Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 88
“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)
When Rabbi Heschel wrote this, it was in the shadow of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and, it seems like it was his belief that no matter how impervious a person, group, nation is to what God wants to show us, eventually we succumb to God’s consistent call to us, them, it. Yet, along the path to eventually succumbing, we cause much damage, much hurt, much tears to another human being, another group, another nation, to God as well as to ourselves.
Remaining impervious to our treatment of people ‘other than us’ is a way of being that probably goes back to the beginning of our existence, yet we seem to perfect this mode of being more and more in each generation. We have become more and more in love with both being deceived and deceiving another(s) and ourselves. As we approach the anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, we find more and more people openly celebrating and making heroes of people who broke the law, tried to tear down our democratic society and are still trying to, and are calling these criminals, these white supremacists (because they are afraid of losing ‘whiteness control’) patriots! The people engaging in these behaviors are remaining impervious to what God is trying to show us-community, truth, kindness, care for the stranger… yet, these ‘god-fearing’ idol worshiping people remain impervious to God’s ways, teachings and reflection in another human being.
Celebration of the Confederacy and the Confederate leaders through monuments and treatment of blacks is another example of our remaining impervious to “what He longs to show”. The exodus from Egypt is the first story in the Bible of God’s desire that slavery will end, of God’s creating each of us in God’s Image, therefore no one is more valuable or less valuable than another person. Yet, even though our Declaration of Independence declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, there are those among us who remain impervious to the principle that this country was founded on, to the principle that God showed to the founding fathers. The hope and desire of some people to go back to the days of slavery, of minorities bowing down to the White Taskmaster is so embedded we are again facing a civil war, a spiritual war in this country because of the imperviousness of people who are more interested in being god than serving God, more interested in self-deception and the deception of another, than in being open to God’s truth, God’s help and loving God’s ways!
While these may seem like large scale issues, this way of remaining impervious to “what He longs to show us” is practiced by people every single day and applauded as well. We see this in the way we are unable to speak to people with whom we have differences of opinions, we can and do speak at each other, we fight each other, we ignore each other-we just don’t speak with one another. We get hurt by a person and we make them an enemy, never believing their sincere apology, waiting to ‘catch’ them in a lie, etc. We are unable to accept their apology because we remain impervious to our part, our error, our hurting of this person and/or another person, because we want to whitewash our behaviors as justified and right. We betray another person and blame them because we are impervious to hearing God calling us to do T’Shuvah, to acknowledge our errors and stop blaming the other person; “they had it coming”, “isn’t Karma a bitch” are a couple of the phrases we use to justify our behavior while God tells us not to hate our kinfolk in our heart, to not hate/abhor the Egyptians because they took us in and yet we continue to remain impervious to what God has shown us and is showing us.
In recovery, we take off the armor that has kept us impervious, we let down our guard and begin to “circumcise the foreskin of our heart” as we are told to do in the Bible. We realize that after the flood, the rest of God’s words to us are how to return from the evil thoughts that are with us in our youth, the negative, deceptive ways of humankind can be overcome, can be transformed into ways to hear, connect and be open to “what He longs to show us”. In recovery, we are continually seeking to improve our “God Consciousness” and not worry about the definition of God, rather be concerned with our mental, emotional and spiritual progress.
Realizing the armor I have worn and how imperviousness I have been to “what He longs to show” is wonderfully sad and hopeful. In these years of recovery, I have worn the armor, I have been impervious and, while the pain of realizing these states of being is always great, the amount of time it takes God to get my attention has lessened. Writing this today, I realize that the hurts and the betrayals I felt, the grief I went through for 8 months or so, these were all ways for God to get my attention and I am joyous at realizing that God, once again, has done for me what I could not do for myself; help me realize the next chapter in my journey of serving God and human beings. It has been painful and joyous-a true both/and. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark