Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 259
“To be human involves the ability to appreciate as well as the ability to give expression to appreciation. For thousands of years authentic existence included both manipulation and appreciation, utilization and celebration, both work and worship. In primitive society they were interdependent; in biblical religion they were interrelated. Today we face a different situation.” (Who is Man pg. 116)
These are interesting pairs of actions/words that Rabbi Heschel is using above; “manipulation and appreciation, utilization and celebration, work and worship; while seemingly opposites, we can experience them as partners in our being able to “come into being, take a stand for” a genuineness in our living that brings us to a life of joy, radical amazement, action, connection, justice, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and, most of all love. This is our birthright and, like Esau in the Bible, most of us either sell it cheap or have it taken away from us by the deceptions of another(s).
Many people use manipulation to further their ends, not for the betterment of another(s). They are bastardizing the words of the Bible, the heart of the Bible, the Soul of the Bible, and calling it ‘christianity’, when what they are doing is being false prophets, being like the Egyptians and the Canaanites, being the Romans and the Greeks, the Assyrians and the Judas’. In an article in the New York Times yesterday, a man who went to the Capital on Jan. 6th and supported Trump’s BIG LIE, has been skewered as an FBI plant to foment the riot and the insurrection. Tucker Carlson has made him the scapegoat, has manipulated millions of people to believe that Mr. Epps alone caused the riot and did so on the order of the FBI that William Barr and Donald Trump were in charge of! Mr. Epps had to sell his business and home at a great loss, move to a mobile home somewhere in the Rockies and is living in fear of his life and the life of his wife, all because Tucker Carlson, et al, needed to blame someone other than the true culprits. Who are these true culprits, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump! Yet, as great manipulators, they escape responsibility, justice and truth. Mean spirit Mark Meadows, Junkyard Jim Jordan, Molester Matt Gaetz, Mendacious Marjorie Taylor Greene, and their cronies all believe that manipulation, lies, deceit and deception done in the name of them having power is their right, is the demand that Jesus puts upon them. They are so lost, these manipulators for evil, manipulators for self, they have co-opted what it means to be a person of faith, to be a person of God, to be a person of religious and spiritual values; no wonder attendance at houses of worship keeps declining, no wonder mental health issues, addiction issues, trust issues have risen exponentially over the past 40 years! These people, their ancestors, their partners in crime have given spirit, religion, faith, God a bad name.
We can change this, as Rabbi Heschel is calling on us to do. Rev Martin Luther King, Rabbi Heschel, Reinhold Niebuhr, among others are prophets for us, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, John and Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and others are role models for us to learn how to leave our self-deceptions, learn how to follow the call/demand of our souls, see every human being as worthy of dignity, respect and assistance being manipulated back into the beings they are created to be, adjusted to fulfill the purposes we are needed to fulfill. Each one of the people above, and so many more, heard a call that was more powerful than their false ego call for power, property and prestige, Each one of the politicians made a difference in the ways we fulfill the promise of 1776, each one, in their own way, ushered in new ways of seeing freedom, living decently, ensuring justice, caring for the stranger, the needy and the poor! Each of the Spiritual Leaders above followed the dictates of God, the call of their souls and the needs of the individuals in front of them and have promoted connection between people, love of God and one’s neighbor, and a covenant of truth, mercy and imperfection. We can do the same if we are willing to manipulate/get an adjustment in our thinking from me to we, begin anew to stand for ethics and morals for all, prize and cherish love over power, truth over money, cooperation over slavery, dignity over degradation and forgiveness of self, another over resentment and hatred.
In recovery, we are in the mode of manipulating our self to “come to believe a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity”. We know we are in need of help to return/turn to a life of kindness, compassion and sanity so we seek it from this power greater than us and we seen wisdom and guidance from people who have achieved a measure of the life we are seeking. We know how to follow direction, because we followed it to our ruin, now we seek to follow direction to our benefit and in service of another(s).
I viscerally understand the power of manipulation for self-seeking reasons, I did it for many years consciously. I also know the joy of manipulation for the sake of heaven, for the sake of another and for the sake on my own soul. As I have said over the years, I am still a hustler, the difference is I hustle for God instead of me/greed. I allowed Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, to be my first manipulator in my recovery, Rabbi Heschel has been my ‘chiropractor of the soul’ for all these years along with Rabbis Jonathan Omer-man, Harold Shulweis, z”l, and Rabbi Edward Feinstein, Harriet Rossetto, Heather Garrett and many others. More on Sunday, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark