Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 271
“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)
Most of the challenges facing us today, as in the past, are challenges that come from a denial of radical amazement. We are so invested in our need for certainty and for power/control and this is bringing us to ruin the democratic experiment begun in 1776 and to ruin the Divine Promise that slavery will not last forever as evidenced by the Exodus from Egypt. The belief in the conventional notions from yesterday, last month, years ago is debilitating, enslaving and just plain wrong! It has in the past, is today and will in the future ensure the interruption of the divine plan to move our world forward, to find contentment within our core being and care for the stranger, the needy and the poor in our midst.
“How can I pray when the deaths of 1000’s of innocent Vietnamese is on my conscience” asks Rabbi Heschel in his interview with Carl Stern in December of 1972. This is a statement of radical amazement and deep spirituality as well as a religious and moral question.Our leaders then were not asking it nor are our leaders today asking it. How can any of us pray when the deaths of over 100,000 people from Opioids, over 100,000 people from Alcohol, the suicide rate grows each year amongst our young people? How can any of us look in the mirror as we “stand idly by the bloods” of our brothers/neighbors/fellow human beings? Yet, we are and we do. We have watched more and more people become unhoused/homeless and done nothing to help these poor and needy human beings. We have allowed the people we sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam flounder from their emotional and spiritual wounds from being in these wars/conflicts. We have supported people, even elected a president, who are anti-democratic and believe in authoritarianism and dictatorship. We have given power to the few, the minority through gerrymandering and the electoral college rather than practice and promote freedom and equality.
Radical amazement, as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s use of the term, is the antidote to power for power’s sake, for selfish reasons. It is the antidote to willful blindness and authoritarianism, it is the antidote to the spiritual malady that causes addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, money, power, prestige, etc. It is the antidote to the mendacity and deception of white supremacy, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, homophobia, racism, senseless hatred, etc. All of these old notions and cliches need to end if we are to continue to move the promise of the Exodus from Egypt, the covenant we made at Mt. Sinai, the teachings of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and everyone since forward and create more and more light for the path to wholeness. We are facing the inner demons of power today; Viktor Orban is speaking in Dallas Tx, at a CPAC conference along with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump; 3 people who believe in white supremacy, who sell the lie of standing for “white christianity” and promote boogeymen/women and other lies to people who live in old notions and cliches. The organizers and the people attending are dangerous and seek to overthrow the democratic foundations of our nation, they seek to enslave those of us who do not want to live under so-called Christian Law where Jesus is a Lion, where Jesus cares for the rich and powerful, where the leaders of this movement bastardize everything that is in the Gospels and do it with help from their so-called Religious Leaders. Jews, people of color, Muslims, who go along with these charlatans will find themselves as Kapos, as the people who, in their desire to be near power, sell their souls and their minds for an extra piece of bread.
Radical amazement is a state of being aware of what is right now, a state of learning how to see what is in real time, rather than through ‘old eyes’. While the lessons of yesterday are crucial for learning how to deal with today’s opportunities, today is not the same as yesterday, the experiences are never exactly the same, the court cases are not the same, so we have to be maladjusted to our desire, impulse, need to ignore the nuances and the cries of the poor, the needy, the stranger, our neighbors, our enemies and live in this moment and live in truth, justice, kindness, mercy, and compassion. Radical amazement is the only way to stay away from the mendacity of the people described above, it is, in my opinion, the paradigm that will give us the power and the wisdom to defeat this constant wave of power-grabbing, mendacious people who want to destroy everyone who is not like them, everyone who doesn’t give them complete loyalty, everyone who questions them. Our maladjustment to the status quo, to the Constitution and it’s amendments doesn’t mean we don’t honor precedent, it means we keep it fresh and relevant. Just as there are 70 ways to understand the Bible, we can’t live in a one-way, one-size fits all democracy. Radical amazement keeps us fresh, keeps us democratic, keeps us open to learn and keeps us free.
In recovery, we recognize that each day is a gift, each day is new and we can only live today’s agenda-we can’t go back and replay yesterday’s nor go forward to advance play tomorrow’s. More on Sunday, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark