Ahat -One. Ahat sha’alti me’et Hashem. “One thing have I asked of the Lord, it I will request: to dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life. To see the beauty of the Lord and to visit in His palace (Ps 27).” These are the words of a song I grew up singing, one which involves, in the second half, throwing up a kippah to the accompaniment of the word “Woow!”
The phrase is also part of the special psalm said daily from the beginning of the month of Elul through the end of the holiday season. This year, I am taken by that first word, Ahat, “One.” It reminds me of the other “one” I have been struggling with, the ehad, (masculine form) of the Shma – God is One. And also of the ahat of the Piaseczner Rebbe who talks about holding inside one’s head “a single holy thought,” machshavah ahat tehorah.
Wouldn’t it be nice to only have one single thought, to really only desire ahat – “one thing have I asked of the Lord?” One of the hardest things about the modern world is the stress caused by competing obligations and pulls for our attention and time. How will I ever get it all done, one wonders, as the mind rushes from one thing to another in a whirr of tension that clouds the mind and weighs heavily on the body.
This is the time of year we get to think ahat, one thought about Ehad, the One. Can we align our complicated lives with this one single important principle: seeking out God’s presence in the world. If God is one, the world He created is somehow one, and eyn od milvado, “There is nothing other than Him,” so that every single part of our lives is integral to His Presence.
Perhaps I sound like a fundamentalist. I don’t pretend to actually see the world in this single-minded way. But I wonder if it doesn’t make sense to try to bring wholeness to all these disparate parts, to feel when we wake up in the morning a sense of purpose and clarity of vision, a drive to be aligned with the One in everything we do? I suspect that in this ahat there is great peace and strength, that being aligned with the One means receiving the blessing – Vayasem Lekha Shalom.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGreat. It's funny but the author of the psalm probably meant it literally; after all they really had g d's house.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that you find this yearning fulfilled through relationships rather than an internal sense of holiness? Is our relationship with g d a sense of him within us, or more akin to a dialogue.
This oness seems to be at the heart of spirituality. The sense of being part of the one, connected is a great source of comfort.
ReplyDelete