The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day114

“They have turned their backs to Me, not their faces; though I have taught them persistently, they do not give heed or accept rebuke. I will give them a single heart and a single nature to revere Me for all time and it shall be well with them and their children. I will delight in treating them graciously and I will plant them in this land faithfully, with all My heart and soul.”(Jeremiah 32:33,39,41).

In this time of war in Israel, we must pray for the lives of everyone involved and pray that God’s Will, not the greed and power of humans will prevail.

Jeremiah is speaking this from his place in the Palace Prison which King Zedekiah had placed him in for speaking truth and the Word of God. How ironic it is that speaking truth to power, even in a time when people knew and believed in prophets/oracles, was treated with imprisonment, banishment, etc.

The first verse above is Jeremiah, once again, laying out the issues that caused the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem: lack of fidelity to God’s call, God’s word, God’s teachings. I hear Jeremiah calling out to all of us to not confuse our faces and our backs! Rabbi Heschel teaches us that we “wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our faces.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91). This is, I believe, what Jeremiah is also saying. The people have hidden their faces from God, much like today where we make false images of God through misinterpreting God’s words and teachings. We are still unwilling to give heed and/or accept rebuke. To do this would mean we would have to admit our errors and this is anathema to people in power! So, we continue to be in exile from God, not because of God - rather, because of our stubbornness. 

In the next two verses, Jeremiah is giving us the good news. We will return, God has not abandoned us even in our exile. God will not only return us to our land, God will give to the nation “a single heart” to revere God. I am struck by that statement, we each will have to change our narcissistic and egotistic ways to join with another(s) and with God to revere and follow God’s teachings. God is going to give us the power to do this (as God as always done) and we just have to join in. Our challenge is to allow God to do this for us, individually and collectively.

The last verse above says it all for and to me. God’s greatest delight/joy is treating us with grace, kindness and love. Some people call God in the Hebrew Bible an angry God, a mean God, etc. This verse shows God’s true nature-love, compassion and connection. We get to help God fulfill this delight and desire when we allow God to overtake our selfish and stubborn natures, when we join with God in “a single heart” to bring light, joy, grace, compassion, kindness, love and justice to our corner of the world.

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “But the prophet casts a light by which the heart is led into the thinking of the Lord’s mind. God does not delight in unleashing anger. In what, then, does God delight? I will rejoice in them doing good…”(The Prophets pg. 287). Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence is so overwhelming. Through the prophets, we get to be led, if our hearts are open and willing, into the thinking of God! We get to experience a moment of Divine connection and Divine wisdom, we are being taught by God how to be in the world and what we need to do. This is not done in anger or by an ‘angry God’, we get to have this experience because of God’s love for us. Yes, God unleashes anger in our texts; not because God wants to, rather because our stubbornness and our turning our backs to God leaves no other choice. 

In recovery, we seek more and more of the experiences Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. We have much experience in turning our backs to God and our recovery begins/began/grows each time we turn our faces to God. We are so aware of God’s grace, love, kindness, compassion and justice. We live knowing that we have good lives by the grace of God, not because we are so smart. We get to live with and rejoice with God and all of God’s messengers and prophets each and every day; in fact our continued recovery is dependent on doing this. We know, from experience, living without God is deadly for us and anyone we encounter. We rejoice with God in doing good and are grateful for God planting us in our proper places.

I have experienced the spiritual and physical exile Jeremiah is speaking of. I have turned my back to God, even in my recovery. I have done T’Shuvah with God for these times and I know that what I have helped to create and the people I have helped come from the overwhelming time I spend face to face with God. I feel God’s joy, love, kindness, and compassion each morning as I write this and pray my gratitude for another day to live God’s Will. I know that I/we get to receive God’s grace each and every day, yet we don’t always acknowledge it. I know that God has done for me, what I could not do for myself often in my life. I have exiled myself and people have exiled me, yet through it all, God has been with me and planted me in my rightful place. Are you aware of God doing this for you? Hag Sameach, stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 113

Yesterday’s quote was from Chapter 30 of Jeremiah, not Chapter 31 as I noted. 

“Rachel weeping for her children, she refuses to be comforted. And there is hope for your future declares God: Your children shall return to their country. Just as I was watchful over them to uproot and pull down…so I will be watchful over them to build and plant-declares God. See a time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. I will put My Torah in their souls and write it on their hearts.”(Jeremiah 31:15,17,28,31,33)

The imagery Jeremiah gives to us is so sad, compassionate, beautiful and truthful. Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, the one who died in childbirth, never stops caring for her children, both the House of Israel and the House of Judah. In death, Rachel stops competing with her sister, Leah, she is portrayed as mother to all the children. She is inconsolable as long as her children are in exile. This is true for Rachel in Jewish lore and it is true for mothers (and fathers) everywhere throughout the generations. Even God, who exiled the people for their iniquities and sins, weeps for God’s children. In each and every family where exile is necessary, the remaining members, still weep and grieve over the loss of the one who is exiled.

God, however, gives us the message: “there is hope in your future”. Here is the real story of the Jewish People, as a story for all people; we are not stuck in exile, we can (and must) return from exile after we see the errors of our ways, repent and then we can rejoin the family, the tribe, God, the land, etc. We will return, the question that is ours to answer is when we will decide to return to God, decency, etc. We are promised a return to our country which kept the Jewish people hopeful for almost 1900 years of exile. God is “watchful over them to build and plant” which tells me to remember who we answer to, not a political will or whim, we answer to God, who brought us back from exile and gives us the tools, the Torah, to path to build back better.

We do this by accepting God’s gift of a new covenant. We build back better by accepting the Torah that God has placed in our souls and written on our hearts. We accept the Torah by actually living a life that is based in soul knowledge, which is connective, loving, just, truthful, compassionate and kind. We do this by rejecting the devisings of our minds which wants to “get over” “be in power” and play a “zero-sum” game. Life is not a game, according to God and to our history-it is a serious endeavor that God is helping us with by placing Torah into our souls; allowing us to live life from the inside out, to stop worrying about power over others and begin to live in accordance with God’s will not our own. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Prophecy is not God’s only instrument. What prophecy fails to bring about, the new covenant will accomplish: the complete transformation of each individual.”(The Prophets pg 128-129). Reading Rabbi Heschel this morning, with all that is going on in Israel, in the world and in America; I am at a loss to understand what prevents us from accepting this “complete transformation of each individual”? We continue to disregard the teachings that are written “on our hearts” and block them from entering our minds and being. We have locked up our souls and hardened our hearts so we can continue the zero-sum, power over everything, life. Johann Hari, in 2018 wrote about “junk values” and how they are “making us mentally sick…”. This is, in his opinion and the opinion of Tim Kasser, a professor at the University of Illinois, caused by living our lives based on extrinsic motives/values. Living life from intrinsic values, doing something because it is worth doing and the next right thing to do, brings happiness and joy. Rabbi Heschel’s words, along with Jeremiah’s, remind us that we already have the Teachings in our soul and on our heart-when will we activate them? 

In recovery, we needed exile in order to return. We are so aware of our new covenant, we recite it everyday when we wake up and are grateful to be alive, when reach out to another person and ask how can we be helpful rather than what can I get from them. We live the teachings by building our lives under God’s watchful ‘eye’ and getting direction and strength from God to build back better and more joyous. We make the choice to live from our soul’s knowledge rather than our mind’s rationalizations so we can lie down in peace and happiness each evening after reviewing our day, repairing our errors and enhancing our ‘wins’. In recovery, we are dedicated to living life from the inside out-we know the pain of exile, the loneliness of exile and we are not willing to go back to that way of being. 

I have been in exile and I am aware of the part I play in my exile. I have been comforted by God in my own exile by following God’s path back. I have, over these 32+ years, lived from the inside out more and more each day. I know what is written on my heart and I do my very best to make the Torah/Teachings of God, my path and my will. My life is so much better because, even when people exile me, God does not and we, God and me, are connected and carrying on. Each day gives me/us the opportunity to build back better under God’s watchful ‘eye’. I have made the choice to stop depending on extrinsic values for joy and instead rejoice in fulfilling the intrinsic values God has placed in my soul. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 112

“In that day-declares the Lord of Hosts-I will break the yoke from your neck and I will rip off your bonds. Strangers shall no longer make slaves of them, instead they shall serve Adonai, their God. …I did these things to you because your iniquity was so great and your sins so many. But I will bring healing to you and cure you for your wounds declares God.”(Jeremiah 31:8,15,17)

Jeremiah is called on to “write down in a scroll all the words I have spoken to you” and to make sure they are available for when the people are returned to Judah and Jerusalem. The prophet is letting the people know right away that their exile will end and, I believe, this is an eternal promise for all people. Even though we are immigrants and exiles, even though we are wandering from our original land, we will be restored to our proper place both physically, emotionally and spiritually. And we need a record of this promise and our obligations in order for the promise to be fulfilled.

I am understanding the first verse above as the promise of spiritual, emotional and physical freedom. As we saw with the Israelites who left Egypt, physical liberation is the easiest to accomplish, emotional and spiritual slavery is much harder to attain. Yet, God is telling us, through Jeremiah, we will be free to serve God - not our emotions, not someone else and their emotions,-we will be able to serve God and thereby serve true and authentic selves. 

Parts of the yoke have been broken for most of us. There is, of course, the physical yoke of slavery because of caste systems, because of class systems, because of racism/anti-semitism/islamaphobia, etc. What I am focused on today is the spiritual yokes we have put on us. It is because of these spiritual yokes, the imprisonment of our souls, that we have to experience the consequences of “your iniquity was so great and your sins so many”. The greatest sin and iniquity, as I read the prophets, is our inability to return to God and Godly actions. God has been calling us since the Garden of Eden, yet we continue to turn a deaf ear and tell ourselves that we are serving God. This mendacity is an affront to God and puts a yoke/imprisons our spirit. 

Yet, God still wants us! Again, the eternal promise that God will not leave us, God wants us, God needs us and God will save/redeem/rescue us. We see this over and over again in the Bible and in the fact that Jewish Civilization has survived and, in some times thrived. This promise is, I believe, a promise for all people, not just Jews. It is, however, a call to return to God in truth, trust, justice, righteousness, kindness, and compassion. No one can claim to be a person of faith and use God’s words and ways with mendacity and deception. There are many who have over the millennia and still do today, these people are the enslavers that are talked about in the first verse above, and they will meet their undoing because of their iniquity and sin. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches regarding the last verse above: “The prophets proclaimed that he heart of God is on the side of the weaker. God’s special concern is not for the mighty and successful, but for the lowly and downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor…The heart of God goes out to the humble, to the vanquished, to those not cared for.” Oy! When one listens to the charlatans who purport to know Jesus’ words and God’s will by treating the stranger and poor as people who God doesn’t love, treat the downtrodden as people who deserve their fate because God doesn’t love them, herald the rich and powerful as the ones God loves because they are rich and powerful, we see the bastardization of Jeremiah’s words. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out these people for the false prophets and corrupt priests that they are. I pray that they will have their spiritual yokes lifted and/or be put in exile so they stop spreading poisonous lies in God’s name. 

In recovery, we know the exile our iniquity and sins have caused us and our recovery is also a turning back to God/Higher Power/Higher Consciousness/etc. We also are engaged in returning to our spiritual essence and purpose as well as breaking the yoke of physical and emotional enslavement. We are no longer beholden to behaviors and substances which enslave us, we are no longer in need of committing iniquities and sins to “feed our slaveries”. In recovery, we experience God’s grace, kindness, love, through God’s outreach to us, redeeming us, and putting us in our proper places. 

I have been blessed to be one of God’s instruments to help break the physical, emotional and spiritual yokes of exile for many people. I am blessed to have had many people help me break my yokes at different times in my life. I am also aware of the charlatans and the “good people” who are on the “right side” of issues and causes all the while putting yokes on another(s) and committing the same iniquities and sins that our ancestors did. I also am guilty at times of these ways as well and I return because I am unwilling to live in mendacity/self-deception. We all have to keep turning to God as the prophets teach us to imbue ourselves with God, not the god of someone else’s understanding, rather God who calls and cares for you and another(s). We get to serve God, liberate and free ourselves through concern for the poor and the stranger. We get to serve God, liberate and free ourselves through living in truth and letting go of mendacity and self-deception. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 110

“Thus says God…let not the prophets and diviner’s in your midst deceive you…When Babylon’s seventy years are over, I will take note of you and fulfill to you My promise of favor… When you call Me…I will give heed to you. You will search for Me and find Me, if only you seek Me wholeheartedly… and I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.”(Jeremiah 29:8,10,12,13, 14).

Jeremiah sends a letter to the people in exile, the royalty, the priests, and the people who were exiled with them. It is so important to Jeremiah (and to God evidently) that they not buy into the lies of the false prophets and diviners to their own ruin, as is happening in Jerusalem. God and Jeremiah are telling the people that the exile will end, the rule of Babylon will end and the people have to “do their time” until it does. 

What seems to be forgotten by the people who are in a hurry to return to ‘normal’ is that they caused their own destruction through their own actions. They want to pay minimal price for the maximum damage they did to their people, their country, their covenant with God. These lying prophets and diviners are telling the people what they want to hear, not the truth. We see this all the time in business, in politics, in families, in relationships, etc; let me say what they want to hear, get the heat off of me, how do I get to go back to my secret life, etc. 

God, the prophet reminds us, still holds the people in favor, still holds all of humanity in favor-even after being disappointed so badly. God is still waiting for the people (us) to call out to God and God will respond, on a condition. We have to seek God “wholeheartedly”. 

We have to seek God in and with truth. We can no longer phone in our relationship, we can no longer “get over” on God. This means we can no longer be in deception with another(s), we can no longer engage in mendacity with family, friends, in business and personal relationships, we can no longer say words and not follow them up with actions. There is no room for the paths taken before, deceit, mendacity, cruelty, etc. We have to take, as Dr. M. Scott Peck says: “A Road Less Travelled”.

This road of passion, purpose, truth, kindness, justice, righteousness, compassion, etc. leads us back to the place we call home, the place we were exiled from. Just as our actions exiled us, so too can different actions save us and return us to our rightful places. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The prophet is not a mouthpiece, but a person; not an instrument, but a partner, an associate of God. God, we are told, asks not only for “works” for action, but above all for love, awe, fear.” (The Prophets, pg 25). Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to take the words and actions of the prophets seriously, don’t write them off to the ravings a madmen, as the people of the time evidently did. No, these men are partners with God and they are bringing to us the way of living that is compatible with being partners, albeit junior partners, with God. They are reminding us that the actions lead to the love, awe and fear so do them with your whole heart. Immerse all of ourselves in the decent actions we are taking so that these actions will lead us to be a truer version of ourselves each and every day. We get to be, like the prophets, an associate of God-Rabbi Heschel is demanding we live our part in this relationship. 

In Recovery we are constantly seeking God with a whole heart and searching for truth. We pray each day for “knowledge of God’s will and the strength to carry it out”. Our time in exile has taught each of us individually the importance of a real connection with God, a real connection with the people around us, a desperate need to live congruently in all of our affairs. In recovery, we can no longer live ‘a personal life’ separate from a ‘business life’; cheat on taxes or in anything and ‘work an honest program’. We can no longer engage in hiding, lying and subterfuge. We get to live in a manner that is compatible with God’s world and God’s ways. Yes, it is a lot of work to clean up the daily messes we make, acknowledge the good we have done and it is work that is enriching, important and esteem boosting.

As one who has returned from the exile that lying, drinking, stealing, etc brought upon me, I can attest to the Grace of God when I sought God with my whole heart. I have been rewarded beyond my dreams and what I thought possible. I continue this practice each day-knowing that I miss the mark and knowing that God, unlike some humans, doesn’t exile me for mistakes that I take responsibility for. I know so well the desire of people to believe the deception and mendacity of another(s). It is how I survived as a criminal for those 20+ years. I also know the light that shines from two souls who connect from their divine image and how that light reflects throughout the world. I no longer ‘go along to get along’ because that leads me to the mendacity that Jeremiah is speaking of-both the mendacity of the false prophets and the mendacity of those seeking God half-heartedly. I am blessed to be on “the road less travelled” with a multitude of family, friends and seekers. Which road are you walking-truth and connection or mendacity and exile from God? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 110

“But the prophet Hananiah removed the yoke from the neck of the prophet Jeremiah and broke it. Hananiah said in the presence of all the people, thus says God: So will I break the  yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar….in two years. And the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah; Listen Hananiah, God has not sent you and you have made this people trust in a lie.”(Jeremiah 28:10,11,15).

We are faced in this chapter with a war between two prophets, one sent by God and one sent by himself and purporting to speak in God’s name. Since the days of Torah at Sinai, we have been warned by God to be careful not to buy into the lies of false prophets. Yet, we continue to buy into their lies because facing the alternative, truth and heeding true prophets seems too difficult. 

Hananiah, wanting to impress the king and the priests and the powerful not only lied in God’s name, he broke the yoke that God commanded Jeremiah to wear. This is the ultimate in “thou shall not take the name of the Lord, your God in vain”, the third commandment. When we purport to be speaking in God’s name and really are speaking for our benefit, this is taking God’s name in vain. When we tell someone to go against the word of God as God has spoken, in Torah, Bible, personal experience, we are taking God’s name in vain.

Hananiah is trying to build himself up by lowering Jeremiah’s stature and status in the eyes of the people. Hananiah is puffing himself up by using Jeremiah’s ways of prophesy without the power of God behind his ways and his words. After God had declared that Babylon would reign for 70 years, he is saying it will only be 2 years. The decree was made, the purifying time was set and Hananiah was going to change it. 

Jeremiah had been arguing on behalf of mercy for the people with God forever and saw that the people would not do what was necessary; return to God and God’s ways, to bring the grace and mercy that God wanted to give the people. Hananiah broke the yoke on Jeremiah and desecrated God’s Name, not sanctified it. So, Jeremiah had to hold him accountable.

The last verse above is so important. Jeremiah calls out Hananiah’s lies and his betrayal of the people he purports to serve. Jeremiah is not about to do this in public, as Hananiah did, he speaks to him privately and makes him hear truth, whether he admits it or not, we don’t know. We do know that, as Jeremiah tells him in the next verse, Hananiah did not live out the year. He died for spreading false rumors in God’s name. Hananiah’s false prophecy encouraged the people who wanted to fight to the bitter end and destroy the city of Jerusalem, rather than allow it to be ruled by Babylon,  left intact and the people go about their business. Mendacity destroyed the city and the people, I believe. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The certainty of being inspired by God, of speaking in His name, of having been sent by Him to the people is the basic and central fact of the prophet’s consciousness… To use such expressions without being inspired was condemned by the prophets as “a falsehood”, a lie.”(The Prophets pg 426/7). Rabbi Heschel’s words echo Jeremiah’s above. The prophet was so sincere and so devoted to spreading the word of God and when someone would come along and deceive the people it was/is enraging. Yet, false prophets would not keep arising if we, the people, did not want to be deceived by them. Just as the people of Judah and Jerusalem wanted to believe Hananiah and the other false prophets, we too in America and across the globe want to be deceived by the lies of the false prophets of our time. As Pete Seeger asks: “When we ever learn?”

In recovery, we hear the call of God daily because we seek God out daily. We hear God’s direction through the words and guidance of another(s), we have a commitment to stay loyal to God and not to the lies we tell ourselves nor the lies others try to sell us on. In recovery we welcome and proudly wear the yoke of God and we only try to break the yoke of slavery and deception from the shoulders of another(s) when they ask for our help.

I am ashamed at how, prior to my recovery, I was Hananiah-spreading deceit and falseness for my own gain and the ruin of another(s). Studying this today reminds me of those days in a different light-I took the gift God gave me, twisted it and used it for my own sake-I desecrated God’s name in the same way Hananiah did, I was that false prophet and false witness. In my recovery, I am not that person. I may not get it right, I do not, however, give false testimony nor prophesy falsely. I, like Jeremiah and many others have been shunned for my prophesy and trying to save people from their own self-deceptions, my heart hurts at the hostility and abuse I have experienced because people believed the false witness and the false prophet. Yet, I know that while my reactions are not always good, I stay with God, I stay with truth and I stay my course. I am begging everyone to stop following the path of Hananiah-falseness, self-deception and mendacity and follow the path of Jeremiah-truth, God and service. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 109

“The nation or kingdom that does not serve King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon-doesn’t put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will visit, declares God, with sword, famine, and pestilence, until I have destroyed it by his hands. Give no heed to your prophets…who say to you, ‘Do not serve the king of Babylon…I will drive you out and you shall perish. But the nation that puts its neck under the yoke…will be left by me on its own soil to till it and dwell on it, declares God.”(Jeremiah 27:8-11).

Jeremiah is walking around with a yoke on his neck, directed by God, to show the people that having this yoke, while constricting, still allows one to move about and do the bidding of God as well as Nebuchadnezzar. He is telling the people and the other nations, Edom, Tyre, Moab, Ammon, Sidon, to submit to Babylon and live in their lands and the yoke will not last forever. Do not revolt against Babylon’s supremacy, accept it and live with it. 

I find this so interesting. Part of the T’Shuvah God is proposing to the people, for their abandonment of God, is a loss of power to another king. This king is being sent/allowed by God to take over the lands and the people will be able to stay in their homes, till their soil, and live their lives pretty much intact. A tribute will be made to the king of Babylon and, it seems, that is the only difference. Self-rule will be suspended for a period of time, 70 years is Jeremiah’s prophecy. 

God is giving us the gift of servitude to another king so we can see what it is like when we serve a master other than God. God is giving us a softer landing than total destruction and exile, if we choose the yoke. I would argue wearing  the yoke of Babylon is in preparation to accept, again and anew, the Yoke of Heaven, the Yoke of God, the Yoke of Torah. None of these yokes are punishing, they all are aids to help us live well and the yoke of Babylon is the preparatory yoke to teach us how to live well while yoked. If we can till the soil and dwell on the land while yoked to Babylon, how much the more so can we live well when yoked to God? 

And, we have to make the choice not to fight, otherwise our destruction is guaranteed. God, through Jeremiah, is giving the reality of our situation: you can suffer for 70 years under the thumb of a foreign king (as part of your t’shuvah) or you can cause your own destruction by trying to fight against Babylon and God. I liken it to ‘you did the crime of abandoning God, now you have to do the time’-while others say: ‘Its not a crime to abandon God and I will fight this case to the end’. The end is destruction. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Patriots in Judah… were clamoring for revolt, encouraged by …false prophets who announced that exile and the rule of Babylon would soon end. Emissaries from five kingdoms in the area came to Jerusalem to organize the rebellion. At that moment, Jeremiah, at the command of God resorted to a strange and bold act.He harnessed a wooden yoke to his neck with thongs and bars…The acceptance of Babylonian overlordship, unlike the submission to Assyria which Isaiah had called upon the people to reject, did not involve the danger of complete expulsion and national extinction.”(The Prophets pg 135-136).  Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, I believe, of the danger of false prophets, soothsayers, diviners, etc. because they appeal to our desire to be deceived and our desire to believe in our own superiority. Jeremiah, seeing the need for bold action, took it and called out to the assembled leaders to stop their lying ways and return to God, stop trying obstruct God’s plan for you and cause your own destruction. It is so sad that people throw off the Yoke of God for the yoke of mendacity, the yoke of a “strongman” leader, the yoke of authoritarianism, the yoke of hatred, the yoke of fantasy.

In recovery, we are aware of the yoke we were under in our old ways of living. We lived under the yokes of mendacity and victimhood, hatred of self and another(s) and despair and anxiety. Once we decided to accept the Yoke of God, we could breath a sign of relief, we could see a future of light and bright. In recovery, our powerlessness and our reconnection to God enhance our living, not harm it. We get to live in ways we only dreamed of prior to being in recovery. We get to connect with people in authentic and real ways, we drop the pretenses and facades we used to put up and our entire being changes. In recovery, under the Yoke of God, our eyes soften, our hearts open, and our souls receive and give love, direction, kindness, truth and compassion. We have returned from our exile and we are once again living in our proper places and doing the work that God created us to do. Yes, we put ourselves into Exile and God brought us back, so being Yoked to our Redeemer becomes a privilege, not a burden. 

I had rejected God’s offer of exile many times before I accepted the reality that I had to be outside of the camp in order to return. Since December of 1986, I have known that the Yoke of God is the one I have to wear and succumb to each and every day. I get to serve God and I don’t always do it right, my Yoke has many cracks in it and I haven’t taken it off. I love the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel in reminding us to throw off the Yokes of mendacity, ego, etc. This is the challenge I face each and every day. I wear these other yokes for a minute and God reminds me to return to the Yoke of Heaven so I and others can live well. What are you Yoked to? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark 

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 108

“Now, mend your ways and heed the voice of the Lord your God, and God will renounce the punishment he has decreed upon you. As for me, I am in your hands; do to me what seems good and right to you. Know if you put me to death, you will be guilty of shedding innocent blood; for in truth, God has sent me to you to speak all these words to you.”(Jeremiah 26:13-15). 

In the verses prior to those quoted above, Jeremiah warned the people of Judah again about the coming destruction. As he does above, earlier in this chapter he calls on the people to repent and turn back to God. What do the people think, especially those in power? Kill the messenger!! How apropos for people unwilling to take responsibility, acknowledge their imperfections, make amends for their errors and change their ways of living. The rich and powerful of Judah and Jerusalem did not want to look at themselves in anything but a positive light, validating each other’s evil ways as good and right. Sound familiar to anyone today?

The prophet is a one-trick pony, he can only call for the people to change and return to God. He is incapable of staying in his own personal anger for too long, in fact, Jeremiah is angry for God, for the way the people have turned from God, for the pain and sorrow that God experiences when God’s children abandon God. Jeremiah’s devotion to God and the people is so complete, even in the face of impending death and/or imprisonment, he is still concerned with the people trying to kill him! This is the greatness of the Prophet that Rabbi Heschel speaks about in his writings and his teachings. 

Every time we abandon God, we abandon our soul, our spirit, which gives our emotions and our rational reptile brain much too much power over us. We will not die from a lack of knowledge. We wither and die, much before we stop breathing, when we abandon God, our inner knowledge and our connections. Living a false life, living a life of optics and fauxthencity, as Harriet Rossetto calls this type of living, leads us to die inside and fooling ourselves as to how wonderful we are.

Jeremiah is not afraid to die for spreading the word of God. He knows he is innocent of the charges, sort of, made by some people. He is guilty of speaking truth, of frightening the people, of going against the powerful and the people in charge, all for the sake of Heaven and he is willing to die for God’s word and for living his Divine Need out loud. What a hero, what a warrior and what an example for all of us!

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “An essential feature of anger as proclaimed by the prophets is its contingency and nonfinality. It is man who provokes it and it is many who may revoke it… This is the mysterious paradox of Hebrew faith: The All-wise, Almighty may change a word that He proclaims. Man has the power to modify His design. .. The anger of the Lord is instrumental, hypothetical, conditional and subject to His will.”(The Prophets pg 285,6). These words cause a deep trembling within me, when I think about what is happening in the world, in our country and I want to call God’s wrath down on those I disagree with, Rabbi Heschel is saying, in essence, stop calling on God to punish the people, get off your fanny and make the changes yourself - then you/we can avert the decree. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel say ‘we the people can change the decrees we have caused to be made’.  We are not powerless over our environment, over our destiny, we can return to God and begin anew, we are never lost nor abandoned by God, it is our blindness and stubbornness that tells us ‘this is our fate’. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that our fate is in our hands; connection to God and serving God will keep us whole, joyous and part of. 

In recovery we have heard the call of Jeremiah and mended our ways. We have averted worse decrees and punishments that we have already suffered by turning back to God and serving God rather than our selfishness. In recovery we experience a serenity (clarity according to the latin) of what is truly important in life: serving God, serving another(s) and staying connected. We know we are not perfect and we no longer hold ourselves to this false standard. We keep growing along spiritual lines and have responses to situations that used to baffle us. All of these ways of being come from our connection to God, our learning from another(s) who travels this path of recovery with us and a return to truth, decency, kindness, justice and compassion. In recovery, we are less afraid of what others think and less controlled by societal demands and more concerned with how we act and the demands of God. 

My own experience is one of inner knowledge of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above and never articulating it. I believed that people know my heart, my soul, and any actions that seemed over the top, as Jeremiah is describing above, would be seen for what they are/were: hyperbole and drama to get someone to see the errors of their ways, repent, return and have new responses. Most of the time this is/was true-it just isn’t anymore. Rather than hear the prophetic voice in me, the prophetic voice in another(s), people in power (in all areas of life, work, home, government, media, etc) don’t want to hear truth. I have committed the same error at times. We need to hear truth and embrace it so we can live well. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 107

“These 23 years the word of God has come to me. I have spoken to you persistently, but you would not listen. Turn back, everyone, from you evil ways and your wicked acts… But you would not listen to Me, declares God, rather vexed Me with what your hands made, to your own hurt.”(Jeremiah 25:3,5,7). 

Jeremiah is recounting for the people how long he has been speaking to them about their actions against God, against the needy and the poor, against justice, love, kindness, truth, etc. He is reminding all the people they have been warned, cajoled, yelled at, constantly and consistently by him, by God. I am in awe of Jeremiah’s persistence and perseverance to fulfill his mission, knowing that the real goal; getting the people to return to God, to fulfilling the covenant; will not happen and yet he continues. I know it is because he has made God his Employer. 

When God is our employer, we continue with our work no matter what humans throw in our path to stop us. We may not stay in one place, one position, yet we continue to engage in the work that God has called us to do. It is rare for people to stay at the same company for 25+ years anymore, we are a mobile society, and it is our obligation to continue to work for God no matter where we get a paycheck from. This is the message I get from the opening of Jeremiah’s words quoted above. 

Jeremiah is a broken record and the people have stopped listening. He has gone from speaking to the king and the priests to speaking to all the people. “Turn back, every one” is called out to all the people and, still, they cannot/will not listen and take this action. God, through Jeremiah, is continually trying to save the people from the negative consequences of their own behaviors and the people turn a deaf ear. 

God has not stopped calling us home, God has not stopped calling for our return and, like our ancestors, many do not listen and some believe they are above God’s words. These are the people that God is speaking to in the last verse, “you would not listen…to your own hurt.” We humans are willing to go to ruin, rather than listen to the prophets speaking to us today, we are willing to destroy the work of our ancestors rather than treat the poor and needy with dignity and respect. We are engaged in a zero-sum game and call it life. Jeremiah is telling us that this type of thinking is the BIG LIE we are telling ourselves. We have to return to Truth, to God, not pervert all the foundational values of spirituality, of religion, of God to do evil. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Jeremiah has often been called a prophet of wrath. However, it would be more significant to say that Jeremiah lived in an age of wrath. His contemporaries had no understanding of the portent of their times… They did not care for time…To Jeremiah his time was an emergency, one instant away from a cataclysmic event.”(The Prophets pg. 106). How easy it is to swat away the words of Jeremiah and all of the prophets who have spoken to us throughout the ages by saying;  ‘they are just angry men/women’. It is easy to write a person off because they channel the wrath of God, they channel the pain of those to whom justice, kindness, love, truth, compassion and caring is denied over and over again. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to all of us to recognize the time we are in, the times that have been prevalent and constant throughout our history and stand up with Jeremiah, instead of against Jeremiah. Let us all stand up with God and God’s messengers, and take the actions they are calling us to. 

In recovery, we are constantly following Jeremiah’s words to turn back for our negativity and our actions that miss the mark. We are engaged in a daily conversation with God and another(s) to seek out the path that God has laid out for us as an individual and carry the word of God that was given to us. We seek to serve God in all of our affairs, in all of our doings and, when we are in God’s world, being God’s employee, we can sleep well at night, wake refreshed in the morning and excited to communicate with and learn more about God and God’s plan for us, as individuals and as a community. In recovery, we carry a message from God to all the people we encounter and continue to spread the word of God, no matter how it is received by anyone. 

I have been called wrathful and angry. Sometimes I have been-more often I have been angry for God, I see what is happening, I understand the dire consequences awaiting an individual, a family, a community and my words match the calamity of the moment. This is the way God has given me to meet the portent of the times I have been in, it is like screaming when someone is about to fall off the cliff to warn them. Doesn’t work for everyone, I just understand Jeremiah very well. I also needed this morning’s reading to remind me to keep serving my true employer, God. While the community I have served for years has ‘exiled me’, God never has and I have to continue to spread the word of God that I keep being given in new and different places. We all need to take stock of how we are spreading the word of God inside of us without regard to the scorn of another(s). Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets 

Day 106

“…So I will single out for good the Judean exiles whom I have driven out from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will look upon them favorably, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not overthrow them;…I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am God and they shall be my people, I will be their God when they return to me with all their heart.”(Jeremiah 24:5-7).

Jeremiah is giving us hope at a time of great distress. After informing us of our exile, the prophet is also telling us we shall return. This is truly unconditional love by God. Even when we are not loving towards God, even when we want to silence and muffle God’s prophets and messengers, God is still willing to take us back. 

This is the model for all of us, to practice and engage in this unconditional love towards all we meet and even those we do not know and only read about. This love is not without consequences, after all we were exiled. It is a love that is open to and helps make possible the return of a missing human being. 

God never stops looking favorably upon us, even knowing we are doing the wrong thing, committing crimes that are unspeakable, engaging in self-deception and the deception of another(s); God has so much faith in us that we can and will return to God’s ways. Not only faith, Jeremiah says, in the name of God, “I will bring them back… I will build them…”. God is going to do everything possible to bring us back to our proper place in God’s world. While we can take this literally, I believe it is true for each person to know that God has given us a place, a plan and a path to live that is uniquely ours and we get to return to it whenever our heart moves us to. 

God is waiting, as Rabbi Heschel says. And, God is an active partner in our return, as I understand these verses. God is going to build us back up, plant us firmly in our being, remove the foreskin of our hearts so we can know God, again. Isn’t this what all of us want, in our inner being? Connection to something greater than ourselves, a longing to know that we matter, that is not dependent on the whims of fickle people trying to lord power over one another is a shared human experience, I believe.

This all happens when we return to God with all of our heart. What is the purpose of exile? It is to remind us of what is important in life: connection and kindness, truth and love, justice and mercy. We go into exile as a purification experience, not as a punishment for the sake of punishing. We go into exile to learn, repent, change and return. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Man is unable to redeem himself, to cure the sickness of the heart. What hurts the soul, the soul adores. Can man be remade? A prophet can give man a new word, but not a new heart.”(The Prophets pg 128). I shudder when I think of how many people think they are self-sufficient, don’t need God nor another(s) human being, and stay in exile; all the while kidding themselves that they are not in exile. I know many who still adore what hurts their souls and believe their sickness is actually health. In fact, this sickness is so cunning and convincing, many people don’t believe they are in exile! As I I am reading Rabbi Heschel this morning, I hear his voice calling me back to my faith and belief in God and partnership with God as the only way to truly return to who I am, where I belong and the people who are here to work with me. 

In recovery, we know we can’t do it alone. We know that we have to surrender to the love of another till we can love ourselves as God loves us. We also have had the experience of being built anew. We are not the people who were in exile because of the choices we made anymore. We were just prior to our recovery and now, we are the people with a new heart, a heart that knows God and keeps seeking greater knowledge of God’s will in our lives and in the life of the world as well. We know and rejoice in this new heart that God has given us. We know and rejoice in the kindness and unconditional love God as bestowed upon us in the rebuilding of our beingness. In recovery, we are grateful for both the exile and the return we experience. 

I needed to be in exile in order to return. I realized that early on in my recovery, which began prior to my sobriety. I began my recovery in prison and my sobriety after I was released. I knew the exile was going to be good for me, I was remade and reshaped through the unconditional love and purifying of God, Rabbi Mel Silverman and my daughter while incarcerated. In the 32+ years since my release, I have gone where God has sent me and the only time I experience negativity is when I forget God is running the show and I have to follow God’s script for me-not the one for you. I have been exiled and have been quite sad and heartbroken at the ways this exile as played out. Unlike God, when humans exile someone, they rarely want to welcome them back. And, I have found a new way of being in exile that connects me to God, to love, to justice, to kindness, to return and to truth. May we all find these connections now! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 105

“Therefore, declares the Lord, God of Israel, about the shepherds who should tend My people: It is you who let My flock scatter and go astray. You gave no thought to them, but I am going to give thought to you for your wicked acts. And I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock…Judah shall be delivered and Israel shall dwell secure.”(Jeremiah 23:2,3,6).

Jeremiah is giving hell to the people in charge. He is also reminding us that power is not for personal gain, it is not for our ego, it is for upholding, teaching, and living God’s words, God’s desires and God’s ways. It is not the usual way of thinking for most of us today, nor was it then. The struggle between our egos/desires and our souls has been a constant battle forever and Jeremiah is calling on leaders to be 51% living their souls knowledge so that God is guiding them, not their egos/desires. 

I hear Jeremiah’s call to all people in power, from parents to elected officials to monarchies: “you are but trusted servants and you are breaking the trust I placed in you.” I also hear the exile is the logical consequences of their poor shepherding, their poor stewardship of God’s people, of God’s ways. We have seen this throughout history; leaders get ‘fat’ and think that they can and should hold onto power forever and pass it down to their descendants, corruption begins and spreads from one generation to the next until this cancer takes over enough of the country to cause civil war and incivility to flourish. This path always ends in destruction and slavery. 

Jeremiah is speaking God’s Truth and Israel was unable or unwilling to hear this Truth. It is so important to understand leadership as a gift, as service to the people one leads and to God. Yet, so many take leadership as a right and as something to hold on to at any costs, including using mendacity, obstructionism, lawyers, stacking the courts/boards/officers with ‘yes’ people, etc. God is holding those of us who engage in these practices accountable and there will be a day of reckoning. While this day may not come in Jeremiah’s lifetime, or ours, it will come according the verses above.

And, redemption will come also. Jeremiah, for all of his doom and gloom, keeps the light of redemption bright and shining.  “My flock”, deliverance and security are ideas expressed above, words of love and connection. Jeremiah is reminding us, after everything that these shepherds did to the people, God will redeem them/us and we can and will return to our proper place in love and connection. This is my definition of unconditional love: redemption and reconnection is always available.

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “How much quiet tenderness, how much unsaid devotion is contained in the way in which the Lord of heaven and earth spoke of Israel. “The shepherds who care for My people… have scattered My flock and driven them away.”(The Prophets pg 110). I am always energized with hope and devotion when I read Rabbi Heschel’s description of the connection between God and Israel, between God and humanity. We don’t talk about the tenderness of God towards us often nor do we appreciate the devotion God shows us. This is how we make God vengeful, responsible for our bad acts and the bad acts of another(s). Yet, Rabbi Heschel is calling on us to appreciate the sorrow, anguish, love and tenderness God has concerning us and our straying. God always wants us to return, to return in love, hope and desire. We are “My people, My flock” and it is time we act in accordance of the esteem God has for us. 

In recovery, we are both the shepherds who caused destruction and the people God sends to give the message to others who suffer a lack of connection with God. We are recovering a way of living that is compatible with being a shepherd of God, a trusted servant carrying Truth, hope, redemption and connection to anyone in need-regardless of race, color, religion or ethnicity. We are blessed to be able to show up and serve God and another(s) by spreading the hope and serenity we have experienced and grown in our recovery. We are secure in our living because we have given thought to and repaired our “wicked acts”, we know we have been “delivered” and we are continuing to grow spiritually and to live in accordance with God’s will, not our own puffed up egos. 

I immerse myself in these verses and I am reminded of the times I led people astray, as a follower and a leader. I know that all of my recovery has not been perfect and there were times when I led others astray because I did not follow Jeremiah’s (and the other prophets’) words and warnings. I am also aware that these times were few and far between and grew fewer as I grew up in recovery. I also know that I took Jeremiah’s words to heart and was a trusted servant of God and another(s) more than 85% of the time. I am a survivor of my own destruction, my own bad shepherding and this has led me to realize new and better ways to shepherd me and another(s). I am heartbroken that the moments of bad shepherding by me have become the storyline for some people in power and they forget the 85%. These people may not realize they are ruling by fiat, not conversation and consensus, they may not realize they are trusted servants, not all-powerful. Yet, they are still ‘my people, my flock’ as I get to practice the tenderness and devotion God shows me with another(s). Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day104

“Do what is right and just…do not wrong the stranger, the orphan, and the widow;…do not shed the blood of the innocent in this place…But if you do not heed these commands, I swear by Myself, declares God, this palace becomes a ruin.”(Jeremiah 22:4,5).

God sends Jeremiah to speak to the King of Judah again, knowing the king wants to imprison/kill Jeremiah for speaking God’s words to him and the people. God, in God’s infinite mercy and love, wants to give everyone another opportunity to repent, to turn away from the paths they have chosen and return to God and each other.

How do they do this? Jeremiah is going back to basics with the people: “do what is right and just” is the beginning, and I believe end, of the way back. Doing what is right and just is different from just doing what is right and just doing what is just. Separately, as I am understanding Jeremiah here, it is more than possible to do one and not the other, the “letter” of the law and not the spirit of the law. Combining the two concepts leaves no room for error in understanding God’s desire for spirit and letter to compliment each other. 

God always tells us the return is how we treat the least powerful people in our society, the stranger, the poor, the widow, etc. We cannot return to God, we cannot return to our own spiritual and moral essence without caring for the powerless and voiceless in our society. One cannot be a spiritual leader or giant without standing with these people, our people, God’s people. Yet, there are many today who dispute the words of Jeremiah, we will study their outlook tomorrow. 

Do not shed the blood of the innocent is reminding us of the beginning of the verse, do what is right and just. Racism is shedding the blood of the innocent. Anti-semitism, Islamophobia, gender bias, etc is shedding the blood of the innocent. Taking advantage of another(s) just because you can is shedding the blood of the innocent

Rabbi Heschel teaches us: “Justice is scarce, injustice exceedingly common. The concern for justice is delegated to the judges, as if it were a matter for professionals or specialists. But to do justices what God demands of every man: it is the supreme commandment, and one cannot be fulfilled vicariously.”(The Prophets pg 204). Oy, these words of Rabbi Heschel send chills up and down my spine. We shed the blood of the innocent by holding others to standards we don’t live up to, incarcerating minorities at insane rates and saying a life sentence for a teen is constitutional and right, as our Supreme Court did. I am sure the people in that majority erred when they were adolescents and could not have withstood the strict justice for their errors that they are putting onto others, mostly minority teenagers. Yet we allow these “professionals” with their bias’ and their interpretations to trample the rights of the downtrodden (they found that corporations are the same as an individual soul) to determine our future and we go against God’s demand for each of us to do justly and rightly. 

We see it in all types of ways, we turn things over to the ‘professionals’ that we used to deal with ourselves or with the assistance of our community, the elders, the clergy, to make peace, not win; to keep dignity and worth of each party intact, not crush our opponent; to find a compromise that spoke to the truth of the situation, not trying to save face. 

In recovery, we follow God’s demand and we don’t send someone else to do our work. We never ask anyone else to make amends/tshuvot, for us, we go and speak to the person we have harmed face to face whenever possible. We don’t ask someone to do something they are not capable of. We do not take advantage of the stranger, rather we welcome him/her/they with open hearts, knowing this new person will enhance our space and lives. In recovery, we continue to grow in doing what is just and right, knowing we will never be perfect and celebrating both our ‘missing the mark’ and ‘hitting the bullseye’-making a mistake and getting it right.  In recovery, we work each day to increase our integrity, bringing closer our inner life and our outer life, following God’s demand to do justly and rightly more and more each day, letting go of our need for optics and immersing ourselves in the messiness of living well and rightly each day. 

In my life, I have been judgmental and used people for my own gain, in fact this was most of my life prior to my recovery. In my recovery, I have been bombarded by the demand of God to do justly and rightly and the reality of the politics of work, religion, boards, etc. I know that I have sought to do justly and rightly even when that meant saying no, sometimes loudly, brashly and harshly, to people I care(d) about. The internal war that has raged inside of me vis a vis: optics and just/right; has taken a toll and, at times incorrectly, led me to explode over the injustice of optics, the injustice of allowing me to be taken advantage of because I say ‘f*&$k’ or it is too much trouble to stand up with me (or me with you). When I haven’t stood up for and with you because of fear/optics-I apologize and when I have, I am grateful you allowed me to. Optics-Demand of God-which are you choosing today? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 103

“House of David, thus said God: Render just verdicts morning by morning; rescue one who is robbed from the one who defrauded him. Else my wrath will break forth like fire and burn, with none to quench it, because of your wicked actions. I will punish you according to your deeds, I will set fire to your palaces and it shall consume everything around it.”(Jeremiah 21:12,14). 

Even though the fate of Judah seems set in stone, Babylon is at their gates and Egypt can’t help, the prophet is giving the king and the people of Judah a way to return and be saved. Jeremiah is asking the people in power to render fair verdicts for the poor and the needy, he is asking the people to stop defending the defrauder and help the ones that continually are being robbed. To do what Jeremiah is proposing in the first verse above, however, the people in power would have to take stock of themselves and stop defrauding the poor and the needy themselves. Yet, it is too difficult for the people in power to give up their “wicked actions”. It is too hard for the people in power to see the need for them to repent in any way; it ruins the self-deception they have honed over their lives. 

Jeremiah tells them that the wrath of God will “break forth like fire” and this still doesn’t create a change in the people. Jeremiah is also telling us, I believe, that fire serves a purifying purpose here. Without fire, the people will not have a change of heart, a change of spirit and a change of actions, so the only way to purify them is through the wrath of God, which includes anger, fire and, eventually redemption. 

Jeremiah’s anger is also on display here, he is angry for God and he demonstrates the divine anger as pathos, a way to help the people see what is real and the self-deception they are buying into. “I will punish you according to your deeds” is a message to all of us, stop being a victim and complaining-be responsible for your actions, repent and be redeemed. Otherwise, the fire that you set in motion will consume you and everything around you. Rather than blame God and make God an ‘angry God, a vengeful God’ as many people have done over the millennia, Jeremiah is pointing out to us our responsibility in creating God’s wrath, it is not for want of love that the fire consumes everything, it is precisely because of love that God’s wrath is a purifying agent after all else has failed. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The prophet was filled with a passion which demanded release; if he tried to contain it, its flame burned within him like a fever…Jeremiah felt the divine wrath as springing up from within.”(The Prophets pg.116-7).  Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of Jeremiah’s deep love for God and the people, his ability to hold both in one moment and at one time. Jeremiah could not contain his own anger when he was filled with the anger of God, because his identification with God was so complete. Jeremiah’s wrath matched the pathos that God was experiencing and, unfortunately still experiences, because of the actions of the people/us. Rabbi Heschel’s words and teachings have a powerful identification with divine pathos and experience also, which is why many of us believe him to be a modern-day prophet. 

In recovery, we have to follow God’s command for justice and decency and truth. We cannot live in recovery any other way. In fact, living any other way led us to experience the fire and destruction of our lives by our own actions and with God’s help we both fell to our bottoms and were picked up and redeemed. In recovery, we are passionate to help others and passionate to stay in truth-letting go of our own mendacity and self-deception so we do not deceive others and render unfair decisions. In recovery, we are aware that every decision we make impacts another(s) as we are connected to so many other people. We are responsible to be an example for the newcomer to recovery, we get to be guides for people of all ages in how to live in truth, decency, compassion and justice. We have experienced the wrath and the glory of God and we choose the glory today. 

I know Jeremiah’s inner life, his wrestling with his inner compassion for God and for the people, his fear for what is going to unfold for the people. I am guilty of outbursts of anger when I see something that is wrong, when I have attempted to help someone change and they continue their “wicked acts” and others applaud them for their evil ways. I have been cast as the enemy by the very people I have helped and/or tried to. I have ‘lost it’ as Jeremiah and fire was come forth from me and consumed many innocent bystanders and I am remorseful for this. I know my inner sympathy has been for both God and another(s) and my attempts at redeeming people through my anger has not always worked. It is, as with Jeremiah, an inability to control the divine anger I feel inside of me. This is the conundrum, controlling the divine anger at evil deeds, saying nothing and let the anger burn us up inside, or allow for the outbursts and the fallout afterwards. The first is the obvious choice and it says easy and does hard. Discerning when the anger is divine pathos and personal pride is a challenge as well. We all have this inside of us, we all are descendants of the prophets, maybe it is time to honor the inheritance from them and stop being ‘politically correct’ so we can save ourselves and each other. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 102

“Pashur…the priest who was chief officer of the House of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesy these things. Pashur thereupon had Jeremiah flogged and put in the cell… You enticed me O Lord and I was enticed; You overpowered me and You prevailed. I have become a laughingstock every day and everyone jeers at me. I thought, I will not mention Him, no more will I speak in His name-but (His word) was like a raging fire in my heart, shut up in my bones.”(Jeremiah 20:1,2,7,9).

Jeremiah is speaking to the people and letting them know that the ones in charge are leading them down a path of destruction and the only solution is for everyone to repent. The response of the chief officer is, predictably, lock up Jeremiah; lock up the truth sayer so we can go on fooling the people and not have to change our ways. Serving God meant nothing to Pashur, he sounded good, he looked the part and, all the while, he was interested in serving himself and the others in charge for their gain, not the gain of the country nor the people. Sound familiar? 

Jeremiah thought about stopping his prophesy, muzzling himself, yet could not. The language he uses is the language of love, at first-enticing is a seductive word and overpowered in this context, could mean the enticement is so strong Jeremiah is unable to resist it. Both words convey a sense of not being able to say No to God, to God’s call, to the lure of God’s love, even in the face of being laughed at, jailed, jeered at, hated by the people he is trying to save, etc. Jeremiah, cannot resist God. 

In the last verse above, Jeremiah is telling us of his inner war-part of him wants to stop the disgrace that is heaped upon him, part of him wants to stop warning people and being jailed for it, part of him wants to stop speaking the truth and be hated and injured for it. Yet, the greater part, at least 51%, can’t because God’s words are “a raging fire in my heart”. We have heard people like John Lewis speak from the same “raging fire” and we know it when we hear it. We have heard so many people in our country and in the world speak from the “raging fire” that God put in them, like God put it in Jeremiah; and most of the time we have treated these messengers from God, these modern day prophets just like the people of Judah treated Jeremiah. We have jailed them, scorned them, marginalized them and killed them; Martin Luther King Jr., Yitzhok Rabin, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, etc. 

We can only shut down this fire for so long, otherwise it burns us up, as Jeremiah says “shut up in my bones”. Many people know what it means to burn up in our bones, to feel this heat,  and do nothing; we become shells of who we are meant to be, we become the Pashurs of our time and space, we retreat into a private hell that impacts us without our awareness. We try to escape it, yet it never leaves us. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: ‘the compulsion to proclaim the word of God to the people is stronger than all attempts to restrain oneself from doing so. Apart from, and often against, his own will the prophet must take over and fulfill his task; he must both apprehend and preach inspired truth. Thus he knows a two-fold necessity-that of accepting and experiencing and that of announcing and preaching.”(The Prophets, pg.445). It is, in my opinion, the same experience Rabbi Heschel, himself, had. Like the prophets, Rabbi Heschel could not stop the compulsion to proclaim God’s word, even if it brought him to be marginalized by mainstream institutions, etc. He was blessed to know his task from God, know the divine need he could fulfill and do it. We all have a divine need to fulfill and we are all capable to do it, yet we continue to deny the compulsion that is shut up in our bones, a raging fire in our hearts. Herein lies the challenge of Rabbi Heschel, of the prophets, of God-will we respond to this challenge or run away from it?

In recovery, we know the scorn that Jeremiah and all truth sayers experience because we heaped it upon those who tried to tell us the truth prior to our recovery. We tried to extinguish the raging fire that was in our heart and shut up in our bones in any number of ways.We also experienced God overpowering  us and now we can live free, whole lives. We experienced God’s call and now speak truth to others regardless of how they treat us. We make amends to those people who spoke truth to us that we ignored and express gratitude to them once in recovery. In recovery, we are grateful for those who came before us, have left their imprints upon us, given us  a roadmap to follow and a platform to call out to another(s). 

My Rabbi and friend, Ed Feinstein, said I am more a prophet than a Rabbi and he was/is correct. While not all of my outbursts are the words that God places in me, most of them come from this fire in my heart and bones. I drank and stole to quiet it and that was a disaster. I continue to discern better between my needs and God’s need for me. I continue to discern between the fire of God, the experience of apprehending and preaching truth, no matter the consequences. I know the dangers in doing this, as I have been shunned and exiled from different spaces and places. It breaks my heart, as it did Jeremiah and all the other people who share this experience and we persevere for. God! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 101

“For they have forsaken Me and made this place alien to me. Thus said Lord of Hosts, God of Israel I am going to bring upon this city and all villages all the disaster which I have decreed upon it for they have stiffened their necks and refused to heed My words.”(Jeremiah 19:4,14).

The opening verse makes me cry and tremble. God is again crying out to the people for their connection/reconnection. God is mourning the loss of a loving relationship or at least what was hoped to be a loving relationship with the people Israel. God’s cry can be heard ‘round the world’ and identified with by all of us who have been forsaken by another person. 

There is a sense of bewilderment that I hear in God’s cry-why is this happening? What happened to you and our relationship that you would forsake me, leave me and make the place I created for you something that is so alien, it is going to be destroyed. You have not only screwed up your lives, you have not only ruined the lives of your fellow humans and children, you have made a holy space into a defiled space that can never be cleaned without first destroying it and you. WTF?? 

The second verse above and the last in this chapter is also a sad cry of God. You foolish people who refuse to hear and heed the call of My prophet, who is speaking for Me, are going to bring ruin and destruction upon all of you and each of you. This is not victory for God, rather it is defeat. The people God had the closest relationship to, the people God saved and nursed to health and wellness, the people who God spoke to directly as a group, this people said: “No Thanks God, we did everything ourselves and don’t need you” with their actions.

This is the great sadness for God and Jeremiah, I believe. God is crying out to the people to change, Jeremiah is relaying this cry with countless appeals to return, yet the people say no. This verse is God’s realization that the people abuse God’s mercy so Justice and sadness (not anger) have to prevail. The stubbornness of people to believe they can ‘get away’ with anything they want, make an insincere amends/tshuvah and return back to their old ways is devastating to God, as I read this verse. 

Only when we relax our stubbornness and we become willing to learn from God and teachers of decency, ethics and morality, spirit and loyalty to principles, will we realize the errors of our ways, will we begin a new journey to wholeness, joy and connection.
Rabbi Heschel reflects: “What a sublime paradox for the Creator of heaven and earth to implore the people so humbly. The heart of melancholy beats in God’s words. These words are aglow with a divine pathos that can be reflected but not pronounced: God is mourning Himself.”(The Prophets pg 110,111). These words can allow all of us to breathe better when we face paradoxes and are torn as to what the next right thing to do is. Sometimes we are going to have to turn away, sometimes we have to continue to reach out and sometimes we just have to mourn what we have lost. People say, you can’t lose what you never had and, while I see the wisdom of this saying, I know that we do have relationships and connections that get lost when one or both of the people involved are too interested in being stubborn, need to be right and/or fail to hear the call of the soul of another. Mourning the loss of relationship and connection is difficult and Jeremiah, God and Rabbi Heschel are showing us how to get through the pain. 

In recovery, we are keenly aware of the paths we took to forsake God, forsake another(s) human being, forsake ourselves and mess up any and every place we were in. We have PhD’s in stubbornness and refusal to heed God’s words much less the words of another(s) human being. This is the shift we made when we came into recovery; we are not experts, we don’t know everything, we have to act our way into right thinking and feeling, we need to be one grain of sand better today than yesterday, we fail forward by learning from our errors, we seek forgiveness and change our negative paths each and every day, we acknowledge that without God we have no chance at positive change. In recovery, we bless God and another(s) for this knowledge and assistance to be better versions of ourselves each day. 

I hear God’s anguish, I have cried God’s anguish, I have called out to others as Jeremiah does, I have been stubborn and, on rare occasions, I have forsaken God in the past 32+ years. I am writing this, today, with tears in my heart for the many times I experience loss of connection with people and I look at my own actions to see if I was fooling myself and how desperate I was to see connection where there was only a transactional relationship. From today’s verses, I understand my need to see connection and the truth that this is one of my fatal flaws, needing to make something real that just isn’t. I saw and experienced it yesterday in an interaction and it made my heart break at the pettiness of people whom I have helped and sad that their pettiness is going to inhibit many people from being able to grow and expand their goodness, talent and soul. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 100

“Thus said the Lord: I am devising disaster for you and laying plans against you. Turn back, each of you from your wicked ways and mend your ways and actions. Lord, You know all their plots to kill me, do not pardon their iniquity, do not blot out their guilt from You. Let them stumble before You, in Your moment of anger, act against them.”(Jeremiah 18:11,23).

Jeremiah and God are letting the people of Judah know what is going to happen and giving them an opportunity to repent and change the course of history. We know that they don’t and this warning and call is relevant for us today.

The first verse begins by reminding us that God is involved with and in the matters of humans. In Judaism, in the Bible, God is not distant, God is not far away, God is intimately involved and caring for humanity as a whole and each individual. The warning is a call to action by the people, not some capricious statement by God. The call is a reminder that actions have consequences and none of us are able to escape the consequences of our actions forever. 

The second part of the first verse is a plea from God and Jeremiah: “I love you, I want you back, I miss you-please come home” is what they seem to be saying.These words are addressed to the nation as a whole and then to each individual. 

The return can’t be by some decree of the king, it has to be an individual decision and commitment to change direction, to look at the ways I have strayed, the evil I have committed, the erroneous paths I have followed and do T’Shuvah for these actions. I also have engage in the soul work to mend my way of seeing things and actions that help me return to ‘right thinking’. Jeremiah is telling us ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t enough, we have to repair not only the damage, we have to repair ourselves. 

In the last verse above, Jeremiah has just found out about another plot against him, they have dug a pit to throw him in so they don’t have to hear the truths he is telling them. Kill the messenger if you don’t like the message is their way. Rather than be grateful for Jeremiah’s warnings and path back to God, they believe if they kill him, everything else will be okay. Jeremiah, who earlier in this chapter, gave/gives them the way back is now being hunted and has to pray for the death of his enemies. How sad, how tragic it is that the people you try to help the most turn on you fastest. It hurts so much and is so bewildering. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches regarding the first verse above: “Jeremiah did not think that evil was inevitable. Over and above man’s blindness stood the wonder of of repentance, the open gateway through which man could enter if he would.”(The Prophets pg. 104). Over and over again, the prophets remind us how much control we have in our life, in the life our nation and in the lives of others. Our actions either propel or retard the goodness of God, another(s) and ourselves. We impact each and every person and situation in our living and WE MATTER. Yet, so many of us forget this, we believe the lie that we can never return, we can never be transparent about our own errors, we have to blame another(s) and, for us there is no forgiveness so we have to deny any wrongdoing, which is what the people of Judah did! This is why Judah was destroyed and Jerusalem was ransacked and the Temple left in ruins, this is why we are in such turmoil today-still looking to blame another(s) for our errors and inadequacies, ie racism, etc. 

In recovery, turning away from the paths that led us into a life of harming another(s) and self is a daily activity. Mending our ways and our actions is also a daily endeavor and we know that we will never do this completely so we continue to maintain the saying: “progress not perfection”. In recovery, we do not hide from ourselves and/or another(s). We have experienced the destruction and ruin that Jeremiah speaks of at the beginning of the first verse above, in fact we have been the cause of it and we know it. Our recovery is life-long because we know that we are susceptible to the call of the negative voice inside and outside us so we give ourselves, God, and everyone around us the gift of daily inventory so we can continue to mend our ways and actions. 

I know the call of Jeremiah in the last verse, as do most of us. I know the deep wound of betrayal by people you have helped and/or are helping. I know that desire to get even and have someone (maybe even oneself) beat the disloyal bastards down. I also know the conflict that Jeremiah goes through, wanting mercy for the people from God, wanting the people to return to God and wanting to beat them up for the way they harmed him personally. I know the outbursts that happen when the treachery and the wounds seem too much to bear. And the inner conflict has to be resolved without hurting the innocent and, when outbursts come from me, sometimes the innocent are wounded along with the treacherous ones. I am sorry and am mending these actions. I no longer need to see the treacherous ones “get theirs”, I am at peace with knowing God is helping me, loving me, taking me back and the people who stand with me are the people to focus on, not the treacherous ones-they take up much less space in my being because I am focused on moving forward with authentic, soul to soul relationships. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 99

“Cursed is one who trusts in man who makes flesh his strength and turns his thoughts from God. Blessed is one who trusts in God, whose trust is God. Lord, all who forsake you shall be put to shame. Heal me, God and let me be healed, save me and let me be saved; for You are my glory.”(Jeremiah 17:5,7,13,14).

Jeremiah is calling out to the people to wake up from their indifference and their complacency and what will happen to them. I do not believe Jeremiah is asking people to be cursed or blessed in the first two verses above. Rather, I believe he is informing the people they have the choice to choose curses and/or blessings. 

Why is one who trusts in man lost and cursed? It is because this one is so enamored with their own or another’s strength that they have turned away from God. Knowing one’s strengths and the strengths of another(s) is important and wonderful, turning away from God, the provider of said strengths is dangerous. As I am reading this verse over and over, Jeremiah is saying STOP believing your own press.

Blessings come to those who are aware of the true order of living. Having God/Higher Power to trust in, be accountable to; allows us to let go of our petty concerns and need to prove ourselves as self-sufficient. I understand Jeremiah to be teaching us that self-sufficiency is a human myth-born out of some need to prove we don’t need God. How silly and sad! Recognizing our need for reliance is also appreciating the gift of God’s help and the help of another(s). The blessings are a never-ending chain of reciprocity to and from one human to another and from humans to God and back again. 

The last two verses above are Jeremiah’s cry for justice, letting the people who have done the forsaking pay for their errors and, by their death, allowing the rest of the people of Judah and Jerusalem to not be destroyed. In the last verse, he is calling on God to heal him and save him; he knows the truth of the words he spoke about blessings so he knows that trusting in God is his only hope to be healed from the trauma of his experience with the people during his prophecy, the trauma of knowing the people will be captured, the Temple destroyed and the land will lie fallow. This, I believe is what he is asking to be healed and saved from. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Justice bespeaks a situation that transcends the individual, demanding from everyone a certain abnegation of self, defiance of self-interest, disregard fo self-respect.”(The Prophets pg 209). Immersing ourselves in the first two verses above and in Rabbi Heschel’s words, we can see clearly the need to transcend our selves in order to connect with God, be blessed by God and live in a world where Justice and Blessings, prevail. All of these actions lead to the blessings spoken about above. The perversion of our inner lives begins with the actions we take that deny justice, truth, love, kindness, generosity, etc. which leads to the curses. Rabbi Heschel goes on to say: “He who loved his people, whose life was dedicated to saving his people, was regarded as the enemy. Jeremiah was gentle and compassionate by nature and the mission he had to carry out was, to him, distasteful in the extreme.”(The Prophets pg.123). Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that truth will set us free in our inner lives and, sometimes, causes us to be an outcast with the people who know us best. As long as we can find something wrong with the messenger, we don’t have to listen to the messenger. 

In recovery, we are all the messengers to and for each other as well as the person who is still suffering. We are blessed to learn the laws of self-abnegation, defiance of self-interest as Rabbi Heschel writes. We have been the cursed because we did not engage in trusting God, rather we trusted our strength and our minds. Now, we are blessed because we, like Jeremiah, cried out to God to be healed, we prayed to be saved and God answered our prayers; healing us and saving us to better carry out God’s Will each day. We know that another blessing is our constant progress, rather than the need to be perfect. In recovery, our days of forsaking God, turning away from God, not trusting in God are over, done finished. We are aware that our only path to stay in recovery is to trust in God, follow God’s teachings and be of service to another(s) in need. 

I know Jeremiah’s pain and anguish well. I know how it is to see calamity coming and be powerless to stop it, yet hear the call to attempt to anyway. I know the power of people’s scorn when one is trying to do what is called for and the next right thing. I know the pain and the joy of “only God knowing the truth” as Rabbi Heschel writes in The Prophets on page 123. AND, I know the blessings that far outweigh the curses and the pain caused by another(s). I know the blessings of speaking truth to people and reaching out to help another(s). I know the blessing of hearing God’s call, responding to the call and following the Will of God, not my own will. I know that blessing that doing God’s Will brings to another(s) and to me. I know the blessings of reciprocity of generosity and I know the blessings of connection to family, friends and community. I know that all is right in the world when we study, learn, laugh and argue together for the sake of heaven and living a little better today than yesterday. Stay Safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 98

“And when you announce all these things to the people and they ask you…what is the iniquity and the sin we have committed against the Lord, our God? And you have acted worse than your fathers, every one of you following the willfulness of your evil heart and paying no heed to Me. For I will bring them back to their land, which I gave to their fathers.”(Jeremiah 16:10,12,15).

It is depressingly wondrous that the prophet is telling us that the people will be stunned by the news that they have sinned and acted in iniquity. It is as if the people are saying: “what did I do, is God angry because I bastardized the spirit of the law, the essence of God’s teachings? I followed the rituals, isn’t this enough?”, feigning stupidity, trying to act bewildered. The depressing piece is that we humans still do it, corporations claim innocence, politicians claim they are following the letter of the law, while crushing the spirit of it, religions leaders misquote the Bible, Jesus, God, etc and say we are following the rules.

All of these instances are areas where the people in charge no better and fake bewilderment, just like the people of Judah. God’s response sends shivers up and down my spine, though. Telling the people they have acted worse than their fathers who abandoned God? What could be worse than abandonment? Willfully following one’s evil heart and mind is worse than abandonment, paying no heed to God’s call to return so calamity doesn’t befall them is worse than abandonment, entitlement and exemption from consequences is worse than abandonments as I understand the prophet’s words today. The shivers come from looking at the ways I, you, we, do the same thing as the people of Judah and wonder when will we ever learn?

Yet, with all of these calamities about to happen, Judah will fall, Jerusalem will be destroyed, the people will go into exile; God’s promise is to return us to our proper places, after we return to God. This is the greatness of God and the quality we most have to emulate, in my opinion. God’s is still calling from Mt. Sinai, when we answer with Hineni (here I am), God takes us back. We have to be open to people when they return to us, when they reach out in earnest, make tshuvah(amends) for their past and a plan for the future. This way of God reminds all of us that hope is eternal, God is waiting for us, other people are waiting for us to return. We are needed and when we are not in our proper place, the world doesn’t work well and this verse tells us that God wants us back. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “There was no sense of guilt, no feeling of shame. The Lord implored His people:…Jeremiah knew the malady was not primarily in the wickedness of deeds, but “in the stubbornness of their evil hearts”.(The Prophets pg. 128). These words are the ones that scare the hell out of me. We are living in a time, again, when men and women are not sensing their guilt nor feeling any shame for their actions. They believe their lies are truth, using God’s name to validate their cruelty and theft of our democracy, our way of being safe and secure, our healthcare, etc. The willfulness of the evil that people are perpetrating on each other is devastating and equal to what the prophet is speaking of and what Rabbi Heschel is teaching. The self-deception that we are engaging in does and will continue to cause destruction of the poor and the needy, the desecration of what is good in the world. Is the fleeting power worth our destruction? 

In recovery, we don’t ask what we have done wrong, what iniquities and sins we have committed from a place of feigned innocence and bewilderment. In recovery, we do daily inventory of our actions, our thoughts, what is in our hearts and we make amends where needed and appropriate and we honor the goodness we create. Each night, we turn our lives over to God to wake up anew in the morning and each morning we turn our lives over to God so we can live one grain of sand better. Our recovery is based on our spiritual condition and we have to rid ourselves each and everyday of our “evil heart” and put goodness and God into our being and our hearts. In recovery, we are grateful each and every day for the blessings of being return to our proper places, reconnection with family and friends where and when appropriate, connecting with new people and, most of all, returning to and coming home to God. 

I know that false sense of innocence that the prophet is talking about. I lived in the self-deception that allowed me to believe in my innocence and convince others of it as well. I am disgusted by this old behavior, still. I am so disgusted that I made a commitment to not engage in this behavior ever again and I haven’t. My way of delivering a message has not always been in the most couth manner, yet it has/is always from a place of caring and concern. I left “the wickedness” of my “evil heart” 32+ years ago and, while I have made many errors since then, I have not done it from the evil heart of my pre-recovery days. God has taken me back, cleansed me, placed me in my proper place. I know that God continues to allow me to stand with God, cleans me each and every day and is showing me my new normal, my new place. Where are you-wicked heart, return to God? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets 

Day 97

“God, You know-remember me, protect me, avenge me on those who persecute me…When Your words were offered, I devoured them, Your word brought me the joy and delight of knowing Your name is attached to me. Why must my pain be endless, my wound incurable…they will attack you, but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver and save you, declares God.”(Jeremiah 15:15,16,18,20). 

Jeremiah is so distraught over his ‘friends’ the people he was trying to save from ruin, exile, death turning against him, he asks God to take revenge and protect him. He is both afraid and angry-for himself more than for God in this moment, I believe. Had he just asked for protection, he could make a great case, when he asks for vengeance on top of protection, he has moved from being God’s prophet to being human. This is not a knock on Jeremiah, it actually makes his Prophet role more powerful to me. Rising above our individual needs to serve God and another(s) is the challenge for all of us and Jeremiah is up to the challenge, usually; just not in this case. 

The second verse quoted above is Jeremiah reminding himself, more than God I believe, of the great gift and awesome responsibility he has been given and his experience of joy and delight in being chosen by God, by being spoken to by God, by being attached to God. These words are ringing in my ears, my body and my soul. We all get this same gift, we all have this awesome responsibility and we all can experience being in communication and attached to God. In Judaism, we get there by, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, immersing ourselves in the texts we engage with. Being in the text means that it is happening within me, to me and I am part of the experience, learning and community. 

Jeremiah, after remembering the gift of hearing God’s Words and the joy of attachment to God, goes back to his own pain. He is so broken at this moment by the betrayal of the people he trusted, the people who he thought knew him, he cannot stay with God, rather he complains and blames God for the pain and wounds. While there is truth to what he is saying, carrying God’s message throughout the land is the cause of his woes, he is crying out in deep pain rather than blame, I believe. 

The last verse above is God’s reminder to Jeremiah that God will protect him and deliver him. God doesn’t say where or how, just a call to Jeremiah to stop his pity party and get back to the work at hand. God’s faith in Jeremiah, God’s appreciation for the sacrifice Jeremiah is making is apparent in these words to me. God is telling him, I know it is going to be difficult and seem even more overwhelming, I have not left you, I am with you and don’t get paralyzed by fear, pain, etc. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “the anger had become the prophet’s own, rather than remaining a true reflection of the divine pathos…Divine forbearance and human indignation conflicted, and the prophet had to be told that God was concerned with the disciplining, not the destruction of His adversaries; it was not for the business of the prophet to recommend that the Lord punish, but that he test and purify.”(the Prophets pg. 126). This is so important to remember that we are trusted advisors, not judge and jury forever. Even Jeremiah, the prophet, should not be recommending punishment on God’s adversaries to God because he was a trusted advisor to help test and purify the people, not punish. Human anger is, at times, retributive, God’s anger is restorative. Hence the debate going on in our country forever, is our court system to restore dignity to victim and perpetrator alike or is it to punish both of them? God gives Jeremiah the formula for return which I understand is a gift of love and forbearance, just as God has for all people. This is the unconditional love of God, to and for me, always wanting our return and always taking us back. 

In recovery, being at trusted servant is the joy and pinnacle of our newfound beingness. We acknowledge that the One in charge is God and we have to seek and find God in our own way and on our own terms. We are the recipients of God’s unconditional love of return and acceptance. We experience the joy of being attached to God when we don’t have to hate those who hate us, we don’t have to hurt those who want to hurt us, we are open to their amends as people have been open to ours. I bold the have so as to differentiate between a normal human reaction that we let go of quickly and the error of Jeremiah in today’s reading. 

I know that call for my enemies to be destroyed, I did it a lot in my previous life. I have even fallen prey to it in my recovery. The difference being, in my previous life, I let this call destroy me, today I don’t. What I am focused on is being attached to God. My “delight of knowing God’s name is attached to me” brings me out of the pain of my ‘friends’ turning against me and trying to destroy me. I hear God calling to me, when I am stuck in the pain and need for vengeance and recognition, to return and take my rightful place as a messenger and a trusted servant-rising above my personal hurts to serve God in my unique way. It takes me a while sometimes, especially this past 14 months,  and I am here today, tomorrow and all the days ahead! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark 

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 96

“Though our iniquities testify against us, God, act for the sake of Your Name…Your name is attached to us-do not forsake us. We acknowledge our wickedness, God, the iniquity of our fathers-for we have sinned against you… Remember, do not annul Your covenant.”(Jeremiah 14:7,9,20,21). 

Jeremiah is trying to avert the severe decree of God against Judah and Jerusalem. Even though the decree is warranted and, in some ways, necessary; Jeremiah wants to avert it, showing his deep love for both the land and the people. Even though they have imprisoned him, scorned him, reviled him, etc, Jeremiah’s love for the people allows him to rise above it all and plead to God on their behalf. 

In the verses above, Jeremiah reminds me of Moses, acknowledging the guilt of the people and reminding God of the covenant and the promise to not forsake the people. The Hebrew used means abandon and it also means rest/comfort-a polar opposite verb. 

Jeremiah is calling out to God to not abandon and give comfort/mercy to the people. Yes they ‘miss the mark’, yes they abandon You, God, yes they learned this from their fathers’ for whom they also are responsible for, yet…. Do Not Abandon Your People, God is what Jeremiah is screaming.

These verses are proof that Jeremiah was a prophet sent by God to me. Whom else would be scorned by his people, be revulsed by the actions and treachery of his people against God, be told what was to happen and still fight with he Judge of all the earth, for mercy, compassion and connection to these same people! Only a prophet who can and does hold God and humanity together in one moment, in all moments, as Rabbi Heschel describes. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches:”Pathos resists from a decision…It comes about in light of a moral judgement rather than in the darkness of passion. It was only in the certainty that His mercy is greater than his justice…”(The Prophets pg 298). He goes on to say: “God had a stake in the life of Israel…Here, then was a task of the prophet: to remind Gd of His own concern…The prophet was haunted by the fear of ultimate calamity: God’s rejection or loathing of the people…Jeremiah’s thought turned to God’s soul and pathos.”(The Prophets pg. 122).
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the greatness of the prophets and the reason we all need to study, learn, appreciate and internalize their teachings and their wisdom. God’s pathos is alive and well, as I read Rabbi Heschel’s words today. Pathos can be mercy, anger, compassion, love, etc. because it is act “formed with intention, depending on free will, the result of decision and determination.”(The Prophets pg. 224). Jeremiah is determined to remind God of God’s promise, covenant and the need for connection for both God and the people. As humans, the worst betrayal most of us experience is the abandonment by someone we love, we care for, we believed we had a connection and/or covenant with. This betrayal is at the core of most traumas we experience and the cause of most of our ‘missing the mark’. Jeremiah is reminding God of God’s mercy being so large that all of Israel’s iniquities, once repentance and return is done by them, can be forgiven and the opportunity to repent and return must always be available so they can’t be destroyed completely nor ever abandoned.

In recovery, we admit our sins daily, we acknowledge our ‘missing the marks’ every evening and we seek mercy and forgiveness from the people we have harmed and abandoned. Because we see our own frailties and weaknesses, we can have more compassion when people harm us. In recovery, we pray for the well-being of those who have harmed us and we ask for forgiveness from those we have harmed. Each time, we realize a new nuance of our behaviors that lead to abandoning the people we love, while proclaiming that love. I use the word abandon because to harm someone, anyone and especially someone we love and are connected to means, for that moment, at the time of the harming action, we have abandoned the covenant, we have severed the connection, turned off the electric switch, in order to harm them. We stopped living our connection and our “needs/desires” overtook what we know is the next right thing to do. We pray for the person who harmed us as our acting Godly; showing the Divine Pathos of mercy, at a time we would rather show anger and retribution. We call out to God to forgive and turn the people’s hearts, minds and souls to repentance and return. 

In my life, I have advocated for many with God, with families and with the people themselves. This is what Spiritual Leadership is, in my opinion. I hear the call of Jeremiah to God in today’s verses and look at the times I emulated him and the times I haven’t. I have experienced the abandonment of people as Jeremiah has and I am blessed because God has never abandoned me. While I have abandoned God’s principles for moments in my recovery, we have kept our covenant strong, renewing it each day and I know the love, compassion, justice, kindness and caring that God has for me and all people. I know that all other abandonments heal because of the healing of God’s mercy. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 95

“Hear and give ear; don’t be proud, for God has spoken. Give honor to Adonai, your God before he brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the mountains in twilight, while you hope for light, it is turned to gloom and God turns it to darkness. For if you will not listen my soul must weep in secret for your pride, my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears, because God’s flock has been taken captive.”(Jeremiah 13:15-17). 

The opening of this snippet from Jeremiah  is asking, begging, pleading even with the people to hear with their souls, with their ears and bypass the intellect that lies to them and tells them they will be fine. Let go of the false pride, the puffed-up ego and hear truth, open up your ears to what is really being said by God, by the poor, the needy, etc.

The only way to honor God, is to stop living entitled, privileged lives and be of service, keep the covenant with God and care for the poor, the needy, the stranger, etc. Honoring God is not in how we do sacrifices, rather to honor God we have to live God’s words, principles in our daily lives and be an example for the other nations. This was the call of  God to the Jewish people and Jeremiah is telling them that there are consequences for their abandonment of God, the covenant and the principles. 

Abandoning the principles, the values and the Words of God lead us to stumble around in the darkness and gloom. It leads to hopelessness and helplessness.It leads to despair, paralyzing fear, capture and enslavement by our inner negativity and outer enemies. Jeremiah is reminding us of these truths and  he is totally invested in the people’s response.

Jeremiah, as with all prophets, is deeply invested in the welfare of the people. His soul is invested in the outcome. He is not angry for his sake, he is angry and rails against what the people are doing for their sake, for God’s sake. He is torn up inside, his soul weeps because of the stubbornness of the people. He is distraught beyond, beyond by the prospect/fact that the people of Judah will be taken captive. These are not the words and experience of an uncaring person. 

Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Impassioned with a sense of the divine disturbance, Jeremiah could condemn with a vehemence that was at times terrifying and devoid of charity. But his own heart was rich in tenderness and sensitivity to other people’s suffering. He terrified in order to save… This, indeed, was the root of his anguish. Those whom he loved he was called upon to condemn.”(The Prophets pg. 120,121). Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that the prophets were not angry men, they were men who heard God’s call, saw the world through God’s ‘eyes’ and were terrified by the people’s lack of understanding and arrogance towards God. Jeremiah is not worried for himself, he is terrified for what it will do to the people themselves. He doesn’t want to see the people be taken captive, he doesn’t want to experience the captivity of those he loves and he doesn’t want God to experience this loss either. Lets not be too sensitive to the delivery of the message, be sensitive to the essence of the message, the call of the message. We know how deeply the messenger cares just by she/he bringing the message at all, rather than let us go down in flames without a warning. 

In recovery, we know the stubbornness and pride that prevents us from listening, giving ear to and understanding messages to change our ways and return to God, family, decency, etc. We believed our self-deception that we could live any way we wanted to and get away with it. The errors of our thinking and ways finally opened up our ears, our souls and our ability to listen/hear the call of God to return to a life of decency and service. We were the bringers of darkness, we stumbled often and were hopeless until we made a decision to return to/turn our lives over to God. In recovery, we honor God each and everyday through our actions, through carrying the message, through acts of lovingkindness, charity, service, decent living, etc. In recovery we get to show up and we weep when someone else returns to captivity, doesn’t leave captivity and/or dies in captivity. We take it personally because each soul matters and when someone dies in captivity it is a tragedy for all of us. 

I know Jeremiah’s pain and I know the pain of being seen as uncaring and angry. I understand that Jeremiah’s way is not always appropriate in every situation and, I see that Jeremiah could plead with the people from his soul and they still could not hear. Once people have decided something about someone, they are loathe to change their minds, no matter what the facts are. I have fallen prey to this way of being occasionally in my recovery and I am blessed to be able to hear God’s call to return and hear the person anew. I have also had Jeremiah’s experience of being exiled/be an outcast because of my message and my way of delivery. I weep/have wept Jeremiah’s tears and my soul aches from the pain of seeing people return to captivity and, at times, die there. Having stumbled for years, and, in contrast, much more rarely now, I am so grateful to God and the people who love me for speaking into my ears and helping me return to honoring God and not self.  Honoring God, staying in pride and ego, where are you today? Stay Safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark