Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 145
“This is the day Adonai has made, I will rejoice in it” seems to be a ridiculous mantra in times like these, just as in all times when the darker forces of human nature are in power and flexing their might and their cruelty. Yet, it is precisely for these moments this mantra is so important. Harriet is reading a book about Anthony Ray Hinton, a black man who was on Death Row in Alabama for 30 years, innocent of course, and the darkness of racial prejudice is so overwhelming as she is recounting to me. The man’s mother told him God would free him and she kept the faith all of her life, the prosecutor told him he would be found guilty because he was black and the prosecutor, the judge and the jury were all white, guilt or innocence did not matter! Bryan Stevenson spent 10 years working on getting him exonerated and went all the way to the Supreme Court to make it happen and he did! The prosecutor was so blinded by his racism that when he was contacted by the wrongly accused man for information for his appeal, he said: “if you get out, I will meet you at the gate with a .38”. How else could Anthony Ray Hinton, a poor black man, keep his hopes alive, keep his will strong enough to endure the horrors of death row in an Alabama prison except by using this mantra, his faith, his mother’s faith and the faith of Bryan Stevenson?
“This is the day Adonai has made and I will rejoice in it” forces We the People who seriously immerse ourselves in this truth to see the everyday miracle, the “everyday holiness” that surrounds us. It is the pathway to re-experience Jacob’s ladder dream: see the angels going up and coming down, realizing the angels I need are right here next to me, in front of me, behind me, alongside of me. The issue is not “where is God?” The issue is when will we the people take the blinders off of our eyes, when will we the people take the cotton out of our ears? The more I engage with this verse, the more I realize how all encompassing it is, how it sets the tone of life when We the People live into it and this is is the most miraculous thing of all, to me.
I have been a student of history, of math, of politics since I can remember. My father, z”l, use to teach us math at the dinner table- he was truly a math genius who should have used the GI Bill to go to college- he would quiz us on multiplying 3 numbers by 3 numbers, he would discuss the day’s current events, he would howl at the injustices he saw all around, he would laugh at the idiocy of some people and he taught us to see every individual as just that, an individual. Way before Martin Luther King issued his prayer for people being judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, my father taught his sons this way of being. The fact that we the people have fallen back into the darkest of Jim Crow days in such subtle ways is infuriating, it is a Desecration of God’s Name, it is a Complete Refutation of Jesus’ words and Ways, it is the anathema of what it means to honor this day, to honor God, to rejoice in and with God’s Will.
The people who put Anthony Ray Hinton away for 30 years, who are architects of a system that knows 20% of their death row inmates are innocent and they will lock them up, kill them anyway-as Antonio Scalia said at a conference I attended: “they had due process, innocence has nothing to do with the law”! These ‘fine christian, jewish, muslim men’ who engage in this type of thinking and being are the exact idolators, false prophets, We the People are warned about over and over. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was asked why he kept going to the myriad of marches he did and his response was; how can I not go? Rev King was called a rabble rouser, a riot starter, all of the bullshit because the powers that be- ‘those fine white christian, jewish, and muslim men’, could not nor would not face the truth of their actions, face their spitting in the ‘face’ of God, rejoicing in their cruelty, not “the day God has made”.
This is the challenge that I faced in a jail cell in December of 1986, do I want to keep living in the cruelty that my actions caused to the people around me, to people I did not know or am I willing to live in “the day Adonai has made”? I have responded YES to the latter ever since and, in my own unique, imperfect ways I have continued to climb Jacob’s ladder to be an angel for another and rejoiced in and with all of the people who have been and are my angels. “I will rejoice in it” gives me the strength and the courage to BE ME, and grow in all areas of living and loving.
ACTION STEP: How are you rejoicing in Adonai’s day rather than the one you make for to satisfy your selfishness, your desires?
God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark