Adventures in Judaism

Yesterday, Facebook reminded me that it was exactly one birthday ago that my nearly two-decade-long journey of religious self-discovery completely jumped the tracks. Ran off the road. Stalled out and seemed unlikely to recover its lost altitude. I had spent a dozen and a half years exploring every liberal fringe or offshoot of Christianity I could find. Quaker theology often seemed the best description of the God I was looking for, but Quaker practice only gave me tantalizing glimpses of that divinity. In all its beautiful simplicity, Quakerism was too austere, too DIY, too empty of the day-to-day (and holy day) trappings of religion to fit me and my family. Unitarian Universalism was a delightful playground for my mind at first, willing to let me ask any question I wanted and answer it however I wanted to (as long as my answers didn't make anybody feel excluded or sound too much like the religions other people were running away from), referencing ...

In those times when terrorism and hate break into our world – clearly the case in the death of four innocents in Tel Aviv last week, and even more so in the death of fifty or more in Orlando days later – those of us who are religious are tempted to ask those classic questions: where is God in all of this? and Why does God allow such evil to happen in our world? Better minds than mine have attempted to answer these questions, but the questions remain unanswered. So, here goes a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread… Where is God in all this? I find this one to be the easier of the two questions to answer: to me it is clear that God is in the suffering and in the outpouring of care and love and hope that inevitably follow these events. God's arms are holding each of the victims, easing the way for each of their souls to make their peace with the life just ended and begin their journey to the life to come. God is standing in solidarity, weeping and angry, next to each...