Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 - Day 10
“The world has fallen away from God. The decision of each individual person and of the many stands in opposition to God. Through our dullness and obstinacy we, too, are antagonists. But still, sometimes we ache when we see God betrayed and abandoned.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)
I am amazed at how we still cannot find the strength to ache, when we need to defend ourselves and rationalize our betrayals and abandonments of God, of Godliness, of decency, of truth, of owing. Owing is one of the major causes of abandonment and betrayal, I am coming to believe. Our debt to God for the gift of life, for the many gifts we have been graced with is too much for many of us. The weight of this debt and the repayment is seen as onerous by many. “What do you mean, I have to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy-let them figure it out themselves, I did” is a common refrain/response to the demand for Tzedakah as ‘charity’. “They had a lawyer and due process was followed” is a refrain I heard from Antonia Scalia when asked about his decision to let an innocent man be put to death in Texas-not exactly following the demand of God to “run after righteousness! Rather than ache, we blame, defend and get angry/offended that our integrity is being questioned. Never once thinking about the integrity of God, the integrity of our Covenant with God is being abandoned and betrayed. We owe one another dignity and truth, kindness and compassion, justice and love, according to the Hebrew Bible. These seem to be in short supply today as much as they have been in the past. Yet, we still have 9 days to rectify this situation, 9 days to replenish our supply of these basic traits and actions that signify our reconnection with God, our surrender to Godliness, our awareness of truth, our persistence of a path of decency as shown in the Torah, and our using the gift of T’Shuvah to correct our missing the marks, to return to a way of being that is compatible with being a partner of God!
We have become so risk averse, so afraid of the next lawsuit, we have stopped following God’s demand, we have stopped hearing the call of the universe, of our neighbor, of our own souls. Our fears of being left out, our fears of not having a seat at the table, our fears of being exploited rather than the exploiter, lead us to abandon and betray God and the ache we need to experience becomes smoothed over by optics, by rationalizations, by self-deceptions. In the next 9 days, we do, however, have the opportunity to leave these self-deceptions, these rationalizations, the need for optics to cover truth and return to the God, Godliness. It will take a concerted effort and “the courage to change the things we can” as Reinhold Niebuhr teaches us in the Serenity Prayer. It will take a daily practice of being grateful one owes, a daily practice of being joyous that we can repay the confidence God has in us to do the next right thing, a daily practice of letting go of our need to be right, a daily practice of self-examination, a daily practice of turning our will over to God and accepting God’s will for us, as a community and as an individual. None of these practices will engender the change we need to make for our self, for God, for another human being, for community until we let go of our need to rationalize, our need to let fear rule us, our need to look good through optics and not see how we don’t walk our talk.
Aching is such a painful experience and one that is necessary for us. When we ache, we connect with the sadness, the pain of the downtrodden, some of whom we have stepped on. When we ache we connect with our own experiences of betrayals and abandonments so we are very aware of God’s experiences of our betrayals and abandonments. I use God to include nature, force of the cosmos, the collective human community, not an actual material being. When we ache, we give ourselves the opportunity to go through the pain we have caused our self and another self rather than hide, blame and rationalize. When we ache, we see how to correct the source of our sorrow and pain, we see how to let go of our old ideas and ways, how to be maladjusted to what the ‘societal norms’ dictate and be our true, authentic self that is of service through acts of lovingkindness.
One of the sayings we learn in recovery, early on, is “you can’t save your face and your ass at the same time”. How true this is, saving our ass means going through the aches our behaviors and ways of being have brought about. Saving our ass means taking these 9 days to get real and clean and then every day after continue to do maintenance to keep “our side of the street clean”. This is the path recovery suggests to/for our self.
I ache because in this writing I realize how I have let pride, ego, fear get me to abandon and betray God. I have been worried about how I will be viewed and not what is the next right thing to do. I have been stifled by ‘the lawyers’ and the need to protect assets. I ache because in today’s world, this is normal and truth has no place in a courtroom, God has no place in some Jewish Institutions, decency and what is right has no place with some Clergy, and courage to stand up is somewhat lacking when faced with loss of everything I/we have worked for. I ache because the place we created has told Harriet to clear out her office, told us we are not welcome there. I ache because years ago I was told and, to some extent, saw what the future could be and I ignored it. I ache for the lost souls who need to prove their ‘rightness’ at the expense of their souls and the souls/lives of another(s). God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark