Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 308
“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation. In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance causes time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place. Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)
Rabbi Heschel is not saying the “harm and blemish” doesn’t exist, as I understand his wisdom, rather that “harm and blemish” can be “extinguished, transformed into salvation”. Salvation comes from the Latin meaning “to save”, in Hebrew it denotes being saved and connotes redemption, which comes from the Latin meaning “to buy back” and extinguish comes from the Latin meaning “to quench”. Using these definitions, this part of the sentence can be understood as “harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be” quenched, changed into saving, buying back our dignity, our essence. This “miracle” occurs because of our willingness to engage in T’Shuvah, our returning to Authenticity, Responsibility, Truth, aka ART. Living our lives as works of ART is a path to “love God with all our heart, all our soul, with everything that is in us” even our negative inclinations.
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and brilliance is calling for us to let go of our old ideas, to be “maladjusted” to the societal norms of ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’, to recognize and suspend our “inner suspicions”. He is demanding that we face “life on life’s terms” and come to grips with the beauty and the ugly within us, to wrestle with the “Jacob and Esau” within us, to “buy back” the ‘sin’ of Adam-hiding from God. To do this, we have to be in truth with ourselves, we need to see our flaws and our greatness and repair the former while enhancing the latter. It is not an easy engagement, it is, however, a simple one. Facing “the person in the mirror” takes courage, it takes serenity, aka clarity, it means taking off the masks we wear, removing the “mental make-up” that has covered up our inner life, our soul’s calling, and our connection to one another and to God. Seeing our senseless hatred of one another, acknowledging our need to blame another for our errors, how we are unwelcoming to the stranger, hard-hearted towards the poor and the needy, engaging in ‘low self-esteem’ while being a partner of God, will allow us to repair these self-deceptions we have perpetrated upon ourselves. These insights, once we have admitted them to ourselves, will allow us to repair the “harms and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves”.
Once we have the clarity that taking off the myriad of masks we wear, we will be better able to testify to the good we have done, we will see the light of our soul and how it has guided us to ‘do the next right thing’. We will be able to fill the greatness column on our inventory sheet with all of the decent, kind, responsible ways we have connected with “the world” and with “ourselves”. This part of our inventory, our T’Shuvah, engages us in seeing the whole picture of our year, of our life, and put into proper perspective our goodness and our desire to love, connect and be a partner with God, with our family, our community, our world in making life “one grain of sand” better for everyone. This way of doing T’Shuvah gives us freedom to choose with clarity how we want to live and how we are going to live in this next year(s). It also guides us to “the unnoticed of all miracles, the miracle of repentance”.
I have experienced this “unnoticed miracle” often in my recovery! In fact, this “unnoticed miracle” has defined my recovery and my entire way of living these past 34+ years. It has not been a ‘one and done’, in fact I have put my own “mental make-up” at various times even though I had removed it before. Yet, engaging in T’Shuvah, being aware of the masks, living in truth and being responsible for the negativity and the goodness I have wrought, being authentic in my remorse and in my accomplishments, helps me throw away more and more of the “mental make-up” I have used in the past. My anger, bombastic ways of being were authentic in the moment and they were inappropriate some of the times as well. When my anger was personal from a place of hurt, my actions were wrong and inappropriate, when my anger was for the treatment of another, when it was the anger of the prophets, my actions were in service of something greater than myself-another human being and God. I continue to grow my ART of living, I continue to let go of the masks, the self-deceptions, and hold onto the goodness and the love I give and receive from “the forgiving hand of God” and bear witness to the “transformed into salvation” my life is becoming. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark