Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 229

“It is not by the rare act of greatness that character is determined, but by everyday actions, by a constant effort to rend our callousness. It is constancy that sanctifies. Judaism is an attempt to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance, to relate all scattered actions to the One. Through the constant rhythm of prayers, disciplines, reminders, joys, man is taught not to forfeit his grandeur.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Immersing ourselves in the last sentence above is, in my opinion, crucial to our being able to “rend our callousness”. Rhythm comes from the Greek meaning “to flow”, constant comes from the Latin meaning “stand with, standing firm”. Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to “stand firm” in the flow “of prayers, disciplines, reminders, joys” that will teach us how “not to forfeit” our greatness. While this is a simple solution to what ails humanity, it ain’t easy to do.

Standing firm within the flow of prayers, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom today, means we have to be involved in our prayers, not just say them. It means we have to engage with prayer so we can change our inner lives, we can strengthen our spirits in order to overcome the rationalizations and desires of our minds. While reason is essential to our being human, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to mature our reasoning powers with the truth and wisdom of our souls/spirits. As we are witnessing today as we have in every generation, reason can be corrupted, it can be used to gain power, make enslaving people a ‘good thing’, bastardize the principles of the Bible, cause us to make good bad, and bad good. Reason without the guidance of the spirit corrupts us. In the third paragraph of the Shema, a centerpiece of daily prayer in Judaism, we are reminded to not “scout out after our heart and our eyes, lest we whore ourselves after them.” This prayer comes from the Bible, it is a description of the challenge of humanity, the experience of our ancestors in the desert, in Egypt, in Canaan, which we are warned against repeating. Yet, we seem unable to learn and implement this and so many other lessons of the Bible, of prayer.

Rabbi Heschel teaches us: “Prayer may not save us, it will make us worthy of being saved.” This teaching, along with the last sentence above, demands of us fidelity with our prayers, it demands of us to immerse ourselves in prayer so we can change our hearts’ desires, so we can truly Shema, listen, hear, and understand the call of God, the call of our souls, the call of truth, the call of justice, the call of love, the call of kindness, the call of mercy, the call of compassion, the call of God. Standing firm in our prayers, being in the flow of what our prayers are calling us to do, taking a “leap of action” based on the prayers we are saying, as Rabbi Heschel says, no longer reciting prayers and immersing ourselves in them, is what I believe Rabbi Heschel is teaching us.

Being in the flow and standing firm/standing with may seem to be contradictory to some, yet they are both necessary in order to truly have prayer change us. Prayer is not about petition, it is about introspection, it is not about fulfilling a commandment, it is about opening ourselves up to understand the call of the commandment, the call of God, the call of our neighbors, the call of truth, etc. Yet, we continue to use prayer for our self-aggrandizement, for power, for domination instead of surrender. Standing firm in the flow of prayer means we are not moving from and allowing ourselves to be carried forward to being more human each day, it means we are surrendering our will and our lives to a power greater than ourselves, it means we are changing our vision of living and bringing  into focus the next right action that moves us forward in our journey to wholeness and holiness.

In recovery, prayer and meditation are crucial. Many of us begin each day with prayer and meditation, be it formal prayer, like a rosary or a minyan, or private prayer, speaking the words on our hearts, without listening, hearing and understanding the response from our souls, our inner life, God, these are only half-measures. We, in recovery, know that “half-measures availed us nothing”, so we continue to immerse ourselves in prayer and meditation in order to live better each day, live with gratitude, be of service, do the next right thing.

This blog, for me, is part of my prayer and meditation routine which I never do routinely! I stand firm in the flow of my prayers and I see how far I am away from the shore of disbelief, how far I am from the horror I was prior to my beginning this journey of T’Shuvah. I am also aware of how much farther I have to travel and am unafraid of my errors, as the saying goes, judge me not for where I am but the distance I have travelled. Through standing firm in the flow of my prayers, I have come a long way, baby!:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark