Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 24
“God will return to us when we shall be willing to let Him in-into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, not our courts and investigating committees, not our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the Father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to power but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image of His presence or that of a beast.” (Man’s Quest for God pg.150)
Rabbi Heschel is challenging us all to allow God, and I would add, Godliness, into every fabric of our beingness and into every corner of our living. Speaking to all of us of our very need to end our segregating, our separating of God to the realm of ‘religion’, to our Churches, Temples, Mosques, etc. In order for us to live into our humanity, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, instructing us “to let Him in”!
Letting God “into our banks and factories” calls for us to treat people well, especially people we have ‘power’ over-our people who need loans and savings accounts and people who work for us. To “let Him in-into our banks and factories” means we have to make the choice Rabbi Heschel is giving us: “reflects either the image of His presence or that of a beast.” To “let Him in” to our banks and factories also gives us the opportunity to care for the needy and the poor, the stranger, the widow, the orphan. When my father died in 1966, my mother was told she could not have the credit my father had built up transferred to her name, she would have to build her credit anew and, as a woman in those years, most banks didn’t want to extend credit to a woman without a co-signer. Today, one has to meet a certain criteria to get a loan, and it is still harder for women, people of color to meet these criteria. God is still absent in our banks, I am afraid. In our factories, we have watched as factory owners still want to pay the workers as little as possible while paying CEO’s, management, themselves and the shareholders the maximum. Isn’t it time to “let Him in” and pay the people who are making us the money wages that give them the honor and respect due them for the work they do so we can enjoy our benefits? When we ship our factories and manufacturing off to a foreign country so we can get ‘cheap’ labor and make more money, are we fulfilling Rabbi Heschel’s demand to “let Him in”? Aren’t we reflecting the image “of a beast” rather than the “image of His presence”?
We hear much about prayer and religious groups in Congress, yet, as we can see now in the Chaos of the House of Representatives, we know these prayer groups and religious caucus members are more interested in their “will to power” than “in his power of compassion”! We are witnesses to the cruelty that they proclaim they are doing in God’s name, we are witnesses to the fidelity to their ideologies, their dogmas rather than fidelity to God’s will, fidelity to compassion, rather than be “willing to let Him in”. It is a sad state of affairs when cutting funds for the needy and poor, when keeping the stranger out, is more important that keeping the government open. When towing a ‘party line’ is more important than “the power of compassion”, when living in either/or, when blaming the victims, when accusing another of that which you are guilty of, etc keeps God out and the “will to power” front and center. When will We, the People, say enough, demand our elected officials “let Him in”? When will we stop our debate over who God loves better, when will we end our Cain/Abel fights/wars and accept that “God is the Father of all men” and we have to learn to get along, settle our differences through compromise and negotiations, and do what is best for humanity, not our selfish concerns?
“Let Him In” is the foundational principle of recovery, of T’Shuvah, of decency, of returning to “the self we were created to be”. In recovery, we become acutely aware that without either an educational or an ecstatic experience of God-consciousness, we will stay stuck. Without serving something greater than ourselves we will be mired in selfishness, ignorance and reflect the image “of a beast”, as we did prior to our recovery.
I “made a decision” in 1987 to “let Him in” and I have stayed true to that decision in all of my imperfect ways. I have let God into all areas of my living, and I have been blind, willfully at times and un-willfully most of the times, to what God has wanted from me. I repair the times of blindness with T’Shuvah, with amends, with changing my pathways, with allowing my soul to dictate the next right action. I cry out to God from the depths and, while not sure God hears me, I know I hear me. To “let Him in” I open my mind and allow my soul to speak to it and I don’t use rationalizations to override what my soul, my intuition knows is best. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark