Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 82
“What is the hope of man with his faithfulness being so feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no man’s integrity unmixed. But man has become callous to catastrophes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a wall between our conscience and God?”(Man is Not Alone pg.147)
I have been thinking about all the seemingly ‘small’ things that we do as humans and think nothing of that God, the Prophets and Rabbi Heschel would consider catastrophes! Whenever the Jewish tradition speaks of the prophet Elijah, he is almost always portrayed as a beggar, an invalid, a person in need of shelter and/or food; never as the one in charge, the smartest person in the room, etc. In pondering this choice Jewish tradition as made, I understand better the small catastrophes we engage in all the time. Elijah is looking to see where our morals are at, he is watching in real time our spiritual condition, maturity, love for God, love for our fellow and how willing are we to do the next right thing when it doesn’t serve us.
The callousness shown to Elijah reminds me of the Hasidic saying which talks about treating the person next to us as if they were the Messiah and if she/he chooses to not reveal him/herself it will not matter. We are guilty of these ‘small’ catastrophes each and every day. When we walk by someone and do not acknowledge them it is our callousness that prevents us. I know many people will speak about their fears, that they are introverts, etc. yet all of us want to be noticed, all of us want to be acknowledged, all of us want to be seen and all of us want to be valued, not only for what we do, just for being human! Yet, we are too busy, too callous to say hello to the people we pass on the street, the people who work for us, the people we work for, the people who serve us, the people who we serve(have you ever dealt with customer service that is based overseas), and, at times, the people closest to us.
Our callousness comes out in the ‘small’ things that we do also. Making business a contact sport/war is a way of being callous and causing catastrophes while patting ourselves on the back for a good job of ‘destroying’ the competition. Think of all the exploitation that occurs in the making of many of the products we use every single day. Think of the exploitation of people’s pain/fear that happens everyday by big Pharma, doctors, pharmacists, big supply chains, etc through the ads they run on TV to get people to demand their products so their bottom line gets bigger. Not too many people see this as a catastrophe, yet it is!
The daily catastrophe of not seeing the people we work with, live with through their eyes, their experiences. We are so afraid of not being able to fix someone else, we are so in need of the ‘perfect’ family, life, friends, that we do not see the emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual suffering of our loved ones because we can’t fix it so we ignore them. We even get angry at them for ‘not snapping out of it’ in the time we think they should. We are callous and cause catastrophes because we are afraid to see the pain and suffering, the neediness and poverty of another human being. We are afraid to see all of this because 1) it would make us more responsible and force us to serve their interests and make them our concern and 2) it would be a mirror to our own pain, loneliness, sufferings, neediness and poverty and both of these outcomes are too much for many people to bear.
Ignoring the immigrants at the border, not finding a path for the immigrants who live here without papers, ignoring the unhoused people and getting angry at them, not noticing the person walking next to you and/or at you with a hello, engaging in ‘alternative facts’ and mendacity to attain power and using the vulnerabilities of another against them, feeling helpless and powerless which leads to frustration, etc with those closest to us because we can’t fix them, all of these ways of being callous and causing catastrophes.
In recovery, we are constantly working to improve our spiritual condition and one of the ways we do this is through service. We know we need to see another person for who they are and serve their needs not our own. We know that engaging in truth rather than mendacity is a cornerstone of our recovery and we seek to heal old wounds are create fewer and fewer catastrophes every day.
In my recovery, I have caused fewer and fewer catastrophes and the ones I have caused have been big ones, for the people impacted by them-I am sorry and have made amends, for the chaos created in God’s world, I have made t’shuvah with God. I also know that saying hello is a big part of my daily practice, noticing the pain of another is also something I am acutely aware of and I am working hard at being less and less callous each day. I also know my life in recovery has been a testimony for the power of healing and helping the needy, the poor and those in need of spiritual and psychological healing. I am proud of being able to work alongside Harriet Rossetto these 30+ years to achieve this. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark