Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 135
“How embarrassing for man to live in the shadow of greatness and to ignore it, to be a contemporary of God and not sense it. Religion depends upon what man does with his ultimate embarrassment.” (Who is Man pg. 112)
A person asked me about the word embarrass last evening at dinner and I have been trying to explain the joy of being embarrassed. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to our souls and engage with our inner life so deeply that our faces wear the glow of redness of being in contact, in awe and in radical amazement regarding our state of being both “a contemporary of God” and living “in the shadow of greatness”. The redness on our face is not shaming, rather it is freeing; the embarrassment our inner lives discover because of the state of being we finally recognize is joyous and freeing-not shaming and blaming! Rabbi Heschel is not using the word humiliation, he is not using the word shame/ashamed, he is using the word embarrass.
Embarrass comes from the Portuguese meaning ‘halter’. Upon learning this, I understand Rabbi Heschel telling us to use our inner embarrassment to lead us to recognizing and using the fact that we live in the “shadow of greatness”, to relish the redness that comes from this discovery and allow ourselves to be a beacon for another person(s) to find their inner embarrassment and the truth of these experiences for themself. Rather than hide our blush, our redness, our glow we are being told to use it to light up and raise up our own living and the living of another(s). Moses’ face was aglow because he realized and experienced being both “a contemporary of God” and living “in the shadow of greatness”. The horns that Michelangelo put on the statue of Moses represented the light of God radiating from him caused by his ‘embarrassment’.
The last sentence above takes on a new meaning this year: Religion comes from the latin meaning ‘to bind, to obligate and to revere” so the last sentence can be understood as Obligation, Reverence and Binding/adherence depends upon what we do with our highest level of being led, being contained. It is our responsibility to allow ourselves to use our free will and our rational minds to serve a higher and truer being/higher truth. Religion depends upon on much we revere, bind and obligate ourselves to the truth of; Rabbi Heschel’s previous sentence, how interested we are in seeking truth, deciding whom we are serving; self, another, or God. We have yet to have a definitive answer to these questions as evidenced by our desire to follow the latest fad, seek forgiveness from God without seeking forgiveness from the party we injured, seek to be deceived and engage in mendacity so we can have power, money, prestige, and/or be close to those in these positions. We have not answered Hineni, here I am, yet to Rabbi Heschel’s call for us to be embarrassed and use our embarrassment to grow and nurture our religious life, our life of reverence, binding and obligation.
When we bind ourselves to a higher standard/level of living, when we have reverence for the teachings, ways and connection of the Bible and the people in it, when we take on the yoke of obliging ourselves to embrace God’s path for us through discovery first and then living this path, we are living our embarrassment in the holiest and highest form. We are able to impact how religion will help bring about the vision of God and the prophets that there will be a time when war will be abolished and there will be peace. While it may not happen in our lifetime, we have to allow our embarrassment shine outwardly so another can use our illumination to move this vision forward. Our embarrassment is a gift from God, it is a light for us and for another(s), lets stop hiding from it!
In recovery, we use the embarrassment we experience to move us deeper and deeper into our recovery and find new ways to make amends and do more good. We are aware that our recovery depends on our group of compatriots and their recovery depends on our cooperation and our shining the light our embarrassment onto them and the group. In recovery we embrace the warmth and the love that being embarrassed brings to our inner life, our soul and our minds. This is one of the paths to living in Rabbi Heschel’s radical amazement and connecting us to God more each day.
I have bound myself to a way of living that I don’t always get ‘right’. I have reverence for the people I meet and fight for their souls, I am obligated to grow my inner life and my standard of living one grain of sand each day. I am embarrassed by my inabilities at times and these ‘failures’ teach me how to not do something so I continue to learn new ways to connect, to overcome my emotional dis-regulation at the betrayals of self and by another, the lunacy of the world, the mendacity of so many people, etc. I am using embarrassment as a path towards wholeness and holiness, it allows me to feel the warmth of connection to God, recognition of God’s call to me and my response of Hineni, here I am! Being obligated, bound, and revering God causes me to be obligated, bound and revere humanity-even the people that don’t like me and I don’t necessarily like. If we cannot do this, there is no hope for the vision of the prophets to become a reality. The joy and path of religion is to be obligated to living the life we were created for and let go of the comparing and competing, stop being ashamed by what we don’t have and rejoice in who we are and what we do have; contemporaries of God and life! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark