Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 281
“Indeed the main task of prophetic thinking is to bring the world into divine focus…The prophet is endowed with the insight that enables him to say, not I love or I condemn, but God loves or God condemns.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 34-35)
According to my understanding of the first sentence above, seeing the world through God’s ‘eyes’ is the gift bestowed upon the prophets and, if we are willing to ‘see’ beyond our desires and self-sabotaging lies, we have inherited. In fact, I would argue that this was the gift given Adam and Eve, the knowledge of good and evil gives us the ‘eyesight’ of the divine and we have abused it, used it for our own selfishness instead of being a prophet in our own time.
This strikes me as a very radical thought, We the People are endowed not only with “certain unalienable rights”, we are also endowed with certain immutable responsibilities which begin with seeing the world through the lens of the divine! The blaming of God for the tragedies of the world, the questioning of “where was God when…” is all an excuse for We the People to soothe our knowing that we have the ability to ‘see’ what God ‘sees’, to take the action necessary so justice, love, mercy, kindness, truth prevail and We the People make this road the “Road Less Traveled” and indulge in the blame game instead.
Extrapolating Rabbi Heschel’s words and thoughts, knowing we are descendants of the prophets, realizing the prophets were everyday people, they were not of the priestly class, not the rich and famous, just ‘average joes’ makes us either seek to improve our eyesight or run away from the divine focus that is available to us. These two ways of encountering the world are on the continuum and most people live in both realities-the choice that I hear from Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above is: where do you/I stand on this continuum, which direction are we headed towards? This is the question being put before us each day; upon waking up and saying the prayer of gratitude that we are alive do We the People ‘see’ the divine focus needed for this day, ‘see’ the responsibility we get to fulfill this day? If not, are we aware of the choice we are making to stay willfully blind to what truly is, to be ignorant of the ways we are degrading another human being(s)?
Of course, We the People have all the ready-made excuses for not living in “divine focus”, ‘we have to make a living’, ‘there are no more prophets’ , ‘the Rabbi/Priest/Minister is supposed to do this for me’, and other such bullshit. “Life is hard and then you die”, the fatalistic viewpoint gives us another excuse, the denial of God because of the ways religion has bastardized God’s teachings, because of all the wars fought ‘in God’s Name’, and other reasons people have left their religion is another reason/excuse for people not living in divine focus-although they will tell you they are moral people, they are good people and, while this may be true, they forget where the scales of morality and goodness come from: The Bible! So, even the people who proclaim God is dead, who say God is a man-made invention, and act in accordance with justice, love, truth, kindness and mercy are exercising their “divine focus”!
That the ‘un-christian christian nationalists’, the ‘un-orthodox orthodox jews’, the anti-islam muslims’ all proclaim their allegiance and descent from the prophets is, to me, the greatest bastardization of “divine focus” the world has seen for at least 100 years! What is happening now in America, in Israel is not democracy, is not justice, is not truth, is not moral, is not goodness, is not kind, is not merciful, is not loving-it is the opposite of these ‘divine principles’. We the People are being called by the words above to stand up and reclaim our “divine focus”! We the People need to get “a new pair of glasses” as Chuck C writes about people in recovery, and ‘see’ what God is ‘thinking’, ‘see’ what God is ‘calling us to do’, ‘see’ the divine truth in front of our faces and take the next right action to fulfill God’s ‘desire’ for the betterment of humanity and of ourselves.
Every time We the People live in and act from our “divine focus”, We experience a joy that is beyond the beyond. We have the experience of connection to the divine, to something greater than ourselves and to the soul of another human being, to the souls of all human beings. It is an exhilarating experience that feeds upon itself and is so overwhelming, such a ‘high’ that We become ‘addicted’ to seeking more of these experiences. I know this to be true because this is the story of my recovery, it is the story of how joyful my life is and has been. There was/is a person who would fight with me because when asked how I was/am I said/say GREAT! “How can you be great all the time”, she asked and I responded that living in recovery, living in line with “divine focus”, living the best I can each day is so overwhelmingly exquisite, how can I be anything other than GREAT?
Living in “divine focus” does not bring about happiness all the time and it does help me live in joy. That I can feel sad, that I can experience the ups and downs of living in the world, that I no longer deny what is true and real, that I stand up and speak out for the sake of God, for the sake of the stranger, the poor, etc doesn’t make me happy-it gives me the knowing I am living my purpose and this is the purest form of joy I experience. That another(s) put me down, want to silence me, use my foibles against me is of no matter because I get to live into the “divine focus” I have been gifted with. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark