Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 121
“The immediate certainty that we attain in moments of insight does not retain its intensity after the moments are gone. Moreover, such experiences are rare events. To some people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered. In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith. In this sense, faith is faithfulness, loyalty to an event and loyalty to our response.” (God In Search of Man pg.132)
As I said earlier, everyone has “moments of insight” at one time or another in their life, yet, most of us forget them quickly, as Rabbi Heschel teaches: “to some people they are shooting stars, passing and unremembered”. Looking at our life and seeing how, when, and where these moments occurred and we paid no attention to them and how could we have been more aware, how could we paid more attention to them; we see how we abdicated and abandoned our spiritual life in favor of a more material, rational, acceptable way of living. How often have any of us feared speaking of our insights, following through on them because we would be laughed at, shunned, ostracized, exiled, fired? And the people of the lie, the people who disregard these moments of insight, these messages of the universe, flaunt their deceptions and seem to flourish.
In seeing the veneration of the Confederate traitors now, we realize this veneration has been going on since the end of the Confederacy. “The South will rise again” is more than a slogan; it is a banner to defeat the core of the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”. Yet, in the South, people who speak this truth, call out these traitors, these bigots, are shunned, ridiculed, bullied, etc. Those of us who are engaged in remembering these experiences are the faithful ones, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, not the charlatans who speak faith and live unfaithfully!
Biblically, Moses has a “moment of insight” at the burning bush and is certain of both the insight and the experience. During the next 40 years, his certainty wavers at times and he stays loyal to his response, he sustains his faith in God, in the people and in his mission. All of us have burning bush moments, which is a way of understanding these “moments of insight” and very few of us follow Moses’ example and keep the memory of the experience and the loyalty to our response in the forefront of our being, make this memory and response the foundation of life and mission for ourselves. This is the tragedy of our time, of all times. When the bullies can stop the rest of us from living our “moments of insight” out loud, when the charlatans are able to make the faithful to worship in secret as the Marranos did in Spain after the Inquisition and the Jews of Russia did under Communism, we are in deep spiritual, moral and physical danger.
We are not in need of a Moses, a Martin Luther King Jr., a Patrick Henry, a Jesus Christ nor a Mohammed, we are in need of doing the work ourselves. We have to make a concerted and conscious effort to remember our “moments of insight”, we have to follow Rabbi Heschel’s example of getting out of his study after writing his book on the Prophets to be part of the care and concern for all people, in the street, participate in the demonstrations, give us enduring lessons of truth and action like the ones above. We are in need of doing our own inner work, bringing back our “moments of insight” from our memory banks, either following our response if it honored the insight or having a new response to an old experience. We also need to stop waiting for someone else to lead us, our “moments of insight” are individual and tailored to our nature and our strengths, our unique fulfillment of a Divine Need we were/are created for so we have to take the ball and run with it, not worrying about the results-just being concerned with being in the solution. We are in need of a Spiritual Revival that can only come from within each and every one of us and we need it now, and we need to sustain our faith by being loyal to our responses and our insights!
For those of us in recovery, we know we got here because of a ‘moment of clarity’, an insight that we followed through on and stayed loyal to, finally. We are aware of all the insights we had prior to this moment of clarity, this commitment to be loyal to a new response we are having. We continue to be in recovery because of our loyalty to the response, our continuing to learn and be part of the care and concern for all people and leave our ‘stinking thinking’ in the past. We are still afraid of ridicule, however, which is why we are anonymous at our meetings, and only use the first letter of our last names, and, in some cases, don’t even use their real names. Yet, without staying loyal to our response, we can’t sustain our faith and we can’t sustain and grow our recovery.
As a teen-ager, my insights were ridiculed and laughed at; only my father took them seriously and helped me refine the ones that were a little out of focus, so I did not pay attention to them either. Yet, they nagged at me and this is probably the reason my double life fell apart. I stayed loyal to the insights and the responses for the past 33+ years and, while I have been ridiculed, exiled, laughed at and watched some no longer be part of the program I helped create, I am proud of my staying power, I am proud of my loyalty to God’s messages to me and I am proud to be able to honor these insights and responses in different ways today. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark