Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 242
“The secret of spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe. The fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith.”(Who is Man pg. 116).
As I delve into the last sentence above, I realize the so-called conservatives, both social and religious, who have decided that women have no right to making free-will choices about their bodies, with their bodies, for their mental/spiritual/physical health, are the least faithful people one can imagine. They have no living faith in God, no living faith in the principles this country was founded on, no living faith in anyone other than men to ‘make the right choices’. As we have seen from history, looking back on all of the wars, all the hatred, all the prejudice, etc that men have caused, participated in and engineered, I have little faith in these so-called ‘people of faith’.
The people who have killed doctors, bombed clinics, legislated anti-choice laws which are not pro-life as they claim, are people of little sensitivity, little praise and prize only their power, their misguided beliefs, their deceptions. None of this ‘conservative’ agenda is about “traditional values” of our country because our Founding Fathers were agents of change, democracy is/was a revolutionary idea and experiment. The Revolutionary War happened because of the sensitivity of the rebellious leaders of the colonies to the call of the soul of humans to be free. Yet, these scammers, these charlatans, these promoters of the Big Lies continue to spew their hatred, their fears, their need for control, their prejudices on all of us. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling on clergy everywhere to stand up, to be sensitive to the call of the souls of women, the souls of the voiceless and powerless, to prize serving God by being advocates for the soul of another(s) instead of prizing power.
The misogyny that dominated most of the world from the beginning is disgusting and wrong, especially given that so many of these so-called ‘conservatives’ are libertarians. The overturning of Roe v Wade is done by the same people who say ‘I don’t have to take your vaccines, I don’t have to wear a mask and the government can’t tell me what to do with my body’ and other such poppycock. Yet, these same mendacious haters can tell a woman what to do with hers? This need for control of women by men has made domestic violence, rape, non-equal pay, denial of voting rights for so long, etc and has been driven by the fear these male losers have of women being better than they. This is not about love of life; they will allow a women to die to save the baby, they will vote for the death penalty, they do not care what happens after the baby is born because they don’t believe in vaccines. This decision and the war on progress is for power, control and enslavement of anyone who is not in “lockstep with us”.
Conservative is defined as “averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values” and the most traditional value is change, the most traditional value is to remember we are all created in the Image of God. The most traditional value, according to a famous commentary on Genesis, is: “there is not a day where God doesn’t make new paths/laws in the Heavenly Court”. Since we are supposed to reflect what is above here below, we should follow God’s example both in this commentary and in the entire Hebrew Bible of continuing and constant change, living a dynamic way of being. The Christian Bible is/was a change from the Bible that Christ followed! Yet, these purveyors of mendacity, these power hungry deceivers, these ‘prayer breakfast bastardizers of Christ’s principles, the principles of Torah, the ways of God, all want things to stay the way they want them-white men in power is their most cherished traditional value! All the while forgetting that the cradle of civilization was in the Middle East-which they do not consider white.
In recovery, we know that we go through a psychic change, a paradigm shift in order to continue to grow. We recognize our “old ideas” led us to bad places, they brought pain, heartache, instability to those around us and were based on lies we told ourselves. We are painfully aware of the discomfort of change, the need to be constantly re-evaluating what we believed and thought we ‘knew’ last week because of what we have learned this week. In recovery, change is the constant and without change, without progress, we will die, emotionally, spiritually and physically miserable.
I have been changing each and every day of my life and my years in recovery have made me aware of my need to manage the changes, manage my self and prize truth, justice, compassion, love and kindness over everything else. At times, these principles/ways of being can seem to be at odds with each other and I have come to realize they are not-in fact without being in all of these at the same time, love and truth quickly dissolve into falseness and mendacity, love becomes a word/tool for emotional power over another and truth becomes ‘alternative facts’ in the mouths of liars. Having practiced these ways prior to my recovery-I recognize the practitioners of this way of being quickly and am sensitive to their lies. Without being able to “detect and respond to signals, slight changes…”(the definition of sensitive), we cannot live as the Hebrew Bible teaches: love mercy, seek justice, walk in the ways of God. To do this is to be dynamically alive and engaged in life, as I understand Rabbi Heschel and have been moved to do in my recovery. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark