Interviews
by Rabbi Mike CominsHere is a fantasy interview, my dream of auditioning for a Jewish Book of the Month club. Besides the shoddy humor, this is a vehicle for presenting the main ideas in A Wild Faith—what's new and different. So here is myself interviewing me. Silly? Maybe. But who better than me knows the challenging questions that a reporter might ask?
There are a number of books out on Judaism and ecology. What will we find in A Wild Faith that's new or different?For starters, A Wild Faith is the first how-to guide for Jewish practice in wilderness. Put it in your pack and start hiking…
Excuse me for interrupting, but wouldn't you agree that most Jews don't go hiking very often?
Well, more than you think. Many more. Hundreds of thousands of Jews will visit a National Park this year.
Yes, but on any given Sunday, they're more likely to be at the bagel brunch than a Sierra club hike. Right?
Your point?
We're considering you for Book of the Month. That's a big responsibility. What would a book group or Torah study class or confirmation class, or anyone who isn't hiking, get out of A Wild Faith?
Well, you don't have to be a backpacker to be moved by a sunset or the flowers in a park, or the flowers in a vase on your Shabbat table for that matter. Yet most people don't know how that basic experience relates to God and Jewish spiritual practice. A Wild Faith goes into the dynamics of why the experience of the nature is so moving, and what to do with it. I didn't have to invent anything. It's all there in the writings of Jewish mystics, Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel. And, hey, maybe the confirmation class would enjoy a walk in the park. In my unbiased opinion, there is no better classroom to teach God and prayer than the natural world. (Editor's note: Free program and study guides to use A Wild Faith with your group, indoors or outdoors, are available at www.awildfaith.com)
Shouldn't a Jewish environmental book speak about global warming rather than horticulture appreciation? Wouldn't a political approach help sell your book and save the planet, not necessarily in that order.
The book isn't political, but it is, in my opinion, an important piece in the struggle to maintain a healthy planet. The political, scientific approach relies on us making wise choices in light of the dire facts. Unfortunately, it's not working well enough. What we need is a cultural shift. We need to act out of a love for the natural world rather than continuing to relate to it as a “resource” or a “machine” or something “out there,” away from civilization, that needs to be addressed lest we endanger our ability to order a vente, non-fat, extra shot cappuccino. A Wild Faith provides a “deep” Jewish ecology, an approach to environmentalism rooted in Jewish spirituality and a loving relationship with the natural world.
I wasn't going to bring this up, but you let the genie out of the bottle. You really don't think of nature as a “resource” or a “machine.” You think of nature as intelligent. You actually have a chapter entitled “But Rabbi, Should I Talk to Trees.” Please tell me that you don't talk to trees.
All the time.
Now you're scaring me. Isn't that pagan?
I happily identify with the many Hasidic rabbis who were accused of being pagan because they found God in the nitty-gritty of the world, including nature. They weren't pantheists, but mystics. Scholars call them panentheists. It's not that God is in the tree, but that everything is part of God.
I speak to trees because speech is the best way for a human to express his or her self. I don't worship a tree, but I try to establish what Buber calls an “I-thou” relationship. Right at the beginning of his book, I and Thou , Buber relates an I-Thou encounter with a tree. He got a lot of flak for it, but he stood his ground and stood by his experience. And it's a true experience. He describes exactly what I experience in nature. Trees don't talk back, but in their own way, they enter into relationship with us humans. That's about all I can say in a sound bite. There's more in the book.
Oh, but let me add another sound bite. The roots of this viewpoint go back to the origins of Judaism. God as a purely spiritual being is foreign to the Hebrew Bible. God constantly appears to the ancient Israelites in some physical form: usually fire or as a cloud. God appears on mountain tops, or near oak trees, or in a storm. In fact, ancient Israelite religion was based on God's influence over the natural world. The three pilgrimage holidays celebrated the three harvests of the Land of Israel (Pesach for barley; Shavuot for wheat; Succot for fruit).
The Hebrew Bible is a non-stop polemic against paganism, not because the biblical experience of divinity was so different from that of pagans, but because it was so close. But no one questions the monotheistic credentials of Abraham, Moses or Job. When we find God in nature, we're not rebelling against Judaism, we're recovering our roots.
When I think of a rabbi, I imagine a person bent over a tome of Talmud, or sitting at a desk with piles of books on it. What happened to you?
Oh, I love books. I spent four years studying Talmud in Yeshiva, went to rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, and I took on Western philosophy at Hebrew University. But I didn't find what I was looking for until I left the books behind and started walking the desert.
What were you looking for?
God, the meaning of life…
You know the meaning of life?
Yes, the meaning of life is 42. Kidding aside, I am a serious meaning seeker. And I have found my home in wilderness, because I feel closest to God in wilderness. What's meaningful is trying to stay in contact with God's presence. It's a path, a way of living.
But you're a rabbi. Don't you like being in synagogue?
Sure I do. It's not either/or. Spiritual life is empty without a community. It certainly shouldn't be limited to when you're in a National Park. I spend a lot to time in the book locating Jewish spiritual practice in wilderness in the larger context of Jewish life and spiritual life in general. But I think I'm like most people. The place I most readily have “God-moments,” the place I can always find God, is out in nature. For some people, that's the only place they get a sense of God.
Here's the kicker. We live in a time of rampant assimilation. Lots and lots of Jews, particularly young Jews, who don't enjoy a synagogue service, are having “God-moments” in the natural world. But they have no idea how this connects to Judaism and a synagogue. Their most profound spiritual moments, moments that could bring them into a genuine and fruitful relationship with Jewish tradition, actually divide them from it. They think, wow, to feel something spiritual, I had to leave the synagogue and Hebrew school behind. When you consider that the formative events in life of the Jewish people took place in wilderness, it's more than ironic. It's a tragedy.
How did you discover nature?
Growing up, my parents took me to Big Sur and Yosemite every summer. They started the family backpacking when I was twelve. I always loved nature. But I never linked that to God until I was about to be ordained. I had just finished writing a mega-thesis on liberal Judaism and Western philosophy. All that intellectual work on theology, ironically, left me feeling further from God than ever. It was strange. And I was just about to be ordained! Somehow, though, I knew what I needed to do. I went hiking. The Judean desert, the Negev, and especially, the Sinai mountains. Everything changed. I was also reading contemporary mysticism at the time, Larry Kushner's books and others, and I realized that I had been looking for God in the wrong places. I shelved my plans for a doctorate and went to Israeli desert guide school instead. I sought out teachers of nature and spirituality, which led me to non-Jewish teachers and led me back to the U.S. after fifteen years in Israel.
Who did you find to teach you?
Native Americans, Buddhists, Jungian psychologists, and the occasional rabbi. Anyone doing spirituality outdoors. Spirituality programs for rabbis had just opened up and I participated in them as well.
What did you learn that stuck?
More than I can say. From Buddhists I learned mindfulness. I sat four and six-week silent retreats, which taught me a whole lot about my body and my mind and how they interact. The most powerful thing, however, was something called a Vision Quest. Four days of sitting in a small area, in solitude, fasting from food in wild nature. It's the most powerful ritual I've ever experienced.
You didn't talk for six weeks. You fasted four days. Are you really Jewish?
Last time I checked.
What do you do for four days alone in, in, God knows where?
Pray, meditate, walk. I did a Daoist movement meditation called Chi Quong. But the point was that I didn't have what to do all the time. I needed to confront my boredom, my fear of going without entertainment, the fear of having to be with yourself. I had plenty of time to look closely at my little corner of the world. Most important, I had lots of time to look inside and lots of time to reach out to God. It was heart and soul time. In fact, I call it a “Soul-O Wilderness Retreat.”
What did your congregation make of their rabbi running off to weeks-long retreats?
Well, I didn't have one at the time. I pursued my spiritual quest for the better part of two years. I called it a “spiritual sabbatical.” Then I took a job as the rabbi of the Jewish community in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That's when I started TorahTrek. I began developing my own approach to Jewish spirituality in wilderness, and leading retreats and hikes in wilderness to share it. It's an ongoing process. A Wild Faith is a snapshot of where it stands today. As readers try it out and share their feedback with others and myself, the field of Jewish Wilderness Spirituality will continue to grow and develop.
Do you starve people on TorahTrek retreats?
Not yet. Hopefully soon.
Really?
Yes.
Why am I not surprised?
There is a section on fasting in the book. It's only one of forty-four spiritual practices in A Wild Faith but it's a good example of how doing something from Jewish tradition, in wilderness, puts the practice in a whole different light. As long as you keep drinking, it's safe, and it's easier than you think.
What do you get out of fasting?
When you fast, your body becomes like an antennae. You experience everything ten times stronger. I'm convinced that that's why we fast on Yom Kippur. Fasting and practicing Chi Quong brought me to a whole new understanding of the world. The mystics speak of God as the “River of Light,” a stream of divine energy that formed the world and animates it. I dismissed this as nonsense during rabbinical school. Imagine my surprise when I began to experience this in my body, what Rabbi Nachman of Breslov writes about. I couldn't believe it at first. I've been a mystic ever since.
I usually associate mysticism with people meditating with their eyes closed, or staring at a candle and trying to enter a trance. It seems very esoteric.
For me it's eyes wide open and feet firmly on the ground. The more alert the better.
Can you describe what you experience?
It's hard to put into words of course, but when I'm doing spiritual practice in wilderness, I usually feel God in my bones. I feel bathed by the River of Light. Energy or light might not be the right word. But I feel energized and clear and morally charged to be the best person I can be and full of compassion for everything I'm seeing. It's emotional but also physical. Through the practices in the book, I am quite aware of my body and I can tell when I'm in the River, in the divine flow. We're always in it, but sometimes it bounces off us and sometimes we let it in. My spiritual practice is about letting it in.
When I think about it theologically, the metaphor that makes sense of it to me involves the human brain. Think of the world as analogous to the brain and God as electricity. Electric current runs through the brain along neural pathways that connect the various parts of the brain. Somehow, because of mechanisms we are far from understanding, the result is consciousness, intelligence, feelings. We can try to reduce consciousness to the physical processes of the brain, but it is obviously so much more than that. So, too, the world has an intelligence to it, that can't be reduced to the laws of physics. I can't prove it, but I think I'm tapping in to this divine consciousness that runs through creation, this light that connects us all and acts like a force but is intelligent, responsive and morally commanding. For me, being in God's presence is a very tangible experience.
So you really do “feel” God?
Yes.
Can anybody “feel” God?
Anybody. Some more than others.
And what if I don't feel anything different in my body when I'm in the Grand Canyon?
My guess is you'll still feel close to God and you'll find another forty spiritual practices to choose from in A Wild Faith.
Without talking to trees.
Thirty-nine. You're really obsessed with talking to trees. I've highlighted the more innovative parts of my thinking in this interview. I'm trying to make Book of the Month. But you don't have to have this or that theology to practice Judaism in the natural world. The practices in A Wild Faith run the gambit from very traditional to cutting edge and innovative.
Thanks for your time.
Hey, wait, did I make Book of the Month?