A bit of personal mid-dashing around the idea of Kevanah, or spiritual focus in life from the Jewish tradition!

Kevanah from the Jewish tradition is a helpful concept of spiritual intention when living life, and especially when doing spiritual practices daily. A bit different than “mindfulness” (or more buddhist approaches), it involves bringing your whole self to your daily practices, in order to meet God through them.

I’m finding it helpful, and echoed in pure Christian practices as well. Bit like some of the church practices within the contemplative tradition, but more focused in some ways. It ask us, where in your own heart are you praying from; can you find Only God through your spiritual practices- reading scriptures or helping others, feeding those in poverty or taking out the trash?

Are you in contact with God there-through the daily activities of life!? And are you bringing your whole head, heart and body into that encounter! Good question, especially for those who do many religious practices daily. Are your rituals an actual meeting place with The Living God?!

Spiritual growth in Judaism: To approach things with an attitude of Kevanah is to approach things as if God were already there, and wanting to meet through them! To pray, or read Torah, or help the poor as a medium of meeting God, is a basic tenet in true spiritual practice. To meet God through marriage, taking out the trash, walking the dog, washing dishes or reading Torah, requires Kevanah, and inner attitude of the heart to focus on and seek the Face of God through your daily activities!

God’s already there at the cafe today; God is already there while taking out the trash; God’s already there in bible study, prayer or religious activities; God is already there in listening well to a person….finding that spiritual intention to meet God through all things is the key. God already there meeting you and your wife in unique ways each season, revealing ever newer parts of Himself to you both.

The Jews teach that first, when spiritually younger, we need to learn to hear nothing else but the Shema (their daily prayer) then later, after years of this practice, focus on the full understanding of each word. Focus into fuller incarnation! Good pattern for spiritual growth. Encounter towards deeper understanding of God!

I like that progression from intention and focus to knowing and understanding that happens within the Jewish map of spiritual growth! Devotionally read the word into intimacy with The Word!

St John echoes this in his blessing for the younger spiritually for overcoming by being in the Word, and the elders for knowing God. (I John 1-3) I commend you younger ones for battling in and through the word, and you older ones for know The Father of all Words and languages, brother John tells us!

Nice meditation on the art of Kevanah today. This word has to do with spiritual focus and intention and meeting God through whatever practice you are doing-prayer, scripture study, acts of goodness to others etc. Kenenah is the inner orientation towards the practice. It reminds one of our dear Brother Lawrence’s touched book, “Practicing the Presence”, which also has this idea of how to innerly orient yourself to each daily activity in order to meet and therefore be transformed by God. How to make common activities holy!

And everyone has written about it in their tradition—from the Midrash to Maimonides and up through Martin Buber, who applied it also to viewing art! One of my favorites of his thoughts! That we could meet both by making and viewing art from an attitude of Kevanah! He might call it holistic engagement with our spiritual practices. Trying to find and meet God through them.

Thinking again of Jesus’ words to the fellow who asked Him what the most important of the Laws were: “Love God with your entire being, and then love your neighbors as yourself!” Or, “I only do what I see My Father doing.” As Daniel, the prophet, He had set His mind to gain understanding!

Nice that there is a tradition of this type of spiritual focus within both Judaism and Christianity! St Augustine would put it, “Love God, and do whatever.” Meaning, if we find and meet God through all we do, it will become holy! There is nowhere God cannot be met, if we have the right heart focus!

God is meet-able in all we do, but it seems to require kevanah! We must choose to focus our intentions, will and heart. As Dallas Willard, the protestant minister who wrote much on spiritual formation, used to teach, Grace is both passive and active. We do something in our spiritualities. We put to death certain things, we lay down the old self, we take up the new creation and bring to the Cross the dying false self, as Thomas Merton might put it! Spirituality is not passive, and requires a certain active spiritual focus.

Otherwise, we are just acting out hollow religious practices. Even the Reform Jews saw this, and felt it was a distraction to have to pray in Hebrew if you had another native language. First learn the heart of prayer is aiming your entire being towards God, then learn the prayers itself. The prayer or Torah reading is a medium towards and encounter of The Messenger, as Buber put it! Nice meditation today, and focus!

As religious practice alone does little for us. But practice with spiritual heart intention—i.e. with the whole being turned towards God as you do, in expectancy of meeting Him, is another matter. It becomes then a transformational tabernacle of meeting for us.

Their concept of kevanah is really helpful. It could be compared to some of the historical christian practices such as lectio Divina etc. But the essence of it is to focus one’s entire being on God as you do things. Jesus said something similar in summing up the Law—Love God with your whole being—heart, mind, body; and then love others as yourself. He knew kevenah!

How to bring your whole inner self into outward actions is a useful thing to consider in these scattered and scattering days! With a sort of collective global attention span problem, it’s good to think about what the Priest Henry Nouwenn would call, “coming home”. We do our part, and God is always there, and here doing His! Grace is still a collaboration. And our job is to enter in with spiritual intention!

Fun study today on how to read or pray with spiritual intention from a Jewish perspective:

Let me end with Moses Maimonides, the Jewish medieval philosopher’s, wise words on the subject of practicing Kevanah, or spiritual intention with one’s whole being (fun reading those who try to teach the un-teachable!):

“The first thing you must do is this: Turn your thoughts away from everything while you read the Shema, scriptures, or during the Prayer [the Amidah], and do not content yourself with being devout when you read the first verse of the Shema or the first paragraph of the Prayer. Wait til you actually sense the Presence of God. Then say thanks with your whole being. Close it, and re-open it.
When you have successfully practiced this for many years, try in reading the Torah or listening to it, to have all your heart and all your thought occupied with understanding what you read or hear. After some time when you have mastered this, accustom yourself to have your mind free from all other thoughts when you read any portion of the other books or the prophets, or when you say any blessing, and to have your attention directed exclusively to the perception and the understanding of what you utter, and the One who utters it then through you!”