Ghosting God, Ghosting Selt
Good morning! This is the first day of my newest Blog: Ghosting God, Ghosting Self. I am going to be putting this blog along with my other writing together, with the amazing aid of my writing coach, Gay Walley, in a book later this year. The themes will vary from day to day, the throughline is: recovering our prophetic voice and taking the actions this voice nags at us to do.
The term “ghosting” is used when there seems to have been a relationship and then all of sudden one of the parties to the relationship goes ‘dark’ and is incommunicato, unable to be reached. I believe this is what is happening in our world right now and, while this is not a new phenomena, it seems to be on steroids, destroying faith in everything, especially in TRUTH. When there is no TRUTH, God cannot be present because, as we Jews say: “God is Truth”, “God is Everything” and when the glory of God is used to validate greed, avarice, capriciousness, mendacity, warmongering, etc then God is being ghosted!
Human beings are “just below the angels” and as such, We the People, in order to “form a more perfect union” with the world, with one another, with one’s self and with God have to come out of hiding, we have to tear down the curtain and stop trying to be the Wizard of Oz, stop following “the great and grand wizard”, stop defrauding ourselves and those around us. When we the people don’t engage to “form a more perfect union” we are ghosting ourselves.
I am overwhelmed with righteous indignation, which many people classify as personal anger, ego-driven because I don’t have a bully pulpit anymore. The difference is my indignation is directed at the people who are purporting to be ‘religious’, ‘holy’, and are, in fact, liars, charlatans, idolators, practitioners of mendacity. This is not personal!
OOPS, that may not be true. As a person of faith, as a Jew who wrestles with God, who ‘corrects’ God when immorality creeps into the Biblical dictates, who follows Rabbi Harold Shulweis’ dictate that we have a duty to obey as well as a duty to disobey, when ASSHOLES, like JD Vance, Paula Cain-White, Ben-G’Vir, Smotrich, Netanyahu bastardize the Bible, take the name of God in vain, make false idols of themselves, Trump, money, power, I do take it personally. I realize in this moment, the reason why!! Becase I have been redeemed by God, because the prophets words and actions ring so loudly in my ears, in my soul, because the Jewish world seems to have become mute vis a vis Israel’s foibles, because the Jewish world has lost the essence of what “Am Yisrael” means and is in the spiritual realm, I take this assault on God, on Faith, on Truth, on Holiness, on the Pope, very personally. An assault on any faith, on truth, on the holiness of the human being, is an assault on ALL OF US!
Not only are there False Images of God being purpertrated upon the masses by those ‘good christian LIARS’, these bastards continue to use the Name of God in vain. When Trump, Vance, et al lecture the Pope on Christian Doctrine and the entire Republican Party does not stand up and say ENOUGH, the conspiracy to use the Name of God in vain is vast and wide. When the prosperity gospels are promoted as ‘coming from Christ’ and Christ spoke about the “money-changers” in the Temple, about loving the stranger, caring for the poor and needy, everything coming from the Bible, we the people have to RISE UP from our Self-Deception, we have to WAKE UP from our desire to be in “the in crowd”, we have to LET GO of our need for certainty, power, greed and STAND WITH GOD, not with the False Images, not with taking the Name of God in Vain, etc.
I have been fighting this fight all my life, for about 20 years, I lost more often than ‘won’, this is my period of alcoholism, of criminality, of rebellion against “the societal norms”. It was not the proper rebellion, it was the wrong way to rebel, it was how I ghosted both God and my authentic self, my family and my friends. There were times when I was present, I did the next right thing, I fought the ‘good fight’, I just wasn’t consistent, I allowed my own greed, grief, anger to override what I knew to be right. These past 39+ years have been spent becoming more and more consistent in doing the next right action, in not hiding, in not Ghosting God nor my Self. This is the goal of this blog, to help you do the same-come out, come out wherever you are!
ACTION STEPS:
Make a list of the ways you decieved your self today
Make a list of the ways you bought into the deception of another
Go over both lists and discern the reasons you went against what you know in your guts, in your soul to allow these deceptions to run you
Begin/continue a spiritual practice of T’Shuvah: inventory, repair the damages you have wrought, enhance the goodness you have brought
GOD BLESS and STOP GHOSTING GOD & SELF, Rabbi Mark