{"id":164528,"date":"2025-10-26T06:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164528"},"modified":"2025-10-26T06:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:23:01","slug":"how-do-you-touch-the-face-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164528","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Touch The Face Of God?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to feel like you\u2019re touching the face of God in traditional Orthodox Judaism, outside of Hasidism. You have to work for your spiritual highs, there’s little cheap grace. Most Orthodox Jews can\u2019t just accept divine love and ride the current. My most significant spiritual highs in Judaism have come from the hard work of studying Torah (and following the intoxicating scholarship of Marc B. Shapiro<\/a> and Aaron W. Hughes<\/a>). Christianity makes spiritual highs more accessible. For most people, the easiest paths to transcendence and comfort are sports, music, and pop culture, along with romance, sex, and, for some, drugs and alcohol. Meditation offers a relatively direct way to touch something higher. Twelve-step programs are like God with skin\u2014honest, raw, relational, and forgiving.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a list of healthy, popular ways Americans experience transcendence, ranked from easiest to hardest:<\/p>\n

Music and live performance<\/p>\n

Sports participation or fandom<\/p>\n

Time in nature<\/p>\n

Romantic love and deep friendship<\/p>\n

Creative immersion (art, writing, design)<\/p>\n

Service and volunteerism<\/p>\n

Meditation and mindfulness<\/p>\n

Group rituals or worship<\/p>\n

12-step or recovery communities<\/p>\n

Deep therapy or emotional surrender<\/p>\n

Parenting and unconditional love<\/p>\n

Solitude, contemplation, or retreat<\/p>\n

Mystical experience or ego dissolution<\/p>\n

The further down you go, the more inner work and surrender are required. The early ones are about stimulation and belonging; the later ones are about stillness and transformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to feel like you\u2019re touching the face of God in traditional Orthodox Judaism, outside of Hasidism. You have to work for your spiritual highs, there’s little cheap grace. Most Orthodox Jews can\u2019t just accept divine love and ride … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t