Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 143
“The fact that we were given knowledge of His will is a sign of some ability to cope with evil. The voice is more than a challenge. It is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374-375)
How sad is it that we continue to misread the sign that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us about throughout his writings, his way of living. The Bible is the GPS for how to live well, how to cope with evil, and how to transform the evil that resides inside of us to enhance goodness. Yet, we continue to follow ‘our own path’ rather than immerse ourselves in the Bible and find the myriad of pathways to coping with evil that living God’s will gives us. According to Jewish tradition, there are 70 ways to understand God’s will, understand the Bible, find the pathway that we are called to follow in each moment, each phase of our lives in order to cope with the evil inside of us and around us. Yet, we continue to misread the signs and give into the subtle and not-so-subtle evil inside of us. We continue to misread the God’s will and substitute our will for God’s will instead of, as we learn in Pirke Avot 2:4 “Nullify your will before God’s will so God’s will becomes your will.” We are have seen this phenomena throughout the millennia and watched as our civilization continues to bring itself to the brink of destruction-not by God but by our own devisings. Rather than using the “knowledge of His will” to the greatest advantage and enhance our “ability to cope with evil”, we are using our “knowledge of His will” to deceive ourselves and as many people as possible to attain our goals of power, prestige and wealth.
We, the People, who have been given “knowledge of His will” can stop the evil that is perpetrated in the name of God, the evil that is enhanced by our idolatry. There are no superheroes to follow, we have to follow the superhero inside of us, the soul and knowledge that is implanted within us at birth. Our religious institutions, our families, our communities need to return to growing our souls from a young age, helping us mature our inner lives, hear the call of our souls and how to use “knowledge of His will” to “cope with the evil” that is inside and outside of us. We, the adults who are still operating from a place of immaturity of our souls, who have allowed our spiritual life to atrophy, have to immerse ourselves in communities that speak about how to live our “knowledge of His will” in today’s world. We have to engage the texts, the wisdom, the commandments and the mitzvot with honesty, open-mindedness, willingness; the HOW of living well, the HOW of living into and growing our “knowledge of His will”.
We do this by letting go of our prejudices/anger against God, forgiving ourselves for all the times we substituted our selfish will for God’s will, forgiving all the people who have done the same to us. This letting go is a deep dive into our adolescent rebellion that is mad because we didn’t get what we wanted, God did not give us ‘our due’, God did not save us from harm, etc. Realizing that God has given us the strength to “cope with the evil” that has been perpetrated upon us is the beginning of letting go of our anger towards God and realizing the truth of the Footsteps poem. More on this tomorrow.
In recovery, HOW is the foundational principle of our program. We begin with honesty when we first admit our powerlessness in the face of the evil that has brought destruction and ruin to all of our relationships, the evil that has brought us to the lowest point in our life in one or more of these areas: physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, etc. Once we begin to get honest with our self, we become so desperate that we open our minds to new solutions as the old ones ‘stopped working’. We listen and learn with a new attitude, taking the wax and the cotton out of our ears, putting on “a new pair of glasses” as Chuck C teaches us, and we begin to understand how to use “knowledge of His will” to help our self and another human being live better than we have.
I still misread the signs of God at times even today, I will never get them all right nor do I degrade myself for ‘missing these marks’. Each day I grow in HOW, each day I am amazed to find solutions and ways to use this day’s “knowledge of His will” to better myself, to help another(s) better themselves, to make our corner of the world a little better. I look back on the past 34+ years of recovery and I am amazed at how the “knowledge of His will” that has shown me pathways I never saw before, given me to power to cope with and transform my own inner evil to do good, guided me to speak in ways people could understand, even when they did not like it, to help them increase their acting on the “knowledge of His will” for them. The long and winding road of life for me is manageable and enjoyable when I immerse myself in God’s will and live it more. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark