Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 86

“The vigor and veracity its ideas are perceptible under the rust and batter of two millennia of debate and dogma; it does not fade in spite of theology nor collapse under abuse. The Bible is the perpetual motion of the spirit, its waves beating against man’s abrupt and steep shortcomings, its echo reaching into the blind alleys of his wrestling with despair.” (God in Search of Man pgs. 241-242).

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the last sentence above calls to all of us to end our incessant need to hide, to defend our ‘bad’ actions, and to not give into despair. While many of us wring our hands and bemoan what is happening in the world, the Bible, according to Rabbi Heschel, “is the perpetual motion of the spirit” and is the antidote to what ails us as a society, as a family, as individuals. This is the challenge of being human-to engage the Bible with our souls, with our minds, with our entire being. This challenge includes us allowing ourselves to be moved by “the perpetual motion of the spirit” of the Bible rather than try and move the Bible to validate our “abrupt and steep shortcomings”.

While we make ‘new years resolutions’ and set goals for ourselves at this time of year, the most important, and I believe only, important resolution is to engage with “the perpetual motion of the spirit” of the Bible. This phrase imparts to us a pathway to engaging with the Bible, one that is always growing, learning, and dynamic. When we get lost in the commentaries of another, of a different age, we are building a dam and attempting to encase the Bible in the spirit of another time. We are blocking “the perpetual motion of the spirit” of the Bible, enabling us to deny our “shortcomings” and use “the blind alleys” of despair to capture people and use them for our unholy desires and goals.

We have witnessed this throughout history; the prophets called out the Priests and the royalty, the wealthy and the poor, as they walled off the ways of God to be only the sacrifices in the Temple and not impact the ways they led their lives. We witnessed this in the times of the Middle Ages during the Spanish Inquisition, the ways the Jews were exiled from so many countries, the ways the poor were treated by the wealthy and the royalty as well as the Priests of the Church. We witnessed this in this country with the bringing of Black people from Africa to be slaves and make landowners become rich in the South. We are witnessing it now with people in power who continually bastardize the Bible to enable them to feel good and righteous about treating the poor, the needy, the stranger, the women, the Jew, the Muslim, the Asian, the… poorly! The fact that Trump is leading the race in the Republican Party, the party of the Religious Right, the party of Christian Nationalism, speaks volumes as to how high the walls are that have been built to stop “the perpetual motion of the spirit” of the Bible!

For many people, these walls cause more despair, give us less hope and more fear, debilitate us and exhaust us. Yet, for people of faith-real faith, Biblical faith- the words above are what infuse us with energy to fight the charlatans, to stand up to the bullies, to repel the idolators. Immersing ourselves in the Bible, engaging in the Bible with the attitude of learning, experiencing the Bible with our spirits, gives an energy that we never knew we had. We are able to see our “shortcomings” through the stories of our ancestors, through the experiences of the archetypes of the Bible. We are able to see the humanness of living into the “both/and” of life-rather than the “either/or”. We can experience the myriad of paths to rise above the despair of slavery and know that we are worthy of being redeemed. We learn how to live with our imperfections, repair the harms we cause, reconnect with people we have hurt and stay connected to God and “the perpetual motion of the spirit” of the Bible.

The spirit of the Bible cannot be experienced by proxy! We have to all engage with it, imbibe it, wallow in it. We cannot allow the Bible to become calcified, only good for ‘those’ people, only understood by the people of antiquity. We get to engage with the spirit of the Bible, it continues to ‘breathe’ life into our being, into our actions. Instead of repeating the actions that caused the Prophets so much grief, we can learn from the errors of our ancestors, we can appreciate our ‘evil inclinations’ are not bad nor are we doomed. Rather we learn how to stay connected to our “better angels” and open ourselves up to the light and the wisdom that can shine so brightly that we no longer are stuck “in the blind alleys wrestling with despair”. We have the power to admit our shortcomings, to repair our errors, to learn new ways to handle situations that bewildered us, to end our obsessive need for certainty, for mendacity, for living a facade, etc. We have to be present in and with “the perpetual motion of the spirit” and let go of our need to be right, our desire to lie and deceive and truly not longer stand idly by the blood of our brothers and sisters as well as “love our neighbor as ourselves”!

The spiritual path is the foundation of recovery! Whether we are “drunk” on alcohol, power, needing to be right, looking good, in love with despair, or anything else-the only path of redemption is the spiritual path. We are suffering, as Father Martin says “from a soul sickness”. So, only by engaging in a spiritual path-no matter which spiritual discipline speaks to you- can we become free. I see the footprints of my path as I look backward so I can go forward and whenever I didn’t allow “the perpetual motion of the spirit” to carry me, I walked into blind alleys, I fought against “the waves beating against” my “abrupt and steep shortcomings”. Each time, I recovered through spiritual means, spiritual principles and with the aid and comfort of many people. My imperfections don’t make me bad nor do yours make you bad-they just make us human and engaging in a spiritual path to repair ourselves and the damage is the challenge of being human and being in recovery. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark