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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 81

“What is the hope of man with his faithfulness being so feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no man’s integrity unmixed. But man has become callous to catastrophes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a wall between our conscience and God?”(Man is Not Alone pg.147)

We are engaged in a war for the soul of America, the soul of the world and the soul of each and every human being. The problem is that we have become callous and unaware of these forces that are attacking our very humanity. Rabbi Heschel is demanding we see the ways in which our integrity has become mixed up and our responsibility for the streams of guilt and misery that have become commonplace as well as engaging in the solution to these problems we, humans, have brought upon us. 

How many catastrophes have we become callous to and what is the reason? We see unhoused people and get angry at them. Some, if not a majority, suffer from a mental illness and/or an addiction and we are calling the police to arrest these human beings who are suffering rather than find solutions to ease their suffering. It is a catastrophe that another human being suffers, suffers in silence and we get angry and afraid rather than helpful and compassionate. How low can we go? This is a catastrophe

We are angry at the Veterans who camp out near VA buildings/property while not being responsible for their unhousedness, for the mental anguish they suffer, for the torture serving in the military causes. Most veterans do not want to talk about what happened ‘over there’ because of the unspeakable acts they witnessed and, in many cases, participated in. How many WWII vets speak freely about the ugly side of what they experienced and this was a legitimate war for the actual safety of our country and the world. Our fear of lower home values, our fear of seeing the pain we have brought to another usually overrides the compassion we are called upon to experience and this is a catastrophe!

We ignore climate change, social uplifting, etc because we are worried about taxing corporations and the top 1%? We are more concerned about an entity that only cares about its shareholders and top executives than with the plight of our world and the people who live next to us and may need the uplifting? We are more concerned with making sure that a builder gets the zoning and ease of building(not always up to standards) than the environmental impact and the social impact of gentrification, of pushing people out of the homes they have lived in for their entire lives? This is a catastrophe!

We are engaged in trying to continually live our facades, to make people believe the outside while the inside is falling apart. We do this with products that make people look good on the outside (Spanx) while being fat and unhealthy on the inside. We do this because image has become more important than reality. There is a cottage industry of ‘image makers’, ‘reputation fixers’, ‘crisis pr people’, etc to make the ‘bad’ aka truth go away or at least get buried deep in the internet. Companies, not-for-profits, individuals nor longer are as concerned with what they are doing as they are for ‘how it looks’, also known as ‘optics’. Principles, morals can be fudged when it is for the “good” of the image, the “good” of the company, the “good” of the charity. This is a catastrophe!

While it is easy to blame ‘those’ people, we are all responsible for these catastrophes. We participate in them, we stand by and watch them happen. We engage in trying to control a woman’s body and choices and never are around to help bring up the child nor make sure their pay is equal to a man’s doing the same job. We have witnessed and participated in prejudices, racism, anti-semitism, islamaphobia, hatred of immigrants, disdain for the poor and the needy and call ourselves a ‘christian’ country of ‘god-fearing men and women? I use the small g for God because these behaviors and belief that Jesus would want this is idol worship, not worship of God nor following the words of Jesus. This is the greatest catastrophe because it leads to all the rest! 

In recovery, we are constantly on guard for these catastrophes because we are constantly searching our self and our actions for the ways we did well today and the ways we missed the mark today. Our daily 10th step keeps us right-sized, caring and cleaning up the messes we created today much quicker than prior to our recovery. 

I have participated in and witnessed these catastrophes. I have spoken up and done my part to remedy these catastrophes. I am aware of the ways I have used my bluster to hide and used it to send a message of hope to another human being. I am also deeply aware of the catastrophic nature of ignoring another human being and being ignored, thrown away and I am guilty of these catastrophes as well. My imperfections stop me from hating myself for these acts and help me realize I can and do improve each day. They help me recognize how much less I engage in catastrophic actions and how painful it is that people I trusted engaged in them with me. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 80

“What is the hope of man with his faithfulness being so feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no man’s integrity unmixed. But man has become callous to catastrophes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a wall between our conscience and God?”(Man is Not Alone pg.147)

This teaching, these words is/are distressing, disturbing and distasteful. It forces us to face our selves, to do a true Chesbon HaNefesh, an accounting of our souls/our ways of being in the world. This accounting is for us to see what we have done well-as all accountings have to include assets and liabilities-and understand that what we have done well does not ‘take care of’ nor wipe out the negative ways we have done. This teaching is pointing out, to me, one of the most negative ways we behave, actions we take against self and another human being(s): callousness. 

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that there are more catastrophes than the ones we call catastrophes. Each time we ignore the plight of the poor and the needy, this is a catastrophe. While many people just shrug their shoulders at such events and see them as ‘just the way life is’ and/or ‘they get what they deserve/work for’ and/or, the new Prosperity Gospel lie, ‘God doesn’t love them as much as God loves the rich/me’. What we are seeing as ‘business as usual’ and/or ‘get real Rabbi, this is the way of the world’; Rabbi Heschel, the Prophets and God see as catastrophes! Yet, we have become so callous, hard-skinned that we are not aware of the catastrophes we are creating each and every day. We are so stuck, so unstable, so mixed up and so lacking of integrity we are blind to these truths, we are blind and unmoved by the calls of the poor and the needy. We have come to blame them for their problems and for the issues that face many of us! We are so callous, so hard-skinned that some people rejoice in their sorrow and misery. How sad, how sick, how unGodly! 

Each time we deny righteous justice, as the Torah calls for, it is a catastrophe. Each time we engage in jury nullification we are creating a catastrophe. Each time we find a cop not guilty for the murder of another human being because she/he is a cop, the victim is black, white, asian, hispanic, and ‘had it coming to them’ we create a catastrophe. Different states favor either the employer or the employee in labor disputes and this prejudice creates catastrophes. Each time an innocent person is convicted is a catastrophe we are creating through our need to win and the deceit of the prosecution. Righteous justice means no bribes, no prejudice, can enter into our search for truth. Righteous justice is the search for compassionate and understanding and to be a person of truth seeking means to seek compassion, understanding as part of the whole story. Callousness to this is a catastrophe beyond measure that we are engaging in each and every day. 

It is a catastrophe to categorize another human being(s) according to any measure. We are all human beings-no one has more dignity and value than any one else. We are all unique human beings so no one is the same as any one else. These two seemingly contradictory statements combine to remind us of the catastrophic nature of our categorizing people, comparing people, trying to get everyone to be the same, and/or ostracizing people who are ‘not like us’ from our midst and from the same opportunities we have. Be this because of the color of their skin, the religion they practice, the sexual orientation, the creed they live by, because they are male, female, and/or other, and because of their ethnicity; hispanic, African, Middle Eastern, Jewish, Irish, Italian, etc. who have all been, at one time and, in some cases, for all time seen as less than, people to be feared, etc. This catastrophic behavior is commonplace for many people and they proclaim the right to revere the leaders of the Confederacy for their prejudicial, pro-white stance and willingness to blow up the Union to keep another human beings down! We have seen this throughout history, read up on how the Jews were expelled from almost every country, and we are continuing it today in our ‘enlightened United States’ in our ‘God-fearing Christian country’. There are people who have become so hard-skinned as to believe causing these catastrophes and more, are their ways of serving God! More on this tomorrow

In recovery, we have to cut away the callousness of our past and keep ourselves fresh and alert to not allowing the callouses to grow back even stronger and harder. We do this by making sure we continue to do our amends, we continue to grow along spiritual lines and we continue to be grateful for what we have, share with another human being the bounty God has given us and work hard to not turn errors, missing the marks into catastrophes. 

I am trembling over the ways I have been callous and the catastrophes I have caused. In looking at my recovery, I am aware of how many people have perceived me as callous and I know I am not as callous as some make me out to be. I also know that my actions have cause catastrophes that I was not aware of in the moment, I have caused heartache and hardship for another(s) without realizing it and this is another definition of callousness for me. I do T’Shuvah and change each day and learn from my errors as well. More tomorrow on this, God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 79

“What is the hope of man with his faithfulness being so feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no man’s integrity unmixed. But man has become callous to catastrophes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a wall between our conscience and God?”(Man is Not Alone pg.147)

Continuing to immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s words and teachings forces us to look at how “the world we have long held in trust…” and not hide from what reality truly is. We are living in a time where some people both in and out of powerful positions are trying to hide the truth of this teaching and Rabbi Heschel said it 70 years ago; when everyone thought things were so wonderful! To see what “has exploded in our hands” we have to ponder and realize what we had/have and what happened to it. 

We had/have a promise; from the time of the Exodus from Egypt to the American Revolution to the Emancipation Proclamation the promise from God and/or the universe is that slavery is not forever and slavery will end for every group at some point. It has been a difficult promise to make into a reality from the time of Pharaoh till now, yet we in America kept our Declaration of Independence near and dear as the Spiritual goal of our revolution and the underpinnings of our nation. We have fallen short forever and, until recently, we were making progress towards seeing each human being as a worthy, dignified and important. Under our former administration, we joined with the likes of Putin, Orban, MBS, etc to move to an inauthentic, mendacious authoritarian way of living-celebrating hatred and prejudice rather than healing it, promoting the Big Lie rather than refuting it, and using the poor and needy as pawns rather than helping them as the Bible calls for us to do. 

70 years ago Rabbi Heschel told us this was happening and we did not listen, we laughed at these words and ignored his prophecy because we did not want to face ourselves in the mirror. We humans are constantly afraid to see what is and our part in it because we want to hide our imperfections and guilty actions, we want to explain them away and/or blame another. We have believed we can hide our heads in the sand and be okay, forgetting that the world which has been entrusted to us needs to be nurtured and grown in order to become the world God and we believe it can be and have envisioned it to be. We have been asleep at the wheel of this vision, this trust account that God/universe gave us to manage and now it has exploded and continues to explode “in our hands”. 

This experience that Rabbi Heschel describes 70 years ago was never taken seriously by enough people to make the necessary changes, hence, the “stream of guilt and misery” which has been unloosed has overwhelmed us to the point where we believe the lies, the deceptions of these charlatans, these authoritarians who keep saying they are fighting for American ideals and our willingness to be deceived causes people to go along with this subterfuge. 

We are suffering from a loss of integrity on the world stage as well as on the personal stage. “A man’s word is his bond” no longer applies we say one thing and do another all the time. We say what someone wants to hear to get what we want/need. We see business as war, we profess covenantal relationships with another while using them as transactional ones to get over/look good. We are willing to sell another person ‘down the river’ and/or enslave them/abuse them to attain our personal goals and perceived needs. We continue to impugn our integrity while living in denial of this truth believing we are living lives congruent with our faith, our higher thoughts, our higher consciousness, etc. We are continuing to deceive ourselves into believing it is ‘the other’ person who is in denial, who has no integrity, so we don’t have to look at ourselves. Our loss of integrity and our denial of this loss has caused us to see the world and another person as dangerous because we don’t want to be found out for our guilt, misery and shame over our current situation. More on Sunday!

In recovery, we are slowly working on recovering our integrity as every person in recovery knows. We do this “one day at a time” knowing it takes much longer to rebuild integrity than it did to tear it down. We are continuing to look ourselves in the mirror and face our guilt and misery with the commitment to use them to move forward instead of staying stuck and enslaved. In recovery, we know our forward motion is based on our daily spiritual condition and without growing our integrity one grain of sand each day, our spiritual condition suffers instead of grows. 

On my 33rd Recovery birthday, I see the times/experiences where I missed the mark in growing the world God entrusted to me. I see where my guilt and misery maimed my integrity and that of the people around me. I also see where my need to connect and believe maimed my integrity because I mistook transactional experiences for covenantal ones and the hurt upon realizing my error was/is tremendous. I also know and am grateful for the overwhelming number of times and experiences when I honored God’s trust in me and kept my covenant with another person and never hid from being me, my not so greatness and my greatness is always transparent. This is integrity for me-insides and outsides matching. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 78

“What is the hope of man with his faithfulness being so feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no man’s integrity unmixed. But man has become callous to catastrophes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a wall between our conscience and God?”(Man is Not Alone pg.147)

Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above allows us to truly see ourselves and our current life situations, personal, communal and worldly, in a different light. While yesterday I wrote about the economic despair, the split between groups of people, today I am struck with both the inner and outer faithfulness that is “feeble, vague, unstable and confused”. 

Our faith in our self is called into question each and every day. We face a crisis of faithfulness every time we make a decision during the day. Yes, we have the science, the history, the facts, and we have to make an inner decision to follow what we ‘know in our kishkas/guts” is the best choice to make. We are being confronted with the lies, the deceptions of ‘alternative facts’, prejudice and hatred, while always under the surface, has erupted and becoming accepted as okay by police, Governors, state legislators, even a former president and his cronies/stooges! I am not going to delve into the psyches of these UnGodly people, I am struck by the feeble and confused faithfulness of their followers, their defenders, their soldiers who carry out their commands to hate, to enslave, to see the color of someone’s skin, the religion someone practices rather than the content of their character.

The people who follow these authoritarian hate-peddlers are the ones who’s faith is feeble and confused and have become an unstable source of good for God. There is no way they can be confronting their inner self, their soul, their higher consciousness and continue to proclaim that God wants them to control another person’s body (which is a lie-Scriptures doesn’t mention this), discriminate according to a persons skin color (God brought the Jews out of Egypt as a statement that slavery is inhumane), make excuses for inhumane treatment of another human being because ‘my friend’ did it; MBS killing Jamal Khashoggi (God tells us: “Do not murder). Because we do not exercise our inner life and continue to grow it by following blindly along with whatever our ‘leader’ tells us, our faithfulness has to be “vague and unstable”. People go to fundamentalist thinking because they are unwilling to engage in the inner wrestling, inner conflict that mature faith, stable faith, strong faith calls for. 

I hold the spiritual and political leaders responsible as well. We are not educating our children to ask questions and challenge ideas and events anymore. We are giving them the facts to memorize, be it in secular or spiritual classes, and reward them for regurgitating these ‘facts’ back to us. Jewish Education is meant to engage in the questions our ancestors encountered and yet, our kids are not given the proper tools nor the permission to disagree with “our sages” in some cases and in others to only disagree with them. We are not giving our children nor our adults the proper tools with which to confront the Spiritual texts that should be and need to be the foundation of our faithfulness and wonder why faithfulness is so “feeble, vague, unstable and confused”! 

We need a renaissance of learning, wrestling and engaging. We need to strengthen our faithfulness with dialogue not diatribe. We need to learn about our own faith traditions  (religious and/or secular) and how to find the path to our souls, our inner wisdom, our inner conflicts. We need to follow these paths and engage in the battle for our souls, the battle for our ability to take the next right action and go beyond our lower logic, our fundamentalist thinking, our narcissistic concerns. We have to begin to engage with people who are not like us so we can build better bridges, build smarter and more robust solutions and see the humanity, the faithfulness and the strength of another human being. It is time to stop isolating, it is time to stop killing our own souls/selves, it is time to stop going backwards to ‘the good old days’ that were actually demeaning, enslaving and hate-filled. It is time to be faithful to the principles that have sustained the world’s existence, that are responsible for the founding of the US and have continued the spiritual quest for freedom begun so long ago in Egypt by the Israelites, Moses and God. 

In recovery, we are constantly studying the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and other spiritual texts to learn more about our own self, our way of being and a new way to be in the world. We know we have to work everyday to strengthen our inner voices, to engage with life in ways that honor the faithfulness God has in us and the trust we need to reciprocate to God and to another person. We do this because it is a living amend to all the people we were unfaithful towards. 

My education and pathways to my inner life have not stopped nor can they. Rabbi Heschel keeps me on my toes as do the people around me, the news I encounter, the texts I read and the prayers I engage in. I am constantly seeking more and more education to better understand and respond to the call of my inner life and the call of another human being as well as the call of God. Without a stable, strong, clear and purposeful faithfulness we can’t do this.  Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark 

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 77

“What is the hope of man with his faithfulness being so feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no man’s integrity unmixed. But man has become callous to catastrophes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a wall between our conscience and God?”(Man is Not Alone pg.147)

I am trembling at these words published 70+ years ago! They come from the subchapter  titled:”Civilization hangs by a thread” and Rabbi Heschel is writing this in the shadow of WWII, the Shoah, man’s inhumanity towards man, the cold war, the atomic bomb, etc. Instead of people of faith hearing Rabbi Heschel’s call, they went the exact opposite way; our faith has become more vague, more feeble, more unstable and more confused. We have been and are led by spiritual leaders who seek to make their names great, not God’s! We are in the midst of a crisis of faith that is at least as terrifying as what Rabbi Heschel witnessed in Germany, Europe, and America during his lifetime. 

We are living in a time of great hopelessness within many people. The economic split between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has grown larger and larger. It has become harder and harder for the “haves” people to see that their reaching out to people in need is not largess on their part, it is not being ‘charitable’, it is not being ‘bountiful’, it is satisfying their urge to respond, to yield and to give. It is their need to stay in the proper gravitational pull so they keep being human. Yet, so many people have forgotten this truth, this need, this basic law of being human that they have no relationship to their urges and only act on their impulses. They are able to defend their practices of exploitation of the poor and the needy by saying how much they give to charity and how many buildings have their name on them. They are able to assuage their urges not by being connected to God, to principles, rather by getting indignant when they are called upon to do more than they want to! 

These “elites” are both democrats and republicans, they are men and women, they are ‘good church/temple/mosque going people’, they can quote anyone and any scripture that gives them cover-never once allowing scripture and eastern wisdom to penetrate their souls, to pierce their armor, to circumsize the foreskins of their hearts. They are too busy patting themselves on the back for their ‘charitable’ work while they use their money and power there to enslave the people doing the work to help the poor, the needy, the enslaved. While they purport to have the faith and commitment to the principles of “their” charity, in reality they don’t live the principles at all, personally, professionally and/or in their charity work. They live the principle of satisfying their impulses to look good and be on the “right side” of things- whatever the current “right side” is today. 

Faithfulness is a word that is thrown around by so many people it has become meaningless. We see in our political world how many people show faithfulness to the BIG LIE of Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy, Rand Paul, Moscow Mitch, Josh Hawley, ‘lying’ Ted Cruz, “little” Marco Rubio as Trump calls these people. Faithfulness to God would entail a faithfulness to TRUTH and the continuous search for truth, knowing we will never attain complete knowledge of TRUTH nor of God. Yet the search for truth is in itself a never-ending exercise of inner growth, inner knowing and being able to balance our inner impulses with our inner urges. This is what is missing, in my opinion, today from our political process and our governing institutions as well as from some of the non-profit boards and institutions that have lost their original missionary way of treating each person as a precious gem, a unique gift from God with infinite value and dignity. 

Life prior to our being in recovery was full of feeble attempts to live with integrity and congruently. Life prior to being in recovery meant being vague and very loose with truth and honesty. Life prior to being in recovery was always unstable because we were constantly afraid to be found out for our phoniness. Being in recovery gives us the opportunity to breathe deep full breaths. It affords us the gift of never having to hide nor be confused about who we are and what we stand for and who we stand with. To paraphrase something attributed to Rabbi Heschel: I am never lost; I know where I came from-Abraham and Sarah and I know where I am going- to the sovereignty of God. This is what we get to know in recovery. 

On Friday, I will celebrate 33 years of Recovery-with the help of God and so many other people. In these 33 years, I have felt unstable and confused for moments, never forever. I have not had to live in my own feebleness as I did prior to my recovery journey, I have not had to live nor be vague about anything-always responding with the truth as I know/knew it and not hiding from anyone. In my recovery, I became the stability for many, many people and I am honored to have made these T’Shuvahs, these new responses to the calls that I used to ignore and take advantage of prior to my recovery. I am grateful that I don’t have to engage in the behaviors listed above because I stay faithful to God, to principles and to serving to the best of my ability with transparency and truth. I am even able to be grateful to the people who fooled me by being transactional when I thought we were covenantal for their teaching me to be more aware and the actions I listed above can be very subtle and convincing. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 76

“The course in which human life moves is, like the orbit of heavenly bodies, an ellipse, not a circle. We are attached to two centers: to the focus of our self and to the focus of God. Driven by two forces, we have both the impulse to acquire, to enjoy, to possess and the urge to respond, to yield, to give.”(Man is Not Alone pg.146)

Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s words and teachings above causes us to pause and look at our life as an individual, as a part of a community, society and as a part of God, I believe. Seeing one’s life move in an orbit rather than in a circle or continuum is a very fascinating viewpoint. I am experiencing this teaching as we are in a gravitational pull between these two centers, we are in a very delicate dance in between the ellipse that has self as the focus and the ellipse that has God as the focus.

Looking back at history, we see what has happened when this gravitational pull has  been out of sync and stopped the orbit of one or the other ellipse. Men have made God into a vengeful, angry, entity and used God’s name to enslave another society, kill people and rain down war and destruction. They have also jettisoned God from daily living and made every decision about a calculation and/or ‘what’s in it for me’ type of thinking. We can see in our own lives when we have been pulled in one direction or the other too much and how our equilibrium has been shifted and we have fallen into one orbit or the other too much.

I don’t experience God wanting us to do nothing but contemplate God and meditate, pray, study, etc all day. God wants us to act, God wants us to be a partner in making our corner of the world better and we cannot do this if we don’t have a sense of self and stop our faux altruistic ways of being; most of the people who speak about their altruism do so to hide what they are doing for themselves- stealing, robbing, etc. Being attached to “the focus of God” gives us the direction, the path and the way to be able to engage in our “urge to respond, yield and give”. And, we cannot engage in our urges without the strength and resources to do so, hence our need to also be attached to “the focus of our self”. 

Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we have to live in this tension, in this gravitational pull to truly be human, as I am understanding him this morning. Our problem is that rather than living attached to both centers, we are constantly seeking perfection and constantly believing, erroneously, that we have to live in one or the other. It is very difficult to live in the both/and of this orbital life. It is very difficult to surrender to the movement of human life in this manner because we want to have control over everything. We cause this weightless, rudderless, bumping into one another when we use our impulses solely for our self, solely to amass, to control, to enslave, etc. When we use God’s name and act in these ways, we are using deception and mendacity to persuade people to go against their self interests, to put us as the focus of both ellipses and this is blasphemy, this is treachery and this causes humanity to lose it’s gravitational pull to stay in the proper orbit and we experience chaos, destruction, hatred, etc. 

Living in the gravitational pull doesn’t mean we have to float weightlessly, rudderless. Rather it means that  we are  using our  impulses “to acquire, to enjoy, to possess” for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of God. We can acquire, enjoy, possess and still respond to the call of God to help another soul in the world, to yield to what is good and right according to a higher justice and give to another the opportunity to make a good life for themselves. Living in the proper orbit means we contribute what we can from what we acquire, we see helping another enjoy, possess and acquire not as competition rather as cooperation, as a way of fulfilling our urge to give, respond and yield. When we are in sync with the universe, when we are service both foci, attached to both centers, we are able to live a full human life and we deal with each situation with an equanimity and knowledge that we are moving in our proper course and proper place. 

In recovery, we are continually striving to find/regain our proper orbit. We fell out of the sky long before we made a decision to recover, in fact, recovery itself is our acknowledgement that we need to live in the tension of the gravitational pull Rabbi Heschel is speaking about. We know we were in the center of the circle of self not to serve our self really, but to destroy our self-physically, mentally and spiritually. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to find the proper measure of serving our impulses and our urges as Rabbi Heschel teaches. 

I am still working on not having these two orbits crash into each other, not focus on one or the other to the detriment of the equilibrium I need to move through life with gratitude, service, joy, possessions, giving, responding and yielding. I see where I have made a fool of myself through being too focused on one center and the other center. I see where I have been pulled to focus on either center more than the other at times by God and by ego. I also know that I am still in this heavenly orbit and I still have impulses and urges that God, another human being and my self/soul need to have met. I am in the orbit and keeping myself attuned to both centers! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 75

“The course in which human life moves is, like the orbit of heavenly bodies, an ellipse, not a circle. We are attached to two centers: to the focus of our self and to the focus of God. Driven by two forces, we have both the impulse to acquire, to enjoy, to possess and the urge to respond, to yield, to give.”(Man is Not Alone pg.146)

These words from Rabbi Heschel put the human dilemma and the path of being human so beautifully, forcefully, and so bluntly. Man is Not Alone was published 70 years ago, yet we seem to have forgotten, never learned, ignored this important teaching. Many people feel adrift precisely because we in a heavenly orbit, an ellipse which has two center points instead of a circle which only has one. We are constantly being pulled towards both of them and this is the essence of being human, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today. At issue, is whether we will continue to live in the orbit like a heavenly body or are we going to leave this orbit and turn ourselves into less than being human? 

I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call out to us to not take the focus of self for granted, to not be so sure of what “the focus of self” actually entails. We have become enraptured with the idea of acquisitions, possessions and enjoyments. We are making this enrapture our sole focus of attention, getting it by any and all means. Whether we are enriching ourselves through using ‘slave’ labor by not paying living wages, enriching ourselves by taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of another person, enriching ourselves through theft and robbery (of all kinds-criminal and non-criminal); our society today is enamored and focused on obtaining as much as we can for our self and using this amassing of wealth and stuff to be powerful and ‘secure’. 

The “focus of our self” has become the center of the circle we live in rather than one point of the ellipse and herein lies the roots of our current situation. The anger and hatred, the power grab and mendacity  make sense to people who see human life as a circle. There is no God, no Higher Power/Consciousness, no Ineffable One to be acceptable to- just self and “it’s my life and I have free will” goes the thinking for people who’s focus on themself becomes the point in the circle that everything else revolves around. We see this politically, with some people focussed on their taking of power for their own sake, to propagate the lies they have been telling themselves to everyone else, to get people to believe that Jan.6, 2021 was a day for Freedom Fighters and Protectors of the American Way (meaning whiteness and prejudice/hatred towards anyone not with their way of whiteness)! 

Personally, we stop looking at our own actions critically, we only see what someone else has done and we are just ‘getting ours’ as the saying goes. Putting ourself in the center of the circle, we need everything to revolve around us and to get that to happen, we will do just about anything. People will tear down the reputations of anyone who stands in their way of getting what they want, of making sure that their self is served above, before and beyond the needs of another person(s) and they will do everything in their power to prove their “rightness”. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that making human life into a circle with the self in the center and wanting everyone/everything else to revolve around my/our self is going to imbalance our individual lives and our world itself. He is gently, this time, disturbing us so we go back to living in the ellipse and leave the circle of selfishness once and for all. 

In recovery, this is our goal, to live in the ellipse that Rabbi Heschel describes above. We have lived in the circle, we have seen the destruction, the ruin, the harm, the pain we have caused by thinking that we could and should move from the ellipse to the circle, from putting us in the center where humanity and the physical world should be. We are in the process of making living amends for these behaviors, we are acutely aware of the damage we did to ourselves as well as to another persons(s). In recovery, we are searching for ways to improve the equilibrium of the ellipse and ensure we keep both centers in sync and in motion. We do this with a daily inventory, taking responsibility for our errors and our successes and being transparent and truthful. 

I have been searching for the equilibrium the ellipse can bring and I know how illusive it can be as well. I am aware of when I have made the focus of my self the center of a circle rather than the foci of the ellipse and I have made and continue to make the amends for those moments. I also am aware that in my recovery, these experiences are truly moments rather than the pattern they were prior to my recovery. As I celebrate 35 years since my last arrest, 35 years since I heard God call me, or as I like to say hit me with a baseball bat, I am so grateful for the people in my life who have continued to stand with me and help me get back to living in the ellipse rather than in the circle. I am also grateful for the people who continue to make their self the center of the circle rather than the foci of their ellipse because it gives me pause and an example of how I do not want to be. We all will, at times, move for the foci of the ellipse to the center of the circle, sometimes it is necessary to do this because we have been so out of measure through denigrating one’s self and we have to remember to return to our natural state, the two foci of the ellipse. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  

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

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

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

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