Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 244
“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 immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and call, I am more inflamed with sadness, anger and a need to speak out. We have lost our ability to be sensitive to one another on both a micro and macro scale. We have lost our ability to praise/prize the path of living that is laid out for us in the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels of the Christian Bible and the Koran. We are in a terrible state of affairs and, worse than all of this, is our indifference to our inabilities to praise/prize God’s creations/creatures and to be sensitive to the will of God. All of this coming from both ends of the spectrum-the so-called conservatives and the so-called progressives. Both are regressive, both are authoritarian, both insensitive to the call and the demands of God and the majority of people in this country.
I am angry at our insensitivity to one another. I am angry at our inability to live with one another in harmony and truth. I am angry at our need to ‘be right’ at any and all costs, even the cost of our democracy, our decency, our humanity. What right do any of us have to be insensitive to the call of a woman’s mental and/or physical well-being? What right do these so-called ‘good christians’ have to be insensitive to the needs of the poor, the stranger among us? What right do we have to endorse the falseness of the many 2nd Amendment claims about everyone having a right to bear arms when the Amendment was put because the framers wanted the States to be reassured that the Federal Government would not do what King George did. What right do the Supreme Court Justices have to be insensitive to the ever-changing needs, scientific and emotional/spiritual knowledge that becomes more available each day? What right do these so-called conservatives have to deny the idea of progress and dynamic living when the Constitution was adopted by the States only because it was immediately amended! These lying, mendacious, phony grifters like Clarence Thomas are destroying the very democracy they say they are trying to ‘conserve’. Of course the irony is that a black man is doing the bidding of white supremacists!
The far-left movement is also insensitive to the needs of people, especially those who do not agree with them. They are insensitive to the need for gradual change in some cases, they are insensitive to compromise, they are insensitive to the beliefs and truths of another whom they decree is not worthy of listening to because they are white, they are male, they are… They are insensitive to the pain they are causing by doing the same thing to white people, especially white men, that has been done to them; vilifying all whites, painting all white men with the same brush, denying the truth of the past being we have to judge things in the context they happened, not by today’s standards. Following the ‘progressive’ playbook with as much rigidity as the conservatives follow their playbook makes both extremes the same people. We have all seen the need of the progressives, like the squad, to play to the cameras, to make sure the optics are right, to bully people into being anti-semitic, anti-Israel, anti-white male, etc.
Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is so humbling and inviting, and so unheard and ignored. We can be sensitive to one another, we can be authentic and imperfect, we can conserve, progress and not be at extremes. Over the years, Harriet Rossetto, Rabbi Harold Shulweis, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Rabbi Heschel have spoken about, been proponents and teachers of the “Both/And” of living. The either/or of the extremes lead us to war, to paralyzing fear and anxiety, to the mental health crisis we are seeing in both youth and adults right now, the lack of togetherness to fight Covid-19 in smart, scientific ways, the inability to see the divine Image of one another, to live in a world of darkness, meanness, mendacity and hatred. Tomorrow I will write on more of the solution that Rabbi Heschel is giving us.
In recovery, one of the fundamental resources we are recovering is our ability to be sensitive to more than the lies we have been telling ourselves. We are recovering our ability to experience life as more than either/or, me against them, my way or the highway, etc. We do this one moment at a time, one day at a time, we reach out to another people to make sure we are seeing things correctly and reflect back to them the reality they are in. In recovery, our regaining of our sensitivity is one of the keys to living well.
I have been insensitive at times, which I am sorry for and regret deeply. I have been insensitive by believing my way was right and I did not hear the call of another, I have been insensitive because I was preoccupied with something other than the person in front of me. I have been called insensitive by being a loud, in your face person that some people feel offended by my way and this I do not regret. I have also been sensitive to the needs and calls of so many people, most of all family and God. I know I have to continue to be sensitive to the call of my soul and people for the health of my soul and the continued ability to help another human being. I commit to be angry about the insensitivity of the world and more aware of my own insensitivities as well. Be safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark