Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 76
I am still fascinated with the selection of Jonah as the prophet to read on Yom Kippur, the day of At-One-Ment, the day of Return, Repentance, New Response. At the end of Chapter 3 of Jonah, verse 10; God sees the seriousness of the people of Nineveh, “that they turned from their evil ways and God was comforted” by their commitment to turn away from evil and the decree was annulled. Imagine this, We the People have the power, the chutzpah, the ability to change God’s decrees, to change God’s mind, to “comfort” God. This is our part of the relationship, it is not a one-sided relationship, nor is it a top/down relationship. In this way, as we say when we put on T’fiillin, “I will betroth you to Me forever, I will betroth you to Me with righteousness, justice, kindness, and mercy. I will betroth you to Me with fidelity and you will know Adonai” becomes the foundation of our relationship with God and with one another. On Yom Kippur, this is what is happening, we are recommitting to our relationship with God, with our community, with our authenticity and every time we do this, God is welcoming us back, God is working hard to heal our backsliding, God takes us back in and with love and we the people keep forgetting that we are “betrothed with fidelity”!
This may be the thinking of the Rabbis who included this prophet in the Yom Kippur liturgy. It is in the afternoon service, just before the “closing of the gates” so as we experience being forgiven from Kol Nidre’s declaration “I have forgiven as you have spoken”, let we the people not think we got off easy! Rather, as the People of Nineveh, that evil city, did, so too must We the People repent, reconnect, “turn away from” our “evil ways”. Hence our need to search for the ways in which we have rejected and played the harlot to our “fidelity” to God, in our misuse of justice, rejecting kindness, poopooing mercy, and holding cruelty, hatred, retribution, graft as the ways of righteousness. In other words, on Yom Kippur the reading of Jonah is a call to take another look inside of ourselves, to dig deep enough to ensure the ways of the MAGA’s, the ways of the “Socialist Democrats”, the “progressives” are no longer holding us hostage.
The relationship that began with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, MalkiTzedek, Jethro, Moses, the People who left Egypt and became the Israelites who stood at Sinai and proclaimed “We will do and then we will understand”, is on life support and not doing so well both here in the United States and in Israel. The commitment being made daily and weekly both in Church and in Synagogue, are lies we the people say to assuage our guilt, to sound good, to keep the rest of we the people in the ether of the bullshit being spread! Rather than hear the call of God, of Jesus, these ‘leaders’ and their ‘fine christian nationalist, jewish nationalist, progressive, and/or socialist’ followers could care less about the call and only hear the lies and deceptions they are being fed and the ones that are embedded in their minds. These people are no more committed to “fidelity” with God, with truth, with righteousness, with justice, with kindness, with mercy than Trump, Vance, Lutnick, Kushner, et al are committed to telling the truth! That Kushner and Lutnick, two Jews who wear their ‘judaism’ on their sleeves would reject the ways of God, would live into the ways of Nineveh before Jonah/God called out to them is a GREAT DESECRATION OF GOD’S NAME, it is IDOLATRY! Yet, people like them, like Bibi, like Ben G’Vir, are called ‘righteous jews’ while they betroth themselves to lies, to power, to wealth-not to Justice, Righteousness, Mercy, Kindness, Truth, God!
It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to stand up to the Charlatans guarding the gates, the thieves who are in the safes and the bank accounts, the liars who swear FALSE OATHS to the Constitution, to the Declaration of Independence, to the Bible, to the New Testament, to the words and deeds of Christ, the Prophets, King David! It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to do what I did some 38 years ago, THROW OFF THE YOKE OF DECEPTION, “TURN FROM THE EVIL WAYS” I had been living in and allow GOD to TAKE ME BACK and for me to BETROTH MYSELF TO GOD, once again. The power of the words found in the Book of Jonah 3:10, are that We the People can go home again, We the People can repair the damage we have caused to our relationship with God, We the People have to be open to and for repair of relationships we have damaged and to the people who have damaged our relationship with them. This is the power and the responsibility of being like the People of Nineveh after God, through Jonah, woke them up. I was woken up in a jail cell and have stayed awake for these past almost 40 years, certainly not perfectly, I have had a cat nap or two:) and I keep going back on Yom Kippur and seeing the brightness of my soul, recommitting to my fidelity to God, to my authentic self and to you, my community!
ACTION STEP
See the destructions, you have caused and prepare to repair them
GOD BLESS, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark