Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 136
“Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of character and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge and understanding, of mystery and comprehension.”(Who is Man pg.112)
Immersing ourselves in the teaching above allows us to understand and acknowledge our lack of embarrassment and our lack of action when we are embarrassed. We are not aware of the incongruity of character and challenge within ourselves much less the incongruity of character and challenge of the people we follow, we align with, we ‘count’ on. We stay willfully blind to our incongruities so we can blame another person for our lot in life and/or as the prosperity gospel believers and the people who put on the National Prayer Breakfast preach; you are poor because god doesn’t love you and god loves the people who are rich and in power. I use the small ‘g’ because they are in fact idolators who preach these lies. There are religious leaders who tell us not to worry that our lot in life is so bad here, in the next world we will be rewarded, again a push for power and subservience. There are people who keep telling us to listen to what they say and ignore what they are doing like the wizard of Oz told Dorothy and company. Whenever we fail to be aware of our incongruities, calamity and evil come roaring to the front of the line and try to devour all of the struggle and good we have achieved.
What is the basis of our denial? Our need to look good, our need to be #1, our need to win, our belief in the Zero-Sum game of life, our hope that if we get _____(fill in the blank) we will be fine, etc. Rather than understanding and embracing the path of the Bible, rather than seeing ourselves in the struggles of our ancestors and the building of a relationship within our self and with God, we are embracing the Greek lie of perfection and the Greco-Roman path of conquer and destruction. It is apparent in so many of our enjoyments as well as in the way ‘business is done’. We see this in our political realm daily and no one is embarrassed at their incongruous way of speaking, voting, governing-especially Moscow Mitch McConnell and the lackeys in his party who follow in lockstep. We saw what happened when the German people were not embarrassed at the incongruity of Nazism and decency, when the Russian people are not embarrassed at the incongruity of Putin and the Oligarchs and the fall of communism in favor of democracy. We see what happens in our family structures when parents are not embarrassed nor acknowledge their incongruities, children come to believe everyone is false and there is no point to being honest-winning is the only thing that matters.
God created us with incongruities, religion is the path to bringing our character and challenge closer together and our religious leaders have failed to meet the challenge God has given us and we are not embarrassed, we are also defending our ways. We see religious leaders preach dogma and behaviorism rather than connection with God and developing our inner life to find our way of serving God and humanity. We listen as they berate and try and control women’s choices about their own bodies rather than engage and help women find the ‘right’ spiritual decision for the individual woman with no other agenda that what is best for her. We watch in horror as religious leaders praise the powerful for their racism, their hateful ways, their attempt to destroy the democracy that was/is America! We are finding ourselves immune to the constant assault on Godliness and Holiness, on the infinite dignity and worthiness of every human being. In so many ways, some of our religious leaders and practitioners are failing us in the worst ways and driving droves of people from God, from a path towards wholeness and a path of healing our incongruities.
We need to be aware of our incongruities, not as failures, so we can put a ‘halter’ on ourselves and allow ourselves to be lead by faith, by decency, by being more human than we have been, by recovering our integrity and living life by principles and not by mendacity. We have been imbued with the spiritual nature to do this.
In recovery, we are constantly searching our inner life to find our incongruities and repair them. We live in this embarrassment that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us about so we can be aware of them. We do this by doing a daily inventory, repairing the damage our incongruities cause and repairing our mental, emotional and spiritual incongruities within us.
I am aware of my own incongruities each and every day. Immersing myself in this teaching today I am embarrassed by my own incongruities that I have indulged myself in and, even more, I am embarrassed by my own defense of them over the years. I am thinking of my father, Jerry, who tried to make me aware of them and how to heal them and how I have not listened to him, how I have ignored his wisdom and love. I am embarrassed by the many people who pointed them out to me and my anger at them for not loving me, when pointing them out to me is the greatest sign of love I can receive. I am embarrassed enough today to be aware of these incongruities and heal them, one day at time. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark