Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 130
NO BLOG TOMORROW
“Zeh HaYom Asah Adonai, Nagila V’Nishmacha Bo.” This is the Day Adonai has made, let us rejoice and be joyous in it, comes from Psalms, 118:24, which describes tonight and tomorrow perfectly. For the past 39 days, I have been writing on preparing for today in my blogs and doing my own preparation as well. I am ready for tonight, I am ready to annul the vows I could not keep, the ones I should not have made, and the ones I will make in the year to come that should not, can not come to fruition. I am ready to “be forgiven as I have said” by Adonai, for these ‘sins’ and for the ones I have yet to realize. Being clean going into Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur doesn’t mean I am pure, it means that everything I know, I am aware of, that is in my conscious mind I either have or are in the process of taking care of my messes and enhancing the good and holy work I do/did.
I am excited to hear the congregation admit the sins of the Ashamnu prayer, I am excited to hear their confessionals, I pray they will take these prayers seriously, they will understand the enormous gift life is and experience the joy of living life as one who loves the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy. One who is not afraid to admit their errors, not afraid to confront injustice, one who is not worried about keeping up with the neighbors nor does things just for optics. These are some of the ways Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur can, and I believe, must impact us-otherwise why go? Going to services, fasting, etc means nothing if one is not ready to be moved to a new spiritual level by them, by the process-in fact, I would say it is a Desecration of God’s Name and one’s own to go and not be moved, to “play the part” and not BE repentant, not BE serious about one’s foibles, one’s errors and the need to rectify, repair them as well as the need to change one’s ways!
While everyone is talking about AI and the dangers of it, people will desecrate God’s Name and their own by showing up, glad-handing everyone, go through the motions, and not be real about anything because facing the truth about oneself, about one’s gifts and vulnerabilities, one’s missing the marks and harms we have brought/wrought is just too much for way too many of We the People and this is the real destruction of humanity. When We the People continue to forget our humanness, our imperfections, our need for one another as covenantal partners, humanity is on the road to destroying itself. Given the current culture, given the shamelessness that is rampant throughout the world, as delineated in a NY Times article this past Wednesday, why worry about AI destroying humankind when We the People seem to rejoice in this action, seem to glad to see another human being(s) suffering, refuse to admit our errors and, in true Goebbels fashion, blame ‘them’ and accuse ‘them’ for the things we are guilty of!
Way too many Jews and non-Jews are rejoicing as if this is the misery they have caused and they rejoice and are glad in it/of it, so acts Jared Kushner, Howard Lutnick, people sitting next to you in Shul tonight and tomorrow, Trump, Vance, Thiel, et al. Kushner is such a selfish prick, Saudi Arabia the country that helped him get started after his first disastrous business failure with real estate in NYC and had to have Qatar bail him out because he was the son-in-law of President Trump, cannot even stand up for them to get them the aid they need in fighting the Houthi’s! What people are you standing idly by as they are being hunted, wounded, imprisoned just because an asshole doesn’t like them, because the masked brown, oops I mean black shirts want to kill them, want to make them suffer in lockups that are unsanitary, etc and deny them the protections of our laws?
Today is the Day Adonai has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it! I will because it forces me to hit the reset button, to deny the lies I have told myself, to open up and lift up my eyes to see the new and ridiculous ways I have engaged in that major disease of self-deception. It is the Day for me to re-covenant with God, it is the day for me to renew connection with authenticity, with my soul, with my intuitive mind, and once again relegate my rational mind to its proper place, a servant. Today is the Day I rejoice in seeing the whole me, seeing and hugging the pure soul and ‘seeing’ the path Adonai has laid out for me this year. It is the Day I get to be totally AT ONE MENT with self, with Adonai and with the people in the community that are willing to open themselves up to truth, to authenticity, to the real. THIS IS THE DAY ADONAI HAS MADE AND I WILL REJOICE IN IT!
God Bless and Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark