Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 244
“Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)
Well, the BIG DAY is over- now what? We have Sukkot to look forward to, hopefully everyone had a moment like I did during the 25 hours of Kol Nidre/Yom Kippur and got close and personal with your soul, with your essence, with your higher consciousness. I am continuing with some of Rabbi Heschel’s thoughts on repentance because, according to the Rabbis, we have until Hoshana Rabbah, the 7th day of Sukkot, to take care of any lingering shit on our shoes that we may have missed. Another reason is because, according to Rabbi Eliezer in the Talmud, Shabbat 153a, “Do TShuvah one day before you die” and since we don’t know the day of our death, “do TShuvah every day”.
The sentence above is the essence of how to live well, I believe. We are continually called to “return again” as the song/prayer by Shlomo Carlbach, that reminds us to we have to keep returning “to the land of our soul”. Repentance is not something we do just on Yom Kippur, everyday we are reminded of the exodus from Egypt in our prayers and everyday we are reminded to “Return” by the 2nd prayer of the middle prayers of the Amidah. Right after we remind ourselves that we have wisdom, we remind ourselves to do TShuvah, repent, return, have a new response! In fact, we praise God in this pray as the “Desirer of our TShuvah”!
Rabbi Heschel’s statement above moves me so much because any rationale for doing Repentance that we may employ renders it false, makes it seem phony, and, usually, is not accepted! Repentance is an inside job-just as seeing the divine essence, the true, authentic nature of your self/essence yesterday cannot be done rationally, neither can repentance be achieved through rational thought nor expediency. It is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card, it is not an “I’m sorry” bullshit excuse. Repentance is a decision that has to be a spiritual one, it has to come from within us, as individuals and as a community. The confession of the High Priest on Yom Kippur begins with one for himself, then his household, then the Congregation of Israel. While the confessional prayer is in the plural, it is crucial that we know our part, our responsibility to say both the prayers of confession, the TShuvah itself, and our acceptance of forgiveness from “an absolute spiritual” place within us. We cannot phone in our TShuvah, we cannot phone in our repairing damage and harm we have wrought, we cannot phone in being responsible for our part in any and all ruptures of connection between an individual and myself, between a community and myself, between a people and myself. Only through “an absolute spiritual decision” can I make my amends, continue to improve on my path, and be connected once again and more fully, to self, to another(s), to community.
The last word of the sentence above is the killer: “truthfulness”! Without returning from the land of our inner self-deception and outer deception of another(s), there can be no TShuvah made, no repentance achieved, no return happening. Which, of course, leaves us wandering in the desert, not the Sinai desert, not the desert on the way to the ‘promised land’, We the People are wandering in the desert of waste, of ruin, of blame, shame, despair, anger, etc. This desert is the desert of death, of dryness, of hunger. While yesterday, Yom Kippur, was a day some describe as a day like death, which I choose to reject because those of us for whom our TShuvah is/was done in “truthfulness”, we weren’t all that thirsty nor hungry, we were not that tired as Ne’ilah began, we were excited to hear the Shofar not because it meant we could eat but because it meant a New Year with possibilities and opportunities was finally here, the old year is history and not a burden upon us, it is a beginning place from which to grow another grain of sand or two this year! When We the People are in “truthfulness”, “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants there in” is not just a phrase, it becomes reality. When We the People live in “truthfulness”, “choose Life” is not just something written in the Bible, it is the level of existence we function from. When We the People live in “truthfulness”, hatred goes away, idolatry is no longer the major religion(idolatry by both the ‘believers’ and non-believers), loving the stranger, our neighbor, showing dignity to every soul we encounter and, most of all, ONE, BOTH/AND is the order of the day-we see distinctions, we distinguish one from another, and we do not separate ourselves nor anyone/anything else anymore. This is the power, the joy, the serenity that “repentance is an absolute spiritual decision made in truthfulness” brings to the individual and the communal-the micro and the macro.
I don’t hold myself out as having achieved total truthfulness, nor have I achieved a state of being where I make no errors! I have and continue to grow in my return because I am growing in my awareness of when I do the next right thing and when I do not do the next right thing. I have and continue to grown in truthfulness and this is leading me to realizations that are painful and joyous-a truth both/and. I have been waiting to be asked to do something and this is ridiculous-my path is to do and then figure it out, my path is to reach and then see who reaches back; not wait for the phone to ring! My awareness this High Holy Day season is that I have to be me-in all my messiness, all my warts, all my brilliance and all my fire. I just don’t know another way nor do I think there is one for me! I am not sure the form this takes shape as, I am not sure the method nor much except the promoting of our new books, the reaching out to speak anywhere that will have me, and move it forward. This is what “truthfulness” has revealed to me! God