Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 282
“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)
Rabbi Heschel is so brilliant in his differentiation between celebration and entertainment/amusement. We have so totally confused the two that there seems to be no separation, no distinction between them. Which, of course in my opinion, is one of the roots of our problems. We need to have a dramatic shift forward in our actions, our thinking, in our living and it begins with basic principles and actually living them, not just giving lip service to them. It is truly time to declare a Moral Emergency again, as Rabbi Heschel suggested to President Kennedy in 1963, it is time to rise to the Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity we are created for and to be.
We begin with a basic principle that God is Truth, therefore we have to strive to seek truth, we have to have a Passion for Truth as Rabbi Heschel’s last book is titled. To seek truth means to take off the blinders, let go of the outcomes we want, see the things that could change our preconceived notions, and be maladjusted to the cliches we have long accepted. Since God is Truth and God is the entire picture, anything less than a rich and full vision of what is cannot be the whole story! When we are making decisions without being fully informed, by definition the decision has a better chance of being flawed than when we are fully informed and make a decision. Beginning with a desire to seek out the whole story, to make informed decisions, to revere Truth can lead us back to celebration.
The next principle is the recognition that we are all created in the Image of the Divine! Not some of us, not just white people, not just rich people, all human beings; male and female both! Knowing and accepting this Truth allows us to recognize the similarities in one another, it allows us to see partnerships and collaborations where we saw competitions and wars before. This principle helps us have appreciation for differing opinions and give us the strength to resolve differences through compromise, not quitting, not blocking, not filibustering, not overpowering. Rather we engage in a give and take of ideas, methods and respect. Combining these two principles allows us to have a different experience of living, of self and of every other self we encounter. These first two principles give us a foundation to ward off the onslaught of the mendacious ones, the people who relish in their Moral Ignominy!
The next principle is gratitude. Waking up each morning being grateful to be alive, grateful for what life has in store for us today, grateful to engage in and enjoy the entire day: good, not so good and everything in between. Another gratitude is for having the ability to navigate whatever comes our way, having the confidence that we(either solely or with the help of another(s)) will figure it out and deal with the consequences of our actions and/or the actions of another.
Another principle is learning: each day waking up with the excitement that we will learn something new today, see something we thought we knew from a new perspective, keep our eyes open, our minds alert and our souls engaged in our daily experiences so we can never see life the same from one day to the next, from one hour to the next. Learning is a discipline, as Rabbi Heschel says in his interview in 1972, and it will be good for us, for our family, for our community to become more intentional and disciplined in our learning.
Having reverence for truth, appreciating the God-Image in each one of us, experiencing learning and gratitude are crucial to our being able to celebrate, otherwise we are ‘celebrating’ falsehoods, mendacities, idols, authoritarians, liars. The choices are pretty clear, they were clear in the 1930’s and the America First’ers wanted to support Germany and Hitler-“when we ever learn, when will we ever learn”?
In recovery we know that reverence and appreciation are keys to our long-term living well. We are acutely aware that the opinions of another have to be heard, honored and, at times, argued with. We are dedicated to learning each day, peeling a layer of the onion off, and are grateful for this day, this moment.
Celebration brings about core contentment in me. It gives me the strength to move forward, living the principles above have navigated me through a myriad of challenges and gifts in my recovery. I am imperfect in living these principles and I do a little better each day. I relish in my reverence for learning, in my reverence of my teachers, my mentors, my entire family-cousins, uncles, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, grandson, daughter. I am so appreciative of the learning, doing, engaging and living that Harriet has helped me achieve and we have achieved together. As the song says: “they can’t take that away from me”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark