Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 171
“Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me? (Who is Man pg 107-108)
Having sat with these words on my heart and on my soul for over 24 hours, I realize the outrageousness of Rabbi Heschel’s words. How outrageous is it of God to have expectations, callings, demands, and then ‘sit’ and wait for humans to respond. We have free will, we can do what we want to, by Divine design I might add, and where does it say we have to meet God’s or anyone else’s expectations, demands, calls, etc?
Putin can go into Ukraine just because he wants to. MBS can kill Khashoggi because he feels like it. Trump and his minions can lie and foment treason and no big deal. Wealthy people believe they can flout the law and get away with it (which happens most of the time), politicians like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham accuse other people of doing what they themselves are doing, a page from Goebbels playbook, hatred permeates so much of life and decisions as does optics, the most progressive along with the most regressive retreat to their exclusive country clubs and gated communities all the while decrying the actions of ‘the other’! Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, prophesizing to us about “a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation”? Who does God think God is? Our creator, our salvation, our neighbor, our guide, our hope, our strength, our redeemer? More than all of these, which God is and always has been, is God the creative force of the Universe whom has entrusted the growth, the maintenance and the connection of this planet Earth into the hands of human beings.
Whether God’s calling, waiting, demanding, expecting is outrageous or not is an individual decision. What is very plain to ascertain, however is the arrogance of humanity! What is the reason we believe we are not “our brother’s keeper” when our entire moral system, and legal system I believe, is based on the Biggest Book of Morality-the Hebrew Bible! What is the reason we believe that we can take advantage of, deceive, overpower, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the needy, etc when we are expressly told to care for all of these people? How arrogant is it of us to act as if some human life is less valuable than another/mine? How arrogant to pass laws of exclusion, to pass laws that enable slavery, pass laws that limit free speech for some and give free reign to the lies of another? How arrogant to say that men can decide the choices a woman can make with her own body? How arrogant to say God doesn’t love you if you are poor, stricken, etc?
The call and the demand, the expectation and the waiting by God are manifest through the calls of the poor, the demands of the needy, the waiting to be free by the enslaved and the expectation that we will repay the gifts life has given us by fulfilling the call, demand and expectation right here, right now! The sub-chapter these words are taken from is title Indebtedness. Instead of seeing how we can get out of paying our debts like Donald Trump does, instead of suing God for collecting on our debt of gratitude, debt of life itself as Donald Trump and his cronies do, it is time for us to drop our false facade of arrogance, it is time to admit our need for God’s/Universe’s spiritual strength and assistance, the need for assistance and connection with another(s) human being and hear the call, respond to the demand, meet the expectation and do it today and every day. We will never complete the task, we will never get it all done, and hearing, responding, meeting the call, demand, and expectation is all that Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to do, today!
In recovery, we keep cleaning up the wreckage of our past and work hard to clean up the wreckage we cause in the present each and every day. We also are so aware of the pain of our past wreckage, we are careful to not make today’s errors as bad as our past ones. We drop our arrogance and we acknowledge our powerlessness and our need to change. We seek to serve and pray for knowledge of God’s will for us so we no longer buy into the self-deception that we are the be all/end all! In recovery, we become aware of the call, the demand, the expectation and the waiting and work hard each day to respond a little more and better.
I am aware of my own arrogance and I know that in my recovery I heard the call of God and did not respond to it, rather I responded, in a very few incidents, to the call of my ego, my mind, my emotions. I was WRONG in doing this and I am grateful it wasn’t that often. I have seen and experienced the ‘love and gratitude’ of some people for helping them and/or their families at the time of greatest need, only to be abandoned, shamed, exiled when they had a chance to get back at me for helping them. I have learned from my experience to not be mad at the people who have helped me, even though this seems to be the conventional notion of many humans. If someone needs help, they believe they are weak and weak get taken advantage of and if you know my weakness, you have to be beat down so you can’t use it against me, is the conventional wisdom-how sad! “No good deed goes unpunished” is their motto and I am grateful for the experiences they have given me so I lessen my own arrogance each and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark