Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 268
“Man may forfeit his sense of the ineffable. To be alive is commonplace; the sense of radical amazement is gone; the world is familiar and familiarity does not breed exaltation or even appreciation.” (Who is Man pg. 116)
Hiding, mendacity, self-deception, conventional notions, disbelief of how much each individual matters, ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’, cancel culture, identity politics, and so much more have become so commonplace, most people are unaware of their participation in these soul crushing activities. In fact, many people wrap themselves in Tefillin, in the flag, in the Bible, in the Church, in their meditative practices to validate their commonplace living. Rabbi Heschel is calling us out on these lies we have been telling ourselves and these conventional notions and mental cliches we have been buying into.
Most people are so afraid of freedom, they have to stay stuck in the commonplace, they have to be engaging in the lies they tell themselves, etc because to be free they have to be responsible, they have to be engaging in their inner lives with the goal being to be free of prejudice, pride, envy and enmity, stop comparing and competing, complaining and feeling bad, and so on. To be free, to make being alive an event, as I believe Rabbi Heschel would say, is to hear the call of the Universe, the demand of the Ineffable and the cry of another human being. To be free is to have these experiences and respond. While it is in vogue to just listen and/or witness the pain of another, to hear the lies people spread and not challenge them because it is ‘their truth’, to believe there are ‘alternative facts’, there are “good people on both sides”, it is part of the path to making alive commonplace which gives more power to the people in charge, to the people with money, and leads to following the path to enslavement, self-deception, and spiritual death.
After the Shoah, many people condemned the Jews, the gays, the myriad of people who ‘willing’ went to the Camps ‘like sheep’ and find this so abhorrent and proof that if the Shoah did happen, then the people who ‘willingly went there’ deserved their fate. While this is the ugliest of arguments, it is also some of these same people who marched in Charlottesville and proclaimed: “Jews will not replace us”. While this is the epitome of anti-semitism, these are the same people who believe the 2020 election was stolen, Donald Trump is a truth-teller, Mike Pence deserved to be hung, the Jan. 6th hearings are a sham, “white is right”, etc. The same people who shake their heads when they hear about genocide, when they hear about following some dictator, are the very same people who make their lives commonplace by believing the lies of a deceiver, by engaging in mendacity themselves, by imbibing hatred at their parents knees, accepting that someone else is to blame for their misery and becoming full-fledged haters of everything and everyone that is not like them.
“Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country”, this phrase used in teaching typing is so important to follow through on by all of us. We have to come to the aid of our country by coming to aid of our self. We have to do more than listen and witness the pain of another, we have to find solutions to the pain, we all have to be “first responders” to the stranger, the poor, the needy among us. We have to do more than accept our own inner pain and frustrations, we need to seek help to heal our inner lives, to grow our inner lives, to mature our spiritual living. We are being called to let go of the conventional notions, mental cliches, mendacities and self-deceptions that have led us down the primrose path to hell! We are being called to be ALIVE, to experience this day as unique, exciting, eye-opening, a learning opportunity, a change to repair old errors and relationships, a moment to respond to the call of the Universe and the demand of the ineffable. This day is the gift given to us to engage in truth seeking, truth telling and more freedom than yesterday.
In recovery, we call this “letting go of old ideas” and no longer practicing “contempt prior to investigation”. We begin each day with a prayer for honesty, openmindness, and willingness to live in the moment, to face what is and to respond with humility and service as a way of living in the grace of life, as a way of responding to the call of the universe and as a show of gratitude.
I think about the moments when being alive is commonplace for me and I am so excited to report that these moments are few and far between. While I am not in action as I was a few years ago, I am in action with thoughts, with plans, etc. I am not seeing life through commonplace eyes, I am engaged in thoughts, in the world, in my writing, in my living one grain of sand better today than yesterday. I am engaged in love of life, wife, daughter, grandson, family, friends, and more of humanity each day. I am aware that this is the best way to honor the grace God has granted me and the fire God has placed in my belly for truth, for service, for love, for gratitude and for life! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark