Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 272
“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)
The more I immerse myself in these words, this wisdom, the more I am convinced of our desperate need to regain our sense of the ineffable, to experience being alive as dynamic and commit to being/living in radical amazement in order to meet the challenges of today, tomorrow and beyond. We have been given a world to help create, an inheritance we received that must be passed on to our heirs and then theirs, and a covenant to one another and with one another to live together in dignity, kindness, truth, justice, mercy and love. This is the mandate from God, this is the basis of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran and every book of the other myriad of spiritual disciplines in our world. There is no ‘one size fits all’ way of spiritual living, there is no ‘my way is better than your way’ in the spiritual world, in the Jewish world we are taught that there are 70 ways to understand each principle!
It is time for the “stop the steal”, “so-called social conservatives”, authoritarian-loving people and clergy to recognize the pathetic path they are taking, the path that is antithetical to the Gospels they are teaching and preaching (Gospels are not limited to Christianity here). It is time for these charlatans, these money-grabbing, power-hungry clergy, idolators and puppet-masters to learn that the Ineffable One is patient and allows them/us to bring about our own destruction, that slavery will end, the enslavers will go into the sea and be drowned, mendacity will not carry the day and people will awaken from their self-deception and rise up to meet the truth and overthrow the authoritarians who have usurped seats of power through lies. While the wisdom above sometimes takes a while to seep in, as was the case in Europe and the US in the 1930’s and 1940’s, it does eventually and we respond with dynamism and with maladjustment to the conventional notions and mental cliches we had been enthralled with before. I am calling out the people who support these authoritarian ways and leaders to remember the poem by Martin Niemoller, the prominent Lutheran pastor who supported Nazi ideas and was politically right-wing until he saw the actual implementation of these ideas, then he became critical and spent from 1937-1945 in prisons and concentration camps.
Our inability to recognize the wisdom, the prophetic calling of the teaching above will be our downfall. What I am sure of, however, is that we will always have a remnant of people who will keep the faith, who will hold on to their sense of the ineffable, appreciate the miracle of being alive and live with awe, wonder and radical amazement. This is the truth of our history and this will be the truth of our present and future. In every age, as the song at Hanukkah goes, there have been people who wanted to destroy the Jews and the ineffable one saves us each time. We, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc, have to accept the wisdom above into our hearts, into our souls so that our inner life is saved from the self-deceptions, the mendacity of another, the lure of authoritarianism, the corruption power brings, so we never have to repeat the statement of Martin Niemoller, “first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out-because I wasn’t a socialist; etc.” We are all one race, Human, we are all connected through our spirit, through our Divine Image, through our shared humanity and the wisdom above is calling us to recognize this truth, live this truth and share in the joy of this truth!
In recovery, we are so aware of the similarities in one another. We all, no matter how far up or down the ladder of success, no matter what our faith tradition is, no matter what the color of our skin is, are in recovery together, in the struggle to live well and to live a life of principles and kindness, truth and compassion, love and mercy. This is what we strive for each and every day; to recover our integrity, a little more humanness, a little more love and a little more connection to the universe.
As my friend and teacher, Rev Mark Whitlock, teaches: we are all “kin under the skin” and, as Father Greg Boyle teaches we need to engage in “radical kinship”. In my years of living T’Shuvah, living Jewishly, I learned that the world for redemption in Hebrew also means “kin”. I know that I cannot be redeemed unless and until I see everyone as “kinfolk”, everyone is a ‘relative’ of mine. I have worked hard to do this all these years and, at times, I have reacted to “my kinfolk” engaging in the murdering of their soul, of the soul of another, of the soul of an organization. I react in a Prophetic voice, loud, ‘uncouth’, and an outstretched hand to bring the person back from their soul-crushing, murderous ways which has saved many, many people. It has also caused problems for the authoritarians, of the right and left, so they worked together to eliminate the uncontrollable one-as has been done in our history and in our present. Rabbi Heschel was a threat to the establishment so he had to be marginalized somewhat and he spoke out and wrote truth wherever he was. This is the example I follow, I hope to follow more because the call from above to me is coming through loud and clear-keep preaching, keep teaching, live my life, be maladjusted so I can bring the message of my soul, the Torah I was created to speak and teach. The same is true for all of us, in this way we defeat the charlatans. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark