Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 119
Tomorrow, Rabbi Ed Feinstein and I will be doing our 2nd Melton Learning Session on T’Shuvah, Heschel, Forgiveness-Please join through the Melton Website www.melton.org
Continuing with Slanderous Speech, we the people also have to look at how small it makes us, how little we become in our own eyes when committing this sin against ourselves and how small and little we become in the eyes of another(s) when we aim our Slanderous Speech towards someone else. There is a “conventional notion” that if I can cut you down, I become bigger and we experience this in our politics, in our business’, in our faith communities, in our families and it is a CANCER that continues to eat away at our relationships with one another and our relationship with God. In these waning days of Elul, our spiritual, moral, physical well-being as well as that of the USA, Israel, nations across the globe are dependent on We the People CURING this CANCER! It AIN’T EASY!! From a very young age, we learn to deny our guilt, blame it on someone else, and then get mad when we experience the consequences of our behaviors, just like Adam and Eve! This is how far back this cycle goes and it is WAY PAST TIME for We the People begin to cure this Cancer of Slanderous Speech, this Cancer of believing to get ahead, I have to make someone else bad; to win the race, I have to attack my opponent and make them my enemy; to be #1 in the family, I have to be in competition with my siblings; etc.
This behavior is on full display both here and in Israel, in living technicolor as they say. Trump, Vance, Hegseth, et al are constantly speaking ill of their ‘enemies’, aka anyone seeking the TRUTH. Netanyahu is speaking ill of the Reservists, the Supreme Court, his opposition-both of these autocrats and their cronies wanting complete control, complete freedom to break any law they want, to make as much as possible off their being in office, and will go to any and all lengths to engage in Slanderous Speech-I can just picture Netanyahu going to Temple and asking God for forgiveness when he has no thought of changing his ways! YIKES
This phenomenon is so prevalent throughout history, one would think that We the Jewish People repeating the sin of Slanderous Speech so many times on Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur both silently and out loud, would LEARN and We the Jewish People in keeping with the ways of our ancestors rather than the lessons of the prophets continue to engage in slanderous speech to our detriment, to the detriment of another(s), and to spit in God’s ‘face’! WTF PEOPLE???!!! “When will we ever learn” as Pete Seeger keeps asking! The Second Temple was destroyed, according to Rabbinic Lore, because of senseless hatred, because of Slanderous Speech and We the People continue to engage in same thinking the results will be different? Talk about Einstein’s definition of Insanity!! While it is true that Gossip is a “delicious pleasure” as Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man described it in a class back in 1989, it is also true that it causes great harm to the three people involved; the person the gossip is about, the person hearing the gossip, and the person speaking it. We the People seem to forget the harm Slanderous Speech, gossip does to our souls, to our inner life, to our intuitive minds-it numbs us out and gives more and more power to the rational mind which may seem logical and is going to kill us with it’s ‘logic’. What is logical, what is holy, what is healthy is “love your neighbor as your self”, what is smart and covenantal is “remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt”, what is crucial is “don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbors”.
To begin to change, We the People have to make a decision to let go of this type of “stinking thinking” as we say in AA, and return to our primordial state of being-connection to God, connection to one another, realizing our deep need for one another. A baby cannot survive without help, a child cannot learn without help, a teen cannot rebel without help, an adult cannot get a job without someone having a company or filling a need themselves with their own company. No one is a Self-Made Man, Bill Gates needed people to buy into, literally and figuratively, to the idea of Word and We the People did, making him a rich man and helping ourselves to a way of communicating that has survived the test of time. Every one of our heroes in the Bible needed help, it did no good to engage in Slanderous Speech-look what it did to Esau and Jacob, to Jacob and Isaac, to Rebecca who is never heard about again in the Bible!
This is the time and right here is the place to look at the ways we engage in Slanderous Speech-I have done a very good job this year of not doing this, I have allowed people to say what they will, I have not needed to slander anyone-I have allowed them to slander themselves, and I have not been hurt by anyone’s slanderous speech about me-the damage was already done and I am in acceptance of what is, the hurts don’t go away, they just wear away and become less and less a part of my being.
ACTION STEP:
Make a list of the people whom you have spoken slanderously about and prepare to make your amends
God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark