Atonement

The human ego is such that it seems sometimes as if “we” (each one of us) operates autonomously in the world. We experience our “selves” as separate so we fear isolation, we yearn for love, we feel disappointment in our lives, and sometimes we harm others. Each tradition developed ways of overcoming this sense of isolation, of renewing the sense of connection to the Divine, to human community, to the cosmos.

Early Jewish rituals of sacrifice where intended to provide tangible mechanisms whereby an individual who wronged another could make an official reparation so that the community did not descend into family feuding. Now prayers and acts of individual /community penance take the place of blood sacrifice.

Christianity and Buddhism emphasized acts of service wherein one focused on the needs of others rather than self-serving attitudes as means by which personal isolation could be transcended. Islam and Zoroastrianism emphasized the extraordinary power of the Divine in every day life as a means by which to affect the same sense of renewed connection.

Hinduism tended to focus on identifying the elements of a person (ones very body) with the elements of the cosmos—as the universe is a unity with many parts, so are each of you a microcosm of that unity (with many parts). As it goes with the individual and the personal body, so goes it with the community as well. Each and all mirrors all and each.

Sufism understands and accepts each of these approaches as legitimate in each their time and place. Sometimes guilt consumes us and only a seeming sacrifice will do. That sacrifice can be in the form of blood, time, or resources. The sacrifice is for us, the atonement is what eliminates the sense of separation. In the end there is only reliance on the One, the Source of all, the Eternal Beloved who remains.

All human communities and contacts are temporary and sadly inconstant and unreliable. We are not solitary, but yet, not fully connected—and often when we are the most connected, it seems most stifling and uncomfortable. It is tough to be in our own skins. It is the blessedness of this Divine contact that makes all else do-able, endurable.

Ya Wali, Ya Wakil.