It’s somewhat trendy nowadays to be a “spiritual seeker.” People used to talk about searching for God, or for an experience of God, although lately the language has shifted and people are more likely to say they are seeking a “spiritual experience.” Either way, many of us think of ourselves as seekers.
But what if we’ve got it backwards? What if we are the ones hiding, not the ones seeking?
Hide and seek. It’s not just for children.
My theme for the high holidays is Questions Worth Asking, and today’s question is a hide and seek question. For context we need to go all the way back to the mythic story of creation.
In the opening chapters of Genesis, the world is created, and light and dark, and ocean and land, and the vegetation and the animals and bugs, and then the humans. And Adam – the first human – is instructed about which trees are okay to eat from in the garden. And then Eve eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they were not supposed to eat from, and Adam takes a bite also.
“And they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, and the man and the woman hid themselves from God among the trees of the garden. And God called out to the human, and said: Where are you? And the human said: I heard your sound in the garden and I was afraid… and I hid….”
We’re not the ones seeking, we’re the ones hiding.
We are hiding, and God is calling out to us: Where are you? And even if some of us do not believe in a God who speaks, or a God who cares about us personally, we are not exempt from answering the question. We just have to shift our understanding of who or what is seeking us. We are hiding, and our inner self, our soul, is seeking us. We are hiding, and our conscience is seeking us. We are hiding, and Reality is seeking us. It doesn’t matter what we call it; it’s all God anyway.
Listen in your mind for a moment – hear the question being asked: Where are you?
What was the tone of voice you heard? Did the tone of voice convey a sense of Where are you, sweetheart? Or did it have a more punitive, or judgmental, or impatient tone? Did it perhaps sound like your mother, or your father?
So we’re playing a game of hide and seek, but it’s a game of hide and seek with a twist – because in this case, the seeker already knows where we are. When God calls out to the human, Where are You? it’s not a geographical question. It’s an existential question. God already knows where we are – it is we who need to figure that out.
Our tradition speaks of God knowing our innermost secrets. For example, in the mahzor / high holidays prayerbook we read: “…You [God] unravel every mystery; all secret things are known to you. For there is no forgetfulness in your presence, nothing hidden from your sight. You remember every deed; you know every doer. All things past and present are known to you, eternal God, and every person’s acts are remembered and judged….” (p. 144)
Rather than rejecting this traditional language of God’s omniscience, we can choose to hear it as directing us inward: There is within each of us a pure awareness that knows more than we know consciously at any given moment. There is within each of us an ageless awareness that is not dependent on our personalities, our neuroses, our life circumstances. There is within each of us an awareness from which nothing is hidden. This is the awareness that we seek to access through meditation, prayer, and other centering practices. And it doesn’t matter what we call it; it’s all God anyway.
So when we hide, we are hiding from this ever-present awareness. But why?
Remember that in the Garden of Eden story, Adam and Eve have just eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For countless generations we have puzzled over the meaning of this image. What assumptions is the Torah trying to convey about the fundamental nature of being human? There is something about the capacity to know right from wrong that leads to the impulse to hide ourselves from the light of awareness. Perhaps it’s the difference between a very young child hiding for the joy of being found, versus an older child hiding in fear or guilt or to avoid responsibility after having done something they perceive to be wrong.
The 20th century philosopher Martin Buber says it this ways [and please forgive his gender bias], “Adam hides himself to avoid rendering accounts, to escape responsibility for his way of living. Every man hides for this purpose, for every man is Adam and finds himself in Adam’s situation. To escape responsibility for his life, he turns existence into a system of hideouts….”
This year I am thinking also of the hiding we do because we perceive the world to be an increasingly scary place. But even if the world isn’t actually scarier than it used to be, and even if we acknowledge the many ways in which humanity has progressed, that does not always ease our gnawing anxiety that the dark side is rising. And so we hide, or try to hide. And in so doing, we are also hiding from taking responsibility for our small part in the epic drama that is humanity.
Where are you? The question calls us to self-awareness – physical, interpersonal, emotional, spiritual. It also calls us to respond, which is one translation of the word teshuvah (normally translated as “repentance”). Teshuvah is the work we are called upon to do during the high holidays, and it requires unflinching self-reflection.
Martin Buber expresses the challenge this way:
“Man cannot escape the eye of God, but in trying to hide from him, he is hiding from himself…. This question is designed to awaken man and destroy his system of hideouts; it is to show man to what [im]pass he has come and to awake in him the great will to get out of it. Everything now depends on whether man faces the question….” (The Way of Man, p. 12)
In other words, there is nowhere to hide. The seeker from whom we are hiding already sees us and knows exactly where we are. But I would shift the tone of Buber’s stern warning into something more hopeful: Rather than responding with fear or existential dread, there can be a sense of relief, even joy. Hearing the Seeker calling out to us Where are you? can elicit from deep within us the desire of that very young child to be found, the desire to come out of hiding, the desire to be seen and known and accepted just as we are. Mistakes and all. Misdeeds and all. The desire, in other words, to be loved, unconditionally.
God is calling out to us: Where are you? And a part of us wants to step out of the shadows and into the light, and answer: I was afraid, and I hid – but here I am.
Hineini. Here I am. Mistakes and all. Misdeeds and all. Ribbono shel Olam, Master of the Universe, let us feel in our hearts the warmth of your loving searchlight of awareness.
As we enter this new year, my blessing for all of us is that we open ourselves to hear this call as deeply as we can, and that we respond by stepping forward into that loving searchlight of awareness with a heartfelt Hineini / Here I am. And may we experience the acceptance and love that awaits us all, if we would only come out of hiding.