Revelation, Inspiration . . . & Then . . .
Is it really inspiration if it doesn't lead to action?
So already, if you’re someone who tends to think of windy days as audible, visible reminders that the natural world lives and breathes, and who sees evidence of the spirit that created it wherever you look in nature, then you would have found last
Friday morning inspiring. All morning long, the tree across the street from my dining room window danced on the air currents pouncing from the west. Eventually, I went down to the street and made this short video so you could see and hear it, too. If listening for a still, small voice were completely a job for the ears, we all would have been in big trouble last Friday.
“Inspiration” is a good word to consider in conjunction with that morning because respiration and inspiration have long been related, as the Online Etymology Dictionary’s entry about “inspiration” makes clear:
“c. 1300, ‘immediate influence of God or a god,’ especially that under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiracion ‘inhaling, breathing in; inspiration’ (13c.), from Late Latin inspirationem (nominative inspiratio), noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin inspirare ‘blow into, breathe upon,’ figuratively ‘inspire, excite, inflame,’ from in- ‘in’ (from PIE root *en "in") + spirare ‘to breathe’ . . . .”*
Only much later—but by 1867—did the word come to denote “‘one who inspires others.’”*
I got to thinking about the relationships among revelation, inspiration, and action earlier this month when I went to my synagogue on the holiday of Shavuot. Sitting with the small group of us who’d gathered for the service, I realized I hadn’t been in a synagogue on this particular holiday since grade school. My inspiration that morning was part obligation: four times a year, I’m required, since both of my parents have passed, to participate in the memorial service called Yizkor. Shavuot is one of those times.
Shavuot is an important holiday, despite my decades-long neglect of it. It commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments and a slew of other laws—big-R Revelation—to the Jewish people at Sinai. That part I remembered. What I hadn’t known, or hadn’t remembered, was that it also celebrates the harvest of the “first fruits.”
In the next couple of days, though I read conflicting notions of what fruits (most but not all said wheat) were to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem on this holiday, the theme and message were consistent across them: we were to give thanks to God for the food with which He provided us, and still provides us. All human survival depends on eating: no wonder Jewish liturgy so often requires Jews to read or chant the paragraph from Deuteronomy (11:13-21) that makes the rain essential for human survival contingent upon people’s observance of and obedience to the mitzvot (laws) given to them—revealed to them—at Mount Sinai.***
Still, only in rabbinic times, after both Temples had been destroyed, did Shavuot come to commemorate the giving of the law at Sinai.
It’s a strange combination, these two holiday explanations. A passage in the margin of Siddur Lev HaShalem, the prayerbook my synagogue uses, links the two metaphorically:
“Torah [the Pentateuch] emerges from the seeds planted in a long-ago ancestral history, from the period of drought which is the experience of slavery and from the growth in freedom, the nourishment offered by God in the desert. The Torah is the fruit of that planting and the harvest of those experiences. The Torah itself is the dedicated first fruit, but the harvest goes on. We continuously labor to increase its yield. Our lives are sustained by the harvest.”****
I like that the final sentences emphasize not only the continuation of harvest, but the ongoing labor necessary for it. It reminds me of five common misconceptions about inspiration in particular.
Misconception #1: Revelation leads to inspiration.
I believe that revelation—small-r and big-R—doesn’t automatically take up residence in the hearts and souls of those who receive it. It may take some getting used to and some deliberate effort before it can be fully incorporated into the self.
The following verses from Deuteronomy aren’t simply anti-drought and -famine advice; they offer guidance for taking big-R Revelation—the law revealed by God to the Israelites—and transforming it into inspiration:
Only if those receiving these words “impress . . . [them] upon your heart and upon your soul” will the spirit of God breathe in and through them—in other words, become inspiration within them. The verses go so far as direct people to wear tefillin, affix mezuzot to doorposts, and take other particular steps to facilitate the transformation from Revelation to inspiration.*****
Misconception #2: Inspiration is enough.
Inspiration is not an endpoint. Even though it might feel so great—like the rush of refreshing breeze through the trees on a summer morning of afternoon—that we’d love to prolong the enlivening experience of it.
But we have to move beyond the moment of inspiration to the action it’s intended to galvanize. That’s why we generally hear “for” or “to” following some form of inspiration: “Jenna was my inspiration for cleaning out my garage” or “I’m feeling really inspired to participate in my local No Kings protest since I listened to that law school graduation speech.” While inspiration doesn’t have a set expiration date or shelf-life, it’s possible to wait too long to act on it: someone feeling inspired to run for political office might start collecting signatures too late to have enough of them to file completed nomination papers by the deadline.
Misconception #3: Sincere “desires to” are inspirations.
Can a feeling be called inspiration if it doesn’t lead to action? Musing might be a better word for entertaining the idea of doing something without actually ever getting to it. That said, I recognize that many people hope that their musings will become inspiration. That’s why there’s so much written about how to cultivate inspiration, how to let it in and nurture it when it finally comes knocking at the door.
Misconception #4: Inspiration embraced overrides feelings and forces that would would get in the way of acting on it.
Inspiration was what I felt after YouTube revealed Yale Law School’s Professor Harold Koh’s recent keynote speech at the George Washington University Law School graduation (around minute 55). Koh told these soon-to-be practicing lawyers who might expect to be intimidated from following their most elevated professional intentions, “What I’ve learned from my dad, from my wife, from my family is that courage is contagious. So is cowardice. What you decide is a choice.”******
I’m not a lawyer, but those words about cowardice got to me—because I am generally fearful of even very slim chances of physical violence—and am apt to let them stop me from doing what’s right and needs to be done. In fact, the parental message of my childhood and adulthood was to stay home and to let someone else do what might be dangerous: I can clearly remember my father telling sixty-one-year-old me he wished I wouldn’t participate in the 2017 Women’s March because “something could happen there.”
But I’m practicing having more courage. Like going to my synagogue for Shavuot services two days after a man threw incendiary devices at a group of Jewish protesters in Boulder, CO and synagogues everywhere were on high alert. Like attending a No Kings protest next to a busy street that would have made it easy for an incensed driver to plow into us.
Even as I share those two examples, I feel silly: my ability to choose the risks I take reflects my being white and American-born. To be dark-skinned and/or born outside of the United States, especially since the last election, is to live daily with a high risk of experiencing violence and injustice.*******
Misconception #5: All revelations are equally worthy of our attention.
In terms of first fruits, I have been deliberately separating the chaff—my ingrained early-training-based resistance to acting with courage—from the wheat. I’m guessing that I’m not the only one for whom chaff can easily get in the way of courage.********
However, I’ve met some people who stay fascinated by their personal chaff. To some degree, I can understand that since recognizing chaff is often the result of liberating small-r revelation(s). The problem occurs when their attention stays focused overly long on that chaff, causing it to feed what’s ingrained and action-averse rather than to fight against it.*********
In conclusion . . .
Truthfully, I think often those early Jews who crossed the Red Sea and received God’s Revelation at Sinai.********** Their experiences of homelessness, seemingly endless wandering, and witnessing God’s revelation at Sinai, all while existing on a steady diet of manna—not a first fruit—must have felt surreal. I always wonder just when and how Revelation became inspiration for the majority of them, if it did.
Meanwhile, just an acknowledgment that while so many of my examples above have been politics- and religion-related, there are so many other areas of our lives where inspiration is important, even if it’s not enough: in my case, it’s necessary for writing blog posts like this one, for trying new recipes, for signing up for poetry-writing courses periodically—and then seeing them through to the end.
Strange as our world is these days, with its rapidly happening events being reported widely and inconsistently at any given moment, it doesn’t feel surreal to me. Just troubling and magnificent at different times. Its ceaseless small-r revelations cannot be trusted and must not be ignored. Nor must they be allowed to blot out the sound of the wind in the trees—or the fields of wheat. So breathe deep, embrace inspiration, know yourself, get over yourself if necessary, and act.
* Inspiration. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved June 20, 2025, from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=inspiration
** “Counting of the Omer” by Karin Foreman: https://karinforeman.com/counting-of-the-omer-sfirat-haomer-%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A8/counting-of-the-omer/
*** Wheat Fields After the Rain” by Vincent van Gogh: https://pixels.com/featured/wheat-fields-after-the-rain-vincent-van-gogh.html
**** The Siddur Lev Shalem Committee. (2016). Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat & Festivals. Rabbinical Assembly, Inc..
***** pdf of Siddur Lev HaShalem, p. 156 (p. 62 of pdf: https://www.tepb.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Shabbat-and-Festival-morning-SIDDUR-LEV-SHALEM-2.pdf
*(6) Screen shot of photo accompanying the following article—and the article itself: GW Law Celebrates Commencement 2025. (2025, May 20). Retrieved June 21, 2025 from https://www.law.gwu.edu/gw-law-celebrates-commencement-2025 Disclosure: Harold Koh is a college friend of mine.
*(7) Screen shot of online Wall Street Journal page: https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-an-immigration-roundup-crying-children-closed-doors-coffee-1519055242
*(8) Screen shot accompanying the following article: Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research. (2023). How does the social behavior of wheat plants influence grain production? Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-social-behavior-wheat-grain-production.html
*(9) Oh, that word “ingrained” is so timely and interesting. Given this post’s focus on wheat as both metaphor and sacrificial grain, how could I fail to notice that “grain” was ingrained in “ingrained”? That recognition sent me back to the Online Etymology Dictionary where I learned that in the late 1590s, the word meant “literally ‘dyed with grain ‘cochineal,’ the red dyestuff.” Interestingly, I happened to be reading Victoria Finlay’s Color: A Natural History of the Palette, which explained that this dye, often called grana, was made from the bodies of cochineal beetles.[Ingrained. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved June 23, 2025, from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=ingrained}
*(10) I wrote a poem in part about these early desert wanderers called “The Flight from Egypt” a couple of years ago. And yes, I know there’s no detailed objective historical record of their experiences.