Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 164
“What is the truth of being human? The lack of pretension, the acknowledgement of opaqueness, shortsightedness, inadequacy. But truth also demands rising, striving for the goal is both with within and beyond us. The truth of being human is gratitude; its secret is appreciation.” (Who is Man pg 114)
Herein lies a truth that many of us ignore; there is a demand for rising and striving for the “goal is both within us and beyond us”. The goal, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today is to understand that we are the “greatest miracle on earth”, we are aware that we “live in the shadow of greatness”, and realize we are “contemporaries of God”. There is in every soul, as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, a demand for striving and rising up to the call and demand of decency, community, freedom, God. This demand, this call is always within us and beyond us, the voice that calls never ceases and we hear it all the time. In some of us, it lights a fire in our belly, like with the prophet Jeremiah, that can never be extinguished, Rabbi Heschel is an example. In others, this fire is nearly extinguished and the voice/call/demand is silenced by a louder call-one’s own narcissistic needs/behaviors.
We are living in a moment where the fire and the voice, the demand and the call are being shouted down by the narcissistic, power-mad, zealots of hatred, prejudice, who try and wrap themselves in the flag of freedom, community and compromise-how ironic. As I hear Rabbi Heschel today, I hear him calling out to us for our failure to keep our alliances of the 60’s together and vibrant. I hear and see our failure to ensure that God’s voice is always heard in the halls of Congress, in the Courts of our land including the Supreme Court. Not the voice of the narcissistic ‘white power always’ crowd, nor the voice of the ‘new gospels where the poor are unloved by God’ crowd, nor by the crowd that identifies only with their ‘own people/fellow victims’. The voice that I hear from Rabbi Heschel is the voice of freedom for all, decency towards all, no more victimhood and no more oppressiveness. It is the voice of Sinai-it is the voice calling out to us to “hear, listen and understand”, it is the voice that connects us to another human being and all human beings, it is the voice of Micah the prophet: “Do justice, love kindness, and mercy, walk humbly with God”.
To hear these voices is, of course, necessary and a good thing. Yet, hearing them is not enough, we must act on them. We must do justly in our homes, in our work, in our interactions, in our business’, in our government, in our laws. We must recognize the dignity of every human being, whether we like them or not, whether we agree with them or not, and we must keep safety, security, caring for one another front and center in our living our own lives for ourselves and for everyone else.
Freedom is not the voice of ‘do your own thing’, freedom is the call to go beyond our narcissistic desires, allow our inauthentic needs to go unmet, to rise up and strive for the greater good of our own souls, our being human and the greater good and humanity of all human beings. Freedom is justice that is tempered with mercy as we learn in Deuteronomy 16:18. Loving mercy and loving kindness are two traits that are most in need in our world, always and especially today. We have become jaded, hateful, mistrustful, unkind to one another. Rabbi Heschel, in his last interview in1972, says instead of “love your neighbor” we have come to “suspect your neighbor”. It is even more true and prevalent some 50 years later! We can do and be more than our lowest self, we can and must stop imprisoning the voice, the call and the demand to strive to be better and to rise to the particular occasion we find ourselves in. We can do this, we must do this, otherwise the world our children inherit may be extinction and annihilation.
In recovery, the volume of this voice, this demand, this call is suddenly turned up. We are continually turning the dial of our hearing to hear the call without as much static as we had before. We are listening for the directions and opportunity to serve instead of being served, feed another before we feed ourselves, see the reflection of spirit in another that we recognize kinship with. In recovery, we are desperately aware of where our deafness brought us and we are gleeful that we can hear, follow and understand the direction of the voice in us and beyond us that we used to ignore.
This demanding voice and call to action is incessant upon me. Rabbi Heschel is a disturbing man because he never lets me rest, he is always calling to me and reminding me of how blessed I am and to share the blessings, to reach out to another less fortunate, to love people even when I don’t like them, to do the next right thing no matter what, to cure my “eye disease and cancer of the soul” of prejudices and hatred. He calls me to rise up and above the pettiness and pride, envy and enmity that has been heaped on me and I put upon another, to care for the stranger, the poor and the needy in me and in all human beings. Rabbi Heschel speaks for the voice I cannot always hear, the call I don’t always want to answer and the demand that is incessantly hammering at my soul. I am grateful that I am able to answer the call, the demand and respond to the voice in me and beyond me with Hineni-here I am. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark