Coffee and Kabbalah

livingspirit3@gmail.com Uncategorized 30 Comments

The Devon Kabbalah Group is now settling into regular fortnightly meetings when our small band meet for meditation and study. Our theme at the moment is a ‘school of the soul’ with our discussions based around Halevi’s diagram as shown opposite. I’ve found myself thinking…’what is the difference between a coffee morning and a Kabbalah group’ ? They certainly do have things in common (mainly coffee!) Looking at that tree diagram, it’s clear that both have a place of meeting, members (or students) and their contemplations, rituals and devotions. Us spiritual types may not like to admit it but there’s nothing intrinsically more holy in setting out the menorah than the coffee spoons.

In our opening prayer we say “let us gather together, let us draw together, let us rise up and go to that holy place of meeting’. How often have I sat in a meeting listening to the personal agendas, the jockeying for power or control (however nicely done)? It might have been a meeting dedicated to community or to spirit but was it holy, were people really meeting? To actually ‘draw together’ requires so much more than just being in the same place at the same time. When I listen to the people in our group I hear a lot of honest questions, the willingness to be vulnerable and not have the answers. I hear a real longing for a deeper perspective, for what the poet Adrienne Rich calls “the truths that we are salvaging from the splitting open of our lives.” In this way we can each be ‘teachers’ to each other. I learn more from hearing someone honestly share their loneliness or their uncertainties about meaning and purpose than from any spiritual tome. I learn to face my own difficult life and how to care about others…not out of pity but out of empathy because we are all struggling sometimes. That’s my ‘holy place of meeting’ – it’s just that human place of shared brokeness and beauty.