Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 87
There is a Yiddish saying, “Sh’ver Tzu Zine a Yid”, it is hard to be a Jew. Many people take this saying in different ways, because of anti-semitism, not having a homeland for almost 1900 years, being “strangers in strange lands”, etc. I understand this phrase to remind all people of faith, real faith that it is hard to live into the dictates of our respective faiths, it is hard to be a Jew when so many people have bastardized the faith, the commandments for their own power, their own self-aggrandizement, their own dynastic ambitions. AND, we the people in our smallness, in our desire to ‘fit in’, go along with these autocrats, these ‘religious zealots’, these ‘fine christian nationalists, jewish nationalists, muslim nationalists’ as well as those ‘fine and upstanding despots’ like Putin, Bibi, Xi, Trump, Erdogan, etc. WTF?!?!!
One reason I believe it is hard to be a person of faith is because most people don’t read the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran through the lens of this document is Holy, it is divinely written, it is divinely inspired depending on one’s particular leanings. I fall into the category of divinely inspired, hence I can deal with the incongruences, the contradictory statements, stories and commandments, knowing there are more than two authors and at least two editors. I do KNOW that the Bible is a Holy document, I do know the prophets teach us how to live when we have gone astray, I do know the mitzvot are to help us live well, and I do know that following any of the spiritual paths laid out in the Bible brings me/we to wholeness, to happiness, to freedom, to justice, to mercy, to kindness, to TRUTH. As we say in our prayers when returning the Torah to the Ark, “its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.
The people who claim there is only one way are full of shit-plain and simple. Since there are “70 faces” to the Torah, since the words have multiple meanings depending on conjugation, context, since each of us is unique and understands in our own way, has our own task, there is NO WAY that the Bible, any Holy Document can be a ONE-WAY fits all. It is a One-Size fits all, because there is only 1 Bible, 1 New Testament, 1 Koran and it is up to We the People to discern the message, the path forward, the acts of justice, kindness, love, mercy, compassion, truth that we are being given and confronted with in this moment! What I know for sure is that the loud-mouth deceivers in the Temples, Churches, Mosques who support the cruelty of Trump, the inhumanity of the Ayatollah, the racism of Netanyahu, the lies of Hegseth, are NOT PEOPLE OF FAITH! They are PEOPLE OF THE LIE, as M.Scott Peck wrote about in his book of the same name.
The Bible is replete with liars and they never meet a good end, they do flourish in the moment and their end is never nice. Yet, here, today and for many yesterdays, we the people have rewarded lying with loyalty, with electing them to office, to filling their pockets with money, being deceived by them in joy and glee, and then we experience the CRASH of having “egg on our face” when we see how disloyal these liars are to we the people. This is a truth that bears out throughout history, we the people hate the truth tellers because they say things we don’t want to hear and we revere the bullshitters because they ‘soothe’ us, they ‘do what we want to do and are too afraid to do’, they give us a vicarious thrill in ‘getting away with murder, etc’ and then We the People see crude oil go to over $100/barrel, our grocery bills skyrocket, our everyday living expenses rise because of inflation, and the ORANGE MONKEY in the White House spend our hard-earned taxpayer money to pay out the Jan.6 Rioters, the assholes who broke the law in a myriad of ways and were convicted by a jury of their peers like Paul Vaughn who was convicted of blocking access to an abortion clinic and he ‘loves’ Donald Trump so Todd Blanche paid him a 7 figure settlement for BREAKING THE LAW, for DENYING FREEDOM OF CHOICE to people while proclaiming his FREEDOM TO DECIDE WHAT IS RIGHT FOR ANYONE AND EVERYONE! WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE?!???
I keep hearing the call of the prophets in my ears, in my mind, in my soul and I am OUTRAGED at the mealy-mouthed Democrats and Republicans who KNOW this is wrong, that what is happening is a Threat to our Constitution which they swore to uphold, that the cruelty being foisted upon We the People is being done by “enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC” and Congress, the Supreme Court are “standing idly by the blood of their neighbors”. BULLSHIT, I say to these ‘fine outstanding people of NO-faith’. It is up to We the People to STAND UP like our ancestors did, like the men and women who served and serve in our military, like the prophets of old did, like the Union Soldiers did, like Washington and his bands of merry men did, like John Lewis did. It is time for We the People to get into and make GOOD TROUBLE!
Action Step: What GOOD TROUBLE can you cause today?
God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark