Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 100
“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)
The more one immerses oneself in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, the more one allows this brilliance to go through them, the better we will adhere to his call to us, I believe. This is the issue, for me, with the “pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition” paths of non-engagement with religion and/or spirituality. All of those ways of being are really pathways to self-centeredness, egotistical pontification, external beauty, etc and none of these ways of non-engagement change one’s inner life. There is no change because all of the ways mentioned above are ways to sound and look good while shielding one’s inner life, one’s soul with teflon so nothing can stick, nothing can get inside of one. These paths are used precisely not to “recall the urgencies…of human existence”.
We see this in our everyday life, when one says hello to a person walking on the street or in a store, the response is either shock or wariness most of the time. We have lost the urgency to recognize another Image of God, another spirit in a physical body, to be seen and recognized as a divine aid, divine partner, divine need, as Rabbi Heschel describes human beings elsewhere. When we see politics as combat rather than how do we serve, we put on great drama and comedy and do not regard the welfare of the poor, needy and stranger as urgent or important. When we are so intent on being right and have our tribe be in power, we see all those who are different as evil, as enemies, etc. Yet, we put on a great show of pomp, circumstance, externalizing and degrading human beings for being poor, needy and a stranger from another land seeking refuge and freedom! We hear the pedantic speeches of people extolling why it is right to infringe on the Civil Rights of people, to decide what a woman can do with her body, give aid and comfort to enemies of the Constitution, the four freedoms FDR articulated, freedom from fear and want, freedom of speech and worship, to the white supremacists who claim George Soros and Jews are enemies, who claim Black people should not have the right to vote(some believe both of these groups should not sit in the same restaurant as they), they are willing to bring down the ceiling, burn the House down so they can retain power, keep another enslaved, practice their hatred all the while wrapping themselves in the American Flag and the New Testament! This bastardization has caused more people to leave religions than anything else, these lies have caused people to sigh “God Help Me” and we know what happened to Pharaoh, yet, these deceivers have deceived themselves into believing they will not drown in the red sea of their own making, how sad, how terrifying!
We have a response, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us above. To “recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence” is the way to overcome and defeat these charlatans, these bastardizers of the holy and the good. We, the People, have to stop denying the perpetual emergencies of human existence: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness as our Declaration of Independence states in the second paragraph of this God-inspired document. We, the people, have to lead the revolution against tribalism, against mendacity, against our spiritual, religious, and democratic principles that are under assault by the pedantic, superstitious, externalizing ceremonialists! We have to stand up and speak out of the urgency of our spiritual life, the emergency we are once again in, “whether this nation can long endure” as Abraham Lincoln said. We have to not “let the light go out” as Peter Yarrow teaches us. We have the power to stand up for those who are experiencing these urgencies and emergencies physically and we need to exercise our spiritual power to meet the urgencies and emergencies of the souls of all of us.
These urgencies and emergencies are usually what brings people to recovery. Most people do not seek recovery when we believe everything is good and we can get away with our “little white lies”, our “secrets”, it is only when our ways of living/coping come crashing down on us that we seek to recover our souls, our decency, our dignity and find the life we are meant to live rather than the one of superstition, externalization, following the ceremonies and using pedantry to prove we are right. In recovery, we realize “the urgencies and emergencies of human existence”, of our own existence and begin to dedicate our living to engage in these urgencies, heal these emergencies by healing our spiritual crisis and then, helping another to heal their spiritual emergency.
I know both sides of this paradox, I am aware of the pull of mendacity and how to use all of the paths away from God, away from authenticity and still look like I am moving towards God and being authentic. I used to be frustrated ‘the good people’ who do this also and only point their finger at me, however, like Dr. Susannah Heschel taught me, now I have great compassion, great pathos for people who are so stuck in these self-deceptions. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark