In the beginning (of May 2011) God created a small Kabbalah group in South Devon...
Over countless millennia of continuous Creation, God had worked on a winning formula of bringing order out of chaos and on this particular Wednesday evening, She clearly saw no reason to break with tradition. The original pair of gardeners had after all made some interesting mistakes, which had kept everyone busy learning and growing ever since....and now in this small garden of Kabbalah, a new pair looked set to be following in the footsteps of their ancestors and getting off to a good messy start.
Joyce phoned me just about the time she was due to arrive to join me in the adventure of co-tutoring the new group. "Could you manage without me? " she asked. Given that she was about to present the study material and facilitate the discussion in this new group... 'formless and void' just about summed up my state of mind at that moment... and in the spirit of co-creation my answer had to be"No!" As thirteen Kabbalistic companions began to converge on my home, I confess to welcoming them with both pleasure and a slight sense of shock.
Soon almost all were seated in a circle, the candles were lit and 'Day One' was underway... 'there was light'...and 'there was darkness' (still no Joyce!) God probably saw that it was good, but sadly I was suffering from a lack of divine perspective, as we started the meeting anyway. But soon we were moving on to 'Day Two' and the waters of thoughts and feelings were flowing and separating as we shared our different senses of purpose and vision for the group and our lives.
As a diverse gathering of women and men with a variety of different faith backgrounds and Kabbalistic experience, it really 'was good' to listen to each other. It seemed to me that we were like a sacred grove of "trees on the land, that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." The meeting ground was starting to reveal a wonderful variety of fruitful perspectives, including an honouring of our own names and understandings of our creative Source....which ranged from Adonai to Universe, from Logos to 'that which flows through all things'. This may seem like a simple thing, but in a world where people still torture and kill each other over their different forms and words for God, it is a powerful, creative act to join the Wholly One in looking at 'each according to their various kinds' and affirm this as good. 'Day Three!'
Meanwhile Joyce had arrived and we finally looked set to breeze on into the 'Fourth Day' of Kabbalah group creation. While God was able to tackle major powers in creating the sun and moon, we however managed less well with our technologies and although Joyce grappled womanfully with her lovingly prepared power point presentation...all was not good in the garden at this stage. It's a pretty tall order to try and find words for what is really beyond words, but I think it matters to try. So we tried...but I fear were not very successful in conveying a helpful perspective on the Creation story that was then the focus of our study session...
On the 'Fifth Day' we joined the 'winged birds' or angels through meditation on the Tree of Life. I found this a more fruitful stage and always appreciate the blessing of meditating with others. After this we came back to earth again for the 'Sixth Day' of Creation. We shared our experiences of spiritual practice...from praying open car doors, to finding joy in the washing up... from thinking of others to being authentic about how difficult this can be! It felt to me like a little taste of being truly honest about what it is to be both fully human and made in the image of God.
The meeting concluded with poetry and blowing out the candles. In that final still moment, after all the varied moments of clarity and confusion, the creation for this particular evening was all over. All briefly rested in silence, in stillness, in holiness on that 'Seventh Day'.
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