Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- a daily path for living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 74

“For God is everywhere save in arrogance.” (Man is Not Alone pg.145).


I have been stuck on this sentence since Friday, when I wrote about it. Arrogance, claiming for oneself from the latin, is an insidious and subtle way of being. In fact, many of us are arrogant and would recoil and argue this fact if and when it was pointed out to us. I want to explore the lessor known ways of engaging in this arrogance that keeps God out. One of the first incidents of arrogance, I believe, is when we buy into the self-deprecating ways we speak/think of our selves, individually and collectively. While what we say about ourself may have some basis in fact, putting ourself down as inadequate and unworthy is an affront to our Creator. I would posit that much of the harm and violence that our deprecating and negative self-talk brings is an affront to God and to our souls. We keep ‘claiming for our self ‘ a way of thinking and excusing ourself that is an arrogant stance. 


We are all created in the Image of God, according to the Bible. Using this as a starting place, how can any of us be defective or damaged goods when God created us? We begin to buy into these false statements, either because we were told them by someone else or came to them because of comparing and competing, at a young age. When we are told we are “bad” for doing something that our parents/caregivers think will either harm us or make them look bad, we begin to imbibe these erroneous beliefs. As we get older, more and more authority figures use these types of negative statements to get us to believe we need follow them in order to be able to develop into ‘adulthood’ and live well. This is such BS and, yet, we still perpetrate these ways on children and adults alike.

We are created with infinite value, equal value to everyone else, and unique value. No other person has more value nor dignity than the next person and when we are bowing down to another’s value or dignity, we are being arrogant towards ourself. This is one of the ways we are “kept in our place” by society; remember the saying “Children should be seen and not heard”? These messages give us the beginning of a negative self-image that denies our infinite worth and dignity which leads to an inner arrogance. I saw a sign on a cubicle many years ago: “I must be somebody cause God don’t make no junk”; I believe all of us should read this daily to our self and to all those around us. 

When we accept the role of ‘victim’ we are being arrogant as well, I believe. Rabbi Heschel had many traumas happen to him, the anti-semitism, leaving his family for America at the start of WWII, losing much of his family in the Shoah, being marginalized by many during his lifetime, yet he was never a ‘victim’. He did not believe in despair as a response to life, according to his daughter, Dr. Susannah Heschel. I understand how he avoided this trap: he never lost his connection to God! It is how Rabbi Heschel stayed the course God gave him to follow and fulfill the divine need of helping us all be more in tune with the message of the prophets and how to fulfill their message and way of being one with God and humanity at the same time. I also understand why despair and ‘victimhood’ are such arrogant traps that disguise themselves as understandable and logical.

We are all ‘victims’ to one thing or another and using it as an excuse, adopting it as a way of being in the world defies the gifts God has given us, defies our dignity and infinite worth and is saying to God that God did make junk when we were created! How arrogant is that?? We are denying the Divine Need we are here to fulfill when we succumb to being a ‘victim’, to living in ‘low self-esteem’, speaking to and about ourselves in self-deprecating ways. Yet, we miss the arrogance of these ways, we miss the fact that we can rise above our need to be arrogant about our self by denying the spirit and the power God has invested in us.

In recovery, we remember to not confuse humility with self-humiliation. We no longer need to deny who we are and what we bring to the table, we no longer need to embellish who we are and what we contribute. We no longer live in compare and despair, we no longer need to define ourselves in relationship to another human being, rather we define ourselves by our gifts, our spirit and our being. 


I am guilty, as I said on Friday, of the arrogance of bragging, thinking I am the smartest person in the room and not needing another person in my 70+ years on the planet. Much less in my almost 33 years of recovery. Yet, I am also guilty of the self-deprecation, the not believing I have something to say that people will be interested in, my ideas are too ‘far out there’ for anyone to take seriously, etc. I have tried to prove I am worthy of breathing the air because of the negative self-talk and the negative talk from another(s) human beings. I have been told that I am ‘not a real Rabbi’, ‘a niche Rabbinate’, ‘not professional’, ‘bad person’, ‘inappropriate’, etc and, I am realizing that I have bought into these lies both from within and that I have been bombarded with from outside of me. I realize the arrogance of believing these untruths and commit to let them leave my being as soon as they rear their ugly heads! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 73

“It is as easy to expel God as it is to shed blood. And yet even when He hides, even when our souls have lost His trace we may still call Him out of the depths: out of the depths of all things. For God is everywhere save in arrogance.” (Man is Not Alone pg.145)


Reading this paragraph/teaching each day for the past 4 days has impacted me greatly. Our calls to God never go unanswered, we just have to attune our hearing, clear out our inner chaos enough to hear God’s response. As the last sentence says, “God is everywhere save in arrogance.” What a brave statement to make and I believe this goes a little unnoticed about Rabbi Heschel, his courage and his bravery under fire. True, he did not serve in the military and he was a general, strategist and foot soldier in the war for the soul of Jews and the soul of America; at a time when the rest of the Jews and the rest of America was not even aware of the onslaught against their spiritual foundation. 


Arrogant comes from the latin: “to claim for oneself”, which validates the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. We are so enamored with the Greek civilization and it has become such an insidious part of societal norms, we think nothing of claiming for oneself things that don’t belong to us, things that we are a part of and not the entirety of. Plagiarism is such a behavior and while it is condemned once known, the fact that it is done so often and with such impunity is a sign of the arrogance of our current state. The College Admissions Scandal is a sign of arrogance of the wealthy and the con man. William Singer took advantage of the arrogance of wealthy people and then took advantage of them again by ‘rolling over’ when he masterminded the whole scheme! His arrogance is mind-boggling as well as the arrogance of the wealthy involved in this scandal-God was not anywhere in this experience because arrogance and God cannot co-exist. Singer, et.al. claimed for themselves the ‘right’ to do whatever they wanted to because they were wealthy and he was ‘smarter’ than everyone else. 


We see this arrogance in some of our Spiritual Leadership today. “Come to me/us-we have the answer to your problems” “Come to us/me and I will tell you what God is saying” “Come to us and you will be saved” “Come to us and we will show you the way (there is only one and it is ours) to God, to serenity, to wealth, etc.” are all slogans we hear from churches, mosques, and temples of all different spiritual and religious traditions. How arrogant is this! God is infinite and we are finite, hence it is impossible for any human to make these and other statements. Of course we know what God wants: decency, justice, kindness, caring, love and truth; yet no one knows the totality of God nor can anyone point to only one way to understand God much less serve God. Yet, we hear all the time, Spiritual Leaders, Religious leaders claim for themselves God’s mantle and knowing. Instead of rejecting these charlatans, we follow them even to our physical deaths, we follow them to rejecting vaccines, we follow them to hate another group of people because they are not like us. These are not God-fearing people acting in this way; these are people who live in such arrogance that God cannot dwell within them, within their community and mendacity and self-deception. 


We see this with our political leadership as well. We have so many people who don’t care about what is best for all/a vast majority of people event their own constituents, they care about being seen and being an obstructionist. They cater to a Religious intolerance and deception as well as to the prejudices and vulnerabilities of some people. Being judgmental about the poor and the needy: it is their own fault after all because God doesn’t love them as much as the rich and powerful according to the mendacious prosperity gospel being preached; making the stranger an outcast: after all the problems we face today are because of them as some of our elected officials and citizens like to say; are two of the ways of claiming for themselves what God means when 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible we are told to care for the poor and the needy as well as the stranger because we were strangers in a strange land! All of these lying deceptive arrogant people forget they were immigrants here as well. They do not care that their constituents and their congregants are part of the poor and the needy! 


It is sad that even people who don’t have the same views, who are not so arrogant, respond to these liars and engage with them on their level instead of engaging with them on God’s level. Every compromise that keeps God out of the picture, that doesn’t uphold the principles of justice, truth, kindness, compassion, love, etc falls into the category of arrogance as I am experiencing the teaching above today. We have to look at our institutions, our families, our relationships as well as to see our own acts of arrogance and our ways of expelling God, of not crying out, not hearing the cry of another and not hearing God’s response. 


In recovery, we are constantly seeking to improve our conscious contact with God, knowing that God/the Ineffable One is so beyond our comprehension we can only stay clear enough to hear God’s call back to us and to respond to the call/cry of another human being. 


I know I have been arrogant and expelled God and each day I strive to do this less and less. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 72

“It is as easy to expel God as it is to shed blood. And yet even when He hides, even when our souls have lost His trace we may still call Him out of the depths: out of the depths of all things. For God is everywhere save in arrogance.” (Man is Not Alone pg.145)


Yesterday, I was immersed in the first half of the second sentence above. Today, I am immersed in the ‘cradling’ I mentioned yesterday of the second half of the second sentence. As I read this part of the sentence, I was moved to look at Psalm 130 again and think about how return always begins with a cry from the depths. New beginnings begin with this cry from the depths, whether we realize it or not, it is a cry to the Ineffable One, to the higher consciousness of self and another, to a higher power in the universe, to the creative force of the cosmos-however one wants to think about/describe/name the part of the universe from whence our intuition, thoughts, breath come from. 


When one cries out from the depths, what are we crying for if not connection and assistance? We cry out to be heard and we cry out to hear ourselves; at that moment of calling out to God, to another human being we are saying we need help, we are unable to do everything on our own and we are stuck. We are stuck in our self-deceptions, our mendacious ways, we are stuck in stubbornness, we are stuck in slavery to another person’s whims, we are stuck in a class system, we are stuck in ___(fill in the blank). We are stuck with no where to turn except to cry out and seek the wisdom, the strength and the key to becoming unstuck whether from another person and/or the Ineffable One. Our calling out is the first step towards freedom for our self, it is the first step on the journey of recovering our integrity, our authenticity, our humanity. 


This call out of the depths is the most ‘cradling’ action we can take in that moment. We are rocking ourselves to calm ourselves so we can hear the call of our soul, the response of our call and know that help is on it’s way-whether from ‘up there’ and/or down here. In many prayer traditions, swaying back and forth happens at times people are most active in calling out to God and while some people find it humorous and ridiculous, those of us who engage in it experience both the calming and the calling, our enslavement and our being cradled and soothed. 


For the people who hear this call out of the depths and respond, we are aware of the holy action we are engaging in. It is not a burden to respond to this call, it is an honor, it is a Mitzvah, it is an encounter with another human being and something quite larger than ourselves. We get to hear and respond to the call of the widow and orphan, stranger and poor, the needy in material and in spiritual matters. We get to return the gift of the lives we live to God by sharing, caring and reaching down to the depths to pull someone else out of the shit we were once in. WOW, it can’t get any better than this. This is the ultimate in being cradled by God and then cradling another human being. 


This is why it is so important to stop scapegoating the people who are crying out from their depths-let’s stop judging whether they ‘deserve what they got’ and begin to make the society that God is calling on us to make-a society of refuge, a society of imperfection, tshuvah, return and welcoming back. None of us are so perfect we have not had the need to cry out and for those unwilling to hear the call and the cry from the depths of all things, from the border to the boardroom, from the current scapegoat to the millions who have died from addiction/use/abuse of numerous substances and behaviors because their calls and cries were not heard-THE SIN IS YOURS! We need to remind our fellow travelers on this planet to be responsible not only for their actions, but to remember what Scripture teaches: we are our brother’s keeper and “the bloods of your brother cry out”. 


In recovery, we called out from the depths of our being trapped and stuck in living a false, miserable life and we were heard. We call out to God/Higher Power each and every day in gratitude and in service. We continue to hear the call and cry from the depths by another human being and reach out to help that person up to a place of liberation knowing freedom is theirs once they connect to a way of living that is congruent with decency, love and service. 


35 years ago, I called out to God and, sitting in a jail cell, I heard God’s response to me. “I have a plan for you and you have to figure it out, Mark” was the message I heard and I have spent these 35 years continuing to figure it out and to hear the call of the soul/depths of another(s) human being. In writing this today, I realize I have needed to call out at other times during this time and I haven’t because of ego, of people pleasing, of needing to fundraise, etc. I also know that I did cry out at times inappropriately possibly, and these cries were not heard and/or misinterpreted by another. I also did not listen for God’s response at times because the pain of being stuck, the pain of seeing wrong-doing was so great. I feel very held and cradled today by remembering all I have to do is call and wait and listen for the response because it always comes. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 70


“It is as easy to expel God as it is to shed blood. And yet even when He hides, even when our souls have lost His trace we may still call Him out of the depths: out of the depths of all things. For God is everywhere save in arrogance.” (Man is Not Alone pg.145)


The second sentence above is very cradling for me. While “He hides” is a little troublesome for my rational self, my ‘lower logic’, my soul knows that God always hides a little to a lot, depending on us, on our needs and on our ability to hold on to the “traces’ we have obtained through our living. God “hides” is a device we humans use to explain the imperfections in the world and/or our need to deny the existence of God/the Ineffable One, I believe. While it is ‘true’ that we cannot see the face of God or we will die as the Torah teaches us, it is also ‘true’ that God sends messengers/angels to us all the time. God “hides” could be another way to describe the immutable truth of God’s gift of free-will. God’s full presence in the world would rob us of this gift, and even when we use it poorly, God doesn’t take the gift back. “He hides” is, in my immersing myself in this thought, Rabbi Heschel’s way of pointing to the impossibility of ever really knowing God, Rabbi Heschel’s way of showing us the enigmatic nature of the Ineffable One. 


The second part of this three-part sentence is causing me to tremble. How can our souls lose “His trace”? How is this possible? Our soul is our divine image, how can we lose “His trace” from His image? I hear Rabbi Heschel is speaking to all of us to be careful and stay right-sized. We lose “His trace” when we stop hearing our inner voice of God/Intuition/knowledge/higher consciousness, whatever you want to call our connection to something greater than ourselves. We stop hearing the call of the “still, small voice” within us and in the universe when we allow our souls to atrophy, when we end our spiritual development at age 13, 16, 18, or whenever. We lose “His trace” when we end (if we even began) our spiritual growing/learning. While many people quote the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, other Holy texts of the other religions and spiritual disciplines, many of those have lost “His trace” because they do not live the words, they only speak them. 


Our world is full of people who are narcissists and sociopaths who will quote/say the right words all the while acting totally different in private. While their public actions look good, they are all for show because they have lost “His trace” and their path of deception and mendacity is so strong, they have convinced so many of their sincerity and kindness, all the while fleecing people’s emotions, spirits, and, at times, their bank accounts. We see this in the political sphere all the time-be it about abortion, vaccines, protecting the wealthy and treating a corporation as if it is human while it engages in inhumane activities, obstructionist measures to ensure the unequal rights of one group or another, etc. We see this in advertising, especially the advertising and marketing of prescription drugs on TV and in Magazines. “Tell your doctor” is a way to force doctors to prescribe something that might not be good for a patient but the patient either is going to leave the practice or, worse yet, sue for malpractice-watch “Dopesick” on Hulu to see this practice in action and how many deaths are still occurring thanks to Purdue Pharma.

We see this behavior in small business and families as well. The different serial killers who were family men, people ‘you would least expect’! We see the parents who put on a show of how devoted to their children they are while neglecting them spiritually, emotionally and treating them as investments, props-not precious souls they are blessed to steward into adulthood. We see this in the two-faced way people are at home and at work, in church/temple/mosque and in the world.We see this in the person who prays every day and then cheats another person, who gaslights another person, who spreads gossip, true and not true, about someone they are trying to dominate, all the while speaking eloquently about their spiritual connections. 


We lose “His trace” whenever we engage in mendacious behavior, whenever we wall our souls off from the rest of our being, whenever we actively ignore the “still, small voice” inside of us and outside of us. When we choose to hide from God and when we choose to not seek God and not allow God to find us we lose “His trace”. It is not God’s hiding that makes us lose “His trace”, it is a choice we make!


In recovery, we know that our recovery is determined by the nature of our spiritual condition each and every day. We know that spirituality is not something we attain, it a way of being. We know that the moment we believe we are spiritual, we lost “His trace”. We continue to “grow along spiritual lines” so we can deepen our connection to the Ineffable One and grow “His trace” within us.


I will write more on this second sentence tomorrow including my experience with it. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 70


“It is as easy to expel God as it is to shed blood. And yet even when He hides, even when our souls have lost His trace we may still call Him out of the depths: out of the depths of all things. For God is everywhere save in arrogance.” (Man is Not Alone pg.145)


I have spent 9 weeks in the Chapter titled: The Divine Concern in Rabbi Heschel’s book: Man is Not Alone. In reading the above quote, I am realizing that this chapter is holding my interest so strongly and profoundly because of my fear that we, as individuals and as a society, have forgotten the concerns of the Ineffable One, the concerns of the Universe, the concerns of Higher Consciousness-however one wants to define/label the creative force in the Cosmos. 


NEWS FLASH: GOD IS NOT DEAD!! Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that those who say this are the people who expel God from their living so they can shed blood in all manners of ways. There are the people who shed blood through mendacity and deception. Many of these people are ‘bible thumpers’ and ‘bible quoters’; they can recite chapter and verse of the Bible so they can bastardize the Holy words! These mendacious and deceptive people claim “Come to me, I have the answer to all your problems” all the while deceiving another human being to become subservient and dependent upon them. This happens in all walks of life, in all religions, in all political parties, in all movements, in all families, communities, etc. These people, while claiming to be people of faith, ‘God-fearing people’ have already expelled God from their ways, their hearts, their souls because they are shedding blood through deception and mendacity, they will, when found out and they will be eventually, cause people to lose faith, to lose hope and to become more cynical and more desperate, making us more susceptible to the next charlatan that shows up. 


We expel God and shed blood in so many ways: through dishonest speech, through the ‘delicious pleasure’ of gossip, through twisting the words of someone else to overpower them and/or embarrass them, through using the vulnerabilities of another person against them, through betraying covenantal relationships in a myriad of ways, through going to war to gain money, not for principle nor safety, through criminalizing/marginalizing certain groups of people to ‘keep order’ while really just enslaving the particular group, etc. War, when attacked, when fighting for a principle of God, while shedding blood is not expelling God. 

We are living in a world where ‘alternative facts’ have become mainstream. The insurrectionists who attacked the Capital on Jan.6 and their supporters in Congress and elsewhere have decided to promote the ‘alternative fact’ that these people were just visiting and are patriots and only killed and maimed because they had to protect themselves and …! What BS! Yet, these people also claim that God is telling them to kill anyone who disagrees with them, to prosecute and imprison people who help women make their own choice about their bodies, imprison people of color for longer terms than white people for the same/similar crimes, make it harder for people to exercise their right to vote, put the Jews in Concentration Camps, blame the Jews, the Hispanics, the Irish, the Italians, the Blacks, the Muslims, the ___(fill in the blank) for any and all problems. These are the same people who speak about personal responsibility while shunning wearing a mask to protect themselves, another human being, even their families. Exercising free-will is not freedom; Making free-will moral choices as Rabbi Abraham Twerski says is what makes us human and free. Free-will devoid of God’s Truth is the path to shed blood, enslave another(s) and try to destroy the spirit of another human being. 


In recovery, we call this type of behavior EGO: easing God out. We say this because expelling God is a gradual, almost unnoticed activity. For people who don’t ‘have faith’, ‘don’t believe’ we find agreement in what they don’t believe in nor have faith in. Since we all know that thoughts come into us from somewhere and we have all experienced our intuitive minds, as Einstein calls it, we have all experienced the Ineffable One, in my opinion. We “ease God out” by ignoring the ‘gut instinct’, the intuitive voice, the ‘knowing in our bones’ because of our ability to rationalize and validate choosing our feelings over our soul’s knowledge. In recovery, we are constantly engaged in clearing out the junk that blocks our spiritual arteries. 


I have shed blood by expelling God at times in my life, both prior to recovery and in recovery. I see how my need to be right, my ignoring signs that God and another person were giving me, having my ego puffed up by believing the bs that another person gave me and/or believing my own press pushed God out from my being in those moments and each time, I harmed someone(s) and I harmed myself and I learned. I also know that I have become pigeoned-holed as a lunatic for the ways I passionately and loudly proclaim God’s presence in my life and in everyone’s life, for promoting recovery for all people, recovering the true passion and purpose of each individual’s life. It is a bumpy road and I learn how to navigate the new pot holes each day with God’s help and the help of so many other people. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 69


“All beings are replete with the divine word which only leaves when our viciousness profanes and overbears His silent, patient presence.”(Man is Not Alone pg.145)


If we are being disturbed and concerned by this teaching, then we are also being consoled by it. The states of disturbance and concern are to remind us of what is important in the world, in our lives and in the way we live. The concern we experience about the way people are vicious and profane regarding the divine word is a good experience, though it brings worry and dismay. It is a good experience because it means that the divine word is being awakened inside of us again, we are called to act on the divine word that is in us and to act on it/them in our own unique manner. “Evil flourishes when good men/people do nothing” which is attributed to Edmund Burke, is a call to action on the divine word inside each and every one of us. We are not stuck nor trapped by the viciousness and profanity of another(s) human being and/or group, and/or country. We all have a choice to stand up against this viciousness and profanity by standing up and acting on the divine word in us. 


This brings much consolation and hope to all of us. We are living in a time(not unlike other times) where negativity, mendacity, evil, subterfuge, etc seem to be winning the day and even some of our religious and spiritual leaders are participating. We are living in a time, not unlike other times, where truths are being bastardized by a few for power over the many. We are seeing a form of minority rule that could be reminiscent of the time before the American Civil War AND we can bring the divine word in us, we can fill our world back again, ie be replete, with the divine word in us and hear the divine word from and in another human being. This is our challenge, this is our task and this is our ability. 


While finding the divine need that we fulfill may seem daunting, the teaching above from Rabbi Heschel brings joy and hope! One of our basic needs, as I am understanding this teaching today, is to bring the divine word(s) we are replete with to another human being, to allow them to shape our actions, then our thoughts and then our feelings. Hurt feelings is a major disease today and in the past; countries have gone to war and millions have died over hurt feelings and resentments. If we live Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, then when we are hurt by another person, we will fill ourselves back up again with a divine word and a divine teaching and hear the divine words, even in the viciousness and profanity of the person who hurt us. Not that this means we had this vicious and profane attack coming to us, just that we get to ask ourselves the question: “What is the question this experience is the answer for” as I learned from Rabbi Jonathon Omer-man. In asking “what do I learn from this experience” we are able to divorce ourselves from the viciousness and the profanity, not carry a resentment nor give credence to this attack, and strengthen our ability to hear and speak the divine word(s) we are filled up with. It is one of the better ways of letting go of resentments and being able to forge ahead with our path and service to the Ineffable One, another human being and our self. 


I love the use of the word replete, the latin is “to fill back again”. The divine word never leaves us! We are constantly being filled up with the divine word, the higher truth, a way out of the slavery of our thoughts and feelings and this is joyous and consoling for us. Many of us see the negativity as continuing to flow and being refilled in the world, which it is; yet Rabbi Heschel is telling us the antidote to negativity, divine words and deeds are also continually flowing in our self and the world. While negativity gets more attention, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to start paying more attention to the divine word(s) and deeds that we are filled up with again and again. Isn’t it joyous and consoling to know we are filled with higher aspirations and actions than the worst we portray? Isn’t is hopeful to know that divine word can overcome viciousness and profanity? I believe it is. 


In recovery, we are able to discern the divine word(s) that fill us up and the ways we are vicious and profane, many times bastardizing divine words to be more vicious and profane. In recovery we are aware of the need to be vigilant about our actions, our words, speaking to people in ways they can hear and helping our self and another self to keep being filled back again with divine word(s) and mitigating our leanings towards viciousness and profanity.

I am thinking of a teaching that says: “Every person should see oneself as if holiness abides in one’s guts”. I am so grateful to Rabbi Heschel for reminding me that I am not my worst action, that one “oh shit” doesn’t wipe out “100 atta boys” as the saying goes. I am consoled by this teaching reminding me I am replete with the divine word and, while I have been vicious and profane, I have been kind and compassionate and of service much more often and I no longer have to resent anyone else who is vicious and I choose to not resent myself for my errors. I commit to continue to live and speak my divine word more often for my sake, for the sake of another, and for the sake of the Ineffable One. These are the best motivators of positivity and antidote to viciousness to me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

1 Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 68

“All beings are replete with the divine word which only leaves when our viciousness profanes and overbears His silent, patient presence.”(Man is Not Alone pg.145)


This sentence, coming on the heels of Friday’s quote can and must disturb, concern and console us. When we are standing for a divine concern, we are displaying our individual repleteness of the divine word. Replete’s latin origin means to ‘fill again’ and the English meaning is ‘to be well-supplied’ with. Every human being is capable of refilling her/himself with the divine word(s) that is uniquely theirs and the universal divine word(s) that brings all of us together as humanity. We are the ones who allow our viciousness to profane and overbear the Ineffable One’s “silent, patient presence”.


Today’s disturbance is understanding that viciousness is not just deliberate cruelty, it comes from the latin meaning ‘vise’. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that when we put the divine word in a vise, when we use it for our benefit instead of the benefit of humanity, we are ignoring the divine word that fills us up. We are engaging in behaviors that are antithetical to the call of our souls, the divine word that wants to emerge and guide us. To stand for a divine concern is Rabbi Heschel’s description of being as we discussed on Friday; today he is teaching us that when we allow our cruelty, our tightening of the screws to be our modus operandi and our guiding principles, we are not only denying the presence of the Ineffable One within us, we are denying the presence of the Ineffable One in the world and, we deny our humanity. 


One of the problems of today, and in the past of course, is that the people engaged in this type of vicious behavior are neither concerned nor disturbed. They are so lost, so stuck, so without guidance and without connection to their own inner life/soul that they can’t even be disturbed nor concerned about their abandonment of the divine word and the divine concerns! It is sad and disconcerting as well as enraging to those who see this viciousness in action and are powerless to stop it because of the obtuseness and the willful blindness of these lost, sad people who are following like sheep the cold, calculating, charlatans who hide behind a misread of scriptures and our constitution to hold power and enslave ‘those’ people, ie, ‘anyone who isn’t us’. It is also disturbing to people who are students of the prophets and learn to see the humanity and the Ineffable One together in one moment and in every moment, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us to do. We are able to see how the charlatans are seeking, maintaining and abusing the power they have. We are able to speak about this twisted, dangerous path that a person is taking and it falls on deaf ears. The problem with viciousness is that is like a drug, one needs more and more of it to be satisfied and there is never enough! 


Another concerning and disturbing aspect to our world today is that profane comes from the latin ‘before the Temple/not sacred’ and as a verb means ‘treat something with irreverence, disdain’. When people put ideas, ways of being that they don’t agree with into the vise of viciousness, what is produced is disdain, irreverence as well as unholy behavior towards another human being, our planet and the Ineffable One! The ‘sin’ here isn’t just against our fellow human beings, we are harming the Ineffable One’s creation, the spirit that the Ineffable One placed in us and in the universe. We are ‘using this drug’ (vicious, profane behavior) and wrapping ourselves in different flags, Christ, God, Allah, Freedom, Woke, Victimized One, etc. What we are not aware of is that even in fighting the injustices of our times, when we use viciousness, when we profane the divine word that is within us and within another human being, we are no longer fighting the injustices, we are committing them!! This is the most disturbing and concerning thought this morning. 


In recovery, we know what our viciousness brought to the people around us, to our own life-destruction, denial, disruption, discord, disarray, etc. We realize the reason people crossed the street to stay out of our paths. In recovery, we continue to improve our awareness of the divine word that fills us up, we continue to hear the call of the Ineffable One so we can live the divine word and not the viciousness that we are capable of. 


In my life I have used profanity and been told how offensive it is to some. Yet, these same people are not offended by the profane ways they and another vitiate the divine word within them and within another human being. I realize today, while my ways are not everyone’s ways, I spoke/speak to people in ways they could hear, I exhibited my passionate belief in another human being, and I have been able to be an advocate for the soul of another. The viciousness that Rabbi Heschel is speaking about, I believe, is the bastardization of the divine word within each us and bastardizing the divine word in another thereby using the vulnerabilities of another against that person. While I have, of course, been guilty of this along with everyone else, I also know that I have been accused and convicted of these crimes much more than I have committed them. I see how I have made myself a scapegoat and an easy target for people to point at me rather than see themselves. I feel deep remorse in giving someone an out from self-reflection by pointing a finger at me. I commit to stay me, continue to speak the divine word(s) in my soul and, if I am a target, be a target for God and not have my ego get bruised. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

1 Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

 Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 67


“What is a thing to us is a concern to God; what is part of the physical world is also a part of a divine world of meaning. To be is to stand for, to stand for a divine concern.”(Man is Not Alone, pg 145). 


“To be is to stand for” is a reverberation of a calling to us from Mount Sinai, from Jesus’ Temple Mount, from Mohammed’s Mecca, from Buddha, Confucius, from Freud, etc. For   those of us who believe in a faith, this is a calling from the Ineffable One. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us that if we don’t “stand for” we are merely breathing/existing-not living and being human. 


It would seem if we just stopped there, Hitler, Putin, Orban, Trump, Hirohito, Jung-un, etc would fall into the category of being because they stand for something: authoritarian power, wealth, etc. To be clear about what “to be is to stand for”  is not bastardized, as so many spiritual truths and tenets have been in the past and are in the present, Rabbi Heschel further clarifies what stand for means: “to stand for a divine concern”. 


What is a divine concern? 36 times in the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible), God reminds us to care for the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy and the stranger, 36 times; more than any other commandment! Yet, we have forever tried to and been successful at finding workarounds to this call that reverberates through our Torah, through Jesus, from Mount Sinai and from our souls. It began when people would not lend money in the 5th and 6th years before the 7th year of release so Hillel proposed a workaround and it was adopted-even in ancient Israel, wealthy people did not want to help the poor. Even in a place where pilgrimages to Jerusalem were common to worship God, wealthy people were afraid of ‘getting beat’. They stood for something, however, it was selfishness, power, money, prestige, success, not the interests of another who was hurting, needy, not knowing the way of the land. 


We are hearing from ‘people of faith’ that the asylum seeker should be sent back, the immigrant is bad, people who have abortions, who perform abortions, are abominable, trickle-down economics, which did not work in President Reagan’s time is wonderful for the country, the rich paying their fair share is wrong-the middle class should pay more taxes than the wealthy. Be afraid of the stranger, the LGBTQI, the Jew, the Muslim and, before now, the Irish, the Italian, etc. Anyone who is not like us, we don’t have to nor should we care for. Of course, ‘like us’ is used very loosely because many of the followers of these ‘people of faith’ are the very ones who are in need. These ‘people of faith’ are not believers in Jesus’ teachings, they are believers in their power, their rightness, their ‘whiteness’, their entitlement, their superiority, etc. They are spouting the words of Christ in ways that Christ would be aghast at if he were here to hear them. 

The woke crowd is not too much better as they are willing to write off and treat the people they feel hurt them and they are against are less than human as well. They are against so much and, while they say they are for the people God is telling us to be for, they are ignoring and mean to the poor, widows, strangers, needy and orphans that don’t agree with them. 


Standing for a divine concern means we get to take the actions that our inner being is calling us to take, We get to be in action to help another person in the ways they need, not the ways we want to. We get to see how to help the stranger and needy inside of us, we get to see the way we are orphaned from our essence, from our Divine Image, from our core gifts. We get to experience a connection with another human being that is real, truthful, transparent and whole. Our soul is calling us to be one with the universe, one with our self, one with humanity. Standing for a divine concern is the path of being human, the path of a fulfilling life, the path of meaning, purpose and passion. Standing for a divine concern is true Beingness. 


In recovery, we know that we have to stand for divine concerns because standing for our concerns got us nowhere good. We crashed into a wall from our selfishness, our self-centeredness and total self-reliance. When we are standing for our own concerns only, we are stuck in a narrow prison that leads to depression, anxiety, addiction, need for more, more, and there is never enough. In recovery, standing for divine concerns becomes the greatest gift to fulfill our own concerns as well.

I have been standing for divine concerns throughout my recovery, not perfectly nor always, and consistently and constantly. I have had all of my needs met by standing for divine concerns and I have the honor of being a trusted servant of the Ineffable One! “To be is to stand for” has gotten me into trouble when I am standing for ego-mine or someone elses’- and when what God is telling me/my soul is calling me to stand for goes against the conventional notions/‘wisdom’ of the people around me or the mood of the times. Divine concerns have not changed, the ways we fulfill them may have, however the concerns haven’t. I have erred in standing for divine concerns in ways that are ‘outdated’ though effective, in ways that leave me and another vulnerable to attacks and lawsuits. I am sorry for this and am more careful now, while still standing for divine concerns. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 66

“What is a thing to us is a concern to God; what is part of the physical world is also a part of a divine world of meaning. To be is to stand for, to stand for a divine concern.”(Man is Not Alone, pg 145). 


Yesterday I wrote about the inner war and some of the different ways it manifests in human beings. These two sentences set the stage for maturing, growing and recognizing our Ineffable spirit and the Ineffable spirit in the universe. Realizing that every thing we see, touch, feel, ignore, disdain, profane is a “concern to God” overwhelms us, so we tend to ignore this truth. Yet, immersing ourselves in this truth will not bring us instant and complete awareness of all things, it will begin to awaken us to both the beauty and the holy in things that we have ignored, taken for granted, desired for less than Godly reasons, etc. Beginning with our selves! Accepting that we are a concern to the Ineffable One is, I believe, an important place to begin to mature and grow our own “spirit of concern for life”. 


Many people are concerned with/about their lives without ever realizing that their concerns are actually harming them rather than growing and maturing them. Sure, they obtain things, money, comfort, etc and, in many people I have met who are nor ‘addicts’, they always feel something is missing, they are afraid of losing everything. When one realizes, immerses oneself in being “a concern to God”, we see life differently. We no longer look for ‘where’s mine’; we see what is ours. We no longer are playing a ‘zero sum’ game; we are looking for win/win solutions. We no longer see life as a battle; we see life as a gift that we have to grow and pass on to the next generation. Accepting and living as “a concern to God” gives a new set of eyes with which to see ourselves, our gifts and our ability to make a difference in our world. Living as “a concern to God” gives our life a new meaning and new goal: being a better partner through listening to our souls and, while our minds/selfishness will burst thru our thinking, our souls will gently thank them for their opinion, consider what they are saying and choose to honor our being a “concern to God”. 


Once we accept our being “a concern to God” we begin to look at our surroundings as concerns to God as well. We are more aware of our environment and what we do to it and for it. We are more aware of health issues and what we do to promote healthy plants, farms, animals and humans. Politics takes a back seat to what is healthy and safe for humanity, nature and the animal world. In fact, once we begin to see our surroundings, the “things” around us as “a concern to God”; politics becomes a vehicle for robust and dedicated ‘arguments for the sake of heaven’; no longer a zero-sum game of power and ugliness. In fact, politicians become statesmen, more Daniel Webster than Mitch McConnell. 


Seeing another human being as “a concern to God” is intrinsic to healing this war within us, the inner conflict between ‘where’s mine’ and ‘how can I be of service’. When one sees another human being as “a concern to God”, there is no longer a war as to which do I choose, because we are able to choose both, serving oneself and another at the same time.. This is the problem that has faced humanity for millennia: How do I live with dual concerns, for you and me? The answer is found in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, of course, and especially in today’s quote. Knowing and accepting that another human being is of as much concern to God as oneself is a humbling and uplifting experience. One is reminded that we are not the center of the universe and we get to share the spotlight, the dignity, value with another unique individual who is someone who can do things that one can’t and one returns the gift of doing what one can and another can’t. This relieves us of the “less than”, “poor me”, anxiety and depress that these messages of our emotions and thoughts bring to us. Instead we are know that we are connected to other concerns of God and to the universal “spirit of concern for life”. These are some of the ways of healing our inner conflicts and maturing and growing our souls. 


In recovery, our goal is to continue to heal the inner war/conflict so we can live without the angst and anxiety, depression and despair that our conflicts bring to us. We seek to be of service each and every day, helping people in the ways they need help, not the ways we want to help. In recovery, knowing that we all are “a concern to God” makes us more accountable to heal and grow. 


I have, at times in my recovery, acted in ways where people thought I believed I was the only concern to God and not anyone else. Had they looked into my being, they would have seen how much I yearned for them, how much of a concern they were/are to me! Yet, I realize in transactional relationships, which is what most people believe in, the only looking one does is to see what one can get from the transactions. I have not always acted as if another human being is a concern to me and I have always known and tried to honor that they are a concern to God. My ways are not conventional and the covenantal relationships I am engaged in have strengthened my commitment to living as a concern to God and another as well as seeing another as a concern to God and therefore to me. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark  


Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 65

“When we say that He is a present within all beings, we do not mean that He inheres in them as component or ingredient of their physical structure. God in the universe is a spirit of concern for life.”(Man is Not Alone, pg. 145).


Living in today’s world makes some people yearn for God to “inhere in them as component or ingredient of their physical structure”. Yet, God’s presence, the presence of the universe, that we are all created in the Image of according to the Bible, is not part of our physical structure, just as God is not a physical/corporeal being. Rabbi Heschel is not saying that God isn’t inherent in our beingness, just that God is not inherent in our physical structure, which makes it easy for people to not believe, to blow off the ‘voice of God’ that is calling to them from their inner life/gut instinct/soul. 


There are people who try to say that God is inherent in our physical being by anthropomorphising God. By giving God human attributes, the Rabbis of old were, I believe, trying to speak to people in ways we could understand about an infinite being that is beyond our comprehension. Unfortunately this has been bastardized so much that people would worship kings as descendants of God, empires as God ordained (The Holy Roman Empire) even though they treated people within their empire with such hatred, disdain, harsh labors, etc. This anthropomorphic description of God has gotten so bastardized that there are “people of faith” who say that rich people are more loved by God and that is why they are rich, poor people are less loved by God so it is their fault they are poor and who are we to go against God’s love and help the poor and the needy! What poppycock! What a bastardization of God’s teachings to us, God’s directions to us and the depiction of God crying because God’s children are dying in the Red Sea! These “people of faith” are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing, they are power-hungry, boundary skirting/pushing, prejudiced, self-seeking, self-centered, selfish people parading as ‘God-Fearing’ and God-Loving’ people. We, God’s people, have to stop these mendacious menaces now!


How do we stop them, you might ask? Immersing ourselves in the second sentence above is the beginning. Acknowledging the “spirit of concern for life” in us and appreciating it, maturing it and growing it is the key to stopping the bastardization of the ‘good people of faith’ the ‘prosperity gospel deceivers’. God is always concerned for life, as we read throughout the Bible, Jewish and Christian; the Koran; in all spiritual disciplines “a spirit of concern for life” is present first and foremost. Yet, humanity, which has this spirit inherent in us, blocks this spirit from guiding us for fear of not getting ours, not having enough, not being seen as ____, etc. Not appreciating, maturing and growing this Ineffable Spirit that is in all of us allows for an inner war that is constantly happening within us, whether we are actively aware of it or not. 


This inner war manifests in so many ways, most of all in the split ways we live. How often have we celebrated the (usually) man who is ruthless in business and so kind and gentle at home, only to find out later that his wife and kids suffered more than they ever let on out of fear of rage, punishment, etc from this ‘nice guy’. Watching the series “Dopesick” showed us how many people bought into the Purdue Pharma deceptions, all the while knowing somewhere inside of them that it wasn’t right to believe. We celebrate the rich, the powerful and feel bad that we are not “those people”. This inner war manifests in our seeking distractions without knowing why, having a “drink to take the edge off” without being an alcoholic, our anxiety is a sign of the inner war between what we are doing, what we think we should do and what our spirit is telling us to do. Another manifestation is when we consciously buy into our own self-deception because we think it is easier to do and better for our self, our Ineffable Spirit gives us a tightening of the gut, an uneasiness that we tend to ignore and go forward anyway. More on how to win this war, to mature and grow this Ineffable Spirit tomorrow. 


In recovery, we come face to face with our self-deceptions, our deceptions of another(s) and our mendacious paths. We become firmly rooted in our recovery through this confrontation with our selves and repairing the damage we have caused and finding a new way of responding to the situations that will come up that are similar to the ones we have found ourselves in before. In recovery, we make a decision to listen and follow this Ineffable Spirit as guide and director with veto power over ego and face-saving. 


I am realizing more and more each day, through this experience with Rabbi Heschel, how mature my Ineffable Spirit is and how immature it is as well. I am realizing how I still get afraid of not being able to be me so I rebel and make myself into a caricature of who I am. I forget what I bring to the table and am ready to just take table scraps instead of sitting down to a proper meal. I also realize how I step into my authentic self and role more and more each day. I am aware of how no matter how my life changes, I am still me, I still possess and am guided by this Ineffable Spirit and am hopeful. I am also aware of the times I am trying to be accepted, liked by people that will never get me, people who are into transactional relationships/role-role(which are not bad), and portray our relationship as soul-soul. I am always aware of my inner conflict/war and I know that my Ineffable Spirit/concern for life wins out 85-90% of the time and I am proud of this. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - A daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 64


“Creation in the language of the Bible is an act of expression. God said: “Let there be”; and it was. Creation is not an act that happened once, but a continuous process. The work Yehi, “Let there be,” stands forever in the universe.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144/5).


I have been thinking about this last sentence since yesterday. I am trembling with the impact and force of Rabbi Heschel’s words. “Yehi, “Let there be” has never left the universe, it is a constant call, a constant demand, a constant hope and a constant prayer. Creationists think God created the world in 7 days and then everything was finished. Evolutionists believe that there is no God and everything that has happened has been random and the world is dynamic. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is saying they are both wrong and right. Creationists are correct in that God/Ineffable One/creative energy/Higher Power created the universe and they are wrong that creation is over. Evolutionists are wrong that there is no Divine/Mystery/Ineffable One at work in the creation of our worlds and they are right that creation is dynamic and happening right now. 


The power of “Yehi, “let there be”, is overwhelming at first blush in this way of living. We are constantly being called to create anew, to improve on yesterday’s creation, to use the power we have to create goodness, wholeness, community, safety, justice, truthfulness, kindness, acts of lovingkindness for everyone, equality of worth, value and dignity for all humanity. We are being called to create a better world each and every day. We are called to be “a light unto the nations”. “Let there be” is a demand, not just a command as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel this morning. I never thought of it in this way before. The Ineffable One is demanding us to create, to continue the creation the Ineffable One began, to be true working partners, not just the entitled children of the king/ruler, etc. I am struck by this call/demand/thought. Looking at the world today, we can see the people who respond to this demand through creating more and more goodness, kindness, reach out to the poor and the needy, see another human being-not a skin color or religious affiliation, etc. We see the people who are making a fortune and sharing it with those less fortunate, trying to change the systems that are set up so the poor and the needy can never succeed. We can see so many people answering the call, the demand of “Yehi, “Let there be”. 


We can, of course, see the people who use “Yehi” for their own benefit. Who seem to care about creating a better world and really only care about themselves. We see the people who use their power corruptly, to line their own pockets, to defeat the very ideals, ethics, morals that gave them opportunity! We see how people use “Let there be” to create systems that keep people out, exclude another human being and I am not talking about just immigration here. Country clubs, neighborhoods, etc have/had restrictions against people of color, Jews, Muslims, etc. and once these restrictions were found to be unconstitutional, they made sure they could keep the “riffraff” out through high initiation fees; larger taxes for schools, etc; blackballing, etc. These same people decry the immigration debacle caused by our government and still engage in exclusionary practices. “Let there be” can be used to create chaos, prejudice and power grabs, unfortunately as well as hope, goodness, form and inclusion. 


The demand to do T’Shuvah, to see what we have created that is good and what we have created that is not good each day rings loudly in our souls/inner lives. This use of “Yehi, “Let there be” is so very important to engage in. We have to be constantly aware and on-guard as to what we are creating, as we have seen in another and in our own lives, slipping into bastardizing our power to create, our call to create can happen without our conscious awareness, through our self-deception and mendacity. Acting on this demand to create, appropriately, entails doing our T’Shuvah each and every day. 


In recovery, we know about a daily inventory, we know about a complete and fearless moral inventory as well. We are acutely, painfully aware of how we use our “Yehi, “Let there be” power and call to serve our self only, to bastardize the faith, the power, the demand that the Ineffable One imbued in us for our selfish desires. In recovery, we seek to find commonality, we pray for those who are still suffering, we welcome all into our way of being and we seek to serve rather than be served. In recovery, the actions we take are in direct opposition to the bastardization of earlier times, they are creating wholeness and goodness within us and with another(s). 


I am guilty of bastardizing the demand and the power the Ineffable One gives me to “Yehi, “Let there be”. I see the times I disregarded the call, pushed aside the demand, argued with people who were trying to help me see and hear the call of my soul, the call of God more clearly and act upon these calls rather than continue on in the path that I was on. I am acutely and painfully aware of the difference in my life hearing these calls from my soul, the universe, the people around me would have made. While I am proud of the way I have lived “Yehi, “Let there be” these past 33 years, I also realize there was more to be done and I could have done more had I not been afraid, had I not been so deaf. And, since “Yehi” stands forever in the universe, I have time and the energy to hear anew, create anew and live anew each day. God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 63

“Creation in the language of the Bible is an act of expression. God said: “Let there be”; and it was. Creation is not an act that happened once, but a continuous process. The work Yehi, “Let there be,” stands forever in the universe.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144/5).


The more I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words, the more I hear him speaking to me, to all of us. The third sentence above is one of those ideas that continue to explode in its application and meaning. Creation never stops! What an absolutely marvelous, fearful, uncertain statement of fact! Taking this truth seriously and living it means so many of our basic assumptions could crumble. The responsibility put on humanity becomes more urgent and causes us to stop being “in a box”. 


Since creation is a continuous process, we can no longer be fundamentalists on either poles of the continuum. We cannot continue creation when we want to return to the “good old days” of _____(fill in the blank). We cannot continue creation when we want to destroy everything that is/was and build what we want. Continuing creation, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel, is joining with God/Creator/Higher Intelligence to continue to expand, grow, repair, change what already exists to meet our experience and our needs. Not the selfish needs of a few, again on both extremes, rather the needs of humanity, the needs of God, the needs of harmony, respecting each other, caring for the earth and all that is in it. Truly living the command of God in the first chapter of Genesis to replenish the earth, to care for each other and the plants, the fish, the fowl and the beasts. Use them for our benefit AND care for them, hence kosher meat has to be slaughtered in a way that is least painful, all the blood has to be drained out, etc. so even in death there is care. We are not to leave a dead body to rot overnight, rather we show respect by burying as quickly as possible, even a murderer gets this respect.

Creation as a continuous process means these actions mentioned above and so much more are ways of growing the creation of our world, of our physical space, of our just and respectful ways of dealing with each other. When we use deception, mendacity, slander, libel, lies, to cause chaos, anger, hatred, etc for our own gain, we are retarding creation. When we go along to get along, we are retarding creation. When we knowingly give credence to the false accusations/claims and pay people off rather than stand up for truth “on advice of counsel”, we are retarding creation. When we accept a fine, no matter how large, rather than prosecute and hold people responsible for their actions, we are retarding creation. When we are asked to mediate/help resolve conflicts and decline because we don’t want to be involved/open ourselves up to false/legal claims, we are retarding creation. When we need to blame another because of our failings, we are retarding creation. 


We help continue creation when we are engaged in radical amazement, when we are unwilling to accept the ‘old ways’ or return to ‘the good old days’. We are continuing creation when we live in today, the present, using past experience to enhance today and not being bound by religious/secular behaviorism and/or spiritual/emotional plagiarism. We continue creation through constantly seeking to improve the living standards of the poor and the needy, by seeking to connect with people who are ‘different’ than us so we can learn from them, both their needs and their gifts. We continue creation when we collaborate instead of compete to win. We continue creation when we “lift up our eyes and see” what need we can fulfill right now, see what is truly in front of us and how to make our corner of the world a little better today and every day. When we can admit our errors, our missing the marks, and repair the damage we have wrought, we are continuing creation. When we face our true, authentic self and live authentically, transparently and spiritually, we are continuing creation. Realizing the ways we continue creation and celebrating these gains is important as well to keep our self moving in the right direction:)


In recovery, we are creating a new life each and every day. We know that we continue to create anew through learning, through amends, through asking for help, through responding to calls for help, through connecting with another human being, etc. We are aware of our need to continue to continue creating a new life, one built on honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. In recovery, we turn to God/Higher Power/Higher Intelligence each day for the wisdom and energy to hear our intuitive voice clearer and act on it more often. 


I am guilty of retarding creation even in my recovery and my awareness of my guilt and repairing the ways I have retarded creation is one of the ways I continue creation. Rabbi Heschel is calling me to task again, he disturbs my conscience and never leaves me alone, to work a little harder to continue creation, to move the ball forward one grain of sand more, to be a little more just, a little kinder, a little more charitable, a little more truthful, a little less self-deception, a little more concern for another, a little more compassionate, etc. ‘A little more’ acknowledges that I am acting/living in these ways, just need to grow it each and every day. I know I can and I commit to continue creation in the ways I am uniquely gifted to and ask you to do the same with your unique gifts as well. This way, we put our gifts together, in collaboration, and the world becomes the place we all want to live in. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 62

“Creation in the language of the Bible is an act of expression. God said: “Let there be”; and it was. Creation is not an act that happened once, but a continuous process. The work Yehi, “Let there be,” stands forever in the universe.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144/5).


God spoke and creation happened! While I am not here to validate the actual experience at the time of Creation, no one can, I can attest to the truth of the relationship between speech and creation, between words and actions, between someone far away saying something and it affecting people on the other side of the world, as we all can.


Speech is such an amorphous thing, having no real shape nor form because it can take any and all forms. One person’s speech can be interpreted as harsh, assaultive, harassing by some and comforting, connecting and kind by another(s). One can use a word that has one meaning to the speaker and another, sometimes completely opposite meaning to the listener. What we create with our truthful speech is important to recognize and to recognize that we are powerless over what someone else does with our words both in understanding us, translating us and acting on what we say, either in agreement or disagreement. “God said: “Let there be”; and it was” the world came into being and God has been powerless to move us to care for the world and perpetuate the health of the planet. No matter when you think the climate change began and/or will end, it is a noticeable fact that climate change is real and was not part of God’s plan when the world was created. 


Yet, we are also not powerless in the way we use speech to convey lies, deceptions, to start revolts, to engage in prejudice, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, sexual discrimination, etc. When we watch an ad on TV for drugs and people are smiling and happy while the announcer is telling us how fatal the drug can be and reminds us if we are allergic to the drug, don’t take it-all the while showing nirvana for the ‘sufferers’ of the disease (not knowing it the people are real patients or not). This mendacity is subtle and deadly to the trust we should be able to have in our healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies. As Purdue Pharma showed us, profits over health, bottom line over other people’s lives, personal responsibility only applies to the people suffering, the people being conned, caveat emptor is the law of the land. Pharmaceutical companies exercising their ‘free speech’ have killed over 100,000 people last year due to opiate overdoses, yet no one is responsible according to our system.

I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call us to account in this sentence, God is accountable as we learn throughout the Bible, God is accountable to Noah, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to the Israelites, etc. God gave to humanity the responsibility to care for the world, care for each other. Yet, we have throughout the millennia, used speech to create lies, subterfuge, revolutions that hurt the people revolting, etc. We have used the power of speech to harm each other through intended and unintended words, ways of promoting our words/ideas and by using the vulnerabilities of a person, group, country to do our ‘dirty work’ for us and tear down good ideas, good systems and punish anyone we see as our ‘enemy’-those doing the right thing! We are in the midst of such a time right now and it is tearing our country apart, our world apart. Still, we persist in promoting the lies, the mendacity of a few because we are afraid, some white Anglo-Saxon people are afraid of losing control and not being the majority rather than embrace the diversity that created this country, honor the words, deeds and brilliance of people who are different than they. 


Speech is a topic that has been important in the Jewish tradition for a long time. Yet, we still misuse it, we still abuse our freedom of speech. We have all seen how one misspoken word can cause an uproar in politics and in personal relationships. We have all experienced our words being used against us because of a need by another person to have power over us and/or feel less than and need a club to “win”. It is sad and we can change this way of being, we can ask for clarification, we can stop judging with prejudice what someone else is saying, we can seek and speak truthfully instead of in ways that get us what we want, etc. 


In recovery, we are constantly seeking deeper meanings and lessons from the words spoken in our meetings, our learnings, our texts, our books. We are constantly looking at our part and not blaming another, not needing to bastardize the spirit, words, intent of another person for our own gain. We are more careful each day, week, year, to notice what our words are creating and work hard to ensure that they create truth and goodness. 


I am guilty of using words poorly. I know what I mean, I am passionate and, to some, seem angry when I am speaking and I don’t always speak in ways that another(s) can understand and/or I put bullets in the guns of people who want to use my words against me, for whatever they can gain. I am responsible and have experienced the consequences of these encounters. I also know that my words, my ways of conveying ideas and thoughts have saved lives and for that, I know I am fulfilling God’s call to all of us to care for each other and the world. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark 

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 61


“Creation in the language of the Bible is an act of expression. God said: “Let there be”; and it was. Creation is not an act that happened once, but a continuous process. The work Yehi, “Let there be,” stands forever in the universe.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144/5).


The first sentence above takes my breath away. I am sitting here, stunned by the impact of it. Creation is an act of expression is not just a biblical experience, rather I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words to explain to us the origin of the word creation, the truth of the meaning of the word creation, and, maybe, the recognition that, since we have the power to create from God, we need to realize what our creations are expressing. Immersing ourselves in this sentence, we could, and in my opinion, need to, review our creations and ask what do they say about us? 


What does our family life express about us? Are we raising a family that believes in creating good things to express the goodness, joy, hope and responsibility God has imbued us with? Are we raising a family that creates good things only for themselves to express scarcity, fear, prejudice, controlling, etc that God has given us the free-will to choose to do? Am I as an individual creating things that help another, hurt another, control another, free another? In a ‘cancel culture’; ‘micro-aggression’; ‘fear of losing control’ society, what are the ways we have created expressing about ourselves? In a ‘white society rule’; a ‘power for the sake of self’;’the one with the gold rules’ society, what have we expressed through our actions? 


Rabbi Heschel’s teaching here, hopefully, causes us to take a pause and ask ourselves what do our actions/creations express about ourselves. What does it mean to create goodness? Do I have to do everything altruistically to create goodness/good things? Can I make a profit, even get rich from doing good? Of course! Most people who make money, become famous, etc from what they create/their actions are decent hard-working, kind, caring people who look to make their community better and are responsible to and for their community. Of course there are a few bad apples who use their money to create chaos, create mendacity, create wars, create obstructionist policies/ways to stop progress and/or another person’s creation. Yes, we focus on these bad apples more than on all the good, giving them power to create more chaos, more destruction, more mendacity and more obstructions to our own creations. 


It is time for us to immerse ourselves in this first sentence above. It is time for us to stop the negative self-talk that obstructs our creative nature and creative/problem solving ways of experiencing life! We create many barriers for our own selves, for our own creative expression through our negative self-talk, through our self-deceptions, through listening to the nay-sayers around us. We create more chaos and doubt, we create sadness and despair, we create self-defeat and self-loathing when we allow our negative self-talk to ‘win the day’. 


We have the tools, the power, the assistance and the spirit to overcome our negative self-talk. We can use all of these to truly fulfill the Divine need we are created for, the song/niggun of our soul, the gifts we bring to the world in order to make it one grain of sand better. To do this, however, we have to look at what our actions/creations have expressed and ask ourselves what do we need to repair/recreate from these expressions. Once we do this, we are able to continue our study of our inner life, through texts and individual spiritual counseling, and discover the song of our soul and create new actions to express this melody, this song. It will not happen in a day, week, year and we have to constantly check in with our soul because the song changes, once our creation can stand on its own, needs to stand on its own, it may be time for us to sing the next song God is giving us! 


In recovery, we are blessed to clear out the negativity we have lived from and lived in. We leave this negativity, not completely and enough that it no longer controls/rules us, in order to create anew, to hear the true song of our soul, to act in ways that express the love, kindness, truth, justice, etc. that God has imbued us with. In recovery, we are acutely aware of how our actions and creations are acts of expression and we are much more careful as to what our acts of expression are. 


I have been a creator of good and of negativity throughout my entire life. I look back and see that I have made errors, I have allowed my own negative self-talk to create negativity and I am sad, remorseful and ask for forgiveness from the people I have harmed that I know about. I also realize that I have been deaf to the new song(s) God has given me because I was too busy, too needy, too scared to leave the old one. I also know that I have helped to create an amazing place, an amazing community, Beit T’Shuvah and I am grateful that it expresses/expressed my deep belief in the power of T’Shuvah, the power of return, the power of God’s love, the power of Truth, the power of community, the power of belonging, the power of creativity and seeing each person as different, worthy and healable. I know I created a space of caring and concern for another human being. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel 

Day 60

“Divine concern means His taking interest in the fate of man; it means that the moral and spiritual state of man engages His attention. It is true that His concern, is to most of us, one of the most baffling mysteries, but it is just as true that to those whose life is open to God His care and love are a constant experience.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144)


On this Thanksgiving Day, after parsing this paragraph in sentences, seeing it as a whole and in its wonder causes me to pause in awe, gratitude and humility. Divine concern is for and towards everyone. No one has more nor less Divine concern paid to them because of race, color, religion, practice, etc. No has more nor less Divine concern paid to them because of the way they ‘understand’, pay heed to or ignore, connect to or reject God/the Ineffable One. Divine concern is, period!! We all need to get off of our ‘high horse’ and recognize this truth, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel, and live in awe and respect rather than disdain and ‘better than’. 


I am thinking about the people I disagree with, the ones I call charlatans, they have as much concern paid to them by the Divine as I have paid to me. This equality causes me/we to reach out, to “rebuke my neighbor and bear no guilt because of them”. Yet, I know that no one can stand on the mountain top and say: “I know all and I am the one God loves more than anyone else”. I know that no one can preach loudly that: “I know God’s intent, God’s Will”. I know that God speaks to us both through our Holy texts and listening to the call of our soul/inner life. I know that God is calling to us to ‘do the next right thing’, find ways to connect, be a Divine reminder as Rabbi Heschel teaches, be interested in the concerns of another human being as deeply and dearly as one is interested in the concerns of ourselves.  


Think of all the ways we separate ourselves from each other. “God loves me better because I am ____(fill-in the blank) is a popular refrain among some religious people, because they believe a fundamentalist/non-fundamentalist way of being is what God has ordained. Yet, we are being told that this is not true by Rabbi Heschel; what is true is that every human being is a concern and an interest to and of God. What an awesome and trembling concept this is, in fact, I believe only through wonder and radical amazement can we apprehend this idea. God’s concern and interest do not give us entitlement, do not give us special status, do not give us  the right to say: ‘everyone else has to follow our dictates’. God’s concern and interest give us the opportunity to serve and protect ourselves and another(s) from immoral actions, gives us the responsibility to be inclusive, gives us the obligation to care for and build one another up, rather than tear each other down. God’s concern and interest in us calls us to partner with one another to make this world more whole, more connected, more kinder, more loving, more compassionate, more truthful. 


Yet, we still are trying to be the “ONE” and only that God is really interested in and concerned about. We are still excluding people because they don’t ‘practice’ the way we do, etc. We exclude people from country clubs because of the money charged to be a member, by the blackballing system that is used. We exclude people from getting an  equal education because of the cost of a private school, because we don’t provide quality public education anymore, not enough books, telling what can be taught, some people want to go back to burning books, etc. We exclude people because of race, because of creed, because of religious beliefs and/or non-beliefs, because of their family history, because they have made mistakes in the past and, even though they have done their T’Shuvah/their amends, we still exclude them from jobs, from housing, from our group, etc. Exclusion denies the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above and it is time to rethink our actions. 


In recovery, we know we will differ about the meanings of the spiritual texts we read, we know we will differ over ideas and ways of living well. AND we also know that our unity is so important to our recovery, we know that we do not have all the answers and are in search of the right questions as well. We know that separation leads to isolation and isolation leads to living poorly again. In recovery, we are dedicated to the whole, to the we so that the me can truly flourish. 


I have been excluded from many groups because I don’t meditate, I don’t do this, I don’t do that, etc. I have been used and abused because of my natural way of being, passionate, interested, concerned and loud, abrasive, transparent and committed. Re-reading this paragraph has helped me understand me, better. I am deeply concerned and interested in the well-being of another human being. I am constantly motivated by God’s love and care for me to reach out and help another human being, hence how Harriet and I, along with a cast of 100’s, built Beit T’Shuvah. I realize that my way is not for everyone, just as another person’s way isn’t always for me, and this teaching is giving me more compassion for another person’s way when it is authentic and it is in keeping with God’s interest, concern, love and care for humanity. I cannot and will not abide with people who are only interested in, concerned for, care for and love themselves and “their people” to the exclusion of everyone/anyone else. This behavior will always engender my passionate (some say angry) response. God Bless and stay safe, Happy Thanksgiving, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 59


“It is true that His concern, is to most of us, one of the most baffling mysteries, but it is just as true that to those whose life is open to God His care and love are a constant experience.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144)


This is the end of yesterday’s quote and again, Rabbi Heschel’s poetry and prose, wisdom and insight pierce the armor many of us have put around our souls and hearts to protect ourselves from hurt. Yet, as I hear and understand Rabbi Heschel’s words, this protection from hurt closes us off to and from God, from care and love from the Ineffable One and from another human being(s). Herein lies the conflict for many of us, if we are vulnerable and open,  we will be hurt by many/some people;  we will find our souls hurt deeply by people we open up to and trust, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally;  we will have our hearts broken by the love and care we give to another(s) and find we have been “used” and were not aware of the transactional nature of the relationship; all of these will happen and all of these experiences are real and hurtful. Yet, Rabbi Heschel’s words are teaching us/reminding us that God’s love and care, God’s concern and passion for our spiritual and moral state of being, are the one constant we can relay upon. 


Wow, as I write these words I am immediately aware of how some people will read these words. The Greco-Roman society use god as a tool for power, as a proof of the appointment of the current leaders because they are stronger, wilier, slicker, etc. They are not leaders because of the high moral and spiritual stature nor ideals/beliefs; they are leaders because they could defeat their predecessors in war, politics, using hatred, lies, deception, etc to win at any and all costs. While this is a path that some people still choose, as they have over the millennia, Rabbi Heschel is again calling for us to have true faith, not faith that is contingent upon the outcome, rather faith/belief in the experiences of our living: God cares, God loves, God is concerned with each and every one of us. 


This is such a chilling thought and an exhilarating experience! While there are charlatans who use this teaching to promote their own agendas rather than God’s or another soul’s, we “whose life is open to God” know the joy of God’s embrace, the warmth of God’s concern, the spiritual uplift of God’s love. The fact that God’s concern is, “one of the most baffling mysteries” doesn’t stop us from experiencing it! In fact, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel teach us to stop trying to figure out the mystery and be present in the experience. Every time someone asks ‘how are you’ we can experience God’s concern, every time we ask someone ‘how are you’ we are expressing God’s concern! In this experience, we no longer just say it as a throw away line, we take the time and intention to respond truthfully and ask earnestly. How can we be recipients of God’s love, care and concern and not share it with another? This is the Greco-Roman way, not the way of people of faith and who truly worship the Ineffable One. 


While some people say God doesn’t care, Rabbi Heschel’s words confront that faulty thinking. Some of the people who say God doesn’t care finish the sentence with ‘that is why we must’. I am hearing and knowing the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s words above: God cares so we must care, God loves so we must love, God is concerned with our spiritual and moral well-being so we must be concerned with our spiritual and moral well-being as well as the well-being of our family, friends, community, world! 


In recovery, we know this embrace and we are lost without it. We know that God had been trying to get our attention for a while and brought us to recovery through the love, care and concern of another human being. While very few of us hear God’s call directly from the mountain, all of us hear God’s call through another person. In AA that person is called our eskimo, the one who guides us to our recovery even when we are not happy about it nor with them! In recovery, we have the experience of God’s love, care, concern each and every day and we continue to improve our conscious contact with God so as to be enwrapped in this experience more and deeper each day. 


I know that I am embraced by God’s love, care and concern and I know there are times when I forget this truth, by falling into extreme sadness that borders on despair. I have come to realize today that despair is a rejection of God’s love, care and concern while sadness is not. Sadness over the people who have been more Greco-Roman than faithful to a covenant is appropriate, making them bad, wrong, and me a victim is not appropriate and I am guilty of both. I know how blessed I am and I rejoice in my blessings: my daughter, my grandson, my family, my extended family, my friends, my community, my gifts, my recovery, my amazing and adorable wife, and on and on. Knowing I am blessed forces me to confront the times I feel bad because I am not feeling God’s care and love and see the ways I deceive myself into believing this lie- I am always able to experience God’s care, love and concern because it is always here for me and for you! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 58

“Divine Concern means His taking interest in the fate of man; it means that the moral and spiritual state of man engages His attention.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 144).


The more I am living with Rabbi Heschel, the more his brilliance and depth, poetry and prose permeates my soul, my heart and my intellect. Today’s continuation of his writing from the chapter called The Divine Concern, moves me to tears, to fears, to awe, to trembling and to love and embrace. God is taking an interest in the fate of man, God cares! While there are some who believe there is no God so this is just poppycock, there are others who believe God left the building and it is up to us, and, there are people like me who believe God is here, God continues to speak to us, call to us, and we get to respond to God’s call. Unfortunately, not too many of us are truly responding to God’s call in a positive manner, in an affirmative manner, hence the need for God to “take an interest in the fate of man.” The Torah is a story about God and humanity, how we began our relationship, the ways to treat/love God, love another(s) human beings, love ourselves. In Genesis, God saying: “it is not good from human to be alone” proves how interested God is in the fate of humanity. Yet, we are not as interested in our own fate as God is and therein lies the challenge, the problem and the solution. 


The challenge, problem and solution the sentence by Rabbi Heschel is what moves me to tears and fears. I am fearful in the healthiest sense of me not hearing God’s call and not paying attention to God’s path and direct communication with me through my soul’s intuition, etc. I am fearful of the path humanity is taking in hearing the call of our desires, our greed, our need for power louder than God’s call for morality and decency. I am so sad in the moments of reflection when I realize how I did not care as much about my fate as God does, I did not engage my moral and spiritual status as much as God was engaging in it. I am moved to tears and wailing, not as “poor me”, not as “ a victim” rather as a lover who missed the call of his loved one. 


The challenge of living by taking the same interest in our fate, in our moral and spiritual state, by engaging our attention to these matters as God does is enormous and seemingly impossible. We are overcome with our desires rather than our fate, we move any and every mountain in front of us to satisfy these desires, whether they are appropriate, healthy, unhealthy, kind, evil, truthful or deceptions. In doing this, we lose sight of the morality of our actions, of our moral compass being moved towards self, entitlement, status, etc., which goes against the hope/direction of God as to what our fate is. God cannot control the choices we make without our agreement and our participation. We are not ‘fated’ by God, we are given certain traits, certain gifts and these are to be used by us to fulfill the Divine Need we are tasked with, according to Rabbi Heschel, and God cannot make us do things, we have to be decent and moral from our own choice. 


This truth, that God doesn’t choose our fate, we do is what makes possible T’Shuvah, redemption, ‘rags to riches’ stories, etc. This truth is antithetical to the words of the charlatans who preach and pray about poor people not being loved by God as much as rich people, etc. As Rabbi Heschel said yesterday: “The God of Israel is passionately interested in widows and orphans”. This is not the description of the idol these charlatans worship. I am in trembling and awe of this truth. I tremble with healthy fear, with an infusion of spirit and energy as well as questioning my resolve and ability to fulfill this awesome responsibility God has placed on me/us. We have to choose our water, our fate is the result of our choices. When we are as interested in our spiritual and moral state as God is, when we pay as much attention to our spiritual and moral state as God does, we will enjoy life, with all its hardships. We will see life as an opportunity for connection, a journey of service and love, awe and joy. This is the challenge I am hearing Rabbi Heschel give us. 


In recovery, until we realized the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s words above, we were unable to be in recovery. We were stuck in ‘fate’, entitlement, poor me, victim, where’s mine, etc. We kept defending bad behavior, our unhealthy way of living, our soul’s sickness as neither our fault nor anything we could fix. For many, we blamed God or, as my mother used to do, call out to God wondering what we did to deserve this fate. In recovery, realizing our responsibility in our fate, in our spiritual and moral states, in the help God sends to us through our spirits/souls, we now enjoy a different experience, a different fate. 


I experience these words and the actions of God and another(s) as love and embracing me as a whole person. Engaged in my spiritual and moral state, interested in the authentic, real, me is the greatest expression of love there is-it is Godly love. I am so grateful for those who show this love to me daily, weekly, whenever. I realize my addiction, my criminality was my way of escaping the loss of this love when my father died. I realize my worst behaviors appear when the person/people I am dealing with speak the words of this love while their actions are so different. I am also realizing from this teaching, I have to stop seeking this love from another and relish, appreciate and reciprocate this love that I am getting from those around me. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- a daily path of living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 57

“Zeus is passionately interested in pretty female deities and becomes inflamed with rage against those who incite his jealousy. The God of Israel is passionately interested in widows and orphans.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 144).


Rabbi Heschel is speaking to us in a very subtle, yet powerful manner. He is not condemning passion at all, he is not even, as I read these sentences, condemning rage, he is condemning jealousy, sexual immorality and power for the sake of power, I believe. In the Greco-Roman way of living, which is predominant in our world today, ‘if I can get something, then it is mine, it was meant to be mine, I deserve it’ mindset is predominant. We are intensely jealous and angry at what we don’t have, what we don’t get and ‘where’s mine’ is a constant refrain. It is a personal rage, it is a personal jealousy, it is a personal conquest, it is a personal power over another human being/over many human beings that is our goal and focus. Greco-Roman society sees nothing wrong with using power for their own ends, to serve themselves and their cronies. We have seen this throughout the millennia, we see this today in the ways we have become more polarized than at any time in my lifetime. 


Living in the ways of the “God of Israel”, ie, God of all people, also calls for passion, jealousy and anger. We see this in the Torah, in the Prophets, in the words of the Psalmist, etc. The difference, however, is for whom/what we are passionate, jealous and angry. Herein lies the crux of our struggle to be human. 


The prophets railed against the ‘sins’ of the people of Israel and Judah. They spoke of God’s anger, rage, and jealousy towards the peoples because of their adultery, their uncaring, their selfishness, their misuse of their power. Torah, the Prophets, the Psalmists, all knew that we are born with these traits and, as Rabbi Steinsaltz teaches, we have the ability to use them in proper measure for their intended purposes and we have the power to use them out of proper measure, for our selfish purposes. When we do the latter, we create more evil, we create more hardship, we create a world that God did not envision for us. 


The anger, power and jealousy of God and of the Prophets, the Psalmist, the Torah is focused on the ways we care for only ourselves, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today. “The God of Israel is passionately interested in widows and orphans” is a testimony to the belief that the weakest, most disenfranchised people must be cared for and, as Father Greg Boyle says, we need to erase the margins and practice “radical kinship”. Yet, for too long, we have been concerned with our self, those who are in our ‘club’, we have made it a practice to ‘go along to get along’ even when we know one of ours is in the wrong-we will defend them rather than rebuke them.

The prophets, the psalmist, the Torah all call for us to stand up for God, for what is right, for what is just, for what is decent, kind, caring, loving and truthful. Yet, there are times when all of us fail in this task. And we are expected to fail because we are not perfect. In the Greco-Roman society, we will lie, explain and cover-up our imperfections; in a society that follows God, that is indeed a spiritual society, we do T’Shuvah/Amends for our imperfections. In a God-centered society where truth, love, kindness, justice, decency, caring is at it’s core, we know we can grow one grain of sand better each day,  we know we are not afraid to be confronted on our errors and/or confront ourselves on our errors because to do so is a great statement of faith. In this way of being, a spiritual way of being, we are aware that to be confronted/rebuked takes a great deal of faith in us that we were just unaware of what we were doing and we can live more just, truthful, loving, kindly and decently. This is the power of the anger, jealousy and passion of God, the Prophets, the Psalmist, the Torah as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s teaching today. 


In recovery, we switch our passions from those of the Greco-Roman society to those of a God-centered/spiritual society. We move from needing to be in power, needing to be right, needing to conquer all and be King/Queen of the mountain to using our innate power wisely, knowing when we are right and when we are not, leading when and where appropriate and following when and where appropriate, being with people even as leaders, we do not separate ourselves from the community. In recovery, we know that we have to be as passionate for good, for true connection, for justice as we were for the Greco-Roman ways. 


I stand before you, as I said yesterday, guilty on all charges of the indictment Rabbi Heschel is bringing. And, I am not as guilty today as I was last week, last month, last year. Rabbi Heschel is not expecting us to be God, just to emulate God’s ways and the progress I make, while seemingly small and insignificant, is incremental and growing. At times I revert back to the Greeks, I am sorry to say, and I don’t stay there, which is a good thing. I am hearing God’s passion for me and you when we are the widows and orphans, when we are unable to care for our true self. I am grateful that God, family and friends do when I can’t. The ultimate of “God doing for me what I can’t do for myself. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- a daily path to living well

  Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

  Day 56

“Zeus is passionately interested in pretty female deities and becomes inflamed with rage against those who incite his jealousy. The God of Israel is passionately interested in widows and orphans.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 144).


Continuing his thoughts about the Divine Concern and comparing them to the Greco-Roman system, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us what it means to be human, what it means to be a person of faith, and what it means to truly serve God in these words. 

Zeus and Greco-Roman culture, when these mythologies were written and up to today is passionately interested in things, in beauty, in one-upping each other and being jealous of another(s). We see this in their stories and we see this in our culture. To make the cover of magazines, one has to be one of the “beautiful” people, either in looks, status, and or economic/celebrity fame. We are a society that is intent on having the “perfect” body, house, job, bank account, cool-factor, etc. We are a society that feels bad/shame when someone else succeeds and, whether we are successful or not, feels jealous rage at the good fortune of another. 


This jealous rage comes out in so many different ways and it is seen in business, religious institutions, politics, academia, and even in personal relationships. In my years as a Rabbi, I have found people suffering from this comparing and competing way of living and it brings them self-loathing, disconnection, despair, depression, and anxiety as well as physical ailments, addictive behaviors/disorders and ruined interpersonal relationships. We see this in the political sphere with all of the vicious polarizing hate speech and disdain our political leaders speak to one another with. We see this in the rallies calling for harm to be brought to people of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, anyone who isn’t “us”. We see this jealous rage in the ways that business’ compete with each other, they use the language of war when speaking about their competitors. We see this in the way we speak about a person whom we know, or don’t know, belittling their achievements as “lucky”. We see this jealous rage come out in the ways people manipulate one another through mendacity, deception and fear. 


Passion for sex, for conquest, for jealousy, for ‘being #1, is a hallmark of Greco-Roman society, I believe. In this passion, there are no rules except winning. There are no ‘unfair’ ways to win. As a thief, my associates and I used to say, “if I can take it then it is supposed to belong to me”. The self-deception used by us and by many so-called “legitimate” people is huge and we engage in it so we can assuage ourselves while doing what is wrong, immoral. 


Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that God/Higher Power/Force of the Cosmos/the Ineffable One is concerned with those most at risk of being taken advantage of. The Biblical path, unlike the Greco-Roman path, is to end the rivalries, end the jealousy, end the rage, end the mendacity and the self-deception. It is to raise up and protect those most vulnerable, those most at risk, because without doing this, we cannot really serve God, we cannot raise up humanity and we cannot Be human. This distinction that Rabbi Heschel is drawing is so powerful. He wrote these words 70 years ago, at a time that Americans like to think of as “the good old days” and for him to write these words and give us those teachings, he must have seen how the inside was rotting while the outside was working hard to polish itself. 


We are still hard at work polishing the outside and the inside of society and of individuals are rotting and stinking like old fish. Yet, we persist in using wax to see ourselves as good while the most vulnerable are dying, suffering and pleading for help. My religious colleagues who are willing to decry “the other”, make the vulnerable guilty of anything so we can shirk our God-ordained responsibility towards them, claim they are in this place because God doesn’t love them so much, are deceivers, liars, snake-oil salespeople and part of the Greco-Roman system while proclaiming their allegiance to God. They are idol-worshipers of the worst kind. We have the power to stop their message by letting go of our need to be deceived, letting go of our own self-deceptions and serving God’s passions and interests instead of our own or the ones we buy into. 


In recovery, we know what it is like to be at-risk and vulnerable, we are everyday. We know we are at risk each and everyday of falling back into old habits and paths. We know we are vulnerable to our self-deceptions and the deceptions of another. We know what it is to be a “widow/orphan” because we were without connections and without community by our own choices. Each day we commit anew to living in recovery and letting go of our old ideas. 


I have fallen prey to my jealousies and ‘why don’t they see me’ voices in my recovery. I am not proud of this fact and it is a fact. I know that my jealousy stemmed from my own lack of awareness of who I was/am and what I brought/bring to the table. I have overcome these jealousies through a lot of inner work, given who and how I am-there was not a false polish I could use to fool people. Most of all, I stopped fooling myself. I do not wish anyone harm, I have joy for the success’ of people I know and those I don’t. I am no longer engaging in this Greco-Roman path, I am continuing and improving my dedication to God’s interests and passions. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark


Comment

Comment

Daily Life Lessons from rabbi Heschel - a daily path for living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 55


“The Bible tells us nothing about God in Himself; all its sayings refer to His relations to man…We hear of no reflexive concern, of no passions, except a passion for justice. The only events in the life of God the Bible know are acts done for the sake of man: acts of creation, acts of redemption (from Ur, from Egypt, from Babylon) or acts of revelation.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 143/4)


Rabbi Heschel’s words stir up a frustration and a sense of love for me today. In our Greco-Roman brain and way of being, we want to understand everything about God, we want to know the inner workings of God, of the universe, of life. We want to know this in order to have control. In the Greco-Roman path of living, knowledge is for control, for power, for security. We see this over and over again throughout history and today. If we can know how something works, we can manipulate it for our benefit, we can use it to gain ‘a leg up’. Rabbi Heschel is frustrating this endeavor with his wisdom and truth that we do not, nor can we ever, truly understand God in order to manipulate God. 


Some spiritual leaders and their followers claim to know God and understand God, they claim to understand the ONE WAY to God. This claim on it’s face is ridiculous as they are absolutely sure of what God wants and use a text, the Bible, which can be and, according to the Jewish Tradition, must be interpreted 70 different ways. Yet, these power-seeking, text manipulating, charlatans continue to misinterpret the words and the concerns of God for their own purposes. While they claim to love God, they actually are loving themselves and their patrons. To have some understanding of God, of how to live life well, we have to turn to Rabbi Harold Shulweis’ theology, I believe. Rabbi Shulweis, z”l,  taught us to act Godly, to live Godliness. I am hearing this way of being in Rabbi Heschel’s words above. 


Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to have a passion for justice, true justice, righteous justice. Throughout the Bible, God’s passion for justice comes through over and over again, yet we are still tainting justice to our way of thinking, we still use justice to ‘get our way’. We see this in the courts, we see this in elections, we see this in the way business’ deny any wrongdoing and pay a fine for the opioid crisis that killed 100,000 people in 12 months! Where are the people who claim to know God when someone is unjustly accused because of the color of their skin? Rabbi Heschel’s involvement in Civil Rights came, I believe, from his passion for God and, hence, his passion for justice for all. 


God acts for the sake of humanity is how I am reading Rabbi Heschel today. God teaches us how to be creative and that we must further the creation God began as well as continue to use our skills, our talents, our souls to create anew and different to better our lives and the lives of those around us. We create anew because today is new, the situations we face, while seemingly very old, are new and different today because we are different, the day is different, and our experience has taught us what does and doesn’t work. 


God has revealed to us what actions we have to take in order to live well and to live together. We have to stop murdering the souls of another human being with our prejudices and need to control. We have to stop committing adultery towards God and the people we care about and serve with our self-deceptions and the deceiving of them. We have to stop stealing from those less fortunate and from each other using the “buyer beware” attitude and instead making “the seller must disclose” attitude our mantra. We have to stop bearing false witness against each other in order to have power, prestige, control and more money. We have to stop coveting what another person has and instead be happy with what we have while growing ourselves, our spirits and our world. These and so many more are what has been revealed to us through the Bible, throughout history, yet we continue to ignore these truths because of our “eye disease” of prejudice which causes a “cancer of the soul”. 


In recovery, we are constantly seeking to follow God’s revelations and we are acutely aware of God’s redemption of us. We are grateful everyday for our redemption and God’s love and care for us. We also know how insidious it is to revert back to Greco-Roman thinking by believing we know God’s will. In recovery, we are constantly turning our will over to God, knowing this is the only way to combat our self-centeredness and be human. 


I have been redeemed more times than I am even aware of. In writing today, I am acutely aware of the many times I have been redeemed and, how often, I have taken redemption as an exemption. In my recovery I have done this as well. I am blessed with the knowledge of God’s intervention and I have to see the redemptive spirit in every experience of my living. I am struck today with the knowledge that my experiences have within them a redemptive quality and my job is to find what I am being redeemed from and pointed towards. I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s call to all of us to be aware of and engaged in the acts of creation, the redemptions we have to see and participate in and to “lift up our eyes and see”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment