https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5P1QolWc8dg
And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. I read in Jung years ago this idea that I found extraordinarily compelling and useful, which was that every ideal is simultaneously and necessarily a judge. So you imagine that the ideal is something that beckons to you, but you’re also pale in comparison to the ideal. And so by apprehending an ideal, you’re also simultaneously judged. And the higher the ideal, the more intense the judgment in some real sense. I think that’s partly why people are terrified of great art, like Michelangelo’s David. I read a great commentary on that. The commentator suggested that the statue calls upon you to be far more than you are. So there’s that judgment. And I think part of what happens to Moses here is that he’s afraid to look upon God, the God of Abraham that calls people to adventure. The God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God that calls people to adventure and sacrifice and then out of slavery as well, is that ideal that’s ultimately terrifying in some real sense. And so Moses hides his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. Their negotiation is interesting to me, because God sort of comes forth here and lists his bona fides, right? Because he says, I’m your God, I’m the God of your people. And so it’s very interesting, the back and forth between him and Moses. And so, you know, it’s sort of, he’s almost proving the case that he’s the God to be set before other gods by identifying him as the God of his people. And certainly the God to be set before other gods by Moses, given his cultural heritage, right? So I’m not only God, I’m not only this transcendent figure that you would assume might be behind the unconsumed burning bush, but the more particularized God that’s already been identified as part of this tradition, right? And based on what Stephen was saying, Moses’ reaction to God’s call is also one of attention. You know, he says, here am I, here I am. That’s all he can do. He can just, I’m here and I’m paying attention to what is happening. And this phrase is so important that it’s repeated in other places in the Bible. You see it in the story of Samuel, for example, who has that same reaction. Here’s the call and all they can say is, I am here and I am attending now. And so it’s interesting to see that this idea of attention continues on in the story as well. Well, this idea of attention is extremely important because it’s easy to think of attention and cognition, let’s say, or even rationality as somehow equivalent. But they’re importantly different because rationality builds towers of babel, let’s say, and rationality makes presumptions about the world. But attention is a precondition for revelation and for rationality. And attention is in and of itself a kind of openness to the horizon of transformation. And the more I would say there’s a direct connection between being attentive and even being capable of healing in some real sense. So if you’re a clinician, one of the things you learn, and Carl Rogers, the clinician, was a particularly potent writer on this notion that attentive listening in and of itself has a curative capacity. You let people unfold in front of you, you encourage them to unfold in front of you. And that’s not even analytic thought. There can be a strategic component of it, but mostly it’s just the devotion of attention. And attention also in some real sense sheds light on the darkness because we only see what we attend to and what we don’t see or what we don’t perceive in the broadest sense is in some real sense not even there.