In the beginning, we are told, God created the heavens and the earth. Before this moment, the earth was formless and void, a chaotic nothingness. God enters the scene and with a Word brings order out of the madness.
The beautiful order does not last long, we go on to read. With one bite, one choice, one decision that it is better to know than to live, we see this beautiful order shattered. And since the creation is imbued with God’s own breath, it is a moving, kinetic, wonder. As a result, the shatter keeps on shattering, throughout the cosmos and throughout generations.
You and I inherit this broken glass world, shattered and scattered farther than we can imagine. Some people have made sense of their lives as weavers, puzzlers. They think we can find our vocation as believers by gathering those scattered pieces and putting one or two back together. Sure, that says nothing for the billions of pieces splayed throughout time and space, but our little corner of the puzzle, that we can do something about.
The ancient Rabbis used the imagery of weaving. God’s people were to take whatever fiber was in our hands, and weaving it into another, one broken piece, meeting another, creating a whole. A word they used for this was Kavanah, intention. Whatever we wove together with intention to love and honor God, only those threads could bind together. Only that part of the tapestry would hold.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:
“A moral deed unwittingly done may be relevant to the world because of the aid it renders unto others. Yet a deed without devotion, for all its effects on the lives of others, will leave the life of the doer unaffected. The true goal for man is to be what he does.”
Heschel writes extensively about Kavanah. He argues many sleepwalk through their lives instead of living with holy intention. The deeds themselves may be completed: I scrambled the eggs, I packed the lunch, I kissed the foreheads. I did what was required for those in my care. But if I did it without love, without intention, the person missing out is me.
I can attend church, I can sit in the pew, the words can wash over me, I can hear incidentally but not purposefully. I can do the right things, mindlessly. Kavanah refers to the direction of our hearts, what we are paying attention to, or at its root, what we worship. Anything done with the chief aim to love and glorify God, is done with Kavanah. I tie my child’s shoes, not hurriedly, not absent-mindedly but as the thing God has put in front of me to do. This is what God has for me in this moment and I receive it. I do it with Kavanah.
Jesus said it this way: there are those among us with ears who are not hearing, who have eyes but cannot see. There are those whose hearts are beating with the rhythm God gave them, but will not crack open to receive Jesus. Jesus also said, where your heart is, there your treasure is also. Like a compass, our hearts longings, concerns, and meditations orient our direction. We become what we worship.
In their book, The Shaping of Things to Come, Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost argue for a recapturing of not only this word, Kavanah, but the ideas of much of Jewish mysticism. They contrast this as the life Jesus Himself inherited and lived as opposed to a Christian’s post-resurrection Pauline/Epistles view, and unpack what it has to teach us in a post-Christian age. They say, “The post-Jesus mysticism maintains a wonderfully positive view of holiness. In contrast, so much of Christendom’s view of holiness can be defined as holiness by negation or holiness by avoidance; a faith defined more by what we shouldn’t do than what we should…All things, all events, all activities, can be occasions of hallowing if one brings to them the direction and intent of true Kavanah.”
This is where I’d like to end our series. It seems like a good summary of where I’ve been trying to take us this past year. We’ve had a lot thrown at us as caregivers. We have been called to be teachers, partners, friends, lovers, disciplinarians, coaches, tech gurus (Jesus be near), medical experts, and doomsday preppers, just to name a few. We’ve had to toggle between a kid having a zoom-related-meltdown, and procuring more toilet paper. We’ve struggled with vaccines, feared illness, and endured rage from all sides. We have been trapped in our homes both by circumstance and fear. We have Clorox-wiped our Amazon packages.
But there is something we have done underneath the surface that sparked me to write about Kavanah. We have become more in tune with who we are and what we need, what those in our care need. Perhaps we have not done much great or noteworthy, but we have done much with Kavanah. We have taught our children how to read time on a clock with hands (WHY I DO NOT KNOW) with Kavanah. We have made meal after meal, comforted, rocked, flipped grilled cheeses, all with a new awareness of our actions, with intention, with attention. I think with Kavanah.
I could write for another whole year on more disciplines, and it is in me to do so. Maybe another time. Today is Halloween morning. The jacaranda tree outside my window is finally releasing its leaves. The seasons are changing, and it brings me a sense of relief to let them change me with it.
Tomorrow is November first and my sights will be set on the season of Advent, even though it does not begin until the end of the month. I found so much joy in creating an advent devotional last year that I want to do it again. This time around the theme, “Waiting For Jesus”. (Those who are already subscribed to my emails will get it automatically, anyone else can sign up for free at the bottom of my homepage)
Thank you for going on this caregiving journey with me, I have cherished your thoughts and responses. We have been through the wringer in our homes, in Covid, in a world in turmoil. May we be content today to hold in our hands the threads God has given us and to release those He has not. May we weave together what we can, with joy, with intention, with love.