My years of Living with Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom
Day 86
“God is unwilling to be alone, and man cannot forever remain impervious to what He longs to show. Those of us who cannot keep their striving back find themselves at times within the sight of the unseen and become aglow with its rays. Some of us blush, others wear a mask. Faith is a blush in the presence of God.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 91)
This is the beginning of the 15th week of living with Rabbi Heschel every morning and I have renamed this blog to: My years of Living with Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom to more accurately express how my life changed and continues to change as a result of living with Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, teachings, kindness, love and insights. He is a prophet and I choose to hear him louder, clearer and with more dedication each year, month, day, hour and I hope these blogs help you do the same.
Today’s quote is so overwhelming that most of us shy away from it, run from it and work hard to stay “impervious” to it! “God is unwilling to be alone” is a statement that seems so incongruous with a distant, transcendent entity. The Ineffable One is a descriptor of God and this being that is ‘too great to be expressed or described in words’ is unwilling to be alone? What is Rabbi Heschel saying to us, teaching us, calling for us to do?
While none of us can see God’s face and survive according to the Bible and God is beyond all human needs/attributes, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us that: “let us make man” was as much for God’s sake as it was for the sake of the world and for our sake. We were supposed to be partners with God in completing creation, in caring for the physical world, all the animals, plants, nature, etc as well as each other. Our ancestors found in the Bible taught us how to respond to God’s call either by doing what God was calling on them to do or by not doing what God was calling on them to do. The Bible is a book replete with humanity’s errors and God’s calling, our hiding and God’s tears.
What could be a better example of God’s desire to connect with humanity than the Ineffable One’s call to Adam and Eve: “Ayecha- where are you” and/or the conversation with Abraham regarding Sodom and Gomorrah: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing”. Throughout the Bible, God is sending people to speak to all of us out of a deep desire to connect, to partner with humanity and for humanity to fulfill the promise and the ‘deal’ that was made at our creation. God keeps redeeming us, sending the brothers to Egypt to save the family, sending Moses to the Pharaoh to redeem the slaves, sending the Prophets to us to remind us of our commitment and of God’s need for us, etc.
Yet, we have forgotten this truth. We say God is hiding yet, as I am reading Rabbi Heschel this morning, I believe he is calling all of us out for our hiding from God. Yes, God is transcendent, “beyond the ordinary physical experience” as the latin and English definition explains, and God is also immanent, “remaining within” each of us. “God is unwilling to be alone” is to disturb our willful ignorance of connection, to disrupt our false belief that God doesn’t care, to smash the idolatry of our belief that God has left the room. Rabbi Heschel is not accepting the ‘conventional norms’ of people’s beliefs and definitions, he is calling to us to be in Radical Amazement, maladjusted to conventional norms, beliefs, notions and mental cliches, and respond to God’s call for connection and partnership.
We are afraid to hear God’s call and/or Rabbi Heschel’s call because of our inadequacies which we try and hide from each and every day. Perfectionism is one path to hide from God, from God’s call to us and for us. It allows us to think we can/must be God in order to connect. Another idolatrous thought. Perfectionism is a path to ruin and to loneliness, to disconnection and extreme narcissism, it does not allow for us to call to God and/or another person for help, for instruction, for connection. It mirrors our way of defining God as not needing anything, anyone. Rabbi Heschel is smashing these deceptions and mendacious thoughts, notions, words, teachings by the charlatans of the world.
We do not find recovery until we acknowledge “God is unwilling to be alone” and is calling to us. We can be sober, abstinent, dry without this acknowledgement, we just can’t be in recovery. Recovery is not just for ‘addicts/alcoholics/gamblers/etc, it is for every person who wants to stop being separate from their souls, stop being separate from their higher consciousness, their Higher Power, God, etc. In recovery, we know God is calling and we keep tuning our hearing, our souls to God’s frequency instead of trying to have everyone, including God, tune into our frequency.
Only when I hear God calling do I feel comfortable and at ‘ease’. Only through hearing God’s message for today for me can I have accept the clarity I experience to take the next right action. It is my job to keep clearing out the schmutz and junk that blocks my ears and my soul from tuning into God’s frequency instead of my own and this is a daily practice of Sacred Housekeeping as Harriet Rossetto teaches in her book of the same name. More tomorrow and stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark