Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 329
“In modern society, he who refuses to accept the equation of the real and the physical is considered a mystic. However, since God is not an object of a physical experience, the equation implies the impossibility of His existence. Either God is but a word not designating anything real or He is at least as real as the man I see in front of me.”
WOW, sitting here reading these words send shivers down my spine. As I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, I realize the lunacy of our dependence on “proof” for everything and our dependence upon finding a reason whether true or not for every thing that happens. “There must be a reason” is a phrase often used and usually meant to ask/tell another person of their errors when something “doesn’t come out right”, just as Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, et al. While looking at our actions is important and good, being judgmental that something “didn't work out” may not be. Because things “don’t go my way” doesn’t mean that they are not working out. In fact, one of my favorite sayings and deep beliefs is “everything works” because the ‘result’ will teach us something, will help us grow our spiritual, emotional, educational selves, and will show us a path that we may never have considered!
Equating “real” with “physical” is one of the grave errors of humanity. I am not a “mystic”, you are not a “mystic” because we know that not everything that is real can be felt, touched, smelled, in the physical world. Or, maybe we haven’t given ourselves enough credit for our mysticism! It is a trap, however, to equate these two terms and we see the danger in this right here, right now. Is someone who has been paying taxes, living a decent life, raising good children who serve in our Armed Forces, for over 20 years really “an illegal alien”? That they don’t have the “physical” papers to show they came here legally, that they have lived somewhat under the radars, does this mean they are not really committed to the United States of America, does this mean their children who are serving in the Army, etc are not proud to be in America? I think not!
We have become so out of touch with what is “real” we have allowed the ‘physical’ lies of Trump to be considered “real” because he shows us “physical” proof. Proof that has been doctored, proof that has be redacted all to hell or not given, like the Epstein Files. Because we have become so dependent upon proof, we have proven ourselves to be unable to discern truth from fiction, believing the bullshit provided by the liars, the grifters, the Mike Johnson’s who don’t know about anything, according to his statements, because they know how to doctor a document, know how to “sell ice to the Eskimos”, know how to make murder in the Caribbean look like a patriotic duty! This is the dangerous place we the people find ourselves in and, without God, without looking in the mirror, seeing the divine image being reflected back to us, without knowing the truth of the Bible, the truth of the New Testament, this is where we find ourselves!
In the beginning of this blog, I spoke about proof, seeking a reason, things working out and the situation We the People are living in is “working out”! Not for the thugs of ICE, not for the Liars like Noem, not for the meanness of a Stephen Miller, who’s grandparents are survivors of the Holocaust, not for the profit of Donald Trump, even though all of these ‘results’ are happening. What is ‘working out’ is the uprising of We the People taking place across the land, the protests, the admittance of the depravity of the apartheid being pursued by the Government, the despicable use of Christ’s Name to do the work of the Anti-Christ, the desecration of God’s Name by the Jews purporting they are doing God’s work by hating, killing, supporting the segregation of ‘those people’! For the Jew in the Pew, there is a lot of awakening that this bullshit is not ‘good for the Jews’, for the Christian in the Pew, there is a lot of people waking up to the truth of Christ’s words and the defamation of Christ’s name, words, actions, by these ‘fine christian white supremacists’.
The challenge in front of us today and every day is: “Either God is word not designating anything real or He is at least as real as the man I see in front of me”what say you to this challenge of Rabbi Heschel’s? It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to come to the rescue of God’s Name, God’s Truth, God’s ethereal beingness. We the People are being called to stand up for what we believe in with our actions, our words, and by being witness’ to the power of God, to the realness of God, to the truth of God. The question I pose to all of us this morning: ARE YOU COMING TO RESCUE THE TRUTH OF GOD TODAY?
I know the “real” of God and I do my best to show this reality in my daily doings, how I live my life, how I speak truth to power, how I put my self out to show people a different way, how I continue to show up for people without needing their reciprocity. I show up because I know “THE CALL” when I hear it and the call that I show up for/to is “THE CALL” from the Ineffable One, the call from the universe and I have no way to live with myself if/when I ignore “THE CALL”. This has been the truth for longer than I realized. Even in my addicted, criminal time, I showed up for “THE CALL”. That I didn’t equate hearing THE CALL with changing my lifestyle is a mystery to me and, I know, because I could hear “THE CALL” in my ‘other life’, the knowing of “THE CALL” in that jail cell in Van Nuys, CA. in December of 1986 so “real”. God is as real as the man in the glass, the “man in I see in front of me” and responding to “THE CALL” makes my life richer and more meaningful each and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark