Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 72
“It is as easy to expel God as it is to shed blood. And yet even when He hides, even when our souls have lost His trace we may still call Him out of the depths: out of the depths of all things. For God is everywhere save in arrogance.” (Man is Not Alone pg.145)
Yesterday, I was immersed in the first half of the second sentence above. Today, I am immersed in the ‘cradling’ I mentioned yesterday of the second half of the second sentence. As I read this part of the sentence, I was moved to look at Psalm 130 again and think about how return always begins with a cry from the depths. New beginnings begin with this cry from the depths, whether we realize it or not, it is a cry to the Ineffable One, to the higher consciousness of self and another, to a higher power in the universe, to the creative force of the cosmos-however one wants to think about/describe/name the part of the universe from whence our intuition, thoughts, breath come from.
When one cries out from the depths, what are we crying for if not connection and assistance? We cry out to be heard and we cry out to hear ourselves; at that moment of calling out to God, to another human being we are saying we need help, we are unable to do everything on our own and we are stuck. We are stuck in our self-deceptions, our mendacious ways, we are stuck in stubbornness, we are stuck in slavery to another person’s whims, we are stuck in a class system, we are stuck in ___(fill in the blank). We are stuck with no where to turn except to cry out and seek the wisdom, the strength and the key to becoming unstuck whether from another person and/or the Ineffable One. Our calling out is the first step towards freedom for our self, it is the first step on the journey of recovering our integrity, our authenticity, our humanity.
This call out of the depths is the most ‘cradling’ action we can take in that moment. We are rocking ourselves to calm ourselves so we can hear the call of our soul, the response of our call and know that help is on it’s way-whether from ‘up there’ and/or down here. In many prayer traditions, swaying back and forth happens at times people are most active in calling out to God and while some people find it humorous and ridiculous, those of us who engage in it experience both the calming and the calling, our enslavement and our being cradled and soothed.
For the people who hear this call out of the depths and respond, we are aware of the holy action we are engaging in. It is not a burden to respond to this call, it is an honor, it is a Mitzvah, it is an encounter with another human being and something quite larger than ourselves. We get to hear and respond to the call of the widow and orphan, stranger and poor, the needy in material and in spiritual matters. We get to return the gift of the lives we live to God by sharing, caring and reaching down to the depths to pull someone else out of the shit we were once in. WOW, it can’t get any better than this. This is the ultimate in being cradled by God and then cradling another human being.
This is why it is so important to stop scapegoating the people who are crying out from their depths-let’s stop judging whether they ‘deserve what they got’ and begin to make the society that God is calling on us to make-a society of refuge, a society of imperfection, tshuvah, return and welcoming back. None of us are so perfect we have not had the need to cry out and for those unwilling to hear the call and the cry from the depths of all things, from the border to the boardroom, from the current scapegoat to the millions who have died from addiction/use/abuse of numerous substances and behaviors because their calls and cries were not heard-THE SIN IS YOURS! We need to remind our fellow travelers on this planet to be responsible not only for their actions, but to remember what Scripture teaches: we are our brother’s keeper and “the bloods of your brother cry out”.
In recovery, we called out from the depths of our being trapped and stuck in living a false, miserable life and we were heard. We call out to God/Higher Power each and every day in gratitude and in service. We continue to hear the call and cry from the depths by another human being and reach out to help that person up to a place of liberation knowing freedom is theirs once they connect to a way of living that is congruent with decency, love and service.
35 years ago, I called out to God and, sitting in a jail cell, I heard God’s response to me. “I have a plan for you and you have to figure it out, Mark” was the message I heard and I have spent these 35 years continuing to figure it out and to hear the call of the soul/depths of another(s) human being. In writing this today, I realize I have needed to call out at other times during this time and I haven’t because of ego, of people pleasing, of needing to fundraise, etc. I also know that I did cry out at times inappropriately possibly, and these cries were not heard and/or misinterpreted by another. I also did not listen for God’s response at times because the pain of being stuck, the pain of seeing wrong-doing was so great. I feel very held and cradled today by remembering all I have to do is call and wait and listen for the response because it always comes. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark