Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 200
“The more deeply immersed I become in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all our responsible.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 225)
I was moving on to another piece of wisdom from Rabbi Heschel today, but, I am stuck on these sentences with all that is going on in our country right now. Kevin McCarthy is claiming that his Republican led House of Representatives passed a debt-ceiling increase bill knowing that the whole story is the that bill adds to “the suffering of human beings” and “that in regard to the cruelties committed in the name of a free society” they are guilty and all of us are responsible. The bill he and his cruel cronies passed would harm the people who need assistance most while ensuring that big Pharma, uber-wealthy people and corporations save more and the gap grows. His own constituents, both in his area of California and throughout the Red States would be negatively impacted-yet he says with a straight face he is helping the “average American”. Ron DeSantis’ war on people who are not white like him, not Christian like him seems to know no boundaries. He is against truth, he is against giving medical care to people who need it unless they tow his line, he is against a woman’s right to choose, he is against the idea of redemption. DeSantis, in his christian view, must believe he “is without sin” because he keeps “casting stones” at people who he has decided are less than he is. How does one go to Church, read the Gospels, pray to the Virgin Mary and hate the very people Christ served, the very people Christ lived among? Yet, he is considered the best choice to unseat Trump as the head of the Republican Party!
I am not speaking about the politics of these people, I am speaking of their morality and their spiritual sickness. I am immersed in the words of Rabbi Heschel above and keep being bewildered at the callousness and cruelty of people in leadership positions, of people who support the Neo-Nazi/White Supremacists who marched in Washington DC over the weekend. I am enraged that Sen. Tommy Tuberville would admit that MAGA Republicans are white supremacists and be proud of it, that Marjorie Taylor Greene has a lie to tell about someone other than herself as to what ails us as a country.
I am saddened by the inability of people to be in dialogue with one another. I experience the spiritual ailments of people unable to hear facts and deny them. I am seeking ways to help heal the isolation and anger that is rampant right now in the way people ignore one another, in the ways we find more and more to ignore “the sufferings of human beings”. I am in search of promoting ways to live life “the prophets sought to convey.” We are in desperate need of returning to the ways of the Bible, the lessons of the Bible, the path of return laid out in the Bible. God wants our return, we say everyday 3 times in our prayers. God implants knowledge within us and demands we care for the “sufferings of human beings” not add to them. Each and every day we are supposed to do T’Shuvah, an inventory of our day-good and not good; repair the damage/harm from the not good and enhance the good on the next day; and make a plan how to grow from our successes and our failures, ie fail forward. God wants our return, God wants our goodness, God needs us to treat one another well, God calls each of us to account and responsibility and we have to answer Hineni-Here I Am! Standing idly by the blood of our neighbor/brother/sister is an example of how co-responsible we are for one another!
In recovery, we do our 10th step each night. Each morning we write out a gratitude list, we pray for guidance and the strength to carry the guidance out. We have to be of service so we don’t sink into the selfishness of our past, we have to be vulnerable so we can learn more and be more authentic. We have to be responsible for another alcoholic who is suffering so we don’t lose our humanity. These are some of the ways people in recovery live Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above.
I have to be vulnerable in order to be grateful, I have to be grateful for the bounty I enjoy. Gratitude and vulnerability, responsibility for “the cruelties committed” by my fellows gives me the impetus and the sight to right the wrongs, to lift up the fallen, to be a light to another, to love more and resent less. Without responsibility there is no recovery, there is no T’Shuvah, there is no forgiveness given by me and/or by God and/or by anyone else. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark