November 17 2018
TIKKUN
A Jewish friend of mine, the late Dr. Harold Goldsman, who taught psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, gave me a number of TIKKUN magazines. The Hebrew word TIKKUN means “to heal, repair and transform the world.”
In one of the issues I found a statement that is dear to my heart. The author, a professor of Hebrew, writes, “Most importantly, we need a new sort of Jewish piety, a religious attitude fitting to an environmentally concerned future that is already upon us. Among the elements I seek is a Judaism unafraid to proclaim the holiness of the natural world, one that sees creation, both of the world and the human self, as a reflection of the divinity and the source of religious inspiration….The insight that God and the universe are related not primarily as Creator and creature, but as deep structure and surface, a central insight of the mystical tradition, is key to the Judaism of the future.”
I’d say, “Amen, brother.”
I have said this often, and also have maintained that, if we want to ‘evangelize’, bring the Good News to the world, then all Christian and Jewish believers will find common ground proclaiming the message that creation is holy, that we, by harming it, sin directly against God, the creator. This central insight of the mystical tradition is key not only to the Judaism of the future, but to all Christianity as well.
From there is it just a small step to bring the Best news the world has ever heard: that, when we self-destruct – and this is only a matter of time – a renewed creation awaits us.
Jewry and Christianity have a lot in common. Years ago, when one of our daughters lived on the edge of Beverly Hills, our hotel was next door to a Messianic Synagogue where we attended a 2 hour long service, complete with the carrying of the scroll and a Cantor, singing the law. The sermon was based on one of the letters of Paul. Had we lived in L.A. we would have joined that congregation, visually combining the Old and New Testament.
That TIKKUN – total renewal – is needed world-wide becomes more apparent every day. Our Globe has 70% water coverage, and most of the heat we generate by the zillions of carbon explosions in our beloved automobiles each minute, settle in the oceans.
Warmer oceans result in stronger cyclones. Cyclones can suddenly push huge amounts of salty warm water into the Arctic Ocean. The danger is that a strong influx of salty warm water into the Arctic Ocean could trigger destabilization of hydrates in sediments, resulting in massive eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Methane is TEN times more lethal than CO2.
This methane could cause temperatures to suddenly rise strongly at the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, speeding up decline of sea ice and permafrost, and further deforming the jet stream.
This could trigger even more extreme weather events, in particular storms, flooding, heatwaves and fires, across the Northern Hemisphere that could devastate crops, take down power grids and threaten meltdowns of nuclear power plants.
Such fires could add huge amounts of black carbon to the atmosphere as is happening right now in California.
Furthermore, without access to fossil fuel and with the electricity grid down, many people could turn to kerosene lamps for lighting and burning wood for heating and cooking, resulting in even more black carbon emissions that have a huge immediate warming impact.
I believe we vastly underestimate the immense dangers of our way of life. TIKKUN means “to heal, repair and transform the world.” It is too late to change the course of events that inexorably will lead to destruction of everything living. But it is never too late to change the way we, as individuals, live. Actually it seems to me that this is a requirement for entering THE KINGDOM to come.
LIFE IS A UNITY.
Life is a unity: we are what we eat; we are what we think; we are what we do. But we also are what we believe, as faith must guide us, also in sickness and health.
Always uppermost in my mind is The New Creation, and trying to imagine conditions there and simulate them in the here and now. It seems to me that, as Genesis, the first Bible book, relates people ‘in the beginning’ lived hundreds of years, still, supposedly, influenced by a healthy atmosphere such as pure water and air and good genes, as well as natural eating habits and close community ties.
Today we eat plastic and plastic is a poisonous substance. The world produces 300 million tons of plastic each year. Given that a ton equals 2,000 pounds, this is 80 pounds per person on the earth.
Every month or so, living in the country as we do, I have to gather my recyclables and bring it to the recycle center, some 10km away, a job I hate because it brings home to me how much plastic is part of our daily life. Already plastic has infiltrated our innards. It cannot be long before these poisonous products will affect our health and wellbeing, causing an epidemic of cosmic proportion, a new killing disease called PLASTICIDE. Already it is found in our drinking water, and, I would not be surprised in much of our manufactured foods. Once it is ingrained in our bodies, there is no way we can expunge it: we are what we eat and plastic, a pure oil-based product, becomes part of the human psyche, distorting the way we think, the way we act and the way we die.
That is just one of the hazards we face.
Nobody can say exactly where and when a major earthquake will take place, but we know that there is a very high probability for it to occur in seismic zones: the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean comes to mind.
We are totally distorting the earth’s balance with huge forest fires, untold billions of tons of ice melting at both poles, making it certain that enormous earthquakes will occur.
In Revelation 11: 13, the last book in the Bible, whose title means ‘disclosure, or revealing secrets’, such an enormous earthquake is mentioned, “Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred.
Revelation 16: 18 repeats that ominous prediction, “At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed.”
REVELATION tells us that Nature will fall upon the human race as a provoked lion: it will breach all the constrains humanity has laid upon it, and will explode into extraordinary catastrophes, earthquakes, floods, failed harvests, pandemics. All these will be more severe than ever.
Already the signs are there in trumps. Before TIKKUN can take effect, before the healing, repairing and transforming of the world can take place, all traces of The Old World must be eradicated.
That process is now happening.
CLIMATE CHANGE: WAR ON CREATION
Climate Change is simply a euphemism for WAR ON CREATION. Today the war zones are all too visible: The fires in California, the ice disappearing in the Poles, the destructive hurricanes and typhoons, all are the opening salvos in this war.
In our urbanized world we don’t notice that the frogs are mostly eradicated, that the insects have mostly been eliminated, that the mammals, elephants, whales, tigers, lions, are mostly gone, because we have usurped the habitat to grow soya beans, which we feed to the cattle, whose manure causes more Climate Change, and whose meat clogs our arteries.
Enter Ivan Illich.
Influenced by Ivan Illich, and his LIMITS TO MEDICINE, I have long been interested in natural healing, in trying to combine all creative elements in day-to-day living.
Illich has a tendency to exaggerate matters, but in essence he points to the right direction. “The threat which current medicine represents to the health of the populations is analogous to threat which the volume and intensity of traffic represents to mobility, the threat which education and the media represent to learning and the threat which urbanization represents to competence in homemaking. In each case a major institutional endeavor has turned counterproductive.”
Illich wrote this in 1976. I bought his book, LIMITS TO MEDICINE, in that same year, at a time when CLIMATE CHANGE had not yet become a universal phenomenon. Today counter-productivity extends to all facets of society: No matter what we do, we cause more trouble. Economic Growth really means Climatic deterioration. It is like cancer that is fatal, because it is fanned by the human mind. Just as The War on Cancer quietly expired, now that it will affect a major part of the Western World, so Economic Growth will kill us as sure as incurable cancer.
This fatal global outcome is not the result of ideologies, religions, mad rulers, or the like. This death-march emerges out of a social network as a result of the way the universal system is connected. That doesn’t mean there is no direct cause for this mortal outcome: it is the result of the capital in the hands of the top TEN Percent, money that needs to be spent in some way.
Wherever there is a poor Ninety Percent and a rich Ten Percent, thus an imbalance in the accumulation of capital, the excess will spill from the more endowed side to the less endowed one. In that sense, the War of All Wars, Humanity –us – against Creation, is the Child of Capitalism: in other words “Too many Resources in Too Few Hands.
Paul was so right when he wrote to his protégé Timothy, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. (1 Timothy 6: 10), including the evil that will destroy us all, and, let’s face it, we all are guilty of causing the ultimate demise.
HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?
In these last days that is the ultimate question. My grandparents and even my parents – all children of the Pre-Carbon Age – did not have that problem which is unique to us CARBOHOLICS.
We all are responsible for this deadly situation. There’s no such thing as clean living for us Westerners. Even though our house is heated by wood-ends obtained from the local Pallet Factory, while some of our electricity is supplied by solar power stored in batteries, in the scheme of things it amounts to little.
What I am trying to do is to reduce my carbon footprints to a minimum in every way possible: that aim is constantly on my mind, not an obsession, by certainly a genuine desire.
I believe that such a goal in life is different for every person. I take my cue from Paul again, when he wrote to his friends in Philippi, “Dear friends, as you have always obeyed–not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence–continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, (2 Philippians 12).
Fortunately there is no singular way to salvation. Jesus’ own words tell us that, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. (John 14: 2).
Many mansions also mean many different ways to redemption.
It is not only what we do: it’s how we employ TIKKUN, how we
“heal, repair and transform the world.”
We all have the responsibility to work within the means allotted to us. Our ultimate conduct always must be guided by the Royal Command, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6: 33).
For today, in the extreme times we live, this means that in all our actions we must strive to do TIKKUN, “To heal, repair and transform the world, the cosmos.”
This is a leap into faith, believing that when our single-minded purpose in life is to pursue the welfare of creation, that, when we do that all our needs for daily life will fall into place.
Trust and obey, there’s no other way.