Mike Petrow:

Welcome back, friends, to the Everything Belongs podcast with Father Richard Rohr. Regardless of when you’re listening to this, I’m recording this on the 20th of March and today is Richard’s 83rd birthday. So from all of us, happy birthday, Richard. Friends, each season we’ve explored one of Richard’s books. It’s been so great to get together with you episode by episode and take you with us as we go to Richard’s house to sit in his living room with Paul Swanson and Richard’s faithful dog, Opie, and unpack these amazing books one chapter at a time. You know that after we get a chance to talk with Richard each episode, we then invite in a special guest who helps us live the teachings forward, which means we’re thinking about Richard’s teaching in new ways. We’re asking new questions in this rapidly changing world that we’re all living in together.

Now, you know this season is extra special because we are exploring Richard’s next and he keeps telling us his last brand new book, The Tears of Things. As a reminder, you don’t have to read The Tears of Things to follow along with us, but it is that much more fun if you’re reading along to join the conversation. Today, we are going to head over to Richard’s house and jump into chapter two, Amos the messenger to the collective. In this chapter, Richard looks at his first profit, the Prophet Amos, and in the book Richard uses Amos as an example to show us two crucial things.

First, the prophets, just like you and I, are angry when they look at the cruelty and injustice of the world. How could you not be? But the thing is, they don’t stay there and just stew in their anger. They turn it into generative and creative energy. So one of the things that we can think about together as we listen today is how can we take our anger and turn it into fuel to make change in the world?

Secondly, and just as importantly, Richard shows us that the prophets don’t fall into the trap of just scapegoating one person here and there as the big bad behind the conspiracy of injustice. It’s not just a witch hunt and they don’t blame it on the devil. Instead of scapegoating, and this is one of my favorite things that Richard teaches. Instead of scapegoating the mascots of the big evil out there in the world, the prophets criticize culture itself. All the institutions that Richard says are too big to fail, like government of the church, and they show how they get infected with evils like racism or abuses of power. As you listen, a great question to ask yourself is, where have I scapegoated people instead of looking at the big things that are going on behind them and how can that change in perspective, help me see what’s really going on and inform all the ways that I work to make a difference?

Then after we get a chance to talk to Richard, and I’m super excited for you to hear this part, we say goodbye to Paul. We say goodbye to Richard and then Carmen Acevedo Butcher joins me for a conversation with one of my favorite teachers, Rabbi Or Rose. Rabbi Or Rose will talk with us about what it means to be a prophet from the Jewish perspective, and he will look at one of the greatest teachers on the prophets and one of the greatest living prophets from the last century, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who had a huge influence on Richard, and Richard’s understanding of what it means to be a prophet and how we can all be prophetic in the world.

So Rabbi Or Rose is going to share his own experience with us as a teacher and as a peace worker. He’s going to talk to us about how we can stay grounded in our relationship to the divine and our relationships with each other in a crazy making time. We’re going to talk about this beautiful quote from Thomas Merton. I’ll give you the short version, “Do not depend on the hope of results. It’s the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.” And that’s why this podcast is all about a conversation, and it’s a conversation that we are so very glad that you are a part of. So let’s get into it and head over to Richard’s house. From the Center for Action and Contemplation, I’m Mike Petrow.

Paul Swanson:

I’m Paul Swanson.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I’m Carmen Acevedo Butcher.

Drew Jackson:

And I’m Drew Jackson.

Mike Petrow:

And this is Everything Belongs. Richard and Paul, it’s great to see you again.

Richard Rohr:

Good morning.

Paul Swanson:

Good to see you guys.

Mike Petrow:

Thanks for inviting us back into your home again, Richard. We are here to discuss Tears of Things chapter two, Amos, the messenger to the collective. Richard is we jump in, we’re now three episodes into this podcast. Your book is out in the world at the time that people are hearing this and we’re hoping that our friends who are listening have started reading groups and they’re getting together and reading the book, talking to each other and showing up to listen to our conversations. What do you hope they’re getting out of the book so far as they’re just at the very beginning of it?

Richard Rohr:

I hope there’s a transposition of place happening. That the Christianity we grew up with tended to give pride to the group and shame the individual. This whole notion of sin was entirely to be borne by the individual. As they sink into the prophets, they’re going to see that they’re doing something quite different. They’re telling the individual that they can carry dignity because they’re children of Yahweh, children of God, but the collective is the only thing big enough to carry the shame. And then one step further, once you get that, that the collective is what has to be named as the carrier of evil. Ironically, it becomes an easy step to have the collective carry salvation, which is the sub theme of the whole book, that God is saving the collective God is not saving individuals, although they’re not exclusive.

Mike Petrow:

We’re going to unpack that later in the episode, but thank you for sharing that because I think just now you helped me understand why this book is the logical follow-up to the universal Christ.

Richard Rohr:

Good.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. That’s really, really helpful.

Richard Rohr:

That’s an important connection.

Mike Petrow:

Well, I can’t wait to get into this. Kate Bowler helped me see that we live in a moment in time where everything from yoga to Christianity is permeated with the message of dominant culture. If you have wealth and success and fame and power, then you have succeeded, or you can manifest and have the life that you really want, assuming that you know what’s best for you. And we look at the Prophet Amos and it seems like he was facing some similar things in his time. He preached against lavish lifestyles, reliance on military, immorality people, dominating people to have what they wanted. And you talk about this activity of prophetic culture smashing, which is a great turn of phrase, this bias towards the bottom. And then from that place, the collective calling out of the culture by Amos. When an entire culture upholds luxury status, dominance, immoral social practice, and then calls that Christianity or Judaism and calls that the definition of success.

Richard Rohr:

Of spiritual success.

Mike Petrow:

Of spiritual success. How is it possible that so many people don’t see that mainstream religion can be infected with the dominant cultural value?

Richard Rohr:

Here’s where René Girard’s mimetic theory is at least helpful. That human beings are entirely imitative and when the collective praises celebrity, wealth, I was told the majority of the new cabinet are multimillionaires and even billionaires. The mimetic has raised to the very top of the government, and most people don’t have a problem with it because what they really want. They want to be a billionaire. What’s not to admire? What’s not to imitate? The whole thing is revealed right now in the direction of America, mimetic theory leading to imitation of status and wealth. And a person can be running the government in part at least with no elected office because they’re a billionaire. That gives them cachet status. It’s unbelievable at the American democracy came to this.

Mike Petrow:

Well, back when we did your book Falling Upward, we love this quote and I don’t know if it’s yours or Merton, but it’s this idea of you climb your way to the top of the ladder and then realize it’s leaned up against the wrong wall.

Richard Rohr:

That’s Thomas Merton. Yeah.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. That’s a good one. And I feel like that’s our whole culture right now. Everyone’s just trying to climb the ladder.

Richard Rohr:

Climb to the top of the ladder.

Mike Petrow:

So if I’m getting this right, Amos style of critique is not to push people off the ladder one at a time, but to tell them the narrative that’s telling you to the climb to the top of the ladder is wrong.

Richard Rohr:

Very good. Well said. The whole narrative that you collectively put your trust in is where the deceit lies.

Paul Swanson:

So as we’ve been talking about, the first great lesson is what you call bias towards the bottom, which is something that you’ve been teaching on for years and years. You named it the second lesson that you take from Amos is that his prophecy is to the collective rather than the individuals.

Richard Rohr:

That’s right.

Paul Swanson:

And we’ve already touched on that as well, but I want to build on this point, so the dominant culture of the times builds systems that become dominant forces. Culture and systems have the capacity to help life flourish, which we’ve seen at the best of their capacity, but they can also normalize and systematize evils. What are some examples that come to your mind in our times of this normalization and systemization of evils making these things normal?

Richard Rohr:

Well, just the rather universal admiration, idolization of success and celebrity. Let’s not even use the word money. It’s just success is from God. Success is a sign of God’s blessing. It’s rather unbelievable. You could say that after the crucifixion. Unbelievable. How did you get it so wrong? Again, it’s the collective right now that’s terribly wrong, and you can hardly waste time blaming the individual he just bought the is your colleague.

Paul Swanson:

You go on to pinpoint some examples of this, of killing is wrong, but war is good, greed is wrong, but luxury and capitalism are ideals to be sought after. And you have this example of how at the individual level we will speak about the individual evil of it while accepting the collective nature that actually encourages it at the individual level. This is what Amos is rallying against, not just the bias from the bottom.

Richard Rohr:

It’s rather obvious. From the first page of Amos, have they never read? It was Martin Luther King who quoted Amos to the Southern church that knew nothing about him.

Paul Swanson:

Where do you see that voice coming in right now in our times? Is there someone who is naming these collective evils whether-

Richard Rohr:

I hate to say it, because people are going to think I’m too political, but Bernie Sanders and he says it without any apology, but it’s just a month later we can hear it that my God, Bernie, what you’ve been saying all along is true. The collective doesn’t love God. Does it love the poor? Does it love Jesus?

Mike Petrow:

Can’t help but think of how that aligns with Pope Francis who at the time of this recording is sick in the hospital and even though he is, I mean from a certain point of view, one of the most powerful men in the world, and yet his unflinching willingness to critique the collective and to see how it creeps into Christianity.

Richard Rohr:

Including as Pope, the collective of the Catholic Church, which is why many of the American bishops don’t like him at all because he loves the gospel more than America.

Paul Swanson:

When someone in power critiques their own relationship to power, it really changes the game, the conversation because it’s hard to play the game if the person at the supposed top is not playing that status.

Richard Rohr:

It has undone it.

Paul Swanson:

Yeah.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah. That’s why we’re in trouble right now politically. The people at the top are billionaires. How do you reform that?

Mike Petrow:

When some of us in our own little home and in our own little life look at speaking truth to power and speaking against the collective, it can be overwhelming.

Richard Rohr:

It is. It’s just you’ve lost before you start.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. And Carl Jung talks a lot about how he thinks we should do it, but how dangerous hard it is to speak against the shadow of the culture. Robert L. Moore, who’s a Jungian, who I know you like, he says that there’s two dangers when we face collective evil. One of them is nihilism and one of them is narcissism. I’d love to talk to you for just a minute about this. Yeah. The nihilism is you face the collective evil and you say, “It’s too big. There’s nothing I can do.”

Richard Rohr:

There’s nothing I can do.

Mike Petrow:

I give up. It’s hopeless. What would you say to folks who are feeling that way right now?

Richard Rohr:

You have to replace their bet on the gospel that it’s true. If we had, let’s say, elected the Democrats, you and I could still have our trust in the political system to save us. Now we can’t. That believe it or not is good.

Mike Petrow:

Because our faith was never supposed to be in the political system.

Richard Rohr:

Never supposed to be. Yeah. The Democrats can do it. No, they can’t either. The Democrats are not the reign of God, not the kingdom of God. That knowledge should give us a naked hope in the truth of the gospel. How many it’s going to work on, I don’t know.

Mike Petrow:

The second challenge that more identifies is narcissism, and so on the one hand the danger is it’s impossible, and on the other hand, the danger is I know what the answer is. I know what the real problem is. I’m going to criticize it out there in you because I’m righteous and I know what the truth is.

Richard Rohr:            

That’s the danger of liberals and partially, enlightened people to rest in their spiritual superiority and to give no attention to the collective. It’s useless. I’ll remain privately saved. That’s much of America I think, and I can understand it. I’m sure God can understand it. It’s too overwhelming.

Mike Petrow:

I think about when you’ve talked about the cult of innocence, there’s a great book out there called Against Purity that talks about this idea that we can see the dominant culture, and then we criticize it as if we’re not also a part of it. It’s that again, we said this last episode, I’m part of the solution as soon as I realize I’m part of the problem, but there’s no Eden that I get to and there’s no perfection that I turn around and become totally holy.

Paul Swanson:

It does seem to me that nihilism and narcissism are children of individualism. It’s still all about the eye and what you’re saying, Mike, is that invitation into being a part of the collective is part of what is the healing of the collective is by joining it because nihilism is, it’s too much for me. Narcissism is, I’m the answer to this large question, but really you’re still either way, it’s like a solo mission, which is not what we’re called to in the kingdom of God.

Mike Petrow:

I think you may have just reframed the incarnation of the Son of God for me. Just a fun little fact. That’s brilliant because even this modeling and for those of us who believe that Jesus was the incarnate son of God, even God joins the collective to be part of the problem. Wow.

Richard Rohr:

Very good. Yeah.

Paul Swanson:

We were hovering around it and there’s been teeing off with Amos speaking to the collective in collective evil and then Richard, you bring it up at the top of the conversation around collective salvation. It feels like we’re dancing around, to articulate this a little more clearly, in ways to understand our own participation in both.

Richard Rohr:

Yes, in both. Mind just gets fried with the implications of all this. Just how do you change this much deceit, this much pretense without feeling superior? And then you’re a part of what we’re saying is the problem. How do you hold truth with humility and you said it, how do you know that you’re enjoying the fruits of the evil system.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. And that in my anger, how do I not… To simplify it to this extent, I said this in the last episode, I feel like everyone is angry, afraid and condescending, and it’s that last part, how do I, in my rage and in my desire to speak truth to power not become self-righteous? As a privileged person, how do I own my poverty? As an educated person, how do I own my ignorance? And so on and so forth. I know this is a podcast. We got to keep talking about it, but I feel like Job when he says, “I put my hand over my mouth and I say nothing.”

Richard Rohr:

Very good.

Paul Swanson:

It’s like two sides of the same coin where you see your education but you flip it over, there is your ignorance. So sometimes you can’t see your ignorance when the coin is… You only see your knowledge or your intellect.

Mike Petrow:

Well, and that’s Jung saying to increase the light increases the shadow. We never get away from having a shadow.

Paul Swanson:

Well, I’m going to attempt to bring us back in this here.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah, seriously. It blew my mind.

Paul Swanson:

So just to keep-

Richard Rohr:

I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Mike Petrow:

Same.

Paul Swanson:

And this is I think part of the joy and challenge of wrestling with this text and with the prophets. Richard, you write that Amos judges critiques and makes threats to many, many collectives that this concentration on the collectives changes our moral focus entirely. How does a concentration on the collectives change the moral focus in the story of Amos? When he transitions to the collectives, how does that-

Richard Rohr:

It’s at the heart of Christian and certainly Catholic because that’s one I was educated in moral theology is the principle of the common good. That doesn’t exercise a lot of influence in most Catholics and Protestants I know. The seeking of the common good, it’s the seeking of going to heaven. That’s very different because the common good is now and the common good is nothing I can take pride in. It’s something I admire when the group does get it right, like they did in the Roosevelt era perhaps, where the whole nation turned toward the poor. Unbelievable, and that came from a millionaire. He was the upper class. I’m not trying to teach the democratic ethos, but it did happen in our lifetime.

Mike Petrow:

I appreciate that because I think in standing with both of you and feeling the overwhelm, which is exactly what we’re talking about, Amos teaches us and you teach us, Richard, to critique the collective and there’s an overwhelm in it. If we, as Paul said, flip the other side of the coin and think about what supports us in that. When you talk about the common good, what I hear you saying is when facing big evil, we need bigger love to sustain us.

Richard Rohr:

Big good. Yes. I think that’s what dropped me into the Roosevelts. They were in social programs.

Mike Petrow:

A big vision.

Richard Rohr:

Big vision of the common good.

Mike Petrow:

I think one of the things you taught me very early in our dialogues, and this might be my words and not yours, but it’s what you were telling me. I always thought prophecy was speaking truth to power, and I think what I’ve learned from spending time with you the last few years is it’s speaking truth to power on behalf of a divine vision of love. If there’s no divine vision of love that you’re pointing to, it’s not enough. You made a comment before we started recording where you said that understanding the critique of the system is the other side of understanding universal salvation.

Richard Rohr:

Yes.

Mike Petrow:

And I heard you also say, I don’t think you’re talking about that as an escape to heaven. Would you tell us more about that? How understanding the critique of the system is also connected to understanding how salvation is collective?

Richard Rohr:

It’s a repositioning of your perspective toward what God is doing, God is doing with history, God is doing with the whole event. It’s like we are the first generation that sees these pictures of the world. That’s what God loves and that’s what God is saving that whole planet.

Mike Petrow:

I love the idea of thinking about the common good and the idea of collective salvation, the saving of everything as being ahead of us in the future as something big enough and beautiful enough to anchor us when we’re also facing systemic injustice that is so overwhelming.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah. It doesn’t allow us to run back into our private silos in that globe that we look at now from space. There’s Buddhist people, there’s billions of Hindus. They’ve got to be included in the equation. We just don’t have the ability to exclude so much of the planet in terms of our explanation of how God loves, and who God is able and allowed to love as if we’re the deciders of that.

Paul Swanson:

Jesus just popped in my mind around this conversation. I think it’s in this chapter, which you talk about how Jesus heals individuals, but critiques systems. And how both are a gateway to the opposite. This phrase is the other side of the coin where critiquing the system, you see your own participation in it. Loving and healing the individual, it opens you up to wider and bigger loving. And I feel like there’s a resonant tone with Amos in this. There’s a positive vision that he’s trying to put forth of love. If we’re on the edge of the right discovery here, what would you say that Amos positive vision is that they’re trying to invite people into with the critique of the collective on the way to something larger?

Richard Rohr:

Do I talk about Hosea in his chapter?

Paul Swanson:

That’s the next chapter.

Richard Rohr:

That’s the next chapter.

Paul Swanson:

Yeah. I’m excited about that one. We’re almost there.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah, and Hosea. Trying to make people capable of divine love, of loving like God loves. That sounds like such a cliche, but it’s unstoppable. It’s a germ set in motion that’s going to keep becoming contagious. That the goal is always the criteria. The standard is divine love, nothing less, and it’s hard to learn divine love until we learn patience with history and forgiveness of history. If God can allow all this and forgive all this, and apparently God does because it keeps continuing, then we’re capable of it too. They just keep pushing that agenda of Yahweh’s, steadfast, eternal, infinite love. That’s the standard by which all of history must be judged. I know it’s beginning to sound like a cliché, but we can’t let it be a cliché. It’s really the standard-bearer. The judge of everything. It’s not divine wrath, but divine love.

Mike Petrow:

Well, I love you write, Amos like other prophets, does not stay forever in his initial anger and threat of punishment. Instead, he transforms his anger into generative creative energy. And that’s great because later in the chapter you say negative energy feeds on itself, but positive energy evokes a positive vision. And I appreciate that because I hear you saying we need that positive vision or we can’t do it.

Richard Rohr:

Yes, we can’t do it. We revert into smallness. Defending little tiny boundaries that don’t make a bit of difference about issues that don’t make a bit of difference. How is it people don’t see that? It’s forever a wonderment to me.

Paul Swanson:

Yeah. And I think this is part of the gift of this podcast is we’re doing our best to help one another and others see this possibility and potentiality lying in Amos and other prophets. So Richard, as a way to round out and leave those listening with a sense of participation in that positive common good or that positive vision, how might a person hearing, I can imagine people hearing this and saying, “Well, I go to the protests. I’m critiquing the system. I’m educating myself on injustice. How might you invite them to also participate concretely in a collective vision of the common good with their time, their energy and their bodies?”

Richard Rohr:

Don’t make too much of going to the protests. Show how you can love the little ignorances that are around you, the little infidelities that you are participating in. There’s nothing heroic about that. Mistrust, the heroic. Mistrust in yourself, the showy, the spectacular, the grandiose. That’s too self-rewarding. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but don’t place your bet there that I do that, now I am on a higher moral ground. It feels like we’re talking out of both sides of our mouth. I know that. But I’ve got to put those warnings there. Because I know the games the eagle plays to be superior. I’ve seen them in myself. Just love, love. Love how love works, and love works quietly and insistently and faithfully and forgivingly, in unshowy ways. Trust that that’s what’s going to win history. That’s the remnant.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Paul Swanson:

I had a great tea up to whoever going.

Mike Petrow:

Can’t wait for that episode.

Paul Swanson:

A word of caution to the anything that’s showy and attention to just the daily showing up in love to participate in the common good.

Richard Rohr:

And loving what builds the common good, even though it might be non-showy.

Paul Swanson:

Yeah. You may not get credit for it.

Richard Rohr:

Or get any credit for it. Yeah.

Paul Swanson:

Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Mike. This seems like a wonderful way to leave all those listening, wanting more for the remnant chapter coming up in the next episode.

Mike Petrow:

Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Paul.

Richard Rohr:

Thank you. It makes my mind just swim.

Mike Petrow:

So big.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah. It’s so big.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. I think I love that we have the space to be vulnerable about how overwhelming it is because I’m sure our listeners are feeling the same way, so thank you for sharing that with us as well.

Drew Jackson:

Everything Belongs will continue in a moment.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Rabbi Or Rose is the founding director of the Miller Center of Hebrew College, and he serves as a senior consultant to Interfaith America. Among his recent publications is the award-winning co-edited volume, With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps and Mistakes, which I absolutely love. It’s chock-full of enriching stories, and his forthcoming book is titled, My Legs Were Praying: A Biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel. It’s for teen readers, and comes out in May of this year

Mike Petrow:

In the following conversation, Carmen and I got to sit down with Rabbi Or and we not only discussed this chapter of Tears of Things, Amos, the messenger to the collective and the weight of what it is to speak to collective evil. We got a chance to learn about what it means to remind the collective of their inherent goodness and godliness. We got to learn what a prophet is in the teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Rabbi Or himself. And we got to see in a living teacher, someone who is walking the path of the prophet and puts their anger, their sadness, and their love into their service. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Oh my gosh, Rabbi Or, it is such a gift to be here with you in conversation today. Thank you, thank you, thank you in advance for your time and your wisdom.

Rabbi Or Rose:

Thank you. I’m honored to be in conversation with both of you today.

Mike Petrow:

Fantastic. Carmen, always good to have you with us here. Thanks for being a part of this one.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

It’s great to be here.

Mike Petrow:

Excellent. Rabbi Or, I’m so excited. Right around the time that this podcast episode is going to CAC’s publication wanting, we’ll be putting out its latest issue, and you wrote this profound article in there titled, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. What a title. Oh my gosh. And it talks about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. For our listeners who maybe aren’t super familiar with him and his life, could you just give us a little bit of a morsel of the depth and the difficulty of his early life and what it led to in his career as a teacher?

Rabbi Or Rose:

Sure. Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1907, and he was the offspring of several generations of Hasidic masters, of mystical masters of Torah, of prayer, of Tefillah, of Avodah, of works of goodness, and he was a part of a bustling Jewish community in Warsaw, which meant that even though he was being trained by his elders to be the next great charismatic spiritual master in the extended Heschel family, he also wound his way into different Jewish religious, cultural and political enclaves. And as a teenager, he became more and more interested in blending traditional Jewish life and learning with modern expressions of Judaism. So he made the very difficult decision with his mother, with a close uncle and mentor of his to leave Warsaw to attend a modern Jewish high school in Vilna, roughly eight hours away by train ride. And there he continued his education. He was particularly interested in philosophy, in art history, and most significantly perhaps in poetry.

So it was poetry. That was his first major religio-cultural mode of expression. In fact, in 1933, as a doctoral student in Berlin, where he was studying at the university for a doctorate in philosophy with a minor in art history, he published a book called Der Shem Ham’forash Mensch, which is Yiddish, and the Yiddish translation of that title means God’s Ineffable Name the Human Being. It’s a profound articulation of what Heschel would continue to develop as a spiritual or religious humanism. What is God’s most sacred and therefore, ineffable unspeakable name? Heschel was saying the human being. Of course, it’s a riff, if you will, on the Tetragrammaton. ud-Hey-Vav-Hey, which is considered in Judaism the great name of the divine, unspeakable. It has no hard continental sounds, and so rather than simply restating that position about the divine, the mystery of God, he was saying that mystery, that grandeur, that beauty is present in each and every human being who is created in the image of the divine. So that’s the young Heschel.

And then I mentioned the year 1933 and his doctoral studies in Germany. He of course came of age at a terribly painful time in human history. Not only did he live through the Great Depression, but then of course in 33, Hitler came to power as the chancellor of Germany and the brutality of that Nazi regime began to unfold. Heschel was fortunate that in 1938, he was unceremoniously booted out of Germany as a Pole and was returned to the lands between Germany and Poland. It was a harrowing trip home. He stood much of the way. His family was able to secure his freedom. He spent a year in Warsaw while he was applying for jobs near and far knowing that the Nazi occupation of Europe was well underway and that there was only going to be more pain and loss in brutality.

So he eventually secures his freedom through a scholar’s visa that was issued by Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. The tragedy in that situation was he had to leave behind all that he knew from his previous life. So he left alone and his mother and three of his sisters and many other people that he knew and loved were murdered by the Nazis. So Heschel came to the United States. He was first at Hebrew Union College for five years. It was a reform seminary. He was a more traditional person in his practice. So while he was very grateful to HEC for freeing him, for saving him, he also wanted to be in a more traditional environment. So he moved to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City where he spent the rest of his career until he died in 1972.

I think it’s worth making mention of one other signal moment in his development, which was the reworking of his doctoral dissertation in the early 1960s. His doctoral project, ironically, painfully, was on the prophets, those great ancient champions of compassion and justice, and he was writing that while in Nazi Germany. So he reworked that doctoral dissertation into the two volumes that many of us know simply as the prophets.

And he says that while working on that project in the United States, given all that he’d experienced, given all that he was seeing unfold now in the Cold War period, and of course, with the rise of the Civil Rights movement, the movement for feminism, et cetera, that he felt like The Prophets required of him to leave his study, to close his books and to actually try and embody something of their spirit in terms of the great issues of the day. So he spent much of the last decade of his life working with allies from different walks of life on different issues of peace and justice, while also continuing to write voluminously with that poetic spirit that courses through all of his writings long after he began to publish as a teen and then as a young adult and graduate student.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Rabbi Or, that’s the most beautiful rendition of his life I’ve ever heard. He means so much to me and to so many of us. I especially do appreciate The Prophets, that he published in 1962 and how you bring our attention to his poetic really soul, his oneness of spirit in life. And I wondered if you could talk for just a bit about how Rabbi Heschel and you yourself define a prophet.

Rabbi Or Rose:

That’s a difficult undertaking. I know that Rabbi Heschel would have said, quoting the Talmud, the ancient teachings of the rabbis, that the people of Israel are not prophets, but we are the children of prophets. And I think that’s a statement that I could certainly abide, which is to say, I think that there is so much to learn from the prophets of ancient Israel, and yet, I think we have to be very humble in working with the legacy of those various figures, however we understand them historically or literarily or some combination of the two because as you both well know, it’s a very narrow ridge between righteous indignation and self-righteousness.

I think that for Heschel in the book The Prophets and in many other settings, he described those ancient figures as people that were able to hold God and the human being in heart and mind at all times. So that is the aspiration. For the rest of us, of course, we attempt to do that piecemeal, if you will. We have moments of insight. We seek to be regularly compassionate and justice-minded, and we fall short. And then the question is how do we pick ourselves back up and do better?

In the Jewish tradition, as you well know, the concept of teshuvah, which is commonly rendered in English as repentance is better translated as return. Which is to say, can we engage throughout the course of our lives as mortal, finite, limited human beings in a process of spiritual growth and development that brings us back to our center, to our core? Can we be involved daily, monthly, yearly in various processes of turning and returning? And I would say it’s not simply a return to where we were yesterday, last week, a month ago, but we should think of it as a spiral because there is growth and development. But can we return to that sacred center, to that source, to that place sometimes called by Heschel’s forebears, the Hasidic masters, a spark. An inner spark that is never extinguished.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

One of the things I read recently again was that Rabbi Heschel said that the prophets feel fiercely because they hear deeply. And that to me, the feeling, the emotional aspect, really resonates with me. And I wondered if you could share with us some of how he was an active prophet in his time.

Rabbi Or Rose:

Sure. Or he might say, a person seeking to act very good in the footsteps of the prophets. So one of the things that Heschel took note of while traveling from England that as he left Warsaw, he spent a year or so in England with his older brother, where he also taught in the Jewish community there while waiting for his visa to be finalized. And then he left by boat to the United States, and he says that he noticed that so many of the people that were involved in manual labor were people with darker complexions. And then when he arrived in the United States, he saw the same thing. So he was quickly sensitized to the disparities in the US. And that eventually led him after he acculturated and established himself as both a scholar and a public religious intellectual to engage quite passionately in the cause for African-American civil rights.

He met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the first time in 1963 at the first conference on race and religion in Chicago. And Heschel opened the conference, and King closed the conference. And as I say in that brief essay for Oneing, in a moment of poetic and polemical speaking, Heschel says to the audience, “We are referring to this gathering as the first conference on race and religion. But of course, the first such conference happened centuries ago, and the interlocutors were a man named Pharaoh and another named Moses.” Knowing of course, that great story of liberation was a touchstone for so many across religious, cultural and racial lines.

And also he was being, as I described him, a gadfly because there were many white Jewish and Christian people in the audience who saw themselves very much as the children of Israel as being led by Moses. But he was confronting them. He was asking them, “Whose lead will you truly follow here and now?” And then he went on to say in another moment of purposeful provocation that it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the sea of Reeds than it is for many young African-Americans to cross various college and university campuses. So with just the stroke of the pen and the articulation of these biblical images, he managed deftly to call people to attention, to call them in, and to ask them to think about their values and their priorities, about their histories and mythologies. So that was one major area.

He and Dr. King became very close friends. He also became very close with one of my mentors, Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Bill Coffin, and he and Bill and others, including the Catholic Berrigan brothers created clergy and lady concerned about the war in Vietnam. They recruited Dr. King to be a part of that. So peace work anti-Vietnam war work became very important to him. He also was, as you likely know, involved in the historic Second Vatican Council, which happened from 1962 to 1965 in which the Catholic Church rethought in dramatic ways its relationships to other religious traditions. First and foremost, the Jewish tradition, of course, after the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the Pope and the bishops were attempting to reckon with the long and horrible legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, then modern anti-Semitism and the ways in which frankly speaking, they did not do nearly enough during the Second World War.

So he was involved in all of those causes. With that, he took risks and there were some people that greatly appreciated the intertwining of his scholarship, of his religious writings and his activism, and others that were not supportive of his political positions. And that was a great source of tension. I raised that in part because I think it’s important for all of us who are struggling, we’re trying to sift and sort and clarify what is ours to do and how do we go about doing it thoughtfully, compassionately, courageously that we are not alone. It’s easy to wax poetically about the past and to place figures like Heschel and King on pedestals. They struggled. None of it was easy. They were not always liked and certainly not revered, and their lives were uneven as great as they were. And to me, that’s not a diminishment, but it’s actually an encouragement to all of us to think about what we can do.

Mike Petrow:

Rabbi Or, I love that so much. I think about this book that we’re discussing of Richard’s, he talks about how anger and heartbreak help us find our work to do in the world. If you don’t mind, I’d love to hear more about the work that you’re doing, but first, a transparent question. If you’re willing, would you share with us what’s fueling your anger right now? Do you wrestle with anger and what’s that like for you, when you look at the injustice in the world?

Rabbi Or Rose:

I certainly wrestle with anger and a variety of other emotions, sometimes fiercely. And I am angered, quite frankly in this moment about the blossoming of a politics of shock and awe, which is based oftentimes on political agendas that have little regard for truth or even the quest for truth, knowing that we will never possess ultimate truth. And yet facts, research, expertise, et cetera, seem too often to be shoved aside in the name of uncaring power grab. And I could certainly elaborate and name names and so forth and so on. I don’t think that’s necessary.

I think though what I’m trying to do and trying is the operative word is to hold a need at once for resistance and collaboration, and I don’t think that I’m alone. That is to say when and where and how do I, for lack a better term as a religious and political progressive, try and hold the line, so to speak, and when and where, and how do I also exercise my pluralistic values and priorities and try and work with others to create a more dignified, compassionate, peaceful, and just world? And that is no easy feat, especially when there are people who are working very diligently to divide and conquer.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I wonder, what do you tell your students who may feel rudderless and anxious? I have a lot of students who talk with me just about how do they cope with this moment. Do you have something that you’ve talked about with your students?

Rabbi Or Rose:

I do. We recently held a seminar, which we do every year in mid-January, immediately following MLK Day, and it is dedicated at Khyber Medical to the exploration of other religious traditions. So we have intensive seminars on Christianity, on Islam, on Buddhism, and we do a whole series of co-curricular events. And one of them centered on a letter that Thomas Merton sent to a then-young Jim or James Forest. It was from February 21st, 1965, and you may be familiar with it, and we read pieces of it aloud and reflected on it as a community. This of course, was also the same week as President Trump was inaugurated. So there were a lot of feelings in the halls of our building.

And I’ll just quote briefly from this powerful letter, “Do not depend on the hope of results. When you’re doing the work you have taken on essentially and apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no results at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth, the work itself.” It goes on to say, “The real hope then is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way, we cannot see. If we can do God’s will. We’ll be helping in this process, but we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand.”

So of course, Merton like Heschel was tremendously gifted as a writer, and he’s writing with a certain kind of hyperbole, you might say, because he was an activist in his own idiosyncratic ways. But he’s also reminding Forest and other young activists that ultimately we do the work that we do for peace and justice because it is right, and that we can’t quicken the results that we wish to see that we yearn for. All we can do is run our leg of the race and we may not see many of the results that we hope and pray for. And that’s just again, the narrow bridge or as a Hasidic master, Rabbi Nachman, describe it, the narrow bridge. But we are going to try and walk across it and not be overly encumbered by fear.

Mike Petrow:

Gosh, that’s so good. You blew my mind at the top when you told me that Heschel was focused on this work of God’s ineffable name being the human being. What a conclusion to come to when seeing so much cruelty and barbarism on the part of human beings to still hold that.

Rabbi Or Rose:

Part of what Heschel course was doing politically was saying to friend and foe alike. Before anyone says anything or does anything, they are of inestimable worth. If God is infinite and we are created in the image of the divine, then we are truly sacred beings in our core. Remember that Hasidic description of the spark, that does not mean however, that we are not capable of doing terrible things. It also means that we need to be held accountable, hold ourselves accountable for misbehavior. But there is fundamentally in Judaism, a belief in the power of teshuvah, of turning and returning.

In fact, one of my favorite prophetic books is the book of Jonah, which we in the Jewish tradition, and this may surprise you read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, and it’s strange why on the holiest day of the year in the waning hours of that awesome day, of repentance, do you read about Jonah who is this strange figure. He’s called by God and absurdly, goes in exactly the opposite direction. And one absurd episode leads to the next. And of course, the book is designed to be farcical. But the of the book is that even the Ninevites who are described as being utterly sinful when called in back are capable of teshuvah, of repentance. And then of course, it is the prophet who’s supposed to be the righteous person is disappointed with God that God forgives them.

And again, following this absurd thread, Jonah is actually successful. He sees the fruits of his labor unlike most of these other prophets and he’s disappointed. So why do we read this on the afternoon of Yom Kippur? Because after hours and days and weeks of solemn work, of repair, of repentance, I think there’s a deep understanding by our liturgists that we need some levity. And that through prophetic laughter, you can also break through and examine some of the absurdities in one’s own life, in our communal lives, societally, and then continue to work for peace and justice, which necessarily involves reconciliation.

So remember, Jonah’s full name in the text is Yona ben Amitai, Jonah the son of truth. But what he fails to grasp is that truth needs to be held with compassion, and further that truth is contextual. And that as people change, truths change and only the divine holds ultimate truth, like a diadem, all the possibilities of thought and action. And we do our best in fragmented form to try and pursue peace and justice.

Mike Petrow:

This is so profound. This chapter in Richard’s book, he’s talking about talking to the collective and where you’re leading me mentally is to think about prophecy, is speaking truth to power, speaking truth to the collective on behalf of a divine vision and speaking to a collective and saying, “Hey, look at what you’re doing right now, but remember who you are and remember who your neighbor is.” That’s massive. And you and I had a conversation recently where you talked about the danger of self-righteousness, purity, really, really thinking that we’ve got it and we’re standing outside of the problem critiquing it. Could you share a little bit of that wisdom with our audience because it impacted me so profoundly in the two minutes that we talked about it the other day?

Rabbi Or Rose:

Well, I think here I’ll go back to another prophetic figure to Rabbi Heschel’s, dear friend, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964, he spent a month or so preparing his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and he frames that piece in the following way. Some years ago, he writes a famous novelist, Died. Among his papers, was found a list of suggested plots for future stories. The most prominently underscored being this one, a widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together. This is the great new problem of mankind, he said, I’m sure today we would rephrase it as humankind. We have inherited a large house, a great world house in which we have to live together. That is to say we have no choice. The United States as broken, as divided as it is marbled. We live in a time in which people are interconnected in ways in which even Dr. King could not have envisioned in 1964.

So the question is how do we at once articulate our values and priorities, knowing that we are all imperfect and try and engage in dignified conversation and action for the good? It will necessarily always involve disagreement, debate. We will find ourselves on opposite sides of the picket line. There will be statements and behaviors by people that we know, some of whom we love deeply, that are angering, that are frustrating, that are alienating, and we will advocate. But we also are going to try and do so humbly, knowing that ultimately, as Dr. King said over and over again, “There is no redemption for only some of us. There will only be redemption for all of us.”

Mike Petrow:

I love everything you’re saying, and I know so many of us live in a world where the old 24-hour news cycle has now become a 2 to 4 hour news cycle. There’s so much happening so fast and so much of it is terrible. How do you stay sane, aware of the injustice in the world, but not beat down by the perennial narrative of human conflict that is for so many of our listeners force-fed into their eyes and ears all day long?

Rabbi Or Rose:

So I have a few tidbits, and again, I’m working like everyone else to put the pieces together, often falling short. I think here of another teaching from yet another Eastern European mystical master, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who taught about the narrow bridge. One of the things that he taught is that before one awakens to say the morning prayers, before the sun rises, they should awaken and engage in an activity called hitbodedut, which means to be secluded and to go outdoors and to speak to God in the vernacular. Put aside whatever kind of more fanciful liturgical language one might want to speak in Hebrew in the holy tongue, but just speak openly to God. And he says, “Break your heart open for an hour somewhere out in nature.” And further, he says, even if you don’t have words to say you’re so hurt, you’re so isolated, you’re so beside yourself, just say to God, “God, I have no words to say.” And let that be the beginning of your liturgical offering and speak until you have nothing left to say.

So that’s been one exercise that I’ve been trying to engage in addition to the daily three prayers that are traditionally required. I don’t always wake up early and do it, but I’m trying to open my heart and to break open my heart to the one that I know is present and always listening. At the same time, the flip side of that you might say is break your heart open by listening or reading or viewing the news, but for no more than an hour, do not allow it to consume you. Spend more time in nature with divine, with people, with animals, work on projects that you can do. I think one of the things that we need to ask ourselves amidst all of the tumult, all of the chaos, some of which is very carefully orchestrated by nefarious actors, is what can we do so that we’re not distracted, we’re not overwhelmed?

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Well, I feel this has been like a Thanksgiving meal, slow eating. It’s not like fast food. This is really scrumptious. So thank you so much, Rabbi Or.

Mike Petrow:

What a feast. Yeah. Thank you so much, Rabbi Or, Carmen.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Thank you, Mike.

Mike Petrow:

Goodness gracious. This is wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. In our conversation with Richard today, we got a chance to talk about how important it is that the prophet speaks against collective evil, but we also talked about the challenges that take place when we speak against collective, the dangers of narcissism and nihilism, of feeling self-righteous like we have all the answers or feeling so overwhelmed that we give up. The key to surviving in that scenario seems to be when Richard writes Amos, like other prophets, does not stay forever in his initial anger and threat of punishment. Instead, he transforms his anger into generative creative energy. Amos grows into a mystic poet right before us, balancing out the initial anger of the pruner of trees with the reverence of a fully realized prophet.

Now, I have to say, Carmen, one of the things that I loved about our conversation with Rabbi Or is I feel like he exemplified for us everything about what Richard just said in that statement. He showed us in real time that anchoring in love that sustains us in our anger and in our sadness. My gosh, what a great conversation that was.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I also love that he brought in that poetry of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said, “If you want to know God, sharpen your sense of the human.” And one of the things that was amazing about our conversation, Mike, was how you had a penny drop in real time, as you said. Do you want to share that? Because it was beautiful to see.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. But when he talked about the ineffable name of God, the human being, that’s so extraordinary. And then he talked about the importance of that word, repentance, which is returning again or some would say remembering. And this idea that prophecy is looking at what we’re doing, and then being asked to remember who we are and remember who our neighbor is, in that connection of the ineffable name of God being the human being. That literally hit me like a bolt of lightning.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

And it reminded, me his humility and his wisdom and the way when we asked him, how do you define a prophet? And he was like, let’s sit with this. So it’s not like a definition to get A on, but more a sitting with and really praying with. And it reminded me of a story that a friend of mine whose memory for me is now a blessing. She was a rabbi and she shared this story with me and it sums up really our entire conversation with Rabbi Or, and it goes like this, I’ve been carrying this with me for two decades.

“A rabbi once asked a room full of students, how do we know when the night has ended and the day has begun? The students figured they understood the importance of this question because there are prayers and rituals that can be only done at night, and prayers and rituals that should happen only during the day. So they thought, we need to know when to pray, which prayers. And one student answered, is it when a person can distinguish a sheep from a dog in the distance? No, said the rabbi, it’s not. And then another student answered, well, is it when a person can tell the difference between a date tree and a fig tree from a long way off? It’s not that either replied their teacher. They were confused. The students, please tell us the answer. How should we determine when night has ended and day has begun? It is when you look into the face of a stranger and see your sister or brother, the rabbi said, until then, night is still with us.”

That to me, sometimes when Rabbi Or was speaking, I got the goosebumps you do when you’re realizing this was a word for you. This is something you’re going to have to take to the marsh and walk with. Like when he said, “Sometimes your heart is so full, you have to go out into nature and you have to break your heart open for an hour and just say, I don’t know what to say, God, help me.” That was something, wasn’t it?

Mike Petrow:

That insight into letting your heart be broken open so that it’s not overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world, my God. I love that parable that you just shared with us. What I learned today in this conversation is that Richard has made it so clear that one of the parts of the prophets particular path in vocation is to speak to the collective, to call out collective evil and not scapegoat individual people. But what I also realize, and I think Richard’s telling us this too, and Rabbi Or made it so clear, is that the prophet also reminds the collective who they actually are, and ask them to rise to the occasion of the inherent dignity in their own divinity. And that is amazing. That is amazing.

Carmen, what’s a good challenge? We can leave our listeners with this month and next month’s episode in facing the collective injustice that’s before us and calling it out is what it is, but also in holding that intention with the collective dignity of humanity?

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I think asking that question together is a first good step. I think the intention also holds tension, because that’s one of the points that Rabbi Or made, is that a contemplative holds the tension of wow, the news is really, really fascistic and dark and scary, and the sky is blue and beautiful and made by love, and my neighbors are love. That inherent dignity you spoke about. So I would say I love the fact of the shuva and the teshuvah, of the returning, and that’s the repentance. What I think is good is we can all picture each other returning to God to love in whatever way. And Rabbi Or also said, limit your news. Not stick one’s head in the sand, but go out into nature, look out the window, read a good poem, and I’m going to be thinking about how Emeli Sandé sings, You Are Not Alone. We’re in it together.

Mike Petrow:

That’s so great. Listeners, thanks for joining us. As you continue to journey through The Tears of Things with us, we hope that you’ve found some friends and dialogue partners to talk to about the book. We hope you can practice a little bit of less posting and more hosting, having good conversations, and even when you find folks you disagree with, honoring those disagreements, honoring the anger and the sadness you feel over injustice and ignorance, and also seeing the inherent dignity in humanity in literally everyone. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to spending some time with you again soon.

Corey Wayne:

Thanks for listening to this podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation, an educational nonprofit that introduces seekers to the contemplative Christian path of transformation. To learn more about our work, visit us at cac.org. Everything Belongs is made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the shared work of?

Mike Petrow:

Mike Petrow.

Paul Swanson:

Paul Swanson.

Drew Jackson:

Drew Jackson.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Carmen Acevedo Butcher.

Jenna Keiper:

Jenna Keiper.

Izzy Spitz:

Izzy Spitz.

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Megan Hare.

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Sarah Palmer.

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Dorothy Abrahams.

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Brandon Strange.

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Vanessa Yee.

Corey Wayne:

And me, Corey Wayne. The music you hear is composed and provided by our friends, Hammock, and we’d also like to thank Sound on Studios for all of their work in post-production. From the high desert of New Mexico, we wish you peace and every good.