Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Day 9
“It is impossible to be at ease and to repose on ideas which have turned into habits, on “canned” theories, in which our own or other people’s insights are preserved. We can never leave behind our concern in the safe-deposit of opinions, nor delegate its force to others and so attain vicarious insights.(Man is Not Alone pg. 14).
Rabbi Heschel’s book Man is Not Alone was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1951 and he was worried about what he was seeing already in America and, probably, across the globe. In the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is putting into words what many of us already know; namely, we cannot live with the ideas that have become habits and be at ease with ourselves. While we can anesthetize ourselves by becoming drunk and/or drugged by the routine of these habits, we can never be completely comfortable with our own lives nor with life in general when we allow our ideas to become habits. Even worse, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel, is when we allow/adopt the insights of another and turn them into our habits. We see this today from both the left and the right, each spouting their rhetoric and pithy sayings without any awareness of how both have become habitual to and for them. This habitual way of being has led to gridlock in our Congress, States, Cities, Communities. This way of being has prevented a genuine discussion of ideas and constant tweaking of these ideas to bring about the change everyone wants to see. The rich do not want a planet that is uninhabitable! The poor don’t want people to close their business and not have a job to go to. No one wants to be called a charity case, we all want a fair shake, an opportunity-we won’t get what we desire/need as a country to grow by petrifying our slogans and staying stuck in our “canned” theories or those of another.
We see the destruction that becoming at ease with making ideas into habits and “canned” theories being preserved has wrought. People are dying because of their belief in the “canned” theories of idiots who are telling them that Covid-19 is a hoax and don’t get the vaccines. Don’t wear a mask to protect another, don’t believe what we are seeing before our very eyes, 688,000 people have died, many because one man, our ex-president, sold his “canned” theory to almost 1/2 the nation and these ideas are being preserved by the very people who are suffering sickness and death! Yet, because of the penchant to be deceived, because of our penchant to engage in self-deception, many people are unable to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from mendacity and their need for comfort and their abdication of their spirit, their wonder has led them to precipice of destroying their connection to the Ineffable One. We witness the destruction of families as a place of growth and freedom, they have become a place of investment and pride. Parents are measuring themselves and their self-worth by how well their children are doing, hence the College Entrance Scandals, the rise in teen-age suicide, the rise in addiction overdoses, the rise in deaths from alcohol and drugs, the rise in desire for gambling, pain pills, etc, the rise in the “failure to launch” numbers.
We have left our “concern behind in the safe-deposit box of opinions” and it is killing our spirit and our bodies as well as the way of life envisioned by Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Founding Fathers of the US, all leaders of rebellions to spiritual, emotional, and physical freedom. We cannot read Rabbi Heschel and not engage in these ideas, we cannot read Torah, the Bible, the Koran, the Constitution and not engage anew in the words, the ideas, the path these point to, as I am reading these words of Rabbi Heschel. We have committed a Cardinal Sin, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel today. We have, in the name of ease, repose, vicarious insights, abandoned our concern and become stuck in old ideas, new ideas, through our reason faculty without regard to how stale being stuck gets us. We have become mean and persecuting in living in these boxes and in the insights of another by forcing our way and not being open to another way, by making our relationships transactional, “what have you done for me lately” rather than covenantal. We have abandoned our connection with God in order to live with ‘surety’. The surety is that we will kill our inner lives, our brilliance and dim the light of our souls so we are anesthetized from our inner dialogue.
In recovery, we have routines and, like the Talmud teaches us, we never do them routinely. We are aware that getting stuck anywhere is getting stuck everywhere in our living. In recovery we are constantly reading and re-reading sacred texts, including the big book of AA, in order to learn anew and stay fresh and connected.
When I have been stuck in old ideas, I am totally unbearable because I have a gnawing in the pit of my stomach and a dis-ease in my body. I have not fallen completely into this trap in my recovery, I have flirted on the edges of this deep dark pit and have not fallen in-hence my continuous recovery. I keep seeing things new and I am scared to death of delegating the force of my concerns to the vicarious insights of another because I am responsible to see the world in my own unique ways, to hear your unique ways/insights and work together to make our corner of the world better. I can’t do this if I abandon my insights nor if I ignore yours. This is the conundrum, the joy, the wrestling and the beauty of not living with “canned” theories and petrified ideas. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark