Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 122
“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)
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the last sentence above is so simple, so profound and so important. He is, of course, speaking about the insights that come from God, from our souls, our inner life not the lies from the false prophets that have been with us since time immemorial. Faith in false prophets, which was a concern in Biblical days, has, unfortunately, seen a rise in recent times and we are all suffering because of them/this rise. I find it fascinating to watch, with horror, the faithfulness with which people will follow and defend the false prophets and their mendacious beliefs. I am also struck by the ways people will quote true prophets, people of true faith, Scriptures, etc in ways that defend their deceptions and their lies. Yet, this has been a concern of God’s forever in the life of the human being. God, however, remains steadfast in God’s belief in us, in God’s faith in us and in God’s search for us and, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel, we have an obligation, an opportunity, a gift to remain steadfast in our belief in God, in our faith in God, and in our search for God through doing the next right thing, no matter the ‘cost’ to us.
The false prophets in the political world have always been around and we have to continually stay loyal to God and to truth instead of to a party or a person. I believe when we are asked to swear fealty to any entity other than God, we are in the presence of a false prophet, a false “moment of insight”, and attaching ourselves to this lie will bring isolation, despair and harm to our relationship with God. There is a God and we are not it, no matter what a political party says, no matter what a demagogue bellows, no matter how loud the crowd is, no matter how many charlatans wearing the robes of priesthood, rabbinate, etc stand with them. We have to use our own insights, our own “light than is never quenched” to discern truth from the deceptions of another human being, the injustice that is wrapped in a nice package and is still unjust, the meanness that sounds correct to our impaired hearing, the treif that is wrapped in a Kosher wrapper. Rabbi Heschel’s words are not for the ‘elite’, the supposedly ‘learned’; they are for all of us, they are to give each and every human being the strength, encouragement and support to appreciate our own “moments of insight”, and remain faithful to them no matter who tells us we are wrong.
Rabbi Heschel is not, in my opinion, speaking about loyalty to a person, a Rabbi, a Priest, etc-he is speaking about loyalty to an insight, to a principle, to a way of being that is compatible with being a partner of God, to a code of ethical behaviors that have at its core: truth, love, kindness, faithfulness, compassion, justice, righteousness, etc. He is teaching us to be loyal to the experience of insight, the experience of connection with God, the experience of a deep knowing that cannot be proven yet we know is truth and the path for us to follow. He is teaching us to “Shema”; hear, listen, and understand the ‘voice’ of God that gives us these insights, gives us the strength to respond to them and to grow them. Rabbi Heschel is gifting us with a way of being that can and will change our living and the world around us. We will live in “radical amazement” and wonder will be the foundation of all our interactions with another person, nature and the world.
In recovery, loyalty to our spiritual awakening, to our realization that the ways we had been living were indecent, harmful and incorrect for us and for the people around us, is the key to long-term recovery. We stay loyal through telling our story, reaching out to another person in distress, raising our children/grandchildren differently than we had, and by living our principles in all of our affairs. In recovery, we know without staying loyal to our “moments of insight” the pull of mendacity, the insidious pleasure of being “one of them” will overtake us and we will return to a life of isolation, misery and despair.
I wear my “moments of insight” proudly and I have stayed loyal to them and to the people whom have shared in my response to these moments. Staying loyal to both the insight and the response means to continue to immerse myself in them so I can hone the insight and the response more and more, I have to see the changes in the world in order to respond appropriately to the “moments of insight” I continue to have. I also have to act upon them, even when it is not “politically correct”, the “optics” are not pretty and the people who have shared these insights with me, betray me. Staying “loyal to the event and loyal to the response” has nothing to do with being liked, with receiving accolades, it has everything to do with my relationship with God, with my self and with the world. I have learned, painfully, some people are just better cons than I was and when I have this experience, it is God’s way of reminding me of the path I can never return to. Even betrayals are “moments of insight” once I get through the pain and the spiritual rape that I experience at the time. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark