I have spent hours trying to get Blogger to cooperate with me, I guess that you could say that I lost, so I am inserting the second half of the previous post here.
I don’t like comments like that, they feel too pat, too packaged, but I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t resonate with me. I have written numerous times about how I have trouble davening, I always feel better when I am davening outside. I have tremendous memories of davening on the top of a boat sailing to
Maybe it takes being outdoors for me to be open, I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t want to live in a world in which people do the right thing because they think that they will be rewarded for it and I don’t want to live in a world in which you think that you can commit horrible acts throughout your life and be automatically forgiven just because you suddenly find G-d.
There needs to be a balance. And I think that there is.
It’s the Nahman of Bratslav approach to praying. It works.:
“The most essential religious practice of Bratslav, and that which Nahman constantly taught was to be placed above all else in his disciples’ hierarchy of values, was hitbodedut, lone daily conversation with God. The Hasid was to set aside a certain period of time each day, preferably out of doors, if possible, and always alone, when he was to pour out before God his most intimate longings, needs, desires and frustrations. Nahman emphasized the need to do all this aloud, to bring those usually unspoken inner drives to the point of verbalization. He also insisted that one do so in one’s native language (in his case Yiddish) rather than Hebrew.”
From Jewish Heritage Online Magazine.
I do not mean any disrespect but that quote:
“Where is G-d? Wherever you let him in.”
reminds me of what all the fundie Christians say when they knock on my door and tell me I should believe in Jesus.
It doesn’t work for me. In fact, it makes me want to run the other way. But I am glad you find something meaningful in it. Perhaps someday I will, too.