Shabbat ’Shmini’: ”Ex Nihilo – The Image of You”

This weeks Torah portion describes the imminent appearance of God that will take place before the nation of Israel upon the dedication of the Tabernacle – the Mishkan.  But one has to wonder: What will God appear as?  How will God look?  What image will the God that does not fit into any fixed image take on?

As human beings, we don't create new things.  We reshape the physical material of our world into new combined materials and products.  We don't make something out of nothing.  We make our somethings out of other things.

But what is new in the world are our ideas.  Our visions.  Our dreams.  Our expressions of self.  Yet if we keep these things inside, as some people do out of shyness or insecurity, then these ideas, visions and dreams never really become part of our world.  But if we put them out there – by drawing them, speaking them, shaping them, building them – then we have created new images in the world.  Because that object or picture or painting or poem or expression of love was not in the world before we shared it.  The material was.  But our new image of that material was not.

The sound-waves have changed through our spoken voice.  The ink has taken on meaning through the poetic words we have written.  Inspiration has been communicated through our use of paint.  Lives have been saved through the medical device we have assembled.

Like a stamp embossed within paper, our expressions of self create new impressions, new images within the world.  Ex Nihilo.

How would you define the image of any one human being?  How would you confine the infinite power of his or her Spirit into a limited collection of words?  It is impossible to do.  For we are all created "In the Image of God", and we are each a small reflection of an Image that can only be experienced through sharing and expression, but is beyond any tangible definition.

We meet God through the wondrous world of nature around us.  We meet God when we hold a child in our arms.  We meet God in the power of a loving embrace when we need it most.  We meet God in a True Moment of personal prayer.

God appears to us.  His image reflects in our heart, and in our own infinite and expressive Spirit.

Attached please find a Shu-Shine for Shabbat 'Shmini': "Ex Nihilo – The Image of You"

May we all be blessed to find God's image wherever we look, and to cast our own image in beautiful ways upon the world as we touch it.

With Love and a Smile,

~Shu

Phish Quote: "I can't describe the feeling when I'm in my bed asleep and then I wake up with a vision blurred… So I'm awake, though in my mind the image that so unrefined is calling to me from the deep…"