Revelation of Godliness

 

If we have spiritual awareness, as Rabbi Brody writes about in The Trail to Tranquility, we become increasingly aware that God is calling to us, revealing His Godliness to us, constantly through our surroundings. When we increase our spiritual awareness we can see this and are by definition enhancing our faith. But the revelation that we receive since the destruction of the Temple is often unclear – we no longer have prophets. God communicates with us constantly, but indirectly, sometimes in ways that are very difficult to understand. Although there are on rare occasions moments of painful clarity.

  

Years ago before I was religious, for lack of a better way of putting it, a professional opportunity fell in my lap via an old friend I had known for decades. She was not someone I wanted to let down. After some initial trepidation, I realized that this opportunity was right up my alley and could even become an entre into a whole new field professionally. I accepted the project, which felt like it was custom made for me. It melded my professional experience, my Masters degree, and secondary fields of study that I had never been able to merge with my professional undertakings – something that felt so invigorating. On top of it all, the project was putting my friend and I in the public eye in a big way, with a terrific company – the kind of place I did not even dream of working. My self-esteem was pretty awful at that point in my life.

 

We only had a week from beginning to end to pull it together. The work progressed rapidly. I gained confidence, something I was in short supply of. It was surreal how well it was going. I started to fantasize that this was it – I mean ‘It’. We were tapping into all the right resources. The right people were falling into our laps. I was learning so much, impressing people – it was a truly special feeling, to feel like I was winning, that I was actually capable, that I could perhaps get the public recognition that my wounded sense of self really craved. It was great collaborating with my friend and gaining her approval in this new way. The final project was a beauty and honestly something I am still quite proud of. It was pretty magical to see how something I had previously thought myself incapable of accomplishing was so easily coming together. 

 

As great as it all was, there was a serious issue. Because I lacked spiritual awareness, because I was not seeing that there is a God Who reveals Himself through all of His creation, I was in essence driving in the Indy 500 with my eyes closed. I was not religious at all, felt like a misunderstood loser a lot of the time, and my life just didn’t feel like it was measuring up to my standards. The more I succeeded with the project, the more the bitter and insecure part of me became cocky. I felt like I was finally going to be seen as the hotshot I always secretly knew I was. We turned in the final project and waited for it to be put before the big shots, people from whom I had never thought I could earn praise, praise that I wanted to brag about to everyone I knew.

 

The waiting was tough, but it was put before the big shots and they loved it. They loved our project so much that they were going to give it much more attention than we had ever thought.

 

My head was so full of cocky arrogant thoughts after hearing that news – this is embarrassing to admit – I started to run my mouth. I was talking up our accomplishments left and right. After one of a few embarrassingly indiscrete gab sessions my friend asked me with whom I had been speaking. And as my answer to her was leaving my lips, I connected the gigantic dots that were right in front of my face, and realized that I had potentially single-handedly torpedoed all our hard work by blabbing with the competition. 

 

My lack of spiritual awareness, my deep ignorance about the spiritual structure of the universe on even the most basic level, had left me deaf and blind. I was going to say that it left me deaf, dumb, and blind, but unfortunately I was plenty capable of speaking, so much so I wrecked all that God had put in my lap. At least that was what I and my buddy, who was in shock over my stupidity, feared.

 

When I realized how horribly stupid I had been, how I had potentially wrecked this wonderful moment for both of us, potentially making her look terrible in the eyes of her superiors, I collapsed onto my bed and started to bawl. How could I have been so blind! I started to beat myself up to beat her to it. I begged for her forgiveness. I told her she was crazy to believe in me, to give me that chance. It felt like the universe had set me up horribly to prove to me once and for all that I was a total jerk and a loser, more than I had ever thought.

 

She consoled me for an hour or two, yelled a little, and then weakly suggested that if we were lucky the person to whom I had spilled the beans might keep his mouth shut. There was hope. We decided to go out for a bite to eat. On the way out of my development I stopped to check my mail, red in the face and exhausted from crying. I took out my mail, saw it was all junk, and went to pitch it in the trashcan near the mailboxes. As I took a step and let go of the mail, I felt my feet go out from underneath me, flew up in the air, and landed flat on my back with a painful, head-cracking thud. It was like one of the Washington Redskins had tackled me in the middle of my cul-de-sac. I lay there crying. Again. I pulled myself to my feet, humiliated again. I looked down and saw a taut chain  buried beneath some leaves tethering the can to the mailboxes. I could hardly lift my face. I got back in the car and sobbed, “Why is this happening!? Why am I being pounded like this? What’s next? I just can’t take it anymore.” I was mentally, spiritually, and physically broken down.

 

I can still dredge up that feeling a decade later, an infinitely happier and quite different person now, thank God. I really believe that God was trying to get my attention and was so desperate to get through to me, He had to yell at the top of His lungs. He had to reach down and literally kick my you-know-what to knock some sense into me. I had been so ungrateful, had seen the magic He was working for me as long overdue, had taken credit not due to me, had taken His gift and devoured it in one bite like an ingrate. I had been such an arrogant loud mouth that I had ruined His present to me and ruined something for my friend.

 

By the grace of God, no one blabbed. The project was a beauty and did well for us. I was so mortified by what had transpired, so humbled, I went back to my old job feeling grateful to have it. And many years later I realize the profound truth of this aspect of faith. The Creator is speaking to us. He is revealing Himself to us and pulling us towards goodness, towards love, towards morality, towards tranquility with everything around us, albeit at times in what feels like a circuitous route. If we can quiet down long enough to listen, to give our gratitude, be humble enough to let Him guide us, He won’t need to tackle us to get our attention.