Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 274
“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)
“Familiarity breeds contempt” is a proverb that I am reminded of when immersing myself in the last phrase above. Einstein remarked: “The intuitive mind is a gift and the rational mind a servant, we have come to forget the gift and worship the servant”. Both of these teachings re-enforce Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above. Exaltation comes from the Latin meaning “to raise aloft” and appreciation means “set at a price/appraise” and neither is possible when familiarity is contemptuous and we worship a servant rather than God, rather than our gift. Herein lies the challenge for us today even more than in 1963 when Rabbi Heschel spoke these words at Stanford University! We are witnessing today, at the polls in some States, a slate of candidates who adhere to the Big Lie, white supremacy, senseless hatred, power for their own sake, anti-semitism, prejudice and racist views, etc promoted by the Devious Donny and supported by Mealy-mouthed McCarthy. Yet, the Senate cannot pass a bill designed to honor a promise made to our young people who put it all on the line to serve our Country in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether the war there was correct or not, they served and deserve our support and assistance with the healing of the wounds that we inflicted upon them. Is this on the ballot, no! What is on the ballot today is the call to hatred because familiarity is breeding hatred, it is breeding an underbelly of seething anger to wave the false flag of “I’m right and good as are all of my people and you(whomever I point my finger at) are bad and wrong as are anyone who agrees with you”. We are in a state where we are so sure we know what it right, we cannot hear, listen, compromise nor respect anyone who is not in lockstep with us. This is true on both ends of the spectrum and we are in danger of losing our democracy, our freedom and our hopes and dreams to this type of extremism.
We have used familiarity to have disdain for one another as witnessed by Devious Donny hoping Patsy Pence would be hung on Jan. 6th, 2021! We have watched in horror the anti-semitism of the far left in order to be woke. We are in grave danger of falling into the abyss of taking everything for granted, of being indifferent to wonder, to beauty, to logic, to truth and to evil. We have come to the precipice of this abyss and the Republican Party is truly in danger of falling into it. Mendacious Mitch, Devious Donny, Patsy Pence, Crooked Cruz, Molesting Matt Gaetz, Jester Josh Hawley, Seditious Steve Bannon all believe the rule of law is theirs to interpret and doesn’t apply to them. They are totally familiar with the Constitution, they just believe they can use it as a weapon and a shield, weapon against everyone else, a shield for themselves. We are watching the destruction of exhalation which brings about a depressive emotional state for everyone, for our country because instead of raising aloft the banner of freedom, instead of raising aloft the beacon of hope and possibility, these people who are so familiar with what this country is based on are using their rational minds to raise aloft mendacity, deception, slavery and indifference. We are watching these charlatans enlist the aid of people of faith to appraise the dignity of every human being as being very low, to set the price of truth at a bargain basement price and to appraise the need to serve God instead of them at zero. This is what the familiarity of our time is producing. This is one of the examples of how prejudice is a “cancer of the soul”, an “eye disease” that has infected the entire body of our democracy.
We can, however, take the cure for this cancer that is infecting and killing our democratic norms and our chance to make our country more in line with freedom. This cure is a return to core principles of democracy as found in every spiritual discipline: Truth, Kindness, Justice, Mercy, Compassion and Love. This return begins with our acknowledgement of how far we have strayed from these principles, whom we impacted including God and our selves, how we have impacted, what we have learned and how we are going to change. It continues with “circumcising the foreskin of our hearts” so we can open our selves up to the truth of infinite worth and dignity that each human being possesses. More tomorrow on the solution!
In recovery, we experience a new freedom when we do our 4th step, when we are able to be in truth with ourselves, when we fearlessly and thoroughly see our errors of judgement and actions when we missed the mark as well as our ‘stinking thinking’ at those moments. This is when our return truly begins to be real, to be possible and we are inspired to move forward in our recovery.
I knew I had an intuitive mind and I squandered it for many years to serve my own mendacity, my own selfish needs. My recovery is to use my intuitive mind in service of another, to advocate for the soul of another human being. I am realizing that familiarity with people did breed appreciation and trust in me and some, a few, used this trust and appreciation to skewer me, while so many more honor our relationship. My intuitive mind reminds me to let go of the few and hold on to the many, while my rational mind tells me the opposite. I know how to make the rational mind serve the intuitive one and I have to employ these skills every day or I will fall into the abyss of mendacity, deception and prejudice. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark