What is idolatry? It is believing that someone or something other than God is the answer to all our problems, will finally make us feel ok and happy and free.
How The People View Moshe
I don’t think the people’s idolatry this week begins with the Golden Calf, but with Moshe himself. When Moshe is delayed in coming down from Mount Sinai, the people say to Aharon – build us a god because this Moshe who took us out of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him (Exodus 32:1). They think that Moshe took them out of Egypt, that Moshe holds the power of liberation, is equivalent to a god that they now need to replace. They feel themselves entirely dependent on Moshe so that if he disappears, of course they will fall apart.
Our Own Idolatry
This is a problematic, but very natural human tendency. We make ourselves dependent on other people and things. We attach our liberation and happiness and okayness to outside forces. We think – if only things go a certain way, then I will be ok. If only I achieve this success or recognition, if only my partner acts in a certain way with me, if only I get an email response, if only Moshe comes down on time, then I will be ok. We see ourselves as dependent; we give away our power. We look for others to be our redeemers. We set conditions on our happiness.
A story is told of the Buddha that relates to this dynamic, and it too, like the Golden Calf, has to do with cows. One day the Buddha was sitting with a group of his students in the woods, when along comes a frantic man waving his arms and crying out – where did they go? where did they go? I have lost my cows! Without my cows, I have nothing. I am nothing. I will kill myself. After the distraught man passes by, the Buddha turns to his students and says – Dear friends, you are very lucky. You don’t have any cows to lose (as told by Thich Nhan Hanh in No Mud, No Lotus, pp. 58-60).
But most of us do have cows to lose, objects or ideas or people that we attach to as holding the key to our survival. And when we lose them or even fear losing them, we are as distraught as the man looking for his cows or as the Israelites waiting for Moshe to come back.
The Panic Over Their Loss
Rashi describes the scene as follows: The people misunderstand the designated time for Moshe’s return and when they see the time pass, Satan comes to rattle them. He brings on darkness and heaviness and confusion, irbuvia, and shows the people dreadful images of Moshe dead in a coffin (Rashi on Exodus 32:1 and Talmud Shabbat 89a).
This is an apt description of what happens to us when we are suddenly overtaken by the trauma of losing our dependencies or attachments, the fear around not getting the one thing that we thought our whole lives depended upon. Something in us is indeed a little like Satan – stirring up darkness and confusion and panic and contriving images of the worst possible scenario.
It’s almost like a toddler who thinks her whole life depends on getting that ice cream cone and then the ice cream spills on the ground. It’s more than the ice cream cone or the cows or even the man Moshe. It’s what we have attached to it – our very existence and happiness — so that when it is delayed or lost, we are thrown into the throes of Satan’s insanity. We are desperate for things to work out a certain way, arms flailing as we cry out – where are our cows?
Double Container of Shabbat and Mishkan
I don’t think we can argue with this terrible restlessness that takes us over sometimes. But the Torah offers us a different route. The Golden Calf incident is surrounded in the Torah on either side by a commandment to keep shabbat. And then, farther out, it is surrounded on either side by instructions concerning the mishkan (tabernacle). It is as if this restless idolatrous impulse in us is held in a double container first of shabbat and then of divine sanctuary.
This double container – its essence is stillness, both from the resting nature of shabbat and from the dwelling nature of the mishkan. To dwell is to stay and be present, not to run around looking somewhere else. You can create such a container of stillness and presence inside yourself and invite the parts of you that are frantically looking for Moshe and the lost cows to enter with all their urgency and confusion into that stillness. Maybe you can picture them as frantic little children all coming to relax inside this sanctuary of rest. They can be held here. It’s ok if they are still anxious. They can be held in an embrace of peace even in their anxiety.
Shabbat: Slowing Down
One of the things that happens when we are in that state of anxiety is that time becomes constricted. We are impatient for Moshe to have come back yesterday, not tomorrow. We have no long range vision because finding our cows feels urgent and imperative. The container of Shabbat offers an antidote to this urgency, because Shabbat participates in divine time, slow, unhurried and endless time, me’eyn olam haba, a taste of the world to come.
We can practice offering our harried, restless desperate parts a taste of this Shabbat perspective by simply lengthening our breath, slowing down our breathing to a Shabbat pace. After the Golden Calf, God reveals God’s essence to Moshe in 13 attributes, one of which is erekh apayim, being slow to anger (Exodus 34:6). Literally, the term means “long of the nose” as if God’s patience is related to a much longer breath. We can adopt this long slow divine breath and let it permeate our bodies as a way of offering a calm container to hold our frantic parts. Maybe finding the cows is not quite as urgent as those parts had thought. We can breathe in some space, some perspective, the fresh air of the vast sky above, and slow down.
Mishkan: It’s All Right Here
This is the special feature of the shabbat container, its slow pace. The mishkan, too, has a particular role to play in offering an alternative perspective to our natural idolatrous impulse. Parts of us are looking everywhere outside us for the redeemer, for that one person or thing that will finally make us feel alright. But the thing is that we carry that power inside us. The mishkan is God’s dwelling place and God’s dwelling place is right here inside us. Veshakhanti betokham, God says – I will dwell inside them (Exodus 25:8) We’ve been on this desperate search for external help, but we already have the answer, we already have the redeemer, right here inside us.
It’s like we are that little bird who asks everyone she meets – Are you my mother? Are you my mother? We are desperately looking for something essential in all the wrong places, devices and people, and in the end we have to return to our nest, to our own selves, to find it. The Israelites thought that only Moshe had the power to make them free. But that’s not right. We disempower ourselves when we give something or someone else that power, when we make ourselves dependent in that way. The truth is that God resides in every one of us. We already have what we have been looking for, right here inside ourselves. And what we have is not like a cow that can be lost or like Moshe who might not come back. It is something that we can never lose. It is our very souls, the divine spark that resides inside us.
The parts of you that are always looking outside, to someone or something else, can you invite them to turn inwards to look at you, at the innermost sacred you, the piece of the divine that has found a mishkan, a dwelling place, inside you? Those parts are so desperately trying to get something from the outside. They reach and they call and they cry out. Maybe they can rest right here in your own divine dwelling place, the sanctuary inside you where you and God meet. Right here is the answer, right here is the redemption, the liberation, the peace. You already have it. You don’t need to fret over when Moshe comes down from the mountain or build a Golden Calf to feel ok or run after your lost cows or spilled ice cream. Everything was always already ok. Let the urgent restless energy come to rest in that knowledge, in that okayness, in that divine dwelling right here inside you.
Image by Hannah Alkadi from Pixabay
