Daily Prophets
Day 106
“…So I will single out for good the Judean exiles whom I have driven out from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will look upon them favorably, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not overthrow them;…I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am God and they shall be my people, I will be their God when they return to me with all their heart.”(Jeremiah 24:5-7).
Jeremiah is giving us hope at a time of great distress. After informing us of our exile, the prophet is also telling us we shall return. This is truly unconditional love by God. Even when we are not loving towards God, even when we want to silence and muffle God’s prophets and messengers, God is still willing to take us back.
This is the model for all of us, to practice and engage in this unconditional love towards all we meet and even those we do not know and only read about. This love is not without consequences, after all we were exiled. It is a love that is open to and helps make possible the return of a missing human being.
God never stops looking favorably upon us, even knowing we are doing the wrong thing, committing crimes that are unspeakable, engaging in self-deception and the deception of another(s); God has so much faith in us that we can and will return to God’s ways. Not only faith, Jeremiah says, in the name of God, “I will bring them back… I will build them…”. God is going to do everything possible to bring us back to our proper place in God’s world. While we can take this literally, I believe it is true for each person to know that God has given us a place, a plan and a path to live that is uniquely ours and we get to return to it whenever our heart moves us to.
God is waiting, as Rabbi Heschel says. And, God is an active partner in our return, as I understand these verses. God is going to build us back up, plant us firmly in our being, remove the foreskin of our hearts so we can know God, again. Isn’t this what all of us want, in our inner being? Connection to something greater than ourselves, a longing to know that we matter, that is not dependent on the whims of fickle people trying to lord power over one another is a shared human experience, I believe.
This all happens when we return to God with all of our heart. What is the purpose of exile? It is to remind us of what is important in life: connection and kindness, truth and love, justice and mercy. We go into exile as a purification experience, not as a punishment for the sake of punishing. We go into exile to learn, repent, change and return.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Man is unable to redeem himself, to cure the sickness of the heart. What hurts the soul, the soul adores. Can man be remade? A prophet can give man a new word, but not a new heart.”(The Prophets pg 128). I shudder when I think of how many people think they are self-sufficient, don’t need God nor another(s) human being, and stay in exile; all the while kidding themselves that they are not in exile. I know many who still adore what hurts their souls and believe their sickness is actually health. In fact, this sickness is so cunning and convincing, many people don’t believe they are in exile! As I I am reading Rabbi Heschel this morning, I hear his voice calling me back to my faith and belief in God and partnership with God as the only way to truly return to who I am, where I belong and the people who are here to work with me.
In recovery, we know we can’t do it alone. We know that we have to surrender to the love of another till we can love ourselves as God loves us. We also have had the experience of being built anew. We are not the people who were in exile because of the choices we made anymore. We were just prior to our recovery and now, we are the people with a new heart, a heart that knows God and keeps seeking greater knowledge of God’s will in our lives and in the life of the world as well. We know and rejoice in this new heart that God has given us. We know and rejoice in the kindness and unconditional love God as bestowed upon us in the rebuilding of our beingness. In recovery, we are grateful for both the exile and the return we experience.
I needed to be in exile in order to return. I realized that early on in my recovery, which began prior to my sobriety. I began my recovery in prison and my sobriety after I was released. I knew the exile was going to be good for me, I was remade and reshaped through the unconditional love and purifying of God, Rabbi Mel Silverman and my daughter while incarcerated. In the 32+ years since my release, I have gone where God has sent me and the only time I experience negativity is when I forget God is running the show and I have to follow God’s script for me-not the one for you. I have been exiled and have been quite sad and heartbroken at the ways this exile as played out. Unlike God, when humans exile someone, they rarely want to welcome them back. And, I have found a new way of being in exile that connects me to God, to love, to justice, to kindness, to return and to truth. May we all find these connections now! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark