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I want to talk about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow, night after night.

Faithful, even as it fades from fullness...But I have no faith myself. I refuse it the smallest entry. Let this then, my small poem, like a new moon, slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

On this night, the holiest of the year, I begin with this poem by David Whyte, to invite us to examine our faith, to shed some light on these difficult times, and possibly, to take back a word that has become maligned and politicized: Faith.

If I were to ask you, what do you have faith in? What would you say? Look inside for a moment. For some of us, like the poet, faith is refused the smallest entry. And for others of us, faith is like the moon: sometimes it anchors us deeply in the void of the nightsky, and sometimes it disappears entirely from sight, swallowed by our doubts and fears and the seeming random nature of life.

In Hebrew, faith is emunah. It means: Firm and steadfast. Like the Ground beneath our feet. But what happens to our faith when the ground beneath our feet becomes shaky and unpredictable? What happens to faith when the earth beneath us is literally quaking? In what can we say we rest firmly?

In the past year, how many of us have heard news: a quirky, unforeseen tragedy; a fateful diagnosis of someone we love; a flip of nature's tail in the form of a tsunami, or an earthquake, and suddenly we are thrown, once again, our sense of order and direction disappearing into the darkness.

I don't believe this is a cause for shame or self-reproach. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg suggests that for most of us post-holocaust Jews, faith has mutated from being a constant fact of life, to a now and again factor. We are no longer divided into believers and non-believers, he says, rather, our lives are a mixture of belief and disbelief. Depending upon the moment, we are, in matters of faith, (as in so many ways) hyphenated beings: believers-non-believers-believers.

Recently, I polled several young people about faith. Interestingly, God did not enter the picture. "I have faith that everything that I've worked for will come back to me in good ways," said one young man. And a 19 year old told me: "If something good is going to happen, it's because you make it happen. You have to be in charge, you don't rely on anyone. My faith is in myself; that's the only control a person has."

Although these statements are from people in the first half of life, who have yet to be awakened to the fact that there may be a power outside of themselves that calls the shots, this kind of thinking–faith that is limited to human power–is surprisingly emblematic of today's theology.

A boy named Josh came home from Hebrew School recently and his dad asks him what he learned that day. Josh says: Very cool. We learned about the time when the Israelites were escaping from slavery and reached the sea and the Egyptians had them trapped." "Yeah?" The dad says, mildly surprised at Josh's excitement. "Go on."

Yeah, the boy continues. Moshe uses his cell to call the IDF air force squad, which bombs the Egyptian army while the Israeli Corps of Engineers builds this amazing pontoon bridge over the sea, which lets the people pass over."

What??? Says the dad. Rabbi Goldstein taught you that?

No, says Josh, but you would never believe the version he told us."

Most young people will tell you, our world is founded on our faith in the rational. And our faith in technology. Yet our world is anything but rational. And as for technology, who here hasn't heard of viruses, bugs, piracy, and crashes?

And even though the world is changing rapidly, let's remember that the Jewish people have lived through three thousand + years of changing philosophies, trends and trouble. And throughout, Jews have held firmly to one core faith. Have lived and died for their faith in One Power, one unifying principle in the Universe, One life-giving source. We would have to guess that this supreme intelligence is big enough to contain our technology. And our science. And even evolution. And all the brilliant ideas from stem cell therapy to tapping new sources of energy; all of these must be a part of this One that we call Echad. And sadly, it follows, that this totality we call Echad, must also include the other parts of our world today: our damaged eco-system, the roaring pain of humanity, Mother Earth's convulsions; All of these must play into our faith. All of these must somehow be included in our emerging image of God, the One.

YK is the day when we need to ask ourselves the hard questions. Not only: how will I change and evolve in the next year, to become more whole? It is also: how will my image of God and my faith, change and evolve in the next year, to become more whole?

It is clear that no life giving faith/theology today can be based upon the idea that God is separate from us, an omnipotent entity, divorced from human experience. It is not only outmoded; it is dangerous. My friends in Israel call the unpronounceable name of God Havayah, which is a rough pronunciation of the letters of YHVH. In Hebrew it means: Existence itself. But it is mistakably close to the word Chavaya: Experience. God's great name is becoming equated more and more with human existence and human experience. This is what the Chasidic masters have been saying all along: God is found in the human experience. Dressed in us, in our activity, in our emotions and in the evolution of our thinking. ("So Ribono Shel Olam, you want to dress up as Zalman for another day? Guzunterheit!")

But if we are awake these days, the human experience, as the experience of the earth, is turbulent, uncomfortable. If God is alive here in this place, present in our experience, then God too, is turbulent, uncomfortable. I would like to propose that God is no longer just the ground of our being. God is what happens when the ground falls away and our old mental moves don't work anymore. When we are fragile and broken and scared, and our idea of reality is shaken. I would like to propose that God is radically present when we are out of moves, and we are dancing as fast as we can and there is an internal revolution happening. Because where there is revolution there is evolution.

A young Palestinian man who visited Boulder last year told a personal story that describes an amazing inner revolution. He had grown up in an Arab village in Israel, which was right next to an Israeli village. But for his entire life, he had never ventured out of his village, had never stepped foot into the Jewish village and he had never met a Jew. He had heard that Jews were evil, that they had tails and horns. He had seen them depicted on Al Jazir television as human deviates. Evil beings bent on devouring his kind.

One fall, there was an initiative sponsored by The Abraham Fund, an NGO given to fostering relations between the Israeli and Palestinian populations. It came in the form of an invitation during the harvest season, that the people of both villages, share in harvesting the crops of each others fields.

The young man was curious. His mother begged him not to go. Other children teased him. But something in him pushed him. Something made him get in line to go to the moshav. So he went. There he was. In line. He began to feel crazed by the voices in his head. He was an idiot, and he had fallen stupidly into their trap. He was going to his death. Yet he kept walking toward the Israeli fields. Then he saw what he feared most: the prototypical Jewish monster. A rotund man with a long beard standing at the head of the line. The boy panicked. It was the devil himself. This was clear. And he was holding something in his hands that shone in the sun. It was a weapon. He was going to his death; walking straight into the trap; he and all the other villagers.

But as he approached, he saw more clearly. What the man was holding, shining in the morning sun, was not a metal gun. It was a metal tray. And on the tray was a batch of chocolate chip cookies. There was before him a Jewish man smiling, holding out a tray of cookies to him. Mohammed was stunned and shaking. But he accepted a cookie and it smelled good. He put it into his mouth. That was the moment that his life changed.

Sometimes our ideas are on so tight that they have to explode into a new reality. These are moments of revolution that lead to evolution that lead to new faith. These are God moments. When consciousness leaps across the abyss of rational understanding.

If you ask me what I have faith in, it is in this.

I have faith in this revolution. I have faith that as our world convulses and our sense of reality cracks–with ecological crises abounding around our globe as well as the desperate fractures between peoples–that we will have to let go of our old ground, and find the faith that we will be caught in the welcoming arms of a new reality.

I believe firmly that there is in every one of us an internal tipping point, perhaps more than one, the ability to transform, to make radical leaps, to survive when the ground of our being falls through, for there is no holding on to the old: we must fly or we will die spiritually.

And if we must let go of our old beliefs and explode into new understandings, then may God too, show us the way, by leaping out of his funky old roles, helping us crash our old systems so that we can upgrade into new theology. May God not only show us the way, but show up in new ways.

A wonderful Talmudic story surprises us with this kind of new thinking.

Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha once entered into the innermost part of the sanctuary, presumably in meditation, and saw Akatriel Yah, Yah Tzva-ot, yoshev al kiseh ram v'nisa, the Lord of Hosts seated upon a high and exalted throne. (So far there is nothing new. But here comes the crash of the old paradigm.)

Vayomer lee: Yishmael b'ni, barcheni.

He said one thing to me: Ishmael, my son, bless me.

Here we are on YK, preparing ourselves to ask God to save us, bless us, heal us, seal us for life. Maybe we have it wrong. Maybe we've had it wrong all along. Maybe God is waiting for us, for our blessings. Maybe God is really the world wide web of consciousness, the Mind that includes all minds, the Heart that beats in our heart and suffers with and in and through us. And She is in sore need of our blessings, our compassion, our tears.

What did Rabbi Ishmael do? He blessed God saying:

Yehi Ratzon Milfanecha, May it be Your will, that Your Rachmanus, Compassion prevail over all Your other agenda. And that as You look upon Your children, Mercy prevails over anger. V'titnaheg im banecha b'midat haRachamim, May You treat Your children with kindness, and stop short of exacting justice.

V'na'naya lee b'rosho. And God nodded her head to me.

May we all be blessed with R. Yishmael's vision: To find a new face of God awaiting us when we enter the interior spaces of holiness this YK; to find a faith in something larger than ourselves alone, faith in the power of compassion, in the Power within us to make to make incredible leaps in our lives: leaps of consciousness and leaps of faith; leaps to new self images and leaps to new God images. Leaps from anger to mercy; from inner revolution to evolution.

And in this world that has come to malign and politicize its faith or refuse it the smallest entry, may our yearning, like the new moon, slender and barely open, be a prayer that opens us to new faith.

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