"Tikkun"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
December 4, 2004

Meditation: “The Thread,” Denise Levertov
Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven't tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.

Sermon: “Tikkun: Radical Hope”
We have entered the holiday season. This year we start with Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday full of lights and hope. As I sit at my desk writing this sermon the sky is finally blue after days of gray and dark. I feel hopeful. I am listening to a beautiful Sanskrit mantra Om Namah Shivay, which is the initiation mantra of the Siddha lineage. A form of yoga dedicated to the end of human suffering. It is the mantra that has been passed from Guru to disciple since the earliest times. Om Namah Shivaya means "I bow to Shiva," the supreme reality, the inner Self or Consciousness that dwells within all of us. I feel hopeful. And I read Jewish texts about tikkun olam the obligation to repair the world. The concept of tikkun olam or repairing the world through social action, is one of the traditional categories of righteousness and justice in the Jewish tradition. And I feel hopeful. What more Unitarian Universalist experience is there? We have a great gift in the many world religions’ sacred texts, centuries of people trying to sort out life and its meaning. As a Unitarian Universalist I am free to seek them out and let them touch me, let them bring me hope.

I find the concept of tikkun to be one of the most helpful; I have spoken about it before. The word "tikkun" first appears in the book of Ecclesiastes (1:5; 7:13 ; 12:9), where it means "setting straight" or "setting in order." Ecclesiastes is the place in Hebrew Scriptures where life is presented as limited and difficult, but God created it all. In Ecclesiastes humans are called to accept the facts about what cannot be changed and enjoy what ever good things God permits. In addition this obligation to repair the world emerges from various other Jewish sources. Some, including many of the ancient prophets, see the obligation as originating primarily from the commandment to emulate God's holiness, for, in their view, God is the model for human righteousness. Others see the obligation to engage in social action as arising chiefly from the Jews' historical position as an oppressed people. [1]

My favorite interpretation of tikkun comes from the Jewish mystical sources. One of these early mystics was Rabbi Isaac Luria. Luria offered novel insights into and interpretations of the classic Kabbalistic text, the Zohar. His myth of creation, deconstruction and restoration became dominant in later Kabbalistic and Hasidic thought. I have told this creation story before.

When it arose within the Infinite to weave Something from it Nothing it performed an act of contracting and concealing itself, thereby forming a central, metaphysical void. It is in this void that the Primordial Man and all the countless Worlds emerge. Lights flashing and recoiling from the eyes, nose, mouth and ears of the Primordial Man emanate the ten archetypal values, and the 22 holy letters which were to be the building blocks of the universe and the structural elements of all things. These lights first formed vessels that were to contain the further emanations of the light of the infinite. However, the vessels could not contain these emanations, and in a cosmic catastrophe known as the Breaking of the Vessels, the vessels were displaced and shattered. The letters, which had been initially assembled into meaningful groups, became a Babel of nonsense. The broken vessels tumbled down through the metaphysical void, trapping within themselves sparks of the emanated divine light. The world, instead of being composed of the pristine archetypal values of Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Love, Judgment, Beauty, etc. was now broken, and displaced. As a result, our world is, as Adin Steinsaltz has put it, "the worst of all possible worlds in which there is still hope," yet paradoxically it is the best of all possible worlds because it serves as the arena for redemption.

As a result of the Breaking of the Vessels, the Primordial Adam was partly shattered into a multitude of individual souls, who themselves are comprised of the same fragments that form our world, and which are exiled and alienated in. The task of individual men and women is to extract those sparks that are his or her fortune to encounter in life, and to raise and spiritualize them, so as to reconstitute the infinite and restore the harmony of the opposites.

Each individual, as he or she travels along life's path, encounters those persons, events and things that contain sparks that he or she is uniquely suited to redeem. Likewise, the objects and people who an individual encounters are potentially suited to assist that individual in raising the sparks within his or her own soul. Each encounter and each life event is an opportunity to raise a spark of holy light or plunge the world even further into darkness. The "raising of the sparks" is the vehicle of Tikkun ha-Olam, the Restoration of the World.[2]

This is perhaps the most influential story of my life, a scriptural piece that puts into words how I feel about the world. Yes, there is evil in the world and there is good. Our job is to emphasize, hold on to, gather and enlarge all the good we can. Our job is to do as much helping and good action as we can. This is an especially important story to tell at this time of year and for me, especially this year. The concept of light being good and dark being bad is, of course, very problematic. Like all metaphors this one can be misused and overused. Still at this time of year when we feel the cold and the see the dark, we are looking for more light and warmth. Without dwelling on the images of dark and light the story still offers a vision of hope. There are shattered pieces of good all around us! It is hopeful. And hope is an essential need of all our lives.

We can look around and see plenty of reasons to despair. For some reason it is the pessimist who finds the most fuel or at least the most air time these days. As a good friend was often heard to say, “Pessimists are never disappointed.” And yet without hope there is really no point even in pessimism. Without hope the pessimistic, the hopeless, does not exist. The state of being without hope is what creates fear and desperation and yet it is in those moments of ultimate fear and desperation that we often see the glimmer of hope. It was when all was shattered that the pieces of hope became visible. Being without hope is what creates war and yet to go to war has been, in the past, a hopeful act. Being without hope is what makes some of us choose to end our lives and yet it is the very fact that we make a choice not to, that we have a choice not to, that brings us hope. Looking at the hopeless state of the world makes some of us decide to not bring children into the world and yet it is in the very act of bringing a child into the world that we find hope. It is out of a history of slavery and exile that this powerful Jewish notion of tikkun was born.

But it is not just a wonderful metaphor. It is an assignment for each of us. There is a piece of the infinite that is yours. There is a part of the shattered vessels that is yours to call out. We see everywhere a desire to find that piece that is ours.

I have not seen the movie or read the book, but I have heard interviews of Mitch Albom, the author of the book, The Five People You Will Meet in Heaven. It is a story about hope. When a man dies he meets five people in heaven that had he not known them, their lives would have been very different. It is a story about knowing that our lives no matter how insignificant they seem to us are essential. And while I might disagree with so many of the premises of the story, I see in its popularity our desire for hope. We are drawn as a culture and as individuals to see the bits of shattered light every where. It is that thin film that Levertov wrote about in our meditation this morning. In addition to the nagging dread, there is within me a gentle and persistent tug to the wonder of life.

Michael Learner, a Jewish Rabbi, has created magazine and community around the idea of tikkun. Its goal is to support everyone from every culture and religion that is setting about the work of repairing the world. Tikkun calls for a New Bottom Line. He writes:

“… we begin to think of our institutions as productive, efficient or rational only if they go beyond producing material well-being for some to also foster more loving and caring, more generosity and open-heartedness, more ecological and ethical sensitivity, more awe and wonder at the grandeur of the universe, more awareness of our interdependence with every other person on the planet, and more celebration, gratitude and joy. Our point is that human beings have a set of needs that are not adequately understood in terms of the Old Bottom Line that continues to dominate American economic and political thinking—and that we need a deeper understanding of what it is to be human, reflected in our New Bottom Line.”[3] He calls it Radical Hope; a hope that goes beyond the old traditional hope to a new place.

My question then to each of us is: What is your piece of the shattered world to bring together? Is it in your family? Is it at your place of work, if those are different? Is it some where else in this beautiful world? In this season of lights, at this time of year when we remember the miracle of the Menorah let us hold tight to that thin strand of wonder, joy, peace, love, rebirth, and most importantly hope.

Namaste.