Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 131
“This is the day Adonai has made and I will rejoice in it” (Psalms 118:24) is the new way I am going to begin my blog. The reason for this is to remind We the People that each day is a miracle- we woke up YAY- each day is pregnant with possibilities to fulfill be human AND the commitment to do a little better this year-each day gives “an open door” to walk through as Rabbi Jules King spoke about yesterday at the services I attended.I was honored by Rabbi King with the opportunity to do a drosh/an explanation of the 13 Attributes of God.
I brought the truth to it, the truth about my hiding, the truth about my sadness/disappointments, the truth about my gratitude, the truth about all of We the People to stop with the whimsy melody of Ashamnu, and be real about our guilt, our betrayals, etc, be in truth about our goodness and greatness. The attributes are not for God’s sake, God doesn’t need our offerings, as the prophets teach, God needs our hearts, our doing of the next right action, our allegiance to one another, our denial of using the term ‘the other’ and replacing it with “another”. The 13 Attributes are for We the People to live into “walking in God’s ways”, to live into a way of living that honors our spiritual beingness, our grave and wondrous responsibility of being a partner in creation, to live in the radical amazement that this day brings. As usual, I had no script written, I just spoke from my being and, as I see over and over again, this touches people much differently than a prepared long sermon. Real begets Real and, God knows We the People need more real in our lives. The phony-baloney bullshit of the MAGA crowd, the socialist democrats has put our freedom in grave jeopardy and it is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to retake our freedoms, renew our democracy, restrain the liars and deceivers, and find ways to argue for the sake of the GOOD, not for the sake of power, wealth, prestige, etc. This is one of the ways of taking the 13 Attributes of God into our beings, the path to walking in 1 of Adonai’s ways.
My Rabbi, teacher, best friend, Rabbi Ed Feinstein calls today, the most important day of the year. He says this because he is calling all Jews to see how Yom Kippur, the 40 days of T’Shuvah, the sound of the Shofar breaking the cement we have erected around our hearts, our souls, our intuitive mind, has CHANGED US. Is today just like Friday. Is today, ‘just another day’? When We the People see and experience this day as a gift, see and experience this day as an invitation to “walk through the open door where God is waiting for us” as Rabbi King taught us yesterday, then the Shamelessness, that is so rampant as an article in Wednesday’s NY Times reported, will no longer be tolerated, will no longer be applauded and cheered, will no longer be allowed to take our Freedoms away, will no longer be able to seek our enslavement and these modern-day Pharaohs will topple, just like Orban did.
What is different within each of us? What has stopped us year after year from being transformed, from being changed, from following the truth that is presented to us on Yom Kippur, on this day “that Adonai has made”? SOCIETAL NORMS and MENTAL CLICHES is the greatest cause of going along to get along. These norms and cliches have allowed for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt wrote and spoke about. It is not some Hitler, Trump, Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, et al that is going to cause their evil to spread, rather it is the clerks like Eichmann, the MAGA crowd, the people pulling the strings to get the non-thinking people riled up and fixated on ‘them, those people’ that will spread and proclaim evil throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein rather than proclaim FREEDOM throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein. Are We the People going to do to stop this proliferation?
This is the reason for this blog, to move however many of We the People I can reach to stop this proliferation of evil, this spreading of lies, this over-seeding of mendacity that is happening in our churches, our mosques, our synagogues, our houses of government, in our national monuments like the Kennedy Center, etc. I am not strong, I don’t have the platform I used to, I don’t even know if anyone reads this AND, as Rabbi Tarfon says: It is not my responsibility to finish the work and I cannot cease to do it. The fire in my belly is roaring today a little more than yesterday and I am grateful!
ACTION STEP:
Write down the way YK changed you and what your plan is
God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark