out the following form:
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