Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 236
“The cardinal sin is in our failure not to sense the grandeur of the moment, the marvel and mystery of being, the possibility of quiet exaltation.” (Who is Man pg.116)
“Our failure not to sense the grandeur of the moment” is rooted in our self-deception and our need to be deceived as well as deceive another. It is rooted in our seeking power for the sake of power, seeking to be more than equal to every other soul in dignity and worth (going against the wishes of Jewish Tradition and how many people read the Bible), and our inability and/or unwillingness to accept our place and divine mission-wanting some other place and/or mission than the one that is right for us and the one we were created to fill. We see this constantly and consistently with people who want to either victimize and/or be victims, we see this constantly with people who forget their debt to God and to one another to be decent, loyal, seeking truth, justice, being kind and loving, etc. We see this consistently in our political realm where so many unqualified people are running for and winning political office on the campaign of fear, appealing to the senseless hatred of “the other” and being “the only one who can fix it/save you” and well as other such lies. There is no sense of the grandeur of the moment, there is no acknowledgment of the moment except for how it serves me, rather than how I serve the moment, the people around me, God, then myself. Instead, these people, of which there are many, serve themselves first, last and always forgetting their debt, forgetting that this moment is precious beyond our understanding and the grandeur is overwhelming. We forget that the moment we are in is great, has infinite splendor, beauty and is the crown on top of the head of our existence. Grandeur comes from the French meaning great/grand, the definition is splendor and the Hebrew is Tiferet, which can mean beauty and/or glory. Our issue is not only that we don’t “sense the grandeur of the moment” we are not even aware of the moment, except in how we can use it, abuse it for our personal gain. We all have experienced the manipulation of a moment by someone (and ourselves if we are to be in truth) using the moment for their/our benefit and spoke about this manipulation, this using/abusing as smart, awesome, brilliant, feeling envy and awe watching how they used/abused many moments to ‘get ahead’, ‘make a killing’, etc.
Yet we are unable to stop our selves from bastardizing the moment and more than we can stop another from doing this as well. We seem to be ‘programmed’ to ignore the grandeur, miss the beauty and splendor and glorify ourselves rather than the moment, rather than God. We have come to believe that getting our way, getting ahead is what the moments are for, not appreciating, sensing the grandeur of the moment, not being grateful for this moment and seeing how we can be changed by the experience of grandeur. We are so intent on self-satisfaction since infancy, we have not learned the lesson, the commandment, the call and demand to delay our own gratification in order to serve a higher consciousness, a higher power, a higher Truth. “Our failure not to sense the grandeur of the moment” is the end product of our egotistical, narcissistic, entitled ways of living. This is why, I believe, the Bible says our thoughts are evil “from our youth”; instead of maturing our thoughts, learning to delay gratification so we can serve something greater than ourselves, we use the learning to enhance our entitlement, grow our self-deceptive ways and learn how to deceive another(s) into serving us, against their own self-interest. Donald Trump and his minions, his enablers, his supporters throughout the Congress and Senate, his supporters in the country are examples of how far we have fallen, how “evil from our youth” we have become and how scary it is to be ruled, under the control of people who commit the “cardinal sin” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of.
The antidote, of course, is a daily inventory of what we have done well this day and where we have missed the mark this day. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses speaks “which I command you this day” to remind us of the importance, the need to respect and envelop ourselves in this day, to sense the grandeur, the potential, the opportunity that this day brings to all of us. Doing our daily Chesbon HaNefesh, our accounting of our soul, we then have a plan on how to sense the grandeur of tomorrow better than today, appreciate how we have sensed the grandeur of this day and repair our errors tomorrow that we have made this day. Another gift this inventory gives us is a look at patterns and ways of being that have served us, another and God well and those that haven’t. Being able to change the patterns that have not served us, another and God well is another way to “sense the grandeur of the moment” knowing that change is the only constant and we are never stuck in a pattern, there is always a way out and a hand to help. Also the realization that even the patterns that are serving another and God as well as our selves have to be kept fresh, enhanced and updated constantly.
In recovery, we know how major a disease self-deception is, how devastating the deception of another is to them, to God, to us. We have a discipline of taking personal inventory each and every day, admitting our errors, repairing them and moving forward as soon as we become aware of them and taking credit for our goodness of being, of our sensing and responding to the grandeur of the moment as well as making plans to enhance this way of being. More on this tomorrow- God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark