Providence

Updated below

I keep a private journal. It's interesting to read through it sometimes and to see that the same questions and the same truth remain relevant no matter what the year. This entry is from over 2 years ago.

I wish I could get a handle on Providence: What do I believe? What is true? What is real? How much is made up?

I went into Judaism totally believing in Providence because that is what I read. A part of me still apprehends in some manner that, yes, G-d is everything, and that everything happens according to his will, and that means the good and the bad and the driven leaf.

The rationalists smirk at the notion. But I don't find comfort in the rational. If I wanted that I would not have bothered with religion. And my very strong feeling is that it is easy to depend on the rational as a way of life when your life is going well.

Talk to me when the bottom has dropped out of it.

Update:

Rachael comments: I would myself say that it is easy to fall back into rationalism/empiricism when the bottom drops out (Why me? I'm a good person! This must mean that the universe is just random and unfair after all!). That's where I am in my own struggle in the here-and-now.

I'd be interested in how you feel about what you wrote from your current perspective. How have your convictions/beliefs changed since that time? If at all?

My first thought is that asking "why me" when the bottom drops out is not, in essence, a rational response, but a cry from the heart. And searching for answers to that cry may be done empirically or not, but in fact, it's really about a search for meaning.

So here's something to think about:

I know that there are a multitude of past "why me's" still battering the gates of heaven, all mine. Made me wonder about what part Providence played in that life. Providence is just such a marvelous mystery to me. It suggests an interconnectedness, a unity that lies behind all things that happen, and, therefore, fits right in with the entire idea of "G-d is One".

Most everything I know and have read about Providence suggests that the peak moments that seem providential are usually in retrospect, and more importantly, are sweet. The ideas of kismet and bashert fit nicely into that category. It's like the notion that when something good happens we think it is due to G-d's intervention or Providence.

I took a look at what the sages like Maimonides wrote about Providence, right through to Hasidism. Everyone has a theory. In essence, the theories suggested some hierarchical, elitist notion of Providence, depending on your closeness to G-d or perfection in doing mitzvot and the nature of your soul. Feh. Cause in the end, they were theories. Rational but unsubstantiated.

And my biggest question was: if I accept Providence as the warp and weft in my life, in all its glory, then I cannot only accept the good and the sweet, but also the really horrible and rotten. It was all or nothing. Either G-d's glory is shot through everything or it becomes a tattered free for all-- the Land of Theories.

The story of Job, for example, resonates a lot for me. I thought about him a lot through many trials. Job's was the ultimate "why me". And though the Rabbis tacked on a happy ending, the only answer Job received from G-d out of the whirlwind is, "What do you know? What do you understand? I was at the beginning and I am at the end. I am G-d". Well, that certainly puts a person in their place! And to know your place is to know humility. But it surely doesn't seem satisfying to the cry of the heart.

I began to think of negative space. In art, negative space defines the form and elaborates on it. Without it, nothing can exist; it is as necessary as positive space to make a whole. At the same time, I ruminated a lot about the Shoah, the ultimate Whirlwind. I thought of the 6,000,000, each and every one of the tortured and dead who must, at some stretched moment, have cried, "why me". And I thought, I could have been one of them. Born in the right place at the right time, that could have been me.

And I pondered the promises G-d made regarding Abraham's descendants, that for 400 years they would be aliens and suffer unspeakable affliction as strangers in a strange land, and then they would be redeemed. (Well, it took 430 years, if you want to read it literally, which irks me, and even then, it was a rush job, but that's a whole other post). I thought about all the people whose destiny it was to suffer as slaves and not know redemption, and realised, I could have been one of them.

I could have been one of those waiting to be scooped up by G-d and saved, and it just never came. Why me? Why not me?

Every single one of us who cries from the heart to G-d, enters a genuine mystery, the mystery of G-d. Job's engagement with G-d was the real reward, I think; he experienced a closeness to G-d that he had never known through all his correctness and fine piety. Doing the right thing, whether genuine or superficial, in my experience, gets you diddly squat in this world; even though the Rabbis tried to determine otherwise with that tacked on happy ending after Job gets humble.

And still here's another paradox, it is only through G-d's favour that closeness to Him is possible. And when that does happen, in my experience, it is when G-d hears the cries of a broken heart. There are spiritual worlds to explore, traverse and uncover with a cry to G-d from the heart. The answers, however, are never what one expects, in my experience. Certainly not the answers that others give, for they are answers that belong to them, not you, not me.

Job was brought low, in my opinion, in order to know G-d. As for G-d's great and powerful rumblings, there is a reason fear and awe of G-d are stressed in tradition and in history and in the story of Job: the journey can be perilous, and G-d demands a lot (YHWH: A Terrible Beauty).

There is nothing rational about a relationship with G-d and I think that's why the structure of religion, in ritual and observance is a must. It is a sound anchor.

To answer your question more simply: the empiricist in me continues to garner evidence, through experience, of Providence at work. My belief in Providence has changed in that I now see Providence as a whole, both good and bad. Do I see it working in my life? Most often, in retrospect. I still thank G-d for the obviously sweet, but have given up on the wonderful Hasidic tactic of sweetening the bitter (e.g., "think good and it will be good"; "it's all for the best"), basically making lemonade from lemons. Frankly, I haven't found anything yet as strangely comforting as simply going to G-d like David, who said to Gad, "I am in great distress; let us fall into the hands of Adonai ".... and always remembering, "Why not me"?

After a lengthy apprenticeship in learning and observance and Torah (not perfectly, but familiarly), you need to discover your own answers, your own questions. I have found there really is no other way, except from the origins of who you are.