I’ve been seeking a more spiritual life ever since I joined a Quaker Meeting when I was 14 years old.

The Quakers were good for me, they taught me a lot about patience, frustration, helping the poor,  listening and true compassion, all things I have wanted to pursue and learn about, but have often failed to do.

I am not conventionally religious, I suppose, but two disparate spiritual forces have inspired me and shaped my life and faith.

On the surface, they have little to do with one another, but in truth, they seem very similar to me. They both guide my life in a number of ways.

One is Jesus Christ, who is not a God to me but a powerful inspiration and guide. The other is  Kabbalah, a series of writings about God and faith and mysticism by unknown authors and mystics writing in secret in Medieval Europe.

Christianity is different than Judaism but elements of the Kabbalah and the core of Jesus’s teachings and beliefs are strikingly similar, and I’ve found powerful ideas in each that I have always been comfortable with and that influence my life now.

Together, they form a foundation for  a kind of faith for me, there is no reason I can’t choose elements of different faiths to form a coherent one for me.

Kabbalah views each of us as balanced between two powerful forces.

One draws us toward rebirth and transformation and ultimate fulfillment, and another negative force pulls is towards self-serving action, impulse, anger, instant gratification and temporal pleasure.

These forces act on us in equal measure all the time.

The significance of the negative force is also indispensable to our spiritual development, they work together to build and sustain a spiritual life. Without both, we are incomplete, something other than human.

In the Kabbalah, the Hebrew God offers insights into how we can best live our lives. At least half of what we do  in the world, says God in the Kabbalah, ought to be directed towards assisting others.

I hear many political leaders speak of faith, but I don’t know one who spends half of his or her life helping others.

The Kabbalah explicitly teaches that practical action to do good is as least as worthwhile or pious as righteous observance. Feeding a hungry person is just as likely to bring transformation as prayer or meditation. Simply put, Kabbalah requires us to take real action in the real world.

I love the idea that good deeds and acts of kindness are a prayer and meditation, they are an act of faith all themselves. Good deeds are not in themselves enough, true sharing requires a profound shift in the way we see our lives and our  relationships with other human beings.

And this is where Jesus comes in. His faith was helping the poor and the needy, standing with the helpless and the persecuted. He prayed and meditated on the poor for much of his life, and is believed to have spent all of his life helping other human beings in need.

Luke 4:16-19: “When Jesus came to Nazareth, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day…He stood up to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed to free…”

Jesus, looking at Mark (Mark 10:21-22): “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will  have treasure in heaven…”

Most of us have learned to see ourselves as the the narrative in the ongoing stories of our lives, we are the main characters in our story. We are our own heroes.

Jesus and the mystics of the Kabbalah, both claiming to speak for God, cautioned people against defining life in material terms: a beautiful home, a lot of money, recognition and glory.

Both warned  against making money and success the primary focus of our being, even if it is the primary focus of the world around us, especially if our riches come at the expense of others.

Both give us a way of understanding our lives that are positive alternatives to the heroic sagas about ourselves that most of  us strive to construct.

Through these teachings I have learned to step out of myself, to accept the positive and negative parts of me, and learn from both, to take practical action on behalf of the poor and the needy.

I have felt the spiritual power of good deeds, it is, for me, both meditation and prayer, a way of being righteous, a kind of prayer for those who live outside of the confines of conventional religious faith.

Although the more I read and learn, the more I come to see that the spiritual power of good deed is conventional religious faith, the new priests in the temple have forgotten where they came from.

I asked one of the pastors in town – we met at the Round House Cafe – if he had ever considered the link between Jesus and  Kabbalah. He looked at me curiously, and said, no that was not taught in seminary.

I bet, but the two have, in so many ways, become a way of finding faith for me.