Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 328
“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these”(Isa. 40:26). There is a higher form of seeing. We must learn how to lift up our eyes on high in order to see that the world is more a question than an answer… The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 63)
The words I have bolded above cannot be re-iterated enough! “Learn to lift up our eyes on high” is crucial if we are to have a society built upon justice, mercy, kindness, love, truth, compassion, etc. It is not “an impossible dream” as some say and many others believe, it is an achievable goal, or at least we can take the baton from our ancestors who began the journey of learning “how to lift up our eyes” and move further down the road to “see” as Abraham is commanded, as we are commanded, as Isaiah is pleading with us to do. There are certain phrases which keep coming up again and again in my mind and one of them is Einstein’s “the intuitive mind is a gift and the rational mind a servant, we have forgotten the gift and worship the servant.” We the People cannot “learn how to lift up our eyes on high in order to see that the world is more a question than an answer” without our “intuitive mind”. It is just impossible and too many of us are trying to do just that, or even more scary, too many of us are either attempting to deny the statement/truth above, abuse it and use the world as “their oyster” and/or are indifferent to the evil being perpetrated by those in power who only worship power, who worship the “rational mind” that can and does figure out how to gain and retain power using cruelty, mendacity as their main tools. HOW CAN We the People BE INDIFFERENT TO THIS IDOICY, THIS INSANITY, THIS MENDACITY??
As one can see, I am passionate about this because I know where we are headed, I know the horrific road we have traveled down so far with the current world leadership of Trump, Putin, paper tigers who are really bullies and liars, using the tools of the authoritarians of old, reminding us of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia under Hitler and Stalin of the 20th Century. Here in the United States, we see the rise of the worst of the underbelly of the Revolutionary Period-white supremacy. The current administrations ICE ‘soldiers’ are not any different that the white ‘law-abiding citizens’ who hung black people from trees, who banned Billie Holiday from singing “Strange Fruit”, who killed Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in Mississippi and the limp-dick Republicans in Congress are just going along with the tide of evil that they are sword to stop! These ‘good christian folk’ betray their oath to Jesus, to the Constitution, to their own constituents to kiss Trump’s ass for ??? It is way past time for we the people to rise above the smallness we have adopted and adapted to and stand up as The People who are Partners with God in advancing creation!
We the People do this by learning the truth about living a decent moral life, we do this by living a life filled with study, with good spiritual counseling, the maturing of our souls and reversing Einstein’s statement. When “we…learn how to lift up our eyes on high”, we see the world from a different perspective, we realize that our view is limited and we need the input of another(s) to see more of the picture, to be able to gain more insight as to the next right action to take, to check ourselves and our action to make sure they are ‘in line with the divine’. Engaging in a spiritual practice, engaging in spiritual, moral, ethical learning leads us to the uncovering of our eyes, it is a cataract surgery for our souls, and then we are able to discover “the question this experience is the answer for” instead of always seeing the experience as a problem to solve. Flipping the script in this way gives We the People the insight, the realization, the question to meet this moment and the next. It is the solution to all of our issues today-finding the right question so we can have a response that is worthy of our partnership with God, that is worthy of our status as human beings, that increases our ability to be human.
“The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God” comes to remind us of our innate ability to see beyond the surface, to go deeper into what truly is and not get caught up with the shiny things, to keep digging into our selves, our souls, our inner life so we can “see” “beyond the grandeur” and, like Moses, meet God “face to face”. We the People have this opportunity every day, all it takes is learning and practicing how to “lift up our eyes on high”, all it takes is to hear and respond to God’s call of “Ayecha, where are you”. All it takes is not an easy task and it is simple, it is a 2% shift from 49% yearning to “see” to 51% learning and willing to “see”, a 2% shift from 51% needing to be right and have the answer to 51% being a student, a learner, person who belongs only to a community of seekers, of nomads, of wanderers searching for truth, decency, justice, mercy, love.
I began making this 2% shift in December of 1986, I knew I was firmly rooted in 51% when I acknowledged my alcoholism, let go of my need to be right, jettisoned my greed and belief in net worth=self worth. Since then, I keep growing in my ability to “see on high” and keep searching for the questions this experience is the answer for, and grow my response to injustice, to disrespect, to mistreatment of people, all peoples, animals, nature because I cannot access God, I cannot access the best of me when I am not engaged in striving to be a better human. I know the importance to my spiritual health that living a congruent life, using my voice, loud as it is, as uncomfortable as it makes people, even those who love me, and not allowing my sight to become clouded like it was before the spiritual cataract surgery God performed on me in that jail cell. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark