THE HOLY CENTER

1 Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia (New York: Swedenborg foundation, Inc.) Par. #8939.

5. Bread and Incense

The altar of sacrifice was a way of bringing deep, underlying feelings, painful as well as joyful, to the Presence, as these feelings were aroused usually by some special occasion of personal, family, or national life. There was something of crisis in this slaughter altar, standing as it did in the courtyard, outside the holy place itself, bearing the fire that made present Love itself. The lampstand of pure gold with its lighted lamps, within the holy place, but still, of course, outside the veil, also had a sense of otherness about it. It pointed beyond what human eyes can see to Truth itself. Both of these furnishings were awesome witness to the Presence in its dwelling place within. The awe is real. But the holy place had also another, more homely and more comfortable symbol of coming into God's presence: the table for the loaves of bread.

The table again was of pure gold in witness to God's love, but the loaves, baked regularly of fine flour grown and ground by people, were the peaceful satisfactions of daily receiving love and strength from God in the normal affairs of life and especially in daily work.

Eating food is perhaps the one most basic symbol of needing to be nourished, to be sustained in life. The prophet Joel sees food as parallel to "joy and gladness" in the "house of our God" (Joel 1:16). The mother who nurses and comforts her child, and the Lord who says to his disciple, "Feed my sheep," are two vivid images of God's caring love in the Bible (Isa. 66:12; John 21:7). To give and share food is the simplest, most natural act of human caring, and at the same time the most directly open to the Divine. It was the way of sharing in the most solemn act of communion in the ancient Near East, as well as the way of fulfilling the most basic human obligation: hospitality to the stranger. According to the earliest tradition, when Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel saw the God of Israel at that most solemn time of the making of the covenant, "they beheld God, and ate and drank" (Ex. 24:11). Again, when the Lord came to speak with him at Mamre, Abraham's first words to his angel visitors were an embodiment of the right ethical response to guests: offering food.

When the angels stayed, the "morsel of bread" became, of course, a meal of meat and curds and milk as well as cakes of fine meal. This is partly normal Near Eastern hyperbole, as any ancient or modern Israeli, Arab, or Greek might speak of what he would set before a guest. But it is also true that bread is the common, staple food, the symbol for all food in general, for all that nurtures and satisfies, including the celestial food of God's love for humankind, and human love to the neighbor. According to Swedenborg, bread is love brought to its simplest, most basic form, on earth and with each person, as well as in heaven (AC 2177). The table for the loaves of bread means bringing normal, human daily work to the Lord's Presence to find peaceful satisfaction in it.

What is in agreement with our life is food for us, and satisfies. Some satisfactions are more tense than others, however. To gain immediate satisfaction only, no matter what the consequences to others, brings fear of retaliation. To hold on to inflated or temporary satisfaction, brings fear of loss. So Aaron, the priest in us, who desires our peace, puts our loaves in order each week for the sabbath, as he does our lamps each day.

The greater part of daily work is not made up of spontaneous acts of affection. Work requires thoughtful effort. It requires planning for what will happen, allowing for contingencies, evaluating methods. The mentality which apparently serves work best is used to taking responsibility, depending on its own resources, judging success or failure in terms of outside standards, putting personal needs aside, our own and sometimes those of others, in order to get the job done. Tensions over performance, or over meeting others' standards, are so common they almost seem to be part of having a job. This mentality may seem perhaps most apt to set us on our own, apart from God. The powerful emotions, anger, fear, or love, touch us enough to drive us to our depths, to meet our Lord. This work mentality seems just to separate. But if persons can find no peace or sense of meaning in the work that takes the major part of their days and greatly influences their feelings about themselves, then something is missing in their tabernacle. It is good to be reminded, when we get pulled off base by regular or by other demands on our time, that one element even now functioning in our inner self, is the priest within, who has the desire, the energy, and the skill to order our priorities so that we may find peaceful satisfaction.

Israel's tabernacle provided ways to deal with both the regular and the occasional demands of work. For the regular, the loaves were set in order every week on the table in the holy place. For the occasional, special bread offerings were brought to the altar in the courtyard as needed. For both, the bread was to be of fine flour. Work takes many forms. It may be public service, or highly public leadership at the executive level, flying airplanes, or repairing their engines, writing books, or washing floors. For some, it may be dealing with inability to get a job. For some, it may be work never acknowledged as work at all, hard work of planning, marketing, cooking, cleaning, driving, washing, teaching, but taken for granted because it is expected of a mother or a father. What makes it "fine" is not its public image or prestige, but its motivation and its actual use to persons in society.

Each kind of work involves some kind of value, or it would not be done at all. It may provide a living, foster an enormous ego, be the facade for rebellion against a parent, or be a sensitive way of serving God and coming alive oneself by using one's best talents to contribute creatively to the common good. Negative, or hidden motivations can create problems. But the work mentality itself can also split our calculating self from our essential feelings and splitting thought from feeling is destructive. Neither accumulation of data or of accomplishments without feeling, nor spontaneously fluctuating expression of every feeling felt, without thought for consequences, makes fine flour. Work done intelligently and from a spirit full of the Lord, wise thought for others and for oneself, put into action, is the flour for these loaves of bread.

To the flour, oil was added. If fine flour is needed for this bread, it is no wonder that pure olive oil, symbolizing God's mercy, is needed too. All life and wisdom and love are, of course, from God, as well as all good food and grain. But specific knowledge of God's mercy to all is essential to the sense of the Lord's presence for our good.

To fine flour and oil, is added the frankincense of intelligent gratitude. It is hard to think of a more pleasant fragrance than that of freshly baked bread, but the fragrances of spices for anointing oil and for incense were also part of the atmosphere of the tabernacle and of worship. Odors have to do especially with perception, and the pleasant odors of incense with grateful, joyful perception of truth. The underlying nature of a person corresponds closely to the atmosphere in which he or she can breathe easily, and to what odors he or she finds pleasant. Pure frankincense is inmost truth, clarified from the falsity of evil, and perceived with joy. Frankincense was a part of the special combination of spices used to make the cloud of incense always before the ark in the tent of meeting, a special combination sacred to that purpose, and never to be used by human beings themselves (Ex. 30:34-38). Frankincense alone was used by human beings, however, and was associated with the luxury of King Solomon (Song of Songs 3:6), the fragrance of the beloved, the bride to be (Son of Songs 4:14), or, together with gold, as a symbol of the wealth of all the world of nations brought in praise of God to Jerusalem (Isa. 60:6). The odor of frankincense mingled with that of fresh bread, was indeed joyful perception of God's goodness in all,that is, worship.

The bread was also to have salt. The salt of the covenant of God (see Num. 18:19 and II Chr. 13:5) is the desire which love has for wisdom, to do good wisely, and the desire which wisdom has for good, to live and to be fruitful. It is the element that makes heavenly food savory and assimilates it to life. To be without it, is to know truth and have no care for living it, to have no savor.

The bread of regular, daily work was to be twelve loaves of generous size, after the number of all the tribes of Israel, and of the fruits of the tree of life, to represent all the varieties of joy and satisfaction of working with the Lord, conscious of the Lord's presence and purpose. The twelve loaves were in two piles of six, six being the number of work days and representing the full state of labor. The two piles of six, side by side, symbolized the Lord's blessing given equally to those who sought to do what was true or right and to those who sought to do what was good. This was the "show bread," the bread of the Presence, placed by the priest on the table within the holy place for each sabbath. The word for "show" or "Presence" here is literally "faces," that is, before the face of God, that is, in the presence of all that is from the Divine Love, such as innocence, peace, joy, or heaven itself with those who receive it (AC 9545-6).

Loaves could also be brought to the altar to be offered for special needs connected with daily work. The bread of occasional, varied kinds of work might be cakes baked outside the oven and simply anointed with oil (lesser, external duties, subordinate to our chief work), or hastily cooked on a griddle or boiled in a pot like dumplings (incidental duties of all kinds), or even flour ready for the baking (a duty not yet seen clearly enough to take a particular shape) (Lev. 2). All work involves some satisfaction. If it is simply dropped and left to go stale, it can be mouldy or dry drudgery, involved in all kinds of negative bargaining. If it is brought to the table or the altar, its satisfaction is recognized, and the bread is transformed by the spirit of God who gives it life.

The loaves of the Presence place on the table in the holy place and the bread brought to the altar for offering were eaten with joy. In both cases a "memorial," a part that brought the Presence of God to active memory, was not eaten, but burnt, sent up to God, to symbolize the Divine actually present. For the bread of the Presence, this memorial was the frankincense; for the bread of the offering, it was "a handful of fine flour and oil" and "all of its frankincense," the "handful" meaning that the person making the offering was to take hold, or love, with all his or her strength or soul. The rest was for Aaron and his sons, to be eaten "in a holy place, since it is ... a holy of holies of the offerings by fire to the LORD." This part which the priest in us eats, means the sense we have of working as of ourselves as we carry our goals into life, knowing that the power to work is from God and is God's power with us.

This combination of my taking hold with all my strength, giving my effort to my work, and at the same time trusting the accomplishment and the outcome of each action to the Lord, because the Lord's strength is present, is the offering of my bread. When I bring to the Lord my thought for daily use which I hope to live in my work, penetrated with the oil of God's mercy to me and to my neighbor, and I catch the scent of the joy of God's gifts, a quickening fire kindles and unites with them all, and brings new life. This is the Lord's life brought to life in the work of persons in this world.

The priest was to eat this bread in a holy place since it was a holy of holies of offerings. When Jesus himself drew near and went with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, they did not recognize him, for the crucifixion had put an end to their hope that "he was the one to redeem Israel." But "when he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them." And as the bread was broken to be eaten, in the simplest human act, most open to the Lord, it became again the bread of life and Presence, and they knew that it was he.

Turn your mind back to one typical working day, the effort you put in, the work accomplished, the times of joy or satisfaction. Be open to your feelings. What kind of satisfaction did you have? Do you feel tense or peaceful as you think of it? Did only one part of you find satisfaction or was the whole of you content? Where did you find the satisfaction? In achievement? In the simple things of life like having enough to eat or seeing a sunset or seeing someone smile? What are you aware of in yourself as you think of bringing your daily work and life to God?

Read again Leviticus 2:1-3 and 13, and be open to the images in it.

What element speaks to you? The fine flour of balanced thought and feeling? The oil of mercy? The incense of God's goodness in all things? The salt that makes satisfaction good and part of ordinary life? The very fact of bringing your satisfaction to the altar and not letting it go stale?

Now think back to your own working day, and ask the Lord to help you bring it as an offering, and receive a holy, peaceful satisfaction as the Lord gives you the blessing of wholeness and new life.

Lord, thank you that you are with me in the simplest, daily parts of life. For my life is full of so many little things, and if I could not find you there, I would be lost and lack direction in so much. Thank you that the simplest act of giving and receiving food is most open to your Presence.

Lord, help me with my priorities. Help me to take hold with my full effort, and then trust all results to you. And thank you that I can bring my work to you and know the taste and scent of peaceful satisfaction. Thank you, Lord. Amen.

6. Mornings and Evenings

If we look at Israel's ceremonies merely as part of history, they may seem like the ceremonies of a very external people, performed with a gross, if not altogether mistaken idea of the God they worshipped, and with an equally obscure idea of worship. Seen in this way, the solemn slaughter and burning of two lambs a day seem simply the remains of the ancient history of a barbarous age.

But what, then, is the element of vitality which has preserved such a detailed record of these sacrifices to the present day? Why are ceremonies like these found mingled with the high ethical teachings, psalms, and prophecies that have been the foundation of the most sensitive social ethics, high religion, and hope for so many generations? And why is it that these ceremonies, related in such minute detail, seem so plainly to be commanded by God as essential for Israel? It seems impossible today, at least, to take them as essential to a relationship with God.

The approach we have been taking sees the Bible as, indeed, a revelation from God, partly clear and partly obscure, as people have been able to receive it. It sees the symbols in the Bible as speaking throughout, with power, of the most central elements in the religious life, whether to ancient or to modern men and women. And these morning and evening sacrifices of the lambs, offered for Israel day by day, deal now, as they have always in the past, with the ups and downs and changes, the timing of the inner life.

The working day outdoors in Israel's climate is dominated by two twilights: the half light before the heat of the sun strikes the land with fire and energy, an almost savage challenge to getting work accomplished in the face of penetrating power, and the half light of evening, the cool of the day, when breath can again be drawn freely, and a little space of rest and peace is given before the deep blue of the night is wholly present. Evenings and mornings here speak more vividly than in the temperate zones of beginnings and ends, of new life and completion, of creation.

Each morning and each evening has its own sacrifice of a lamb, fine flour and oil, and wine. We have seen that animals symbolize feelings, and that meat and bread offerings are to be either burnt or eaten. Animals burnt wholly on the altar are our awareness that good affections are wholly from God, and that these affections or feelings can be the means of our knowing our unity, our communion, with God. Animals burnt outside the camp as sin offerings symbolize thorough removal from the heart of feelings and game patterns that are destructive. And animals eaten in feasts before the Lord symbolize the nourishing of the mind by God and bringing God's life to practical use in this world. These three elements together picture three essential aspects of the fullness of worship: 1) removing evil, 2) receiving goodness and truth from God, and 3) living in a way that brings that inmost Presence of goodness and truth to concrete reality and use.

The morning and evening sacrifices ask for "two lambs, sons of a year, day by day." The lamb is, of course, a symbol of gentleness and innocence. It is affectionate and playful, with no apparent desire to do hurt, and no means of attack. It follows its mother, and then its shepherd. It loves play, it loves food and drink, but it will leave everything at its shepherd's call. This yearling lamb is not a symbol of mere new born want of desire to do wrong, or negative, naive innocence as of something without life, but positive, active innocence. I he poetry of Isaiah sees the lamb together with the kid, the calf, the cow, and the little child, living in peace with their opposites: the wolf, the leopard, the lion, and the poisonous snake, in that final time of peace itself when the Spirit of the Lord shall reign and the earth be "full of knowledge of the LORD as waters cover the sea" (Isa. 11:6-9).

To bring the lamb to the altar, and to commit it wholly to the flame, is to come to the Lord with positive, lively innocence, knowing it to be the Lord's gift, and seeing in it the sacred fire of Divine Love. This is to love the Lord "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength" (Deut. 6:5). This is to trust, and to come near to, the Divine.

We have mentioned other elements in the worship of sacrifice besides this inmost one, namely, purification from destructive patterns, and bringing the Presence to use in the world. We cannot always think directly of the Lord. We come down from states of elevation, or out from the experience of the inmost, to do the work of life, and set our mind to attend directly to what needs doing. But at the beginning of the work, while it is still in contemplation, we can, in full view of it, come interiorly to the Lord with the offering of a lamb. And when the work is done, we can return to the Lord with a lamb, acknowledging that what is good is from God. And if this is done day by day, that is, in every state of our lives, good from the Lord can fill our work with living love. Then we will not defile it by trying to make it bolster up dead patterns of our own that struggle so desperately to manipulate and work against the underlying current of life. Life is full of beginnings and endings, and if these be sanctified by the Lord, the whole of life receives a holy power.

Beginnings and endings are different, however, and our coming to the Presence is a different coming from one perspective or the other. Mornings are the inner person, open to his or her real center within, and evenings the external person, coming back from all the struggle, the successes, and the pains. Both need to be hallowed in God's Presence.

Mornings are easier. Before beginning the work or assuming the responsibility there is a newness, a hopefulness combined with uncertainty, a fear that has a positive potential. The vision of all we hope for is still clean; the dangers, the unpredictable elements, are threatening, often in proportion to the power of that vision.

In the experience of going to a workshop, for example, either to lead it or to take part, there is always some anxiety involved, and it is easy to turn to the Lord for help. The decision to give a dinner or a party may begin with purely pleasant feelings of anticipation, but once the invitations are accepted and all must be organized and ready for that actual moment, tension is present.

Hut having gone to the workshop or given the party, and having had the success or the peak experience, the need for help is less clear. We may know our duty, to acknowledge thankfully that the Lord has blessed us, and that the kingdom, the power, and the glory are God's. But it was our success, after all, and we enjoyed it. There were flaws, granted. It did not come off with all the glory of our dream. But we did it, we made it through, and we deserve to feel good about ourselves.

That second lamb of innocence and inmost centering after the successful event sometimes seems harder to find. The success has become my success. And if I set out to lead another workshop or give another party, I now have the negative fear that it may not be as good as the last one, that I may not have as great a success again, and I want to guarantee it by trying the same methods another time. Or if I shared the peak experience, it is now over; I have a similar negative fear of loss of a possession. And where, in this obscurity of evening is that second lamb?

The key to the problem is in the word "possession." I he second lamb is sacrificed "between the evenings," the two evenings. We have mentioned the two twilights in each day, two times of half light and obscurity. Between the evenings is between the evening and the morning dusk, normally soon after sunset (Deut. 16:6), but in any case before the light of dawn. The two evenings emphasize the light to come, the fact that all obscurities of night are part of the daily change of light and dark that make dawn possible.

The fear of loss keeps saying, "Protect the possession. Don't let it change. Go back to recapture what you had." But nothing, of course, could be more futile or more frustrating. What "between the evenings" suggests is the opposite, the awareness that all beginnings, accomplishments, and endings are part of a living process, that endings are an inevitable part of leading to what is new, and that the process is good. In Hebrew and in Judaism evening begins the new day. Darkness was there upon the face of the abyss when God said, "Let there be light." Evenings precede mornings in the poetry of the six days of creation. The awareness of God's creation at work in every evening at the beginning of each new day, is an awareness which suggests that second lamb of thanks to God for life itself, the ground of all our work, our intention, and our feeling good.

No living thing can exist for long without real change. Morning and evening awareness of God, day by day, is the bringing of our changes of state to the Lord, seeing the Lord's presence in the changes. It is a relief to read in Swedenborg's treatment of this commandment that angels as well as people in this world are expected to have real ups and downs and changes of state in their growth process. I imagine they are more aware than we are here of a stability underlying the change. But creation is a continuing and a trustworthy life process for us here too. If every morning and evening, every beginning, end, and new beginning, is brought to the altar to be given wholly to the Lord, the whole of life is sanctified and can be trusted, whatever the immediate success or failure.

With the lamb was offered flour and oil and wine. These three, "the grain, the wine, and the oil," are the good gifts of the earth as described by the prophets, as well as by poets who lived in the land of Canaan long before Israel (Hos. 2:2; Joel 1:10). Grain is the fruit coming from the goodness of the earth, the truth of good that gives the good distinctive, existing form. Pure olive oil is good experienced as mercy which soothes, heals, destroys friction, lends taste and consistency to food, or burns with a bright, warm flame; it is a goodness that comforts and heals the spirit.

Fine flour and oil together, then, represent loving thought put into action, permeated and hallowed by a perception of the Lord's goodness to all. They were part of all bread offerings. For morning and evening, the third element, the wine, is added, poured out upon the altar. Wine is water drawn up from the earth by the vine, and as the leaves of the vine sport in the air and sunlight, the water is filled with sweetness and spirit, and presented to us in the beauty of clusters of grapes. Water, from its cleansing and life-giving powers, is truth in active, actual form which distinguishes between worthless and good, and teaches what is right. The vine may be any human mind which loves to learn such truth, to see it in relation to the Lord's love and life, and to present it to others full of sweetness and spirit. For Christians, Jesus, "the true vine," so lived the truth that he presented it to us filled with his own life. The elements of communion, then, the bread of grain and oil, and the wine, are to be with us, joined with the innocence of the lamb, in every beginning and ending of our life. It is not just a symbolic lamb alone. It is the wholeness of a meal that is symbolized, of eating the food of life, but at these moments offered wholly to the Lord.

The bread for this offering on the altar, like the bread of Presence on the table, was to contain no leaven and no honey. Leaven is the beginning of fermentation or corruption, the thought of self that can make a good action inflated and insincere, and honey a merely natural pleasure unconnected to its spiritual base. Leaven and honey are both good. We are called to be leaven as well as salt, to raise as well as to give savor to the lump. The land "flowing with milk and honey" is our promised land of Canaan with its abundance of delight. When we do what we need to do, in the time between the beginnings and the ends, there must be thought of self. Natural elation and all kinds of natural highs and sensual pleasure are good gifts to be enjoyed, not disdained. There are times when it is right to feel good about ourselves and to focus on just that. The question is not whether this is good or bad, but rather one of timing. Wine, of course, is fermented. Truth is processed, but the love of this sacrifice is a spontaneous gift. Devotion to the Lord which does not lead out there to the world of the senses, where lives are lived and actions are done and enjoyed, is incomplete. But actions done out there without a live connection with that inmost space which can give all, totally, to God, are nothing.

We are asked to be aware of timing, of those moments of morning and evening, of beginning and ending. We are asked at these times to turn to that most sacred inmost and offer it totally, with no thought of self, to the fire. And as we do this, the fire of God's love gives life, and an "odor of rest" or pleasantness, a perception of peace, is the sign of God's communion with us, and hallows all the rest.

Relive in your mind, visualizing, and letting the feelings be involved, one piece of work you did, or one thing you decided to go to.

Relive the beginning. What were your hopes? What brought you to that moment when you knew you would do it or go to it? What feelings are you experiencing now about this?

Relive the actual experience. What happened? What was successful? What was painful? What feelings are you experiencing now?

Relive the ending. What was it? Was it a success or a failure or a high, a peak experience of yours? Are you afraid of losing it? Is it something you want to go back and recapture another time? Or was it not an ending at all? Was it just a jumble, a loose end dropped somewhere, or thrown into some corner, that needs to be picked up and seen before its ending can take place? Do you need right now to find that second lamb and offer it to the Lord, and bring your inner work to its completion? What feelings are you experiencing now?

Bring to the Lord the beginning you have just relived, and give it, totally, to the Lord, holding nothing back.

Bring to the Lord the ending you have just relived or just experienced, and give it, totally, to the Lord, holding nothing back.

Lord, we get so often lost, and so afraid, and hurt. Bring us back to you. Tell us again your Love for us, as goodness and as mercy to us and to all people. Help us to come to you with the beginnings and with the endings of our lives. Help us to see them in your Presence. Help us to give them, totally, to you.

7. The Law of Burnt Offerings

The LORD called Moses, and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, "Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them, when any man of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of cattle from the herd or from the flock.

"If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish; he shall offer it at the door of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD; he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before the LORD; and Aaron's sons the priests shall present the blood, and throw the blood round about against the altar that is at the door of the tent of meeting. And he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces; and the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar, and lay wood in order upon the fire; and Aaron's sons the priests shall lay the pieces, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire upon the altar; but its entrails and legs he shall wash with water. And the priest shall burn the whole on the altar, as a burnt offering, an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the LORD. . . ."

Leviticus 1:1-9

The morning and evening sacrifices asked that we be aware of timing, of the beginning and ending points, of the changes in our spiritual lives. The law of burnt offerings, with all its details for what and how, brings us to the issue of specificity. The person bringing the offering is to select a perfect bull, bring it to the altar to the door of the tent of meeting, lay his hand upon its head, slaughter it, skin it, cut it up, and wash its entrails and its legs with water. The same specific directions are repeated in the rest of the chapter for the offering of a sheep or a goat, except that it is to be killed on the north side of the altar, and equally detailed directions are given for the offering of a dove or pigeon. There is no avoiding the specific, graphic details or the direct involvement of the worshipper himself in the details, in this coming to the Lord.

Today we are impatient with such details. We see ourselves as enlightened religious people, and we want to simply "go to the Lord" and feel right with ourselves. We go with our confessions, our fears, our desires to do better, and we hope to receive life and peace. But the spiritual things in us are often obscure, and so our worship is often obscure. We believe that God is with us, and that the Lord will hear us and do us good; we humble ourselves in a general way, and receive a general sense of protection and benefit. But the respects in which we really, specifically need help are often not distinctly seen; the wrong is not distinctly confessed, nor the good intelligently desired. And so the blessing of the Lord does not come clearly to our perception, or come effectively into the particular pattern of our behavior or our feeling that needs healing and new life.

To go to a doctor or to a therapist or counselor with a feeling of discomfort in general is not enough to solve the problem. To confess, and to feel bad about sin in general, is a destructive religious game which hides the cause and does not cure it. To be willing to face the problem at its source, to be helped to find the original choice, the root of the malfunction, and ask for help there, is the essential step to physical, psychological, or spiritual health. As Kierkegaard puts it, God's command is never for love in general, or "by the battalion," but in specific, in the particular choice or encounter in which we are actually engaged.

The first choice in coming near to God according to this law of burnt offering, is that of the particular offering to bring. To "offer" in Hebrew, is to "bring near," and so this choice concerns simply the specific content of what we want to bring near to God, as symbolized by an animal from the herd or flock, a bird, or bread, or other food. For the burnt offering, given totally, as the inmost depth of the person encounters God in his or her aloneness, the underlying feeling was required, as represented by the animal or dove whether other food was given or not. The big cattle of the herd symbolize patient love of usefulness or service, the lamb or sheep innocent love for God's goodness and mutual love for others, the goat innocent love for the Lord's wisdom and for a life according to it, and the dove innocent love of thinking and communicating truth.

No wild animal is in this list. These are the domestic animals, raised for food to sustain life, all symbolizing patient or innocent love. We are all aware of all kinds of other feelings, and wild animals have both negative and positive symbolism. We will be dealing with wild animals of both kinds before we are through. But they are not for this inmost, total sacrifice. We cannot go to the Lord asking that our loves of excessive food, or of superiority to others, or of ability to outfox and manipulate others, be sanctified, and expect an answer of peace. And we cannot complain that we have no innocent love to bring. If we are alive at all, it is because we know sufficient peaceful love to maintain life. We do turn to God when we are aware of the negative side of the wolf or fox in us. But for the strength to meet the wolf or fox, to really meet, enough to realize its posi and use tource of peaceful power within. It is to this peaceful love we turn when we approach the altar.

The ox or sheep or goat I bring may be young or old, but for this burnt offering it must be a perfect male. Its male power, the love of the Lord's truth by which the food is multiplied, must be intact. I must find that first choice, that original and begetting source, which brought this feeling into being or that present potency that keeps the feeling strong. It is this I bring to the altar, to the door of the tent of meeting, that place where the Presence of God speaks within.

Here I lay my hand on it. I accept and feel my full identification with it, not explaining it away, not looking from a distance, but knowing it as a part of me. And now that I have said simply, with no evasions, "Lord, it is I who come," my offering is "accepted" to "make atonement" for me, to lay the cover of mercy over my nakedness as I approach the altar.

And now I kill it. I wholly give it up as mine, holding back no reserve, no string, that it may live from God alone. We all know dreams of dying, that someone else is dying, that I will have to die, that I am trying to put to death someone or something. The reality of moving on from one stage of life to the next often speaks loudly in our dreams, and always, in my experience, with some kind of grief or pain or horror from which I am trying to escape. And yet, we must be willing to move on if we are to be alive at all. To let go and experience the new, is not to say the old is vile or wrong or unimportant. We know with our minds that this is true, that moving on to the new is no attack upon the old. But dreams speak from our feelings. And here we know that to let the old die is to feel the pain of loss. We experience the grieving; it is a part of dying to one part of self, and rising to new life. I do the killing. I, myself.

But now, suddenly, I am no longer alone. The priest in me, Aaron's sons, who are the Lord's own love of saving, of leading people to love good freely, who draw all people to the Lord in love, "present the blood." They pour the mysterious power of the life of my offering on the altar, and say by their action that all the truth in us, from which love lives and grows, is the Lord's own thought, with strength and depth and breadth to pervade all, and even to let us see some small glimpse of its power, if we will let it.

I, again, must skin the bull, and cut it into its pieces, prepare it, as for food. The skin is the most external part, the knowledge of present circumstances and opportunities, which give form to love, but are not themselves a permanent part of the essential being. To make ready for eating, for sustaining life, I must reach the substance of my bull. If the underlying love is reached, the Lord will provide circumstances and opportunities.

And now, the priests put fire upon the altar, fire which is the Love of God uniting with all my feeling and consecrating it as given to the Lord. And they lay wood in order upon the fire, and lay the pieces I have cut in order upon the wood that is upon the fire upon the altar. The bull is mine, and I must have known this identification. But as I let go of it, and give the Lord's Love space to move within me, the priest in me orders it, puts it into the right sequence and proportion, so that I am not left standing beside a mass of stuff too big to handle, but can see the meaning of the order of the parts. Now they are ready for the flame.

The intestines and the legs I wash with water. These are the practical functioning parts that receive food and that carry the animal into action. In actual doing there is always a mixture of motives, of self-interest or self-indulgence, or claims of personal possession to justify using others for my ends. These parts need washing, and I must do this, before my whole mind can be open to the Lord's Presence.

And then the priest in me burns the whole upon the altar, and my offering is given to the Lord, complete. The law of burnt offerings brings out unmistakably the amazing interaction between the offerer and the priest within me as I approach the Lord. It is "I," my conscious self, who finally realize I must take that particular offering to the Lord. And a shiver of fear runs through me, and I stand there, shocked, and cowering, and feeling totally alone. And sometimes at that point I panic, and decide I am alone, with a job I must handle by myself, and so I run away, and the offering does not take place, but waits for another time. But sometimes at that point I stay still long enough to breathe. And I recognize, in the realization itself of the inevitability of that offering, that there is a strength within, a priest already present, drawing me to the Lord. And with that knowledge of a strength and love of God already there, I can face the responsibility I alone must take in carrying out the offering.

For the Christian, Jesus is that amazing interaction, that Presence in an existing human life, made manifest as light and life. He is the wood upon the altar, the fire of the sun, that is, embodied in living trees, made visible to people. And that living fire, present in his life as light, is Love.

The Presence of that Love is already within, as we know always at some level, enlightening, strengthening, the source of life itself. And that Love is at the same time the Presence to which we come, taking our responsibility for being specifically who we are. And when these come together, the offering is complete.

Stop a minute, Be quiet, and see if there is one thing insistently buzzing around somewhere in your mind, a guilt, a fear, a tension in a relationship, a worry, whatever, that you know is one of those inmost things that will need to come to the altar of God.

Now turn your mind to visualize the Lord with open arms of love. Breathe in and feel the Lord's strength and life flow into you, giving life all through you, filling your heart, overflowing and filling your whole body. Feel the Lord's love as goodness and mercy pulsing in you, the strength of your life, and the life of every living creature. Rest in that love. Feel yourself supported by the life of the universe, Divine Love.

Now read again Leviticus 1:1-9, hearing the Lord speak to you from the tent of meeting.

And now bring your offering, the love that bids you bring to the Lord that real, insistent, inmost thing in you, and offer it there before the Lord, as the words direct.

Oh Lord, Source of my life, my Creator and Giver of new life, my Redeemer, my Sustainer, thank you for your amazing grace. You cover my nakedness. Your love is here with me in every moment, and yet you ask me to come to you.

"If a man's offering is a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offers an animal from the herd, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the LORD. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering and kill it at the door of the tent of meeting; and Aaron's sons the priests shall throw the blood against the altar round about. And from the sacrifice of the peace offering, as an offering by fire to the LORD, he shall offer the fat covering the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins, and the appendage of the liver which he shall take away with the kidneys. Then Aaron's sons shall burn it on the altar upon the burnt offering, which is upon the wood on the fire; it is an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the LORD. . . . And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings which one may offer to the LORD. If he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the thank offering unleavened cakes mixed with oil, unleavened wafers spread with oil, and cakes of fine flour well mixed with oil. With the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving he shall bring his offering with cakes of leavened bread. And of such he shall offer one cake from each offering, as an offering to the LORD; it shall belong to the priest who throws the blood of the peace offerings. And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day of his offering; he shall not leave any of it until the morning. But if the sacrifice of his offering is a votive offering or a freewill offering, it shall be eaten on the day that he offers his sacrifice, and on the morrow what remains of it shall be eaten, but what remains of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burned with fire. . . . Say to the people of Israel, He that offers the sacrifice of his peace offerings to the LORD shall bring his offering to the LORD; from the sacrifice of his peace offerings he shall bring with his own hands the offerings by fire to the LORD; he shall bring the fat with the breast, that the breast may be waved as a wave offering before the LORD. The priest shall burn the fat on the altar, but the breast shall be for Aaron and his sons. And the right thigh you shall give to the priest as an offering from the sacrifice of your peace offerings; he among the sons of Aaron who offers the blood of the peace offerings and the fat shall have the right thigh for a portion. . . ."

The law of burnt offerings asked us to look inwards to meet the Lord in the intensity of our aloneness. The law of morning and evening sacrifice also asked us to turn to that inmost sense of the Lord's Presence at moments of beginnings and endings. In both our offering was wholly burnt. Our morning and evening bread was unleavened, pure of all corruption. The symbols here are clear: all good is wholly from the Lord; we turn to God alone. Peace offerings are different. They are the sacrifice we eat. We bring leavened as well as unleavened bread for our feast, and we share our meal with family and friends. We are asked to see the good in us, in those around us, and in the things we enjoy. We are asked to accept joy.

We saw that peace offerings were the most common form of sacrifice in ancient Israel, so much so that Israel's word for joining in public worship was the word "rejoice." The great seasonal festivals of praise and thanksgiving, celebrations of victory or harvest or of living in peace in the land, of return to health, safe journey, or just waking up alive, all called for joy before the Lord. To sing, to dance, to make music, to shout, to clap the hands, to feast together, were normal elements in Israel's worship of God. The peace offering or festival meal enjoyed with others before the Lord, was one of the most obvious symbols of thanking God for the blessings of life.

Blessings were not reserved for some distant time to come in Israel. The ox or bull from the herd of Leviticus 3 was the symbol of material benefits like health, prosperity, or service in the world. Other animals that could be used were the sheep or goat, the sheep meaning innocent love, as for the Lord or for other people, and t lie goat enjoyment of wisdom in a spirit of charity toward others. For this offering the animal could be male or female. The offerer could bring either his awareness of the begetting principle and the receiving of new generating principles from the Lord (symbolized by the male), or the enjoyment of the fruits of the principles of love (symbolized by the female). Israel's psalms of praise, like her command to love, speak not in the abstract or in generalities, but give the reason for the praise. The praise or thanks were given for benefits experienced in a particular success or harvest in this world.

The theory that all good is from the Lord is pure and simple. The experience of enjoying the actual victory or harvest is always mixed, however, partly to do with God's pure gift, and partly with our conduct, right or wrong, of the event. It is this back and forth that creates a problem with accepting joy. And it is precisely to this back and forth that the commandment for the peace offering speaks.

The first steps are the same as for the burnt offering. The worshipper himself brings his bull or sheep or goat, acknowledges that it is his by laying his hand on its head, and gives it into God's hands by doing the slaughtering himself. The priest then throws the blood against the altar, attributing all life and truth to God. But now the rest is not committed totally to the flame. When we rejoice over a good thing the Lord has given us to do or to receive, and when we communicate it to others, we accept it really as ours, expressing it as of ourselves, giving it the unique form that is our life. The greater part of the meat, then, we eat or distribute to those close to us. But as we enjoy and communicate the wisdom and goodness of life, we cannot avoid the knowledge that inmostly the Lord sustains them and gives them their power, and so the inner fat and some of the inner parts of the sacrifice are sent up in smoke to God by the fire on the altar.

In a land as sparse as Israel's, fat had good associations. It is true that a human heart that became "fat" became insensitive and could not understand (Ps. 119:70, Isa. 6:10). But the fat of animals was the choicest part and the fat of the land was the riches of its grain and wine and oil (Num. 18:12-32). The inner fat of the animal had special significance. The priest was to burn the fat that covered the intestines and all the fat that was on them, the two kidneys and the fat that was on them, and the caul or appendage to the liver. The intestines are the parts that absorb nourishment from food, and the fat on them is pure nutriment, deposited for instant use by the body as needed. This fat symbolizes the memory, the wonder of a memory of good things learned from the Lord, providentially stored and ready to come to consciousness in time of need for the nourishment of the spirit.

The kidneys in the Bible as in other ancient understandings of the person, were seen as the seat of the emotions, a part of the body most sensitive to spiritual atmospheres and critical for health. Their function of separating the pure and impure serum of the blood, returning the pure to use and diverting the other, symbolizes the power of discerning between truth and falsity. The abundant fat about them is the memory of the delight of straight thinking. This function and the memory stored with it are to be put totally into God's hands.

In the Bible the liver is associated with the temper of mind, the attitude of heart, the weight or dignity or glory of the person. It has a similar separating function of preparing blood for the heart, removing bitter, acrid, and useless particles, and sending on a fluid pure, rich, and sweet, ready for any use. And so it symbolizes the faculty by which bitter, acrid, and useless things are removed from the mind and the thoughts of the heart are made loving and charitable. The delicate fat which it deposits is the joy of loving, charitable thought. A healthy person needs a liver. The problem is not that hitter, acrid, or useless things appear in the mind. The problem is only if there is no power to discriminate and recognize that they are bitter and let them go. The liver, then, is for us to eat and to enjoy, but the fat and the appendage attached to it are given to the flame.

If the offering is a sheep, its fat tail symbolizes the last and lowest things of the kind represented by the head. And as the head of the sheep represents love to the Lord from perception of God's merciful love, the tail represents a grateful memory of the goodness of God's creation and providence. The fat tail is given with the other inner fat totally to God.

All power has its source in God, and sometimes this is what we must experience. Here, however, we experience the interaction between what lies rightly in our power and what does not. All blood, or life itself; the fat, the amazing, gracious memory of good and truth stored deep within us; the kidneys, seat of the emotions, and separator of truth from falsity; the appendage attached to the liver with its ability to discriminate among the intentions of the heart,--all these are for God's hands alone. Now the breast and the right thigh are given a special, mediating place, as the portion of the priest within us, the part of us which mediates and is merciful, drawing us to good and to the Lord. As the intestinal fat surrounds the vital inner organs, so the breast surrounds the heart, and is "waved as a wave offering before the Lord," and given to the priests to eat. The right thigh, that strong, muscular part connecting our feelings and our vital organs with our power to move and to stand firm, the good of love, is given to the priest who offers the blood and fat. Our priest part brings to consciousness the life from the Lord which comes through into our ability to love and be of use. And now the remainder of the meat, the greater part of the offering, is for the offerer, the familiar human part of us, the worker and enjoyer in this world.

Bringing to the altar means, of course, being open to the inner presence of the Lord, and the meal we share symbolizes our sensing the heavenly things the Lord gives us, filling us with love and peace. God's love and truth are given to us and added to our lives to nourish the inner angelic part of us, to make us strong. But if we forget these gifts are from the Lord, thinking that truth has its source in our intelligence, our souls begin to be separated from their life, and spiritually to die. And so it is commanded that we eat neither the fat nor the blood, but enjoy our gift of life from God.

Our feast demands fresh bread as well as meat. We have seen the symbolism of bread and oil, interior satisfaction of useful work, or love expressed in action. A loaf of bread is given to the priest to lift up and eat before the Lord, to show that we receive the satisfactions of life from God, and the rest is eaten with the meal. Both leavened and unleavened bread are eaten. This is the peace offering in which the joy of ordinary good work, with its mixed motives, is brought to the Lord as good. Self interest too can be real and good. It has its place in this sacrifice in which the actual joy of human beings comes peacefully into the Presence of God and finds its blessing.

Two kinds of peace offerings are described, and these again bring out the rightful interaction between the human and the divine. The meat of the sacrifice of thanksgiving is eaten on the day of offering it, with none left until the next day. Spiritual joys and loves are not things we can lay up or provide for ourselves. They are living and precious only when continually new from the Lord. A votive offering or vow promised ahead to the Lord, or a free will offering, recognized as owed to the Lord and so given, has more of our own foresight in it and can be eaten on the next day also. Our own prudence is often good, though different from the selfless response of pure, spontaneous thanksgiving. We need to provide ahead, and for ourselves. But anything kept until the third day is the confirmation of our own prudence, justice, or generosity, making it the source of our religious practice. This is neither eaten nor burned by the sacred flame into ascending smoke. It is to be burnt with the fire of destruction, into the symbol of annihilation: ash.

Symbols seem always to have at least two opposing meanings. So fire destroys, but also is the touch of love that brings new inner life. The peace offering brings us face to face with two sides of satisfactions in this world. For adults at least, satisfactions seem always to be mixed, partly impure and overly self seeking, and always presenting us with tension between joy in our own strength or sense of what is good, and in God's totally self giving love.

It seems so simple to accept joy. And yet I make it hard. I get caught between the two sides of satisfaction, needing some justification of my own for the joy, or some sort of reassurance that it will really be my sort of joy and not break my categories wide open, when I, where I am, think to accept the gift as mine. And as soon as I start questioning whether I deserve the satisfaction, my guilt begins to work: "The joy can't really be for me. It won't last. It can't be real. They are just saying that to make me feel better." Or my fear: "If I let myself like it, I'll lose it, and that will hurt. Something awful will happen, so it's better if I feel bad now. Then I won't be disappointed." Or my desire to have as owner: "I'll take it. I'll take it as mine and not let go of it. I'll make it last. I'll make it happen again!"

The peace offering is exactly what it says. It brings peace between the inner person, so longing to be open to God's goodness, and the outer, so caught in deeds and justifications that it cannot trust the joy. How does it do this? It gives me the way to go peacefully to God with my successes, the things I have done well. And then it shows me the way to give to God the kidneys and the fat. It helps me know, with humility and with relief, that I am to give the kidneys, that the source of my feelings, of my power to care, is the major element In my discrimination of right from wrong or true from false,--not my own wisdom,--and that the power to care is a gift from God, not under my control. And it helps me know, with equal humility and relief, that am to give the fat, that my deep memory which is such a threat to me when I try to control it, is not meant for my control. I cannot make the time bombs of memory disappear, or tell the uneasy sense of ambush down that path to go away. Thank God, my Lord does not expect me to. But I can put my memory in the Lord's hands, and trust the Lord to be with me in whatever comes, not letting more come than I can handle, and reminding me of strengths and goods in past experience when this is what I need. The conscious memory, that glory of being human that yet so often seems to function as an instrument of hell, can be an amazing instrument of God's grace. The peace offering, the feast of our thanksgiving, of our enjoying our success, puts memory in God's hands.

When we read the accounts of ancient Israel's joy before the Lord, we wonder. Is it all right to take such joy in good things in this world? Is this a joy of simple, primitive people, no longer possible for modern men and women? Is it like seeing the immediate delight of a child in food, in sleep, in life itself, that is so moving partly because it is something we no longer have? When we see ourselves before God, shouldn't we as adults think more of sin and of responsibility than of joy? The Word of God to Israel speaks unmistakably of sin and of responsibility. But it speaks even more unmistakably and emphatically of joy, of gratitude and awe that God works in the whole of Israel's life in the world. Israel knew what we sometimes forget that the courage, the depth of being that is needed to face sin and responsibility, come only on the grounding of accepting joy in God's goodness. Without the experience of joy we are only playing games on the surface of our responsibility, not dealing with the real. The prior reality which lets us respond at all, is God's goodness. The Bible rests on this assertion: God created us for good. Love's joy is to give itself. God's Love has no manipulation in it. It is wholly for our good. Because Israel's faith was grounded in the Lord of history and of creation, she could bring her offerings for victories or harvests confidently to the Lord and accept her joy in them as gifts from God. She could know joy.

What shall we do with the good things that come to us? What shall we do with joy? Let us enjoy them. Let us go peacefully and eat our offerings in God's presence. And the parts we eat, together with the parts we give totally to God shall be "for a pleasing odor, to the Lord," that is, for our inner peace.

Sit quietly a moment. Think of one thing you would like to bring peacefully to God: your health, the power to use your mind or body; the power to do your job; the power to love another person; any one good thing you have received or done.

Are other people near you in the good thing you have received or done? Is your thought of them with you as you think to bring your offering to God?

Turn your mind to the Lord, source of all life and power and good, who called you into being, your true Father and true Mother who has more love to give you than you could ask or think. Feel the joy of that love, breathe in its goodness, rest in its strength. See that love coming also on any you know as near you, in this offering to God.

Now bring your good thing to the Lord. And, especially, put the source of your feelings, your motivation, and your memory into God's hands, releasing them to become instruments of grace and goodness in your life.

O Lord, thank you that all the strength of my life, all my reason for being, is yours already, that I can trust my whole self to you, even my successes and my fear of joy, and those near to me, and know that you are God. Thank you that you are good, that your mercy, your loving kindness, is forever. Amen.

9. Sin Offerings

And the LORD said to Moses, "Say to the people of Israel, If any one sins unwittingly in any of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, and does any one of them, if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, then let him offer for the sin which he has committed a young bull without blemish to the LORD for a sin offering. He shall bring the bull to the door of the tent of meeting before the LORD, and lay his hand on the head of the bull, and kill the bull before the LORD. And the anointed priest shall take some of the blood of the bull and bring it to the tent of meeting; and the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle part of the blood seven times before the LORD in front of the veil of the sanctuary. And the priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense before the LORD which is in the tent of meeting, and the rest of the blood of the bull he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering which is at the door of the tent of meeting. And all the fat of the bull of the sin offering he shall take from it, the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins, and the appendage of the liver which he shall take away with the kidneys (just as these are taken from the ox of the sacrifice of the peace offerings), and the priest shall burn them upon the altar of burnt offerings. But the skin of the bull and all its flesh, with its head, its legs, its entrails, and its dung, the whole bull he shall carry forth outside the camp to a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and shall burn it on a fire of wood; where the ashes are poured out it shall be burned. ..."

Leviticus 4:1-12

No one is sinless. And knowing ourselves as we do, we know we would be foolish to expect our children to have only good impulses, or to see the path of wisdom always. Sometimes we guide them wrongly from our lack of understanding or from sympathy with their wishes, for often what we know to be hurtful seems to their excited wants a great good. They do, of course, do wrong. What we can expect is that in quiet states they will talk with us about what they have done or wished to do, to learn what is hurtful and what is not. If they do this, we are content, for they are learning.

As with our children, so with ourselves. No one knows all the varieties and phases of evil to which he or she is liable. Our depths of evil and of good we learn by living, and not by thinking about them only. As we grow in awareness of our inner selves, and as new circumstances come in our outer world, we will, of course, do wrong. It is as important for us as it is for our children to understand the error and to seek the wisdom to do better, for we are learning. And so the sin offerings speak not to retribution from a God eager to punish, but to understanding the affections of our hearts and the sources of them as we learn to identify what hurts and to avoid it, to find integrity and wholeness.

Errors recognized, excused, and still persisted in, do not receive much sympathy. Unintentional errors under pressure of wrong guidance or of unfamiliar feelings are easily forgiven. But these too cause injury and unhappiness, and must be dealt with. They can become fixed in our behavior by being continued. But they are forgiven and the mind is freed from them, when they are Identified and discontinued.

The sin offerings described in Leviticus 4 are for this sort of unintentional error. Sins done "unwittingly" like this raise the question of how they are recognized as sins. Whose judgment call them sins? Or who has been at fault in doing them in the first place? Leviticus 4 identifies four sources of unintentional error. The part we have quoted deals with the priest. The chapter goes on to speak of the congregation, the ruler, and, finally, the ordinary citizen. What different mistakes in judgment are distinguished in these four cases, then? And how do they apply to us and to our learning from mistakes?

We have met the priest in us, the part that draws us to the Lord, whose purpose is our good. Can our priest, our conscience, be mistaken? The priest is the idea of God, and the influence of God's goodness among people. The sin of the priest is the perversion of this idea and influence, leading us to seek what is not good in the name of the Lord. How does this happen unintentionally? A child will often hold literally and rigidly to one rule he was taught: one way to make "real" scrambled eggs, one way to hold his hands in prayer, and announce instantly the other way is wrong. We smile, but we respect the conscientiousness involved. The danger comes when we do this in God's name, as adults, holding our belief blindly for ourselves and others. In the history of religions there seems to be no sin that people have not committed conscientiously in the service of their gods. Absolutizing our human judgments, convincing ourselves that conscience or principle demands, and forcing ourselves to go against our intuitive sense of what is loving, can cause extreme suffering for ourselves and others. The Crusades and Inquisition are extreme cases, but there are countless others, some hardly noticed because they are so common. Conscientiously picturing the joys of heaven as pleasures of glory, eminence, or indolence, making self gratification in the future the highest end to be sought (with certain arbitrary conditions), has led directly away from the heavenly joy of closeness to the Lord in the goodness of a life engaged in loving others. Conscience can sometimes lead to hell on earth.

When conscience is in error, we must retrace our steps, bringing to the Lord our hearts just as they are, with their desire to do good and with their unintentional guilt. We must learn from God's Word, not from our imagination alone (or from our friends' or parents') what God is and wills. We must be ready to turn away from what we then know to be evil and painful in the presence of God's goodness. Our priest is open to the Lord. Our priest is our consciousness of what the Lord expects of us, and is to be respected. Commitments of conscience must be kept. But our consciousness is also part of us. And conscience, like the rest of us, must be open to growth as we understand more and more what the commitment means.

If the priest is conscience in us, the congregation is the crowd of our natural desires for the good things of life. These too are good. But they can make mistakes if they judge simply on the strength of each desire or each experience of good as it comes. If feelings alone make the judgment, they seem to want to take us over, selling us into the service of whatever taste or lust (or savior complex) we enjoy the most. Excited wants can blind us to any other needs, just as they can our children.

The sins of the priest and congregation concern primarily the self and God. Those of the ruler and the common people concern our relations with each other. I he ruler who directs the affairs of daily life in the community symbolizes the principles of mutual usefulness, while the ordinary citizen carries out the principles, applying them in particular instances. Unintentional errors can happen in either area, by mistaking the principles of good life, or by misjudging the example. I may have lacked an adequate parent as a child, and have no understanding of the principle of being a parent, of the amount of responsibility to take or of the times to exert authority, and so I may exert no overt authority at all over my child. I intend no harm. My mistake once identified can be corrected and forgiven. And yet harm does occur. Rulers as well as priests can make mistakes.

A sin of the common people is in the application of the principle. A new situation is precisely one not covered in any familiar way by principle. If I become a parent, I am faced with different modern authorities as well as with my memories of my mother or father. One expert shows that it is right to leave the child to "cry it out" and so learn to adjust to the reality and the schedule of those around. Another says to follow the timing of the child, feeding normally on demand until the infant is assured of his or her own identity and value as a person to be loved. Both principles have been taught. My mistake as citizen is not in desiring evil for a child, but in not knowing which principle to apply.

Experience itself can be confusing. I learn that I have different responsibilities in different roles. I may know the principle of what makes a good employee or manager of a business, and the principle of what makes a good parent. But my child's event and my business appointment may coincide. My problem may be not in misunderstanding the principles, but in knowing how to apply them in a particular instance.

Four sources, then, of unintentional harm are distinguished, the priest, the congregation, the ruler, and the common people,-in us the conscience, the feelings, the understanding of the principle, and the practical understanding of how to apply the principle. Each of these four areas is recognized and given its way to go to God for healing.

The way for the priest or for the congregation is the same. The offerer is to bring a bull, the symbol of the working strength of the natural mind, in this case perverted to the work of evil. The offerer (the priest himself or the elders acting for the congregation) as usual puts his hand on its head, identifying with the work as his, and then slaughters it himself, giving it entirely into God's hands. The blood is sprinkled seven times before the veil of the tabernacle, the veil, that is, between the Commandments in the inmost tent of meeting and the outer court of our conscious sense of God's presence and our worship. The blood is the living thought, in this case in the state of repentance; sprinkling before the veil is turning the direction of the thought to be open to heaven, and to learn of God. The blood is then touched to the horns of the altar of incense, in thankful perception of the sweet smell of forgiveness. The remainder of the blood is poured out at the base of the altar, the base that connects it to our common life; and the sacred inner parts and fat are burned on the altar exactly as they are for the peace offering. But now the rest of the hull is not eaten. It is taken, together with the skin and dung, outside the camp to a clean place and burned to ash. The way to freedom from the harm committed is not denial and attempts to forget it, nor war against it, nor eating it, swallowing it and living it until we no longer notice it because it is ourselves. The way is trusting God enough to go with it to God, and then giving it out of our hands into God's, to be taken outside our living area to be burnt to ash.

The way for the ruler or for one of the people is the same, except that blood is touched to the horns of the altar of burnt offering, outside the tent, and that the animal is different,-a male goat for the ruler, a female goat or sheep for one of the people. We have seen the male animal as the begetting principle, and the female as the fruit or application of the principle, the goat as understanding and the sheep as loving. The ruler brings his or her male goat to the Lord, asking to be taught understanding of the principle. The people's error may he from a mistaken understanding of how to apply the principle, or from a mistaken feeling of unwillingness to apply the principle in the case at hand. The people have the choice to make between the goat of understanding and the sheep of feeling.

These four sources of error with their different ways of turning to the Lord, ask us to take seriously the interaction of the different parts of ourselves. Whose judgment has been at fault? Any one of our four parts, separated from its balance with the others, can lead to hurt. Who, then, calls them wrong? We do, as one whole person, when we see that something has gone wrong, and trust the Lord, and our own integrity the Lord has given us, enough to take a step toward change. The intent in the repeated detail is not to encourage us to feel sinful before God's judgment. It is to help us understand our inner process, to see where the problem lies, and to get help.

The hurts we are concerned with here are all "unwitting," coming from good intentions. And yet an immense amount of suffering can come from good intentions; children are injured by parents' mistaken kindness; we all have been dwarfed by mistakes of education; our social and civil relations in every direction are distorted by errors of principle and practice. It seems wrong that people are hurt by the mistakes of those on whom they depend. It is painful to discover that we have done an injury to someone dependent on us. But for us in the Western world, the solution is not to cut off all attachment to others. Our sense of growth toward our humanity demands relationships and choices with consequences, real joy in one another's wisdom and goodness, real pain in one another's faults. It is only in such a context that good judgment, discerning good from evil, or helpful sympathy, can have meaning.

The congregation is to bring its offering when its sin "becomes known," and the ruler or any one of the people is to bring his "when the sin which he has committed is made known to him." If, as human beings, we do affect each other and would not have it otherwise, the choice is not within our power to avoid the joy or hurt that is a part of all relationship. Our critical choice comes rather when it "is made known" to us that we have sinned. Sometimes at this point I deny the realization and continue as before, but now with the added pain of defensiveness, avoidance, and rationalization, with new touchy area to carry along with me with great care. Sometimes I improve on the realization and change my overt behavior, but take on a destructive, hopeless guilt to use against myself, a new source of depression. And sometimes I accept the realization for what it is, a way of learning.

From experience, and after the event, I know that neither denial nor depression is worth the effort. But how can reading about the unwitting sin of priest, or congregation, or ruler, or people, be of help in making a better critical choice? How can it help me to accept the realization and to learn?

For one thing, it helps to be specific. To go to God with hurt or sadness in general, no matter how severe the hurt or sadness, can do more to reinforce than to relieve the problem. Regret on finding I have hurt another can be unbearable unless I ask for help. But to bring the regret of unintentional sin to God, I must bring the specific part of me that needs the healing,--my conscience, feelings, understanding, or practicality. My attention has already shifted from the hopeless pain of guilt to the question that starts the learning: What went wrong? Was it the understanding, of conscience or of principle, that got separated from feeling and so became unreal? Was it feeling, left to run blind without the insight of reason, that lost perspective? Whichever it was, there is a way to put it in the Lord's hands and be healed. But first I need to bring the specific offering, and this itself is a decisive and essential change. Even if at this point I don't yet know which part of me went wrong and need to ask the Lord for guidance, my asking is in a positive direction, and I am already breathing a different air,of hope.

For another thing, it helps to come off the dead center of my war against myself and take action. I must come to the Lord with my offering, conscious of the part of me that needs the healing, but conscious also of my power to take a decisive step as a person. I am no longer trapped in either blind alley, of reasoning or of feeling only, overwhelmed by the guilt or pain which is all that I can see. I come, I who made the original choice, aware again of the two sides of my being, one whole person with perspective.

The Lord I know through the Bible is Truth itself and Love itself in the positive peace of Goodness itself, not one or the other, nor one against the other. The choice of the goat or sheep or of the male or female animal, reminds me of the male and female sides in me, as in all people, the symbols of my truth and love, my understanding and my feeling. My peace is in the inner, peaceful marriage of these two parts of me, with neither one as tyrant or at war against the other. "When love approaches wisdom or unites with it, then love becomes love; when wisdom in turn approaches love and unites with it, then wisdom becomes wisdom." Love and wisdom are not feelings operating without reason. They are not facts accumulated as knowledge apart from an intuitive human common sense. They are a unity of mutual respect. And when I turn to the Lord for help with one side or the other, I am conscious of the wholeness of a wiser love.

For a third thing, it helps to know that I am expected. Even when I love the Lord and try to love my neighbor, I am not always wise or loving. And so the ways are open for me to go to the Lord with the part of me that needs its healing. We are not asked to be always thinking of the Lord or always engaged in formal acts of worship. We are living human beings who do our work and make mistakes. We are asked to turn to the Lord to put ourselves in God's hands, to ask God's help, and learn and be forgiven. Our Lord knows our needs, and has opened the way, and expects that we will come.

Why are there so many kinds of sin offering? Because the four basic parts of our learning edge, our conscience, feelings, reason, and practicality, all need our understanding. The Lord would not have us living on and on in unhappiness. We find the potential of the different parts of us by living them, not by keeping ourselves pure, apart from life. According to Swedenborg, even angels receive more loving ends and wiser love by similar processes of searching and return, for the joy the Lord would give is infinite in the deepening and discovery of that particular union of love and wisdom that is our inner self. When the ends or the ways we pursue bring grief, the Lord would have us come back, and find the step that has gone wrong, and learn what is good, and take that for our end with the Lord's peace and our wholeness in it.

Sit quietly for a moment. Feel your breath coming in and going out. Feel life moving in all parts of your body as they quietly and rightly work together. Rest for a moment in the goodness and the wholeness of being alive. Feel God's wisdom and power sustaining your life, giving life to every creature, sustaining the universe. Feel yourself quietly and rightly part of the wholeness, the goodness, and the wonder of life.

Let your mind turn to some feeling or thought that breaks that wholeness. Is it something you did that hurt another person? Something in you that is not right? Is it something you are ready now to bring to the Lord to be healed?

Is it something that touches your conscience? Your feelings for the goods of life you want? Your ruler, trying to understand the principle of what you do? Or any ordinary citizen in you, not sure how to apply the principle to a particular case?

Whichever part of you it is, turn to it as a friend. Stretch our your hand and take its hand, knowing it as part of you with its power of conscience or feeling or understanding or practicality, and thank God for it. And now go to the altar of God, and give your sin offering totally into God's hands.

Reread Leviticus 4:1-12 to hear God's promise of the way of healing.

And now visualize the priest in you, in that place of light outside the veil, bringing your offering to God, giving to God the source of your feelings and your memory, and taking the rest, skin and dung and all, outside the camp to a clean place and burning it to ash.

Lord, thank you that all I am and know and think and feel, you know already, and you still love me, that even when I come apart and hurt others and myself, you still love me, every part of me, and give me life and bring me into being. Thank you that you would have me be myself and find my wholeness, my forgiveness, and my healing. Thank you, Lord. Amen.