What's Your Bliss?

The Eight Day Festival of Hanukkah, often misunderstood as the way Jewish people celebrate Christmas, has just begun. I have heard many a practicing religious Jew and quite a few Rabbis say that is not one of their faith’s major holy times.


It is popular, nevertheless. Occurring near Christmas and the Winter Solstice, and involving lights, gifts, a miracle and lots of wonderful food, it blends in with all the other pick and choose themes we have available to us as multi-culturalists who want everybody to be happy and hopeful this time of year.

A little over 100 years before Jesus was born, a small band of Jews took on the ruling powers and won. The Greeks had long been in control of a vast empire that included Palestine. They were in charge of the capital city of Jerusalem, the spiritual home of the Jews and the sight of their magnificently rebuilt Temple. The Greeks weren’t the first outsiders to take over the Promised Land, and they wouldn’t be the last. By this time in their history, the Jews were used to foreign rulers. Some even expressed appreciation that the Greeks had freed them from the last empire that had harshly controlled their civic and religious lives.

Under Greek rule, things were fine for a while. The Jews enjoyed a measure of religious freedom for a time. But, as usually happens, tensions rose, some things tightened up and some things relaxed, all at the same time.

The Greeks needed more and more income to finance their empire building and Jews felt the pressure of rising taxes and growing restrictions. And more and more Jews, became enamored of Greek culture, and began to leave behind their traditional ways behind. Some relaxed their observance of the Jewish religious laws to better fit in with Greek culture.

Those in power made a deal with the some of the Jews who were becoming assimilated and suddenly the “wrong party” was in charge of the Temple. Eating barbeque pork and worshipping Zeus in the space meant for the Holy of Holies was just too much for those who still followed the traditional ways! Something had to be done!

So, a young man nicknamed “The Hammer” (Judah of Maccabee) and his band of brothers rushed in when the Greeks were distracted by some unrest somewhere else in their vast empire and took back the Temple. It was a great moment! The few overcoming the mighty! A revolt in the name of true religion!

The Temple was rededicated to its “real” purpose, by the “real” priests, and it remained undefiled by the foreigners and those who would merge their identity with interlopers for a while. It was a victory to be celebrated!

It wasn’t until centuries later, after the Temple was completely destroyed by the Roman empire (except for what is now known as the Wailing Wall), the Hebrew priests gone forever, Jews dispersed all over the world, that the focus of the story of Hanukkah shifted away from the mighty band of zealots to the miracle of a small amount of oil that lasted for eight days and nights.

Over time, it wasn’t the forceful retaking of the Temple that mattered so much. It was what happened when the warriors left for other pursuits and the building and grounds folks came in to cleanse and rededicate the holy space.

They wanted to re-light the sacred lamp. For whatever reason, there was only enough fuel for one day and one night.

They lit the lamp anyway and, miracle of miracles, it burned on for eight days and eight nights.

Perhaps this version of the story of Hanukkah, after there was no Temple to take back and no likelihood of rebuilding it, no likelihood of winning a military battle that would restore a Jewish nation in the Promised Land, this story of a lamp that is portable, that travels with the Jews wherever they found themselves, burning on ...carried the brighter hope.

No longer a win/lose depiction of a small band of zealots throwing off the force of an empire that would have made them all Greek, the festival of lights was understood as a way of saying that holy space can be anywhere hope lives on... anywhere that people come together to clear away distractions, and re-commit themselves to be who they really are. Wherever people remember and continue to struggle to be who they are; the lights of Hanukkah will burn on.

It really doesn’t matter if one holy space exists. Any space can be cleansed of “defilements” and distractions....when those who gather go through the motions of re-member-ing who they are and to whom (or to what) they belong. Whenever and whatever the resources that are at hand are used, and the lamp is lit, it will keep burning...

Some say that Hanukkah is not one of the major religious observances on the yearly Jewish calendar because the rules of how one is to observe those times are relaxed during Hanukkah. It is a popular, accessible, portable celebration that all Jews, no matter how assimilated into whatever cultures or nation they find themselves, can participate in.

It is carries a theme that is accessible to anyone. A theme that anyone, who is in a process of remembering who they really are and to what or to whom they belong, can hear.

Despite the threat of outright extinction many times, in many places...Judaism lives on as one of the world’s great religions.  The hope of Hanukkah lights the way!

Joseph Campbell, the great interpreter of the world’s religious myths and famous for what he called the “hero’s journey” said; “follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there is only walls.”

Clear the holy space within your home, within your heart, of distractions...light the lamp of hope, with whatever resources are available and hope will burn on...

Campbell began using the word “bliss” after studying the Upanishads, the Hindu Holy Scriptures. He explained that to follow one’s bliss was to “put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.”

Later, when it was clear that his counsel to follow one’s “bliss” was misinterpreted as encouraging hedonism...seeking only pleasure... Campbell grumbled; “I should have said, ‘Follow your blisters.”

The human journey from birth to death is full of blisters.

In this season of many stories, the question from this story is .."where are your blisters?”..."what is your bliss?”  Are you using what resources you have to light the lamp of hope? Or are you despairing that there is only enough fuel for one more day?

Last week, I used the season of advent to talk about patience. This week, I have used the story of Hanukkah to talk about hope that is portable, the kind of hope that will see you through the journey of your life, whatever your circumstances may be.

Our stories are different, one from another. What has wounded us, what we have grown to be relaxed about, and what rules we continue to observe no matter what are different for each one of us.

What gives you hope? What’s your bliss? What lights your way?

During Hanukkah, young Jewish children are taught to play the dreidel game. The game is based on spinning a toy that has four sides. Some say that each side represents the four empires that ruled over the Promised Land; Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman.

Some say that as the Jews became scattered, in exile all over the world, they used the children’s game of chance, as they had done in Palestine, to fool the minions of ruling empires wherever they happened to live. If they were caught breaking the law, just for being Jewish, they would pull out the dreidel and say we were just playing a game. We’re just old men, playing a child’s game...

On the occasions when they escaped arrest, they repeated what the Hebrew letters spelled out on the dreidel... “a miracle happened here!”...

Not long ago, when some Jews were able to re-enter the Promised Land and build the nation of Israel, they changed what was written on the dreidel, so it said... “a miracle happened here”.

Sometimes we can win battles, against all odds, and it feels like a miracle.

More often our lives are subject to chance and the laws of probability. We can’t, as we were reminded last Sunday, control everything. Things happen to us, and sometimes all we can choose is how we will wait. We can wait expectantly, with patience for what we hope will be, journeying through the fullness of the moment that is... Or we can wait badly, complaining... Kvetching!

Sometimes, it will be very clear that we are nearly out of resources. Metaphorically, or for real, there is only enough fuel to light the lamp one more day. We will lay our heads down exhausted, depleted, going into the darkest of nights, into long, long periods of exile from our “homeland”, from the promise we believed in, making do the best we can with what we have left...

What calls us to keep on moving through the journey that is this life, despite our blisters, despite the rule of forces beyond our control, is sometimes just a memory of what we once were able to do; what battle we won long ago.

Yet, ultimately hope is not based on what we do. It is based on what we find, still present after the long night, that which is still burning. It may be just an ember, only a tiny spark, only light for another night, then another and another.

Bliss is not about happiness with the way things are. It is about staying true to the lamp of hope, that shows the way, not to victory over others, but to peace with the space we are in, cleared of distractions, that becomes holy space lit with the fire that won’t go out.

May we be a peaceful, patient and hopeful people.