In this meditation, we look at the Golden Calf and our tendency to idolatry as a search for redemption in people and things other than God. We explore the urgency, anxiety and restlessness brough on by this constant external search and then feel into how the surrounding container of shabbat and mishkan (tabernacle) –inside us — can offer an antidote to this restlessness that can hold it and calm it. In the process, we discover that we don’t need to be frantically looking outward, that everything we need is right here inside us.
Sources:
Exodus 32:1-6
Story told in Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus, pp. 58-60
Rashi on Exodus 32:1
Talmud Shabbat 89a
Exodus 34:6
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