Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 247
“To be overtaken with awe of God is not to entertain a feeling but to share in a spirit that permeates all being…As an act of personal recognition our praise would be fatuous; it is meaningful only as an act of joining in the endless song.” (Who is Man pg.116)
To permeate comes from the Latin meaning “pass through” and share as a verb means to have a portion of something with another. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is to remind us that rather than us pass through the spirit, the spirit has to pass through us. Rather than thinking and acting as if we have it all, we are entitled to do as we please, we have to live our lives as a shareholder of this spirit which “permeates all being” if we are “to be overtaken with awe of God”.
Herein lies the challenge, the question, the demand of God and of one another I believe. Are we going through life, are we going through the teachings of history or are they going through us? Are we going through the Bible or is the Bible going through us? Are we going through “awe of God” or is the “awe of God” going through us? These have been issues for humankind since our beginnings and now, more than ever I believe, these issues and our responses are crucial to our survival and our thriving.
It is clear that our democracy has been overtaken by ideology in ways never before seen. It is clear that some of our religions have been overtaken by ideology never seen nor meant in the basic texts of our religions. Yet, here we are, living in a world where “the awe of God” is overtaken by the awe of self. Narcissism has morphed into and overtaken democratic norms, our Supreme Court and some of the Justices therein, our everyday conversations and our relationships with one another. The reflection of self and ‘righteous self’ finding and fighting against the ‘enemy’ has become the prominent theme of our time. It has become the way of being for so many people that they are arming themselves with military-grade assault weapons to kill as many as their fellow country people as they can when their “revolution” begins. We called Fidel Castro and Che Guevara terrorists and some people are worshiping the terrorists that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6th, bowing down to the organizers of this attack and others on our democracy, and taking orders from liars, cheats, charlatans and mean-spirited power-seeking men.
While these people engage in wrapping themselves in the Bible, as we saw in June of 2020, they hold it upside down because they have never allowed the teachings of either the Christian Bible nor the Hebrew Bible nor the Koran nor the sacred texts of Buddhism, etc to go through them. They have deftly and sincerely not allowed these teachings nor the “awe of God” to permeate them. Clarence Thomas’ lies about the vaccines are as outrageous as they are dangerous. The Supreme Court’s need to give priority to money rather than health and life are not the needs of those whom are “overtaken with the awe of God”. Yet, they keep using the name of God in vain. They keep violating the 3rd Commandment with impunity and pride. And the people who follow them, who hang on their every word, who are waiting for the call to rise up and kill those ‘lefties’ in California, New York and everywhere in-between, are true believers in the idolatry of these narcissists, these deceivers because the people’s need to be deceived and to engage in self-deception is so great.
We are, like Adam and Eve, facing the greatest challenge of all; allowing our selves to be seen in the raw, to be experienced in our authenticity, or to hide behind the bushes, hide when called by God and another person, be so ashamed of who we see ourselves to be that we adopt different personas so no one will truly know us. We believe if we live a false self long enough, we will become it. The authoritarian leaders people follow know this challenge well, they decided to be authentically self-absorbed and self-centered. They made a decision that God is here to serve them so they worship the god of their making. Yet, so many people will follow these religious and political and business leaders believing that their power will shield them, protect them and rub off on them. How foolish to believe the narcissists attempting to destroy our democracy from within like McConnell and the senators who no longer can vote anyway but his way, Clarence Thomas and his flock on the Supreme Court, McCarthy and his congresspeople who defend Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fascist beliefs. What part of the Bible has permeated them? How has the “awe of God” permeated them? With whom to they share in the “spirit” that flows through all things?
The masks we wear is what we take off to recover our authentic self in recovery. At a meeting last night, the leader spoke about these masks and we all shared about the difficulty of taking them off. In a teaching prior to Yom Kippur in 1989, Rabbi Jonathon Omer-man taught us that the ‘sins’ we commit are like barnacles on boat and we have to scrap them off. So too with the masks we continue to wear. Having Torah and Rabbi Heschel go through me has changed and continues to change my life, engaging with the “awe of God” every day keeps me sharing in “the spirit that permeates all being”. I am blessed by Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, they saved my life and keep me living a life of meaning and purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark