When we stand in awe, our lips do not demand speech, knowing that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves. In such moments talk is an abomination. All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last. … The meaning of the things we revere is overwhelming, and beyond the grasp of our understanding.”
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Tag: 365 Names Of God
2011’s Big Project, continued in 2018 and beyond.
365 Names: “Der Aibishter”
DER AIBISHTER IS FROM THE Yiddish word meaning “uppermost” or “the highest one.” It’s a good Name for at least two reasons: 1) you can never have too much Yiddish, and b) it’s a nice descriptor of the nondualist perspective.…
365 Names: “Ain Sof”
AIN SOF is the Name given by Jewish mystics to G?d’s most transcendent (read: non-immediate) aspect. Meaning, literally, “without end,” it falls short of describing the Indescribable by admitting with honesty that it can’t be done. “There is no way…
365 Names: God-Who-Sees
GOD-WHO-SEES is, in spite of titling a music video, also a fairly accurate descriptor of the non-dual mindstate: “All is seen, but No-thing is seen,” as one seeker-after-the-Divine put it. The Hebrew version, “El Roi” (lit.: “G?d Who sees me“)…
365 Names: The Nameless One
THE NAMELESS ONE was invented by me (unless I unrememberingly wheelered it from somewhere) to express, ironically, that the whole “365 Names of God” project (and similar efforts) is doomed to fail. As Lao-tze said more than a thousand years…
365 Names: God*
GOD* came about after I saw someone refer in like manner to the current president (at this writing, in early December 2019) and some sports figures. Although it’s meant to indicate someone whose office or standing is shot through with…
365 Names: “God”
“GOD” (quotation marks deliberate) is a more concise statement of Intent than “that-which-some-call-God” or even “that-which-passes-for-God.” (Or even The Metaphorager’s own working definition.) The shorter, the sweeter. Once upon a time, in 2011 in fact, The Metaphorager aspired each day…
365 Names: “The Unseen Seer”
THE UNSEEN SEER Google this, and you’ll find a bunch of links describing a Dungeons & Dragons character class. But I recently saw this Name in an (unremembered, alas) online Torah publication, and I like it because of the image…
365 Names: “Love”
LOVE is defined here in its Divine sense as “That which attracts and unifies.” Similar in principle to the Great Magnet, but different in its connotation of intimacy. The Greeks have specified this Name’s essential qualities as “eros,” or sexuality,…
365 Names: “G-d”
G-D is a bit of linguistic trickery. Because traditional Judaism teaches that the name of G?d (see what I did there?) is not to be erased, “G-d” is a way to write that Name without really writing it: on a…
365 Names: Flow
FLOW is preferred to The Flow, since “the” suggests separateness — “Thingness,” if you will — and as Flow cannot be reliably distinguished from that-which-flows, said usage would upset “the” carefully built phenomenological apple-cart. (And we certainly can’t have that.)…
365 Names: “Teacher”
TEACHER The active metaphor here is that G?d has set lessons all around us, and it’s our job to discover them; imagine everything in the Universe labeled with a great big “LEARN HERE” sticker. No one of us really knows…