Reclaiming the Spiritual Depths of the Metaphor of "King"

Searching for a Replacement for the Metaphor of God as King The metaphor of the "king" has many distasteful elements to us these days. Centuries of history of abuse, the pattern of one individual's having "power-over" another, the feudal system's justification of Divine right, the negativity associated with the role of "dominant male," the infantilising/ demeaning relationship of everyone vis-a-vis the king, etc., all justly deserve our distancing. 2. Yet our tradition is replete with images of God as "king," especially on the High Holydays where the word Hamelekhis written large, in bold. How can we redeem some part of this metaphor? 3. Michael Lerner proposes this interpretation of Hamelekh: "Hal'vai (would that it were so) that the most High i.e., God, was king. Unfortunately, nowadays, greed and power are the governing powers and not God. If only, Hal'vai, that God ~ king, then a more enlightened system would rule the planet." This acknowledgement and hope fits in well with the prayers although it doesn't address the issues inherently unacceptable in the king metaphor on its own. 4. A traditional route around this thorny problem is by gaining understanding of the mystical theme of "rebuilding" or redesigning Malkhut (kingdom), the Sefirahof grounding ethereal energies, which is the essence of the High Holy days according to Jewish mysticism. This "abstracting" of melekh to malkhut involves replacing all references to "king" which are found so ubiquitously in our texts with the mystical idea of kingship found in the ten Sefirot (see chapter on Sefirot). 5. A middle step (psychologically, not cosmically mystical) which may be helpful is to study the depths of the spiritual journey inherent in "king" as outlined in this paper, adapted from the article, "In Quest of the King" by Belden C. Lane, published in HorizonsMagazineVol. 14 #1). Reclaiming the Spiritual Depths of the Metaphor of the "King" 1. The metaphor of God as "king" describes replacement metaphors (such as Gaia, the Mother, the Web, the puzzle, the spacetime continuum, the organizing principle of the universe, etc.) we can find similarities to all five of the submetaphors inherent in questing for the king. a relationship with the Divine which can be broken down to five stages evolving sequentially from the previous stage. These five metaphors are a "journey" or a tale of an evolving awareness of our relationship with God. 2. In the metaphor of the "King" there is an underlying spiritual depth hinting at a spiritual journey that moves through the following five stages: from a sense of longing, through hope, boldness, despair to a final shocking encounter. To fully become woven into the cosmic web involves a transformation of the identity of the small, individuated self. Yet the development of these replacement metaphors of spiritual quest is, as yet, not as fully articulated as the metaphor of "the search for the king," the tension not as desperate. Our task is to make the tension equally intense in the newer metaphors as it has been in the "Hamelekh" metaphor. 3. Those of us committed to updating the tradition cannot throw out the bath water without first locating the baby, so let us begin to trace the meanings within the older metaphor and find where, in our