March 6, 2003 Parshat Pekuday (Exodus 38:21 - 40:38) As I
wheeled my shopping cart down the aisle of the local market on
my weekly grocery run, a toddler riding in his mother's cart
came up the other side. He was one of the students in the
nursery school, and when he recognized me, his mouth dropped
open. He pointed and shouted, "Mom, look, it's God!" My young
friend's comment is very instructive. We imagine God in the
image of those who teach us about God. And we perceive the world
of religion in the image of those institutions that introduce us
to spirituality, ritual, and faith. When our rabbis and teachers
are distant and cold, when the rites are forbidding and strange,
so, too, the religious life we acquire -- emptied of life,
emptied of spirit, remote, removed and alien. But, when teachers
inspire and ritual becomes poetry, then a different sense of the
sacred prevails. The measure of a religious institution is not
its magnificent building, the size of its membership roster or
the prestige of its reputa