Daily Prophets
Day 175
“Incline your ears and walk with Me, listen and your soul will be revived. Seek the Lord and God will be found, Call to God because God is near. Forsake your evil path and your sinful plans, return back to God and God will have mercy for you. Our God forgives abundantly.”(Isaiah 55:3,6,7).
These words of Second Isaiah are so important for all of us to immerse ourselves in. Our ears take in so many words, noises, sounds all the time. Yet, far too many of us are so bombarded by these outer and inner noises, sounds, words that we cannot hear the voice of, the words of, and the direction of God. This is the reason the prophet is so forceful in the first verse above. He is trying to cut through the noise and the self-deception as well as the mendacity of so many to help us hear truth. I am amazed at how often we deceive ourselves and another(s) that we are the ONE TRUE ___(fill in the blank) in order to gain power, etc. Yet, Second Isaiah, is telling us to do whatever it takes to “incline our ears” so we can “walk with” God! There is no blind faith here, it is faith based on hearing, doing, walking with God as our partner and allowing our soul to be revived. When we “incline our ears and walk with” God, we are alive and well, our mission gets clearer, and we have the strength to overcome the obstacles the charlatans put in our way.
“Where is God” is a popular refrain along with “where was God”. The prophet is explaining to us that God HAS NOT LEFT the building, we have! “Seek God” is the response to these questions. We ask these questions as a retort, a put down, a clean-up for our bad behavior, etc. The Kotzker Rebbe, possibly as a commentary on this verse, asks “Where do you find God?” After his students give all these beautiful and scholarly answers, the Kotzker answers himself saying: “Whenever/wherever you let God in”. God is near to us because the spirit of God is within us. We don’t find God in prayerbooks or even in the Torah, we find God in our souls, in another human beings, in our interactions, in our doing and being the Mitzvot (commandments/ways) God gives to us. God was in every person who perished in the Shoah, in everyone who died in wars, overdoses, 9/11, etc. We get to be the inheritors of their spirit and incline our ears, walk with God and continually seek and call to God for assistance and guidance.
We beg on Yom Kippur that God not forsake us, the prophet is calling bullshit on us. We are the ones who forsake God through our evil actions, our sinful ways, our deception of another(s) and our self-deception. With all of this, we are still called upon by the Prophet to forsake our evil path and sinful ways and return to God, decency, a spiritual life. As Rabbi Heschel teaches us: “Above reward and punishment is the mystery of His pathos. Sin does not inevitably bring about punishment. Between act and retribution stands the Lord God…Indeed the central message of the prophets was the call to return.”(The Prophets pg.237/8). Conventional wisdom is to try and convince ourselves and another(s) of how we are right and we really didn’t ‘sin’ or ‘miss the mark’. Never admit anything as this is seen as weakness. Because of this misguided approach to living, this evil path that is widely accepted, we are unable to return to God wholeheartedly, whole soulfully, with our entire intelligence, etc. We cannot do anything 100% except follow the wrong paths. Rabbi Heschel is giving us another experience, we cannot fathom God’s pathos, God’s compassion, God’s mercy and God’s forgiveness and this doesn’t mean God isn’t all of these attributes. Once we begin our return to God’s ways, to “walk with God”, a miraculous light shines upon us and within us. God’s call is always “ayecha”, where are you, Shema, hear/listen/understand, and Shuvah, return. How will we respond today?
In recovery awareness of God’s nearness and walking in God’s path is a cornerstone for most of us. This is not to say Agnostics are not in recovery in fact, to paraphrase Rabbi Heschel, God is so great, God helps those who don’t believe also! Seeking God, walking with God is our path to return, to forgiveness and to connection. We cannot stay in recovery without a spiritual path, in my opinion. We may stay sober, we just are not in recovery (for more on this see harrietrossetto.com/blog). In recovery, we experience God’s compassion, forgiveness and pathos daily and we take strength from our errors and what we learn from them, “never shutting the door on them” as AA promises.Without seeking God, being forgiven, bending our ear to God and walking with God, we would not have the lives we do and celebrate the errors and the ‘wins’ with the joy we do.
I am continually seeking God and inclining my ears so I can discern when I am walking with God and when I am walking with negativity. I don’t always hear correctly or well, according to Harriet(so I am going to get hearing aids as my ENT agrees with her:)). I find myself returning after going back to old places that I know don’t serve me, another nor God. I also know that my triggers are the same and some of them are for holy purposes and I do not use proper measure in my responses. Yet, while some humans can never forgive me for being me (even though they used me for their ends), God always does when I return in humility, faithfulness and truth. I will never be whole nor perfect, I do/will continue to err in many of the same ways, and they are/will not be as harmful or dangerous, and I will grow and learn each and every day. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark