Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 47
I have been engaged in conversations with Harriet and many people about the dramatic shifts of the pendulum and how, we the people, are not allowing the pendulum to settle down in some sort of middle. When it slows down to find common ground, when it is starting to give us the both/and, when the cognitive disonance that is part and parcel of being human begins to take shape and hold; one extreme or another pushes the pendulum to “their view” rather than what is good for We the People, what is good for God. All of these ‘good people’ who are behind these political, social, religious extremes are not ‘true believers’ rather they are rank opportunists, like the leaders of the MAGA movement, the leaders of the “squad”, like Doug Wilson who misquotes Jesus, take Paul’s teachings out of context and feed this bullshit to his boy Pete Hegseth, etc. The real “extreme” is, as Father Greg Boyle says: “erase the margins”-seeing every human being as a child of God and to practice “radical kinship”-knowing we are connected one to another and all of these false ‘differences’ are nothing but distractions and deceptions to gain and hold power, money, and prestige! Hosea in Chapter 10:13 has already taught us what we are doing is ridiculously stupid and we cannot hide from the truth that “you have plowed wickedness; you have reaped iniquity; you have eaten the fruits of lies; because you have trusted in your way, in the multitude of your mighty men”. If this doesn’t describe both our current situation and the struggle of humanity, I don’t know what does.
Yet, because we the people show such disdain for Biblical Wisdom, we fail to learn from it, we fail to hear the call to return, we fail to practice “radical kinship”, continuing instead to compete and compare, need to save our face rather than our ass, need to get ‘there’(which there is no there) fast and stay as distracted as possible by gadgets, by thoughts on a loop, by planning our escape, our revenge, our next ‘score’. Because we the people have made a decision to serve our rational minds, keep our “earthly inclination” as the arbiter of our actions, it is impossible for us to learn, it is anathema to think about T’Shuvah, to making amends, to turning back to be the soul we are created to be, to see beyond our own self-centeredness and give a shit about the world, about another human being, just because they are fellow travelers on this earth. HOW FUCKING SAD!
Elon Musk became a trillionaire on Friday-whoopee do! He will continue to think he is the smartest person in the room when he is nothing but a GREAT ConMan-someone who built two companies, Tesla and SpaceX on the back of We the People, our government has financed him through his trials and errors and Trump has not gotten anything back from him for We the People, instead he used his money to get elected, used his money to lie to so many Americans and they both used one another to kill funding for humanitarian needs, to kill people’s jobs so the poor would increase, to be as cruel as possible-just like a ‘good Afrikaner’ would treat Black People in South Africa. When we the people hail him for his genius, we are forgetting his grift, his con, his hatred of anyone not white male like him, etc. This is a classic way we the people have “trusted…in the multitude of your mighty men”, just like electing Trump to “be your retribution”. How has “trusted in your way” worked out for you-not so good for the rest of us!!
Be it Doug Wilson, Ben G’Vir, any of the Rabbis, Priests, Imams, Ministers who continue to rant and rave about their particular soap box, they all “plowed wickedness”, “reaped iniquity”, fed we the people “the fruits of lies” and, like stupid ass guppies, we the people have eaten the lies up, allowed ourselves to be yoked together as beasts of burden to help the ‘multitude of men” to plow our fields for their gain, then gathered in the crops so they could reap the ill-gotten gains-Anyone see the lunacy of this and We the People are continuing to do it!
There is a solution and one of them is found in Hosea 10:12; “for it is time to seek Adonai, till Adonai comes to rain righteousness upon you”. We the People are capable of return and repentance. Our solutions to bring an end to our “plowing wickedness, reaping iniquity, eating the fruits of lies” are found in the Bible, and it all begins with TRUTH, with a real investigation into our actions, reactions, responses and learning how to manage our “earthly inclination” with our “divine inclination”, manage our rational mind with our intuitive mind, make a decision to live in the ways of holiness, godliness, decency, kindness, justice, mercy. This is the ‘secret’ to my success-hearing God, listening to what I know is right and seeking the wisdom of spiritual counselors rather than “the multitude of your mighty men”
ACTION STEP
Make a list each day of how you practice “radical kinship” and erased margins and the ways you plow wickedness enjoy the iniquity you reap.
GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD,GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi Mark