Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 84
Each day there is a new assault on truth, on justice, on kindness, on compassion and each day I rebel against watching too much news because I just can’t take it. The level of acceptance of the status quo causes a volcanic reaction within me and I work hard each day to temper myself, to live the Serenity prayer: being grateful for the Grace to take in with Clarity, the things I am powerless over and the things I am not powerless over, the things I cannot change and those I should change, as well as the discernment to know the difference. Part of what makes me so volcanic are words from Habakkuk 1:4 “Therefore the Torah is slacked and justice never goes forth; for the wicked surrounds the righteous, therefore justice is perverted”. These words spoken before the destruction of the 1st Temple, before the Babylonians decimated Jerusalem, captured the Judeans and brought some back to Babylon, are as relevant today as they were then and We the People still refuse to hear them, to understand them to return Torah/the Teachings to their proper place in the hearts, minds and souls of all people and to restore Justice, Righteousness, Truth, Kindness, Compassion as the foundation of our lives, the foundation upon which the USA was built, the foundation of God’s world, of Jesus’ calling out to us, of the antidote to the selfishness, deception, indifference of humanity.
While politicians give us much to work with in terms of faults, in terms of their assault on decency, on being human, etc; it is We the People who are responsible for what is happening here at home and across the globe. Brexit happened because enough of the British people believed the lies of those who wanted power, Bibi is elected over and over because enough of the Israeli people support his racist, egotistical, grifting, megalomaniac vision, Trump was re-elected because enough of the American people would rather have a racist, megalomaniac in the White House who is stealing us blind, who is destroying everything that our democracy has stood for since 1776, and many of those people are still clapping for this evil individual!
The question I keep coming back to is: What is wrong with people that, since the days of “a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph”, when the choice between “Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein” and following the new Pharaoh, going back to Egypt, the land of enslavement; choose the new Pharaoh!! It is not a problem of the mind, it is not a problem of our emotions, though both are big parts of the equation, at issue is our spiritual health, our spiritual maturity.
At the core of choosing Trump, Bibi, Brexit, Putin, etc is the spiritual malady of human beings. This spiritual malady stems from our being “slack”in Torah, being slack in Jesus’ words and deeds! Our slackness allows Justice to be perverted, kindness assaulted, Truth denied, Compassion seen as weakness, hating the stranger so we the people can have an outside enemy to focus on-which the Arab Countries have done for years, using Israel as the bugaboo so their people will not rise up against the tyranny and theft that Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, et al have inflicted upon them. We the People forever have run away, like Jonah, from the call of God, to be A MENSCH! When the stranger becomes someone to be feared instead of loved, when “the one with the gold rules”, when the rich have a different justice system than the rest of us, when retribution becomes a human ‘virtue’, when Truth is discarded in favor of “alternative facts”, when righteousness is seen as stupid, when narcissism, racism, anti-semitism, autocracy, “socialist democrats”, white supremacy, christian nationalism become the ways of the lands, Humanity is in the same type of Spiritual Crisis as before the Flood, before the Destruction of the two Temples, the fall of the Greeks, the Romans, and all of the other Nation-states who have been the powers in the world.
The solution that I believe works best for We the People is the solution I took: I went “back to basics” and rediscovered the soul I was created to be, found the morality I was brought up, and began to live into the Bible and its teachings instead of ignoring them. In these past almost 40 years since my Spiritual Awakening, I continue to grow my immersion in the Bible, my dedication to Justice, my search for Truth, the openness of my heart and soul to have more compassion for another(s), to forgive more easily, to stand against the lies and thefts by another(s), to engage with people on a soul-to-soul level rather than a role-to-role one. IEveryone I see I search for their divine image and if they choose to be slack in Torah, I choose to not engage. I respect their divinity and I don’t join in their desecration, their ignoring of said divinity. I no longer have to prove anything, which I re-learned on Thursday at the Bridge Club when in trying to prove I belong with “the big people”, I STANK IT UP BADLY! I could laugh at myself by Friday though, progress not perfection! Action Step is to see how you are “slack in Torah”, perverting Justice in the way you live.
God Bless and Stop Ghosting God, Self, Rabbi Mark