Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 140
“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)
The news from the Ukraine is horrific and puts an exclamation point on how aware we should all be of the incongruity of our perceptions and reality! Yet, many of us are not embarrassed nor aware and this is the scariest, saddest truth we can face. Worrying about the people of Ukraine who participated in free and fair elections, who have been bullied by Putin, Trump, the Republican Party, etc makes our embarrassment even more poignant. We all need to write our leaders to step in more forcefully than they have, send troops, bomb Russia, etc. Putin is using Hitler’s playbook, he is using Goebbels’ belief that accusing someone else of what you are doing is a winning strategy. Chamberlain fiddled while Hitler took Europe, please God we have learned something since and from World War II!
Which brings me to wonder how the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and Reagan, are either not embarrassed by the awareness of their incongruity of perceptivity and reality or, worse yet, not aware of their incongruities! Ted Cruz’ father fled Cuba, of course Trump told us that he was involved in Kennedy’s assassination, because of Fidel Castro and he is supported and has supported Putin and Russia. Yet he sees no incongruity here. Moscow Mitch McConnell is so reverent when talking about Ronald Reagan yet takes Russian money and supported Trump’s love for Putin. He also sees no incongruity here. I can’t even get into the incongruities of Trump, his family and his lackeys, like Steve Banyon, Mike Pence, et al.
The Republican Party is engaged in not allowing free and fair elections, making it harder for people of color to vote, and they see no incongruity in billing themselves as the Party of Lincoln and discriminating based on color of one’s skin. They see no incongruity here? The party that was so against vaccine mandates, describing them as Nazi-like cruelties, continues to negate the free choices of women about their bodies and the health. No incongruity is seen or acknowledged here by these liars.
God put T’Shuvah into the world because God knew we would make mistakes. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to us to stand up and stop being blind to our incongruities of perception and reality, to stop holding on to conventional notions and mental cliches, to stop worrying about how things look and see how things are. We are so worried about how we look, physically, politically, emotionally, spiritually that we are unaware of how we really are, the reality of this moment, the reality of our being needed to stand up for God, for the stranger, the poor and the needy as well as the widow and the orphan. It is time for all of us to do T’Shuvah, to take an inventory and see the truth of who we are, what we have done, make amends where necessary and take the actions that are needed whether they are convenient or not. It is time to stand up with and for God, it’s time to wear our embarrassment on our faces, our garments and change our ways of trying to make the world adapt to our concepts and take off the blinders we wear and put on the glasses God has given us at birth to see where and how we can be of service to another rather than enslave another to serve us.
In recovery, we learn early on that one cannot save one’s ass and face at the same time. Prior to recovery, we only cared about how things looked and what reality we could create so we could get what we wanted-usually money, etc. We might have been aware of the incongruities of our lives, we just were not embarrassed by them enough to change. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to uncover our incongruities between our perceptions and reality. We know that reality begins and ends with a connection to a power greater than ourselves and without a commitment to something greater than ourselves we will continue to believe our own press, the lies we make up and the perceptions we want to hold onto. In recovery, we are committed to letting go of the lies, seeking truth, aligning ourselves with reality and being embarrassed.
The more I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words, the more embarrassed and aware I become. I have perceptions that I have been afraid, loath to let go of for fear of being alone. I have been engaged in ways of being that have been, at their foundation, false because I started from a perceptive premise rather than a premise rooted in reality. I have been hurt emotionally because I chose to live in my perceptions rather than see what was truly happening. I also am realizing living in my perceptions is not only incongruent, it is arrogant. Staying willfully blind to the reality in front of me is also embarrassing and harmful to another human being. I realize that reality is wonderful, difficult, eye opening, painful, joyous and the only way to truly serve God, another human being and one’s self. I am embarrassed by my awareness of my incongruities of reality and perception and I am not humiliated by them, I am not humiliated by the lies, the betrayals, the public airing of my less than stellar behaviors. I am embarrassed for the people who betrayed me and Harriet, the people who have enjoyed the public flogging and humiliation they participated in as perpetrator and/or listener. I pray they get as embarrassed and aware of their incongruities as I am of mine. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark