Daily Prophets
Day 149
“If the wicked one repents of all his errors and keeps My laws and does what is just and right,,, None of the transgressions shall be remembered against him. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, asks Adonai, our God. It is rather he should turn back from his ways and live. Cast away all the transgressions by which you transgressed and get a new heart and a new spirit for yourselves…”(Ezekiel 18:21,22,31).
Ezekiel is pronouncing a way of being that is so important to our survival and to the survival of the Jewish people till this day and beyond: T’Shuvah. In the first verse above, God is calling out to all of us, because all of us have done, do and will do wicked/erroneous actions. We know this and we already know that T’Shuvah is a necessary part of living.
So, why is this in need of restatement? I believe so the people can truly look inside themselves and see their own imperfections, their own “wickedness”, their own blame/shame behaviors, their own lack of taking personal responsibility for their part in the wickedness of the world. It is so easy to wrap ourselves in the flag of self-righteousness, in the cloth of “being on the right side of an issue”, being ‘woke’, seeing ourselves as the front line of offense and the last line of defense for the “right” way of doing things and whitewash our errors and the errors of our family members, our cohorts, our ‘side’. We see this all the time, on both the left and the right ends of the political/moral spectrum. Yet, God is calling to all of us to see our errors, ask for forgiveness, so we can release our errors from our inner lives, let them leave our way of being, and allow God to cleanse us.
God, unlike humans, does not want us sinners to die. Each Kol Nidre we ask and give permission to pray with sinners because we are all sinners! Yet, there are those among us who believe their PooP does not smell and have no need to do T’Shuvah, rather they blame another for making them harm them! God wants us to return from our subtle and not so subtle evil ways and live! What a rebellious thought and way of being, don’t kill the evil, transform it, use it for good and for holy actions. This is what God and Ezekiel are exhorting us to do, even in today’s world, or especially in today’s world.
Yet to do this, we have to cast out the transgressions that are in us. We have to surrender and let go of these beliefs that our PooP doesn’t smell, that we are so ‘right’ in our causes that we can do anything we want in the name of our ‘wokeness’ and our ‘righteousness’. We have to truly allow God to do open heart surgery on us, we have to allow God to cut away the foreskin of our hearts and open them up to repentance and acceptance of our total self, not just the parts we want to show off. Doing this rejuvenates our soul and a new spirit of love, truth, justice, mercy, compassion, connection and forgiveness of self and another(s). Then we can truly live a life that is compatible with being a partner, representative, image of God.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging. But behind his austerity is love and compassion for mankind. Ezekiel sets forth what all other prophets imply: “Have I any pleasure in the death…”(The Prophets pg. 12) and he goes on to remind us: “Indeed the central message of the prophets was the call to return.”(ibid, pg. 238). We have forgotten that rebuke is a form of holiness and love. Chesbon HaNefesh, an accounting of our soul, is for our benefit to improve and mature our beingness. T’Shuvah is God’s gift to us so we know we are never doomed to be wicked, we are not “bad seeds” that have to grow into “bad trees, etc”, rather we are human beings who, with our surrender and God’s help, can transform our errors into merits, as Reish LaKiesh teaches in the Talmud.
In recovery, we are living proof of the verses above. We are the wicked ones who repented and returned to a way of living that is compatible with God. We are the ones who “made a decision to turn our will and life over to the care of God” as the Big Book of AA suggests. We have turned from our own negativity to allow God to enter our hearts and renew our spirits daily, so we can continue to grow our knowledge of God’s will for us. In recovery, we are grateful for someone pointing out a character trait out of proper measure, that we did not see so we can bring it back into proper measure and use it wisely and successfully. In recovery, we are grateful each and every day for the gift of return and renewal.
I am the recipient of God’s forgiveness many times over. I am constantly searching myself and asking for God’s help and the help of another(s) to find the traits that I still use out of proper measure. I know that my passion is often confused with anger and I also know that my ways, while at times stinging, stern, and sour, are filled with love and compassion for another human being. I also realize that people use it against me as I can be loud, powerful, etc. While there have been times where this has been my ego speaking, God and I know that the vast majority of these instances in my recovery years, are for the good of another, the belief that another can change and my way of helping him/her see this truth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark