Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 51
There is a Memo of Understanding between Iran and the United States, YAY, except neither nation understands the other, neither nation can count on Israel to agree, and how can one make a memo of understanding between untrustworthy people? I am elated that the ‘war’ is over-maybe- and afraid that, besides giving away the store, making a worse deal than Obama made, that Trump is so unpredictable, his ‘advisors’ are so hateful, that this could blow up at any moment. It is truly a both/and experience for me and many others, across the political spectrum. It points to a larger issue, for me, the trustworthiness of We the People. Since the beginning of the Bible, human beings have demonstrated their untrustworthiness to God, to one another and we the people have paid the price by being enslaved, exiled, taken over, and made into scapegoats-think Hitler blaming the Jews, the Southerners blaming the Blacks, the ‘White Man’ blaming the Native Americans, the white christian nationalists blaming LGBTQ+, the Jews, immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, for all the ills of the nation while their ‘leaders’ rape, rob, and pillage the treasury, the government, foreign policy, etc.
Thinking about this, in this moment, I have an insight as to what Adam and Eve saw after “eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil”, they saw their own mortality, their uncertainty, there were answers to questions they would never be able to find, and there is more to a human being than our material selves. Their fear at seeing what truly is caused them to become untrustworthy to God, to one another. Curiousity may have been the reason they disobeyed and they ignored their curious mind once their ‘eyes had been opened’ in favor of their fearful mind; hence they hid, what I believe is the actual sin. Cain couldn’t be trusted to have a conversation with Abel because he was untrustworthy in SO many ways; beginning with him not bring his best when he made an offering to God, he did not bring his best self when dealing with Abel, and this is a theme repeated over and over again throughout the Bible.
We the People have been lying to ourselves and one another forever and it leads to wars, to slavery, to deep unhappiness, to authoritarian governments, to family mistrust, to scaring our children at their most vulnerable moments, ages, to cheating the customer because I can, to not covering the insurance plans a company sells because of some arithmetic, etc. In our dealing, a handshake is no longer to be trusted, a contract is something to break, find the loophole in, etc. This may be a reason that kids like their chatbot therapists better than actual ones-they can trust the chatbot, they believe they can trust AI or so the people behind AI are telling us and people like Musk, Trump, Lutnick would never be untrustworthy, would they? Most distressing is that we the people have come to accept our deception of self and another, our indifference to evil, our politicians are going to accept money from lobbyists and do their bidding rather than serve the people who elected them, our belief that screwing someone else before they screw me is acceptable behavior, that “love your neighbor” has turned into “suspect your neighbor”, that “love the stranger” has turned into imprison the stranger, that care for the needy, the poor, has become fuck the little guy over and over again. We the people are engaging in untrustworthy behaviors across the political, social, economic spectrums without regard to the ways of God, the words of Jesus… WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE?
Hosea 14:2 has part one of the solution to our untrusteworthiness: “Return Israel to Adonai your God, even though you have stumbled in your iniquity” Return is the first step in our recovery from being untrustworthy, our first step in our recovering our inner life, our essence, our authenticity. It means we have to first admit that we strayed, that we were/are in error, that our untrustworthiness has permeated every area of living. Most of we the people don’t have the ego strength to do this, there is plenty of egotism surrounding us and the people who suffer from egocentrism do not have the Ego Strength to be real, to be trustworthy. The only way back, I found, is to return to God first, returning to my spiritual essence gave me the impetus to continue the journey to finding my authentic self, my purpose. I have gone from really untrustworthy to very trustworthy and it started with my “return to Adonai”, with letting go of the lies, the deceptions, the suspicions, and being open and making deals that might not work and keeping my end of the bargain up to the best of my ability-faltering sometimes and making amends for the missing the marks.
ACTION STEP:
Make an inventory of the times/areas where you are untrustworthy
Make an inventory of the times/areas where you are trustworthy
What do these times/areas share
How do enhance #2 and repair #1?
GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi Mark