“All Things Unto Me Are Spiritual”: Worship Through Corporeality In Hasidism & Mormonism

[volgadon]

http://www.withouten...dism-mormonism/

Walker Wright and I have written a little piece on an important thread running through Mormonism- the religious significance often attached to secular acts. We explore this monistic phenomenon in light of similar traditions in Judaism, including a forgotten strand of Enoch lore.

Some excerpts:

Reflecting on the centrality of this Enoch tradition to Hasidism, Martin Buber remarked that “man exerts influence on the eternal, and that this is not done by any special works, but by the intention with which he does all his works. It is the teaching of the hallowing of the everyday.”[9] By using Enoch as its blueprint, Hasidism spread not only among the poor, illiterate masses, but among wealthy merchants as well. Indeed, they were among its staunchest supporters. “By invoking the Hasidic concept of worship through corporeality… the Seer [of Lublin] reassured busy merchants in his audience that they could transform business trips into paths to holiness.” In the Seer’s own words, “When a merchant travels on business, he should say to himself: “I am traveling for business so that I will have money to serve God by paying for my sons’ tuition, so that my sons will be Talmudic scholars, engaging in Torah and mizvot for the sake of Heaven; and so that I can marry my daughters to Talmudic scholars, and sanctify the Sabbath, and give charity.”…And in this way, he connects his business to God.”[10]

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In R. Israel’s analysis of the Enoch tale, theurgical and theosophical elements are entirely discarded in favor of ethics:

This does not mean that when Enoch sewed together shoes he was cleaving to supernal thoughts. The law forbids it, for how can he be occupied with something else when he is employed on behalf of other people? Rather, the essence of his unifications was the concern that each and every stitch would be good and strong in order for people to benefit from the shoes. Thus he cleaved to the attribute of his maker who bestows his beneficence on all, and this is how he performed unifications, desiring nothing other than to cleave to the attributes of his maker.[13]

In the words of his modern biographer, “When there was a conflict between God-centered piety or kindness toward one’s fellowman, R. Israel preferred the latter, even when it meant sacrificing the former.”[14] Enoch’s ascension came as the result of his intense devotion to benefiting and bettering his fellow man. This was the true essence of God’s own character, so doing even a menial task to the utmost of one’s ability in order to help others is, indeed, the highest form of imitatio Dei. Doing one’s job well even takes precedence over studying lofty theological matters.

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As a covenant people, the Mormons felt they were duty bound to the toil and sweat of Zion-building. The need to find the divine in the mundane surely increased as the Mormons headed West and established an isolated, theocratic government. As historian Matthew Bowman has noted, Brigham Young “bound even more closely than had Joseph Smith the Mormons’ sense of themselves as a covenanted people, specially chosen by God, to the practical work of building a community on earth. The distance between the sacred and secular on the trail was vanishingly small. The captains of the companies routinely celebrated the Lord’s Supper as they prepared decisions about when to move and what trail to take.”[21] President Young saw the “work of building up Zion” as “a practical work” and “not a mere theory.”[22] The saints were “not going to wait for angels, or for Enoch and his company to come and build up Zion, but we are going to build it.”[23]

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This cosmological monism can be seen in other late 19^th-century Mormon publications. The October 1897 Millennial Star talked of a Mormon Indian colony on the Malad River in Box-Elder County, where the local aborigines were being urged to dig an irrigation ditch. With the Elder’s upcoming absence in a meeting, one of the locals was asked to conduct. When the Elder asked what the subject would be, the aborigine replied (in one of the best examples of Mormonism’s own “worship through corporeality”), “O, me preach ‘em heap water ditch, water ditch!”:

The Lamanite had partaken of the spirit and genius of Mormonism. “Water ditch” and water baptism are both vital principles of that religion. The redemption of the soul, the body and the home of man is its purpose…The redemption of the earth, and its restoration to a paradisiacal state, will be brought about in part by the blessing and power of God, and in part by the labors and sacrifices of its inhabitants, under the light of the Gospel and the direction of the authorized servants of God. The Lamanite who had grasped the need of a water ditch by means of which to redeem a portion of the earth’s surface that was a desert had grasped a vital principle of the Gospel of Christ.[33]

Here, the digging of an irrigation ditch is in a sense raised to the same level as baptism, a salvific ordinance. It was a way of maintaining the “present salvation” Young had taught.

[Questing Beast]

That speaks to my inner being strongly. That is my religion. Sitting in temples is what some people need to do. Others need to be making, building, repairing, visiting, reviving, etc. It is all religion if done with the core purpose of making the world that surrounds me better in corporeal ways....

[volgadon]

That speaks to my inner being strongly. That is my religion.

Good!

Sitting in temples is what some people need to do. Others need to be making, building, repairing, visiting, reviving, etc. It is all religion if done with the core purpose of making the world that surrounds me better in corporeal ways....

I see that, but what I think that the two traditions are saying is not that going to a house of worship, etc., is bad, but that any act can be raised to the same level of holiness.

[volgadon]

BTW, you have a great sig line.

[Questing Beast]

Yes I like it as the "Professor" and I have much in common.

I wasn't suggesting that sitting in temples is "bad" either, but that mundane acts are what make up the core of purpose. Dispensing with them in preference to specifically religious avocations can indeed become a bad thing....

[mfbukowski]

http://www.withouten...dism-mormonism/

Walker Wright and I have written a little piece on an important thread running through Mormonism- the religious significance often attached to secular acts. We explore this monistic phenomenon in light of similar traditions in Judaism, including a forgotten strand of Enoch lore.

Great stuff, congratulations, and thanks!!

[mfbukowski]

I wasn't suggesting that sitting in temples is "bad" either, but that mundane acts are what make up the core of purpose. Dispensing with them in preference to specifically religious avocations can indeed become a bad thing....

After pronouncing the same blessings on 60 or so heads per hour, one becomes surprised how the spiritual and the mundane unite in a kind of meditative trance and a profound feeling of the importance of serving the Lord's children, and a testimony of that activity takes over.

It is a very interesting phenomenon in which time kind of stops, and the veil becomes quite thin, until weariness finally sets in, and it is time to move on to another assignment.

[Maidservant]

I wrote a piece once called "The God Who Welds" and here is a bit from it:

"I went with L*** to report his mission to the Stake President and the High Council. L*** reported on his mission to Colombia, and two other young men reported their missions to Nebraska and to the Baltic States (Russian Europe). As well, a senior couple was there to report on their mission to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. As you might imagine, the Spirit was very strong. And I DID feel that everything is going to be all right. All these weak people of the earth like the missionaries themselves and all the people they got to meet—all of us weak people just BEING and doing the best we can on the altar of this earth and then the Savior anointing and consecrating our sorrows to become our joys. I loved hearing all the experiences, but honestly the one that meant the most was when the brother of the senior couple talked about how rust and other environmental things constantly try to ruin and decay the buildings of the Polynesian Cultural Center. And a big part of his mission was welding. Yes, welding. Repairing the metal. Cleaning the areas of the leaves that keep falling. Replacing wood things that get wet in the humidity. Without that work, it would all fall apart and the gospel part of the mission and of the center wouldn’t be possible either. So sometimes, God comes by welding."

[Maidservant]

One of Islam's themes that I appreciate is also that being godly requires one to actually live as a man (or woman)--being a husband, wife, merchant, neighbor, etc. That one cannot become more holy by being a hermit on a mountain, for example, at least not more holy than a person who just lives as a person.

[CV75]

Walker Wright and I have written a little piece on an important thread running through Mormonism- the religious significance often attached to secular acts. We explore this monistic phenomenon in light of similar traditions in Judaism, including a forgotten strand of Enoch lore.

Thank you! These are examples of the great blessing of confessing God’s hand in all things, keeping our eye single to His glory, and seeing that all things denote there is a God.