“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living”. Heschel
Abraham Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century. He was born in 1907 in Poland and died in 1972 in New York. In 1938, he was arrested by the Gestapo but managed to escape to London before the Holocaust. His mother and sisters, however, were both murdered by the Nazis. He became a professor of Jewish mysticism in New York and was a leader in the U.S. civil rights movement. He joined Martin Luther King and John Lewis in the march to Selma.
In the opening quote, given his history and philosophy, I wonder if Heschel was asking, “How should we think about our relationship to life?” How do we find meaning in the midst of evil and madness? That sounds like a relevant question today.
For me, relationships define who we are. The question is, what are those relationships? What is our relationship to ourselves, our family, our work, to Nature, others, societal measures of success, or some higher power?
Those questions are hard enough to answer under the best of conditions, but when we retreat into social echo chambers, culture clubs, or internet fantasy/conspiracy circles, we start to lose a clear and impartial sense of who we are and what gives us meaning.
Heschel’s prayer implores us to cultivate awe in the ordinary and to notice the beauty of daily events. He encourages us to be amazed by the mystery of existence in which we see ourselves as spokes in a larger divine wheel. He wants us to acknowledge that we are participants in the unfolding of time and to be grateful for our “unearned chance to serve, to wonder, to love life.” He suggests that it is better to ask questions than to think we have all the answers.
I wonder if one of our biggest challenges in life is to let go of the attachments we have to certainty and permanence – to think we have all the answers and that life will always go on as is. What if, instead, we were to open up to the possibilities of wonder and mystery? I wonder how the world would be different if we focused more on transformation than accumulation and if we quit deluding ourselves about permanence and security. If we embraced uncertainty.
In a recent column, David Brooks references the chariot metaphor in ancient Greek literature as a way to suggest that our “driver”- our intellectual dimension – needs to do a better job of reading our emotions and desires (our horses) and our body (our chariot). He suggests we should listen more carefully to the messages and wisdom our body and our emotions send us. Brooks forgets to mention, however, the “passenger” inside the carriage who must awaken to guide the driver when he’s drunk, control the horses when they are running wild, and maintain the carriage when it breaks down. To me, the passenger needs to represent our true essence – our Real I (who, according to Gurdjieff, is who we really are, how we develop, and how we harmonize our physical, emotional and intellectual dimensions)
Brooks asks, “What are we thinking?” Perhaps, we should be asking, “Who are we, and how are we relating – not only to each of our physical, emotional, and intellectual dimensions but also to the world at large?” It is when the awakened passengers in our “chariot” represent our collective essence that we have any chance of raising consciousness and regaining control. It is only when our ever-developing essence becomes the dynamic force transforming our lives that we can emerge from mechanical and materialistic performing to purposeful living.
In our current environment, daily headlines indicate that our carriage is careening out of control – driven by drunk drivers, with unleashed greed and grandiosity, transporting a divided combination of terrified, comatose, and enraged passengers to an ever-changing destination. The driver in the carriage continues to speed carelessly around sharp curves, to make sudden stops and starts, and to race recklessly toward the unachievable goal of establishing dominance over all his competitors . . . . . and allies as well. We wake up each day with news that leaves us breathless, and we wonder how many hapless pedestrians will be cruelly killed around the next curve. We wonder when the carriage will finally break down or crash into a wall. As passengers, we keep waiting for the WHAM which is bound to happen unless the collective is able to take away the reins.
Different tribes would surely unpack that metaphor in different ways – they would have different answers to the questions: What is the WHAM and who will take the reins? The real question I’m raising in this post, however is: “What if the daily WHAMs of daily headlines were replaced by Heschel’s WHAMs of:
Wonder
Humility
Awe
Mystery
The shape and power of those WHAMs are determined by the relationships we have with ourselves, our neighbors, our families, our friends, and our faith in possibilities. To me, how we define and build those relationships is what really matters in life.
On a larger scale, religions also define themselves in relation to others. In many ways, those definitions play a major role in either building the highways that could connect our respective “carriages” or destroying the bridges constructed over many millennia to bring us together as fellow passengers on carriage earth. As I have said many times in previous posts, over-identification with any one religion obscures the wisdom of others.
Judaism sees itself as the original covenantal faith. Its self-definition is rooted in “chosenness” – not as superiority, but as a responsibility. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham, “Through you all nations will be blessed.” Scholars believe that particular scripture is a universalist impulse. Judaism does not seek converts; it strives to set an ethical example instead of engaging in a theological competition.
When Christianity emerged, it redefined that covenant. In the New Testament, Paul writes in Romans 11 about Gentiles being “grafted onto the olive tree” of Israel. Christianity saw itself not as a rejection of Judaism, but as its fulfillment. Over time, however, many secessionist Christian religions came to believe that Christianity replaced Judaism. That over-identification led to centuries of antisemitism, despite Christianity’s deep Jewish roots. Hey, even Jesus didn’t identify as a Christian. And Christianity, as an orthodoxy, wasn’t fully formed until 300 years after Jesus was killed by the Romans for sedition.
Islam, coming centuries later, positioned itself as the final revelation. The Qur’an refers to Jews and Christians as “People of the Book,” acknowledging their scriptures and prophets. In Surah 2:136, it says, “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us AND what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac AND what was given to Moses and Jesus.” Islam honors the lineage but sees the Qur’an as the final correction and completion.
It seems to me that all three of these religions originated with an inclusive view of the world. As institutions formed and doctrines became embedded, however, all religions seemed to revert to interpretations that rest on “final corrections” and the “hierarchy of truth.”
In Luke 10, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. The hero is not a priest or a Levite – both insiders – but a Samaritan, a religious outsider. That story resonates with me because I believe compassion matters more than creed. I particularly like the direct challenge to religious tribalism.
So what’s the point? When any religion, tribe, or person defines itself only in contrast to others – “we are right, they are wrong – it cuts itself off from the deeper truths in other paths. Over-identification hardens boundaries that were never meant to be walls. It limits empathy, restricts learning, and breeds conflict.
Most of all, it fuels our hubris instead of feeding our humility. It distracts us from the wonders and mysteries that are constantly unfolding in front of us. It reduces thinking AND relating to dogmatic formulas. It keeps us from living with a sense of awe and gratitude.
Heschel was able to survive the Holocaust and find the blessings in every day. I’m hoping we can survive the madness of our current reality and continue to be blown away – not by violence – but by the mystery, wonder, and awe of the world we have been blessed to experience. May it be so.
