Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 36
“The self is not evil. The precept: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” includes the care for one’s own self as a duty. It is as mistaken to consider the duty to oneself and the will of God as opposites as it is to identify them. To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.” (Man is Not Alone pg.141).
Today, I want to focus on the last sentence of this paragraph: “To serve does not mean to surrender but to share”. I believe Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, teaching us, cajoling us, smacking some of us upside our heads as to what is important in living and how to truly engage in life, with God, with our whole self and with another self.
Applying this truth to any aspect of living and we can see how it enhances, elevates, and enables common everyday activities. When I seek to share with my wife, daughter, siblings, nieces, nephews, family, friends, co-workers, strangers, I do not have to be right, I am not under any “pressure to perform”, I am not governed by the edicts of another, I am able to and privileged to present the real, authentic me, sharing wisdom, battle scars, holding out my hand for them to grab hold of, etc as well as learning from them, taking their outstretched hand and together, truly making a “fence around the Torah”, a connection that helps all of us live better, a connection that states we are responsible for and to each other, a connection that enables each other, and a connection that screams YOU MATTER.
Many people have a terrific problem with the word surrender, I am reminded of Rabbi Harold Shulweis, z”l, screaming at me to never surrender when we were having a debate about the word in the context of recovery. Re-reading Rabbi Heschel’s words today, I understand better what he was saying. Sharing in and with another human being allows us to retain our individuality, our dignity, our freedom and our self-worth. Surrender, to Rabbis Shulweis and Heschel, as I am understanding these words today, was a negative because of the Shoah, because, to them, surrender meant slavery, becoming like another, a loss of dignity and self-worth. Even in relationship to God does surrender sound like the wrong word, as I am reading it today. Sharing with God, sharing in God’s bounty for and to us, sharing with God our soul’s desire, our sadness, our pain, our joy and our health, is a much different experience than surrendering/giving up and not being an active participant in the relationship with God.
All of the prayers we recite at different times have a new meaning in immersing myself into Rabbi Heschel’s thoughts. We recite prayers to share our soul, our questions, pour fears, our hopes with God and us. We pause between the words to hear and share in the words back from God. We pause between the words, prayers to hear and share in the dreams, hopes, questions, pain, fears, etc from the people in our prayer community. We pray as a people for our self and for the self of another human being(s). We share in the tragedies, pain, loss, victories, joys, healings and connections of one another in prayer, in community, in life as well as with God. As I am reading this, we do not come to God as a supplicant, with our hats in our hands, rather we come to God as a partner, as one who has something to share and something to receive.
When we experience service as sharing, we no longer need to have power struggles with one another. We no longer have to force another person to surrender to our will and do what we want to do or want them to do in our to serve. Service is no longer about a hierarchy, it is about equality. Someone serving us is not longer something we are entitled to, rather it is something we are privileged to receive, it is a gift from another person and from God. Service as sharing means that we are gifted with the opportunity to share with another our gifts to compliment, enhance, fill a gap in their life so they can share with another, maybe us maybe not us, their gifts to do the same for another. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward and/or, as Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man taught me 30+years ago, it is the reciprocity of generosity that fuels the world and our souls.
In recovery surrender is not a bad word, we have to surrender our false egos, our “drug of choice” in order to be able to share with another. In recovery, service is all about sharing our experience, strength, and hope. We find ourselves on both the giving and receiving end of these shares, the speakers at meetings don’t lecture, they share and in sharing we are able to express our humanity and receive the humanity of another, no matter their background, faith, race, socio-economic status, etc. In recovery, we share our secrets and our gifts in equal measure fearlessly so someone else can benefit.
I have been blessed to be able to share my experience, strength, hope, joy, pain, sadness, betrayals by me and against me out loud to a community of seekers and sharers. In the 33 years I have worked at Beit T’Shuvah, my service has been all about sharing in the lives of 1000’s of people. I realize from today’s reading that my way of being is to share my ego’s energy with my soul’s vision and this is the path of maximum service to God, to my self, to another self(s). It is the path of to experience the maximum joy, comfort, dignity and self-worth possible. It is the path to the inner peace that we all seek, not the “ohm” inner peace, rather then inner peace of being an active partner with God, with another sharing soul(s) to make our corner of the world a little better and us a little more responsible. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark