My Temple. My Altar.

Can I see some ID?

As usually happens when a friend approaches seeking spiritual/relational advice, I just received wisdom, insight and challenge that have me revisiting what I thought I’d settled, boxed up, taped shut and placed in storage for good. I love when I hate when I love when this happens.

In this case the topic was how or even if we remain in relationship with those whose world views and political interests have not simply strayed beyond our reach, but moved to a place we cannot even stand adjacent to for any length of time. We fear some diseased complicity. We grieve our loss of trust in a once beloved companion. We question either their sanity or our experience of them as we thought we knew them.

It hurts to be pushed out of intimate contact. Perhaps it hurts even more when we find ourselves doing the shoving.

As I hung up the phone after a deep and wonderous conversation, the Jerusalem temple suddenly popped into my head. (I ask any non-Abrahamaics to bear with me. The analogy is going to prove sound, I hope. See it through with us?)

From my first memories of Sunday School, through my Shoshin-chasing undergrad years, ever-present in my seminary training, and stuck for decades like burdock to the hem of my seldom-used priestly alb was a view of the Jerusalem temple as hopelessly exclusionary of whole populations and subgroups. I mean, just look at it:

The Temple keepers assert: You are a gentile, so you’re barely allowed beyond the front porch. You have a uterus, so you are only allowed inside the first gate. You have a circumcised penis, so you can come through the next gate, but only clergy from here. You are low ranking clergy, so park it. You are not the high priest, so step no further than the holy butcher shop. You are the high priest, so up the twelve steps with ye and in, but only on Yom Kippur…

I know we’re talking about the Holy of Holies (cue cherubs), but elitest much?!?

The guy who masterminded all this with the original temple was Solomon. But didn’t he, to his everlasting credit, include this in his dedication speech:

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1^st Kings 8:27)

So maybe the Temple and all the be-spired behemoths that follow are NOT about containing Big-G God for convenient access, but were meant to be a focusing agent for all who seek. After all, even persnickety Paul would write

Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1^st Cor. 3:16)

So, if you and I are Holy Temples, do we not also contain a Holy of Holies? Howard Thurman spoke of an internal altar on an island, flanked by heavily armored bad-ass angels who kept it safe from vandalism. Mmmm.

I know by the air, the peace, the clarity, the intense joy-sorrow I feel when I am facing my innermost altar. Such Holy Center merits protecting.

I have definitely demoted one or two of my former priests.

I have closed once accessible doors to many men and a few women.

I have relied on the strength of twenty men to shut my Beautiful Gate to some who once were granted access.

I have banned a few brutally toxic family and friends from even approaching my Temple Mount.

And now it strikes me:

All this effort defending my Holy of Holies has me turning my back to it, too.

Fortifications are necessary, but only in protection of practices in the presence of the sacred. Vital. Our very breath.

I have doom-scrolled in time set aside for meditation. I sometimes zing when I should sing. I fret when focus is needed. I relegate my High Priest to bouncer duty on the sidewalk outside.

I will now resist the writing of the paragraph laying blame at the feet of those who are deliberately seeking and tripping our triggers. Well, I almost will.

This isn’t about them. It’s about me.

I’m spitting out words to taste what I’m thinking. I’m begging what’s free and counting the cost.

It is when my faith is most difficult that I most need it, and I most need it now. But I’m too busy defending it to be present in it.

Remember the story of the two celibate monks approaching a swollen river one morning? They find on the banks a beautiful maiden unable to cross. The first monk piously turns from her and struggles his way against the current, successfully crossing. The second picks her up in his arms and fights for all he’s worth to make it across, setting her down on the far bank to be on her way.

The two walk on for miles in silence. At nightfall, as they are making camp, the first monk finally speaks up:

“We are forbidden contact with women. You should not have carried her across the river in your arms,” he says.

The second monk answers: “I carried her for a few minutes early this morning. You’ve carried her all day.”

Mind the gates of your Temple as you seek your Holy of Holies, but mind your mind even more. All that comes close you yourself have carried up those steps.

mmm... gimme

you call that hard?
mmm... gimme
you call this cold?
mmm... gimme
that's nothing

come on come on come on come on come on
come on come on come on come on come on
let me into your temple
come on come on come on come on come on
come on come on come on come on come on
I want into your temple

mmm... gimme
come on come on
mmm... gimme

you call that far?
mmm... gimme
you call that hot?
you call that darkness?
mmm... gimme
well, it's not

come on come on come on come on come on
come on come on come on come on come on
let me into a temple
come on come on come on come on come on
come on come on come on come on come on
I want into the temple
the temple
the temple
the temple

come on come on
come on come on

stop.
mmm... gimme
I mean... go
mmm... gimme
mmm... gimme

you call that loving?
mmm... gimme
you call that rain?
mmm... gimme
you call that giving?
mmm... gimme
you call this pain?
mmm... gimme
you call that rough?
mmm... gimme
you call that sad?
mmm... gimme
you call that tough?
well, it's not tough enough

come on come on come on come on come on
come on come on come on come on come on
let me into your temple*

*Temple by Jane Siberry, from the album When I Was a Boy, ©1993 (yes, it’s a favorite)

Temple Jane Siberry iTunes