Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 5 Day 33
“Israel was taught how to accost Him who is beyond the mystery. Beyond the mind is the mystery, but beyond the mystery is mercy. Out of the darkness comes a voice disclosing that the ultimate mystery is not an enigma but the God of mercy; that the Creator of all is teh “Father in Heaven.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 92)
We the People have lost our ability “to accost Him who is beyond mystery” because we have to solve any and every mystery. In our hubris, we the people have decided that we are god, no matter how much we pray to Jesus, Allah, Adonai-our actions disprove our words, we the people, or at least a plurality of us cannot conceive that anything is “beyond the mind”, if we only apply ourselves enough! Not only is this hubris, it is STUPID! I have yet to meet a human being who can make the sky turn its myriad of colors, I have yet to meet a human being who can make mountains grow, who can create ex nihlo fruit bearing trees, etc. While one of the new ‘frontiers’ is creating life by cloning, making Robots have human emotions, no one that I have heard of has created a human being ex-nihlo. Sure, it may happen, and it will not be the same!
“but beyond the mystery is mercy” is the issue. No matter how often we the people create something wonderful, meaningful, helpful, there are always those who seek to exploit these creations for their power and wealth, who seek to destroy these creations for the sake of cruelty. We are in the throes of these power-hungry, never enough money grubbing, cruelty-loving assholes right now and they have the unmitigating GALL to proclaim they are doing all of this in the NAME OF JESUS, because it is what ADONAI WANTS! And do not refute them with the facts of what Jesus says nor with the 36 times the Torah demands we love the stranger, etc; because they will tell their sycophantic followers, their cult members and we who confront them that ‘you don’t understand what it is REALLY saying’. HOW INFURIATING!!
That Good Christian Men and Women, Good Jewish Men and Women in the Republican Party do not STAND THE FUCK UP and say NO, that they do not DEFEND the TRUTH, DEFEND these wanton attacks on ADONAI, on JESUS is beyond me! That We the People have not thrown these idolators, these despots, these lying BASTARDS out of office is also beyond me. It is beyond me to understand how any of the people who have the power to go “beyond the mind” and “beyond the mystery” and be “mercy”.
I do understand living in the darkness, as anyone and everyone who has had a “dark night of the soul”, a spiritual awakening, a crisis of conscience, an experience with one’s own higher consciousness can also understand. This, however, is the key. All of these sycophants KNOW better, they have done the next right action before, they know of Goldwater telling Nixon to leave, they know of booting Gingrich out of power, they know what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and they ignore the TRUTH! When one ignores the truth, the darkness completely enwraps one. Truth is the light at the end of the tunnel and the refusal to engage in it is the downfall of every society. It is Biblical; both Temples were destroyed, the kingdom of Israel was scattered about by the Assyrians, because we the people in our hubris, in our stupidity, in our ignorance, in our self-importance believed we were ‘safe’, ‘it couldn’t happen here’, etc. WRONG!!
And We the People who are sounding the Alarm, We the People who continue to speak out, We the People who keep protesting and voting against these liars, who are cheering Pope Leo, who are resisting the societal pull to “go along to get along”, who are risking being ostracized because we won’t say ‘Israel is right’, ‘America is right’ no matter what are living the certainty that “out of the darkeness comes a voice disclosing that the ultimate mystery is not an enigma, but the God of mercy”. My constant and consistent ranting and raving about Truth, about the need to STOP THE CRUELTY is because I experience the “God of mercy” every day and I need to spread the truth that this is the “ultimate mystery”!
ACTION STEPS:
1) Write about your experiences when you “accost Him who is beyond the mystery”.
2) Do an inventory of how you stopped yourself from going “beyond your mind” because of the lie that there is nothing you can’t figure out
3) Do an inventory of how you went “beyond the mind” and experienced “the mystery”
4) What have you learned from your “dark night of the soul”, from your spirirtual awakening
5) How has the “God of mercy” changed you and how have you been more merciful in your living
GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark