Rabbi Gellman explores the two types of scars we bear in life – virtue scars and mistake scars. Virtue scars, the result of doing the right thing, are often reminders of moments of courage and the things worth fighting for. They may be the result of protecting a friend or speaking out for what is right. Mistake scars, on the other hand, are the result of moral weakness and remind us of our brokenness. 

In this second episode I consider God winks which is the name of the ways dead people find to communicate with us. Please send me your God winks and we can grow our collection. Just press “Record message” on our website godsquadpodcast.com (http://godsquadpodcast.com) and we can consider the weird but wonderful ways that our loved ones have found to us that everything is okay and that death is not the end of us.

In this first episode of the second season of the God Squad podcast which was recorded before Valentine’s Day I offer up as a love letter to my wife Betty my favorite words of wisdom about love.

The third in our series of podcasts on famous sayings we think are true but are not: “All I want is for my children to be happy.” Episode NotesThe first reason this saying is wrong is that as it turns out that being happy is less like something you can achieve and more like something you already have by virtue of your innate personality. Wishing that your children should be happy is sort of like wishing that they be tall or beautiful or good in math. They either are or they aren’t and sadly there is not much you or they can do about it. Psychologists and social scientists who have researched this topic of human happiness are univocal in their conclusions that happiness is much more like an attribute than an acquisition. We know this to be true by seeing two children from the same loving family with radically different happiness set points. Environment matters but not that much. The psychologist and researcher Alex Michalos succinctly put it, “When it comes to subjective well-being, you don't get a big bang out of the real world.” The amazing discovery from those who investigate happiness is that the things we think matter most in making us happy actually matter least, and the things we think matter least actually matter most: Beautiful people are not happier than not-so-beautiful people. Young people are not happier than old people. Smart people are not happier than intellectually challenged people. Educated people are not happier than uneducated people. So if the things we think will make us happy really don’t, what does? It turns out that simple things, prosaic things make us happy. Bread makes us happy. I tell a story about how Bill Paley who ran CBS began every dinner by slowly caressing and eating a roll. He did it because he believed that if he could be thankful for bread, he could more easily remember to be thankful for all his many other blessings of wealth.A good sense of humor makes us happy. Friends obviously make us happy. Volunteering makes us happy, and community makes us happy. There is, of course the cynics who like Spike Mulligan taught in his Las Vegas lounge act, “Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” Henny Youngman said, “What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.”I tell the story of an American investment banker trying to convince a South American fisherman that he should go public as an example of the joy of a simple life. The rabbis teach, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his lot.” I tell the story of an executive vice president of IBM whom I heard speak at his retirement luncheon and there, in front of all the young, eager, and ambitious gaggle of vice presidents he said this, “I know that every one of you in this room want my job and I am going to tell you how you can get it. When my daughter was married I walked her down the aisle. At that moment of my daughter’s life I realized that I did not know her favorite color, or the last book she read, or the name of her best friend. I realized that I knew nothing about my daughter. That is the price I paid to get the things I thought would make me happy. So, if you are willing to pay that price, you can have my damn job.” The rabbis teach, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his lot.” That is the truth. Tommy got Mother Teresa’s business card. On it there was no phone number and no address. It just had her name and these words, “Happiness is the natural fruit of duty.”

The third in our series of podcasts on famous sayings we think are true but are not: “All I want is for my children to be happy.” Episode NotesThe first reason this saying is wrong is that as it turns out that being happy is less like something you can achieve and more like something you already have by virtue of your innate personality. Wishing that your children should be happy is sort of like wishing that they be tall or beautiful or good in math. They either are or they aren’t and sadly there is not much you or they can do about it. Psychologists and social scientists who have researched this topic of human happiness are univocal in their conclusions that happiness is much more like an attribute than an acquisition. We know this to be true by seeing two children from the same loving family with radically different happiness set points. Environment matters but not that much. The psychologist and researcher Alex Michalos succinctly put it, “When it comes to subjective well-being, you don't get a big bang out of the real world.” The amazing discovery from those who investigate happiness is that the things we think matter most in making us happy actually matter least, and the things we think matter least actually matter most: Beautiful people are not happier than not-so-beautiful people. Young people are not happier than old people. Smart people are not happier than intellectually challenged people. Educated people are not happier than uneducated people. So if the things we think will make us happy really don’t, what does? It turns out that simple things, prosaic things make us happy. Bread makes us happy. I tell a story about how Bill Paley who ran CBS began every dinner by slowly caressing and eating a roll. He did it because he believed that if he could be thankful for bread, he could more easily remember to be thankful for all his many other blessings of wealth.A good sense of humor makes us happy. Friends obviously make us happy. Volunteering makes us happy, and community makes us happy. There is, of course the cynics who like Spike Mulligan taught in his Las Vegas lounge act, “Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” Henny Youngman said, “What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.”I tell the story of an American investment banker trying to convince a South American fisherman that he should go public as an example of the joy of a simple life. The rabbis teach, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his lot.” I tell the story of an executive vice president of IBM whom I heard speak at his retirement luncheon and there, in front of all the young, eager, and ambitious gaggle of vice presidents he said this, “I know that every one of you in this room want my job and I am going to tell you how you can get it. When my daughter was married I walked her down the aisle. At that moment of my daughter’s life I realized that I did not know her favorite color, or the last book she read, or the name of her best friend. I realized that I knew nothing about my daughter. That is the price I paid to get the things I thought would make me happy. So, if you are willing to pay that price, you can have my damn job.” The rabbis teach, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his lot.” That is the truth. Tommy got Mother Teresa’s business card. On it there was no phone number and no address. It just had her name and these words, “Happiness is the natural fruit of duty.”

Episode SummaryThe second in a series of podcasts on popular sayings that are actually not true at all.Episode NotesThe idea that health is everything causes people who are unwell to loose hope. This episode is about people who accomplished great things while also coping with illness and disability. The first reason that the saying, “If you have your health you have everything” is not true is that if it is true then it also true that if you lose your health you have nothing, and this is not only false, it is spiritually corrosive. Placing upon people the double burden of both their illness and the despairing conclusion that their illness has taken away from them everything important is much more than false. It is deeply cruel. I know that the saying intends to be positive. It intends to say something like, “Nothing we have is more important than our health.” Of course, I agree that we should strive to live healthful lives and avoid the trans fatty parts of the universe, but health is an evanescent thing, affected by environmental and genetic and even purely random factors. The fixation on health as the only important thing is what is behind this saying, and what is behind the unnecessary and often debilitating despair of sick people. I knew several remarkable people who accomplished amazing things. Hank Viscardi was the Martin Luther King of American's with disabilities. He was a driving force behind the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the founder of the Viscardi School and Center for Disabilities. One day when Tom Hartman and I were visiting Hank, he said to us, “I never think of the people in this center as disabled. I think of you guys as just temporarily abled.” When Moses broke the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments because of his anger at the people for worshiping the Golden calf, God gave him a new unbroken copy, but God also commanded Moses to place all the broken pieces of the first tablets together in the same golden ark of the covenant that held the new unbroken tablets. The broken and the whole were together in the same ark. As it was so it is with us now. Those of us who happen to be disabled or sick and those of us who happen to be temporarily abled are together in the covenant of God’s love and must be together in the bonds of love and support we extend to each other. The broken and the whole are together in the same ark. I knew a woman named Pam Rothman who died of cancer after a long struggle, and although she eventually lost her life, she never lost her smile. One day sitting in her hospital room Pam said to me, “Rabbi, I can't be the best of the best any longer, but I can still be the best of the worst.” And she was the best of the worst, the very best of the very worst. She helped other cancer patients cling to hope, she held her family together by her embracing love and she read and wrote to the end. In the end Pam was taken, but she was never defeated. Add to Hank and Pam Beethoven and Kierkegaard and FDR and Stevie Wonder and Helen Keller and Steven Hawking and Christopher Reeve and Michael J Fox and my friend Tom Hartman. They all had everything except their health. The greatest modern Jewish theologian was Franz Rosenzweig and though he died in 1929 also from the predations of ALS, his illness did not diminish his brilliant translation of the Bible into German with his friend Martin Buber nor his philosophical masterwork, The Star of Redemption, which he wrote by holding a pencil in his mouth and pointing to the keys on the typewriter. We must also remember that God chose a disabled man, Moses, to lead the people out of Egypt. There are, of course, some things that if you do not have you really do have nothing. If you don’t have love, you have nothing. If you don’t have integrity, you have nothing.

Episode SummaryThe second in a series of podcasts on popular sayings that are actually not true at all.Episode NotesThe idea that health is everything causes people who are unwell to loose hope. This episode is about people who accomplished great things while also coping with illness and disability. The first reason that the saying, “If you have your health you have everything” is not true is that if it is true then it also true that if you lose your health you have nothing, and this is not only false, it is spiritually corrosive. Placing upon people the double burden of both their illness and the despairing conclusion that their illness has taken away from them everything important is much more than false. It is deeply cruel. I know that the saying intends to be positive. It intends to say something like, “Nothing we have is more important than our health.” Of course, I agree that we should strive to live healthful lives and avoid the trans fatty parts of the universe, but health is an evanescent thing, affected by environmental and genetic and even purely random factors. The fixation on health as the only important thing is what is behind this saying, and what is behind the unnecessary and often debilitating despair of sick people. I knew several remarkable people who accomplished amazing things. Hank Viscardi was the Martin Luther King of American's with disabilities. He was a driving force behind the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the founder of the Viscardi School and Center for Disabilities. One day when Tom Hartman and I were visiting Hank, he said to us, “I never think of the people in this center as disabled. I think of you guys as just temporarily abled.” When Moses broke the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments because of his anger at the people for worshiping the Golden calf, God gave him a new unbroken copy, but God also commanded Moses to place all the broken pieces of the first tablets together in the same golden ark of the covenant that held the new unbroken tablets. The broken and the whole were together in the same ark. As it was so it is with us now. Those of us who happen to be disabled or sick and those of us who happen to be temporarily abled are together in the covenant of God’s love and must be together in the bonds of love and support we extend to each other. The broken and the whole are together in the same ark. I knew a woman named Pam Rothman who died of cancer after a long struggle, and although she eventually lost her life, she never lost her smile. One day sitting in her hospital room Pam said to me, “Rabbi, I can't be the best of the best any longer, but I can still be the best of the worst.” And she was the best of the worst, the very best of the very worst. She helped other cancer patients cling to hope, she held her family together by her embracing love and she read and wrote to the end. In the end Pam was taken, but she was never defeated. Add to Hank and Pam Beethoven and Kierkegaard and FDR and Stevie Wonder and Helen Keller and Steven Hawking and Christopher Reeve and Michael J Fox and my friend Tom Hartman. They all had everything except their health. The greatest modern Jewish theologian was Franz Rosenzweig and though he died in 1929 also from the predations of ALS, his illness did not diminish his brilliant translation of the Bible into German with his friend Martin Buber nor his philosophical masterwork, The Star of Redemption, which he wrote by holding a pencil in his mouth and pointing to the keys on the typewriter. We must also remember that God chose a disabled man, Moses, to lead the people out of Egypt. There are, of course, some things that if you do not have you really do have nothing. If you don’t have love, you have nothing. If you don’t have integrity, you have nothing.

Episode SummarySpiritual balancing is taught in the wisdom of every world religion. Spiritual Balancing is the only spiritual wisdom that links the religions of the East and the West.Episode NotesI learned this technique one day when I watched a workman carrying carrying two five gallon pails of spackling compound up some steep stairs in an old house we were remodeling. His euphonious name was Meladin Keladin and I asked him, “Meladin, why are you carrying two buckets of mud when you only really need one?” He replied, “Because two pails keep me balanced. If I only carried one bucket, I would be pulled off to one side and it would hurt my back.” Since that moment I have used the concept and the technique of spiritual balancing to help people cope with their griefwork and depression. I have also lectured about spiritual balancing to psychiatrists and psychologists some of whom have adopted it as a therapeutic technique and others have told me politely to keep my day job. What I discovered is that if you ask people who are depressed or suffering, “Is there anything good still left in your life?” they will all answer yes, and they will all be able to name their blessings without hesitation. Their problem is that they are spending all their time thinking about what is going wrong in their life and almost no time thinking about what is still going right. They have become so fixated, so obsessed, with their suffering that the thoughts of their blessings are crowded out by their need to fixate on their burdens and they have therefore been spiritually strangled. So I ask them to spend five minutes recounting their burdens to me in excruciating detail. Then I ask them to spend exactly the same amount of time recounting to me their blessings. At the end of the session many of them feel more balanced. That is spiritual balancing and that is the topic of this episode. My absolute favorite rabbinic legend (midrash) teaches this point precisely. The rabbis ask, why was it that some of the people who crossed the Red Sea argued with Moses and God as soon as they went free on the other side? They answer, “Those people did not see the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea. But others asked, ‘How could they not have seen the miracle? They were walking through the middle of Sea themselves and their eyes were open?’ But the others answered, ‘They did not see the miracle because they never looked up, and so all they saw was mud.’”  They were so consumed by the dangers of the Exodus; they missed the miracle of the Exodus. All they needed to do was to look up and down and the journey ahead would have become balanced and easy. Spiritual balancing is taught in the wisdom of every world religion. Yin and Yang are the symbols of spiritual balancing in the I Ching. In Buddhism the eight fold noble path is the heart of Buddhist teachings, and its purpose is to teach those seeking enlightenment to walk a balanced middle path in their life between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. Says the Dalai Lama, "...the practice of Dharma, real spiritual practice, is in some sense like a voltage stabilizer. The function of the stabilizer is to prevent irregular power surges and instead give you a stable, balanced and constant source of power."Spiritual Balancing is the only spiritual wisdom that links the religions of the East and the West. 

Episode SummaryThis episode is about experiences we all share on our life journey; and one of those is hearing old sayings that are uncritically accepted as true. Unfortunately many of these bromides are false, and getting to t...

Episode SummarySpiritual balancing is taught in the wisdom of every world religion. Spiritual Balancing is the only spiritual wisdom that links the religions of the East and the West.Episode NotesI learned this technique one day when I watched a workman carrying carrying two five gallon pails of spackling compound up some steep stairs in an old house we were remodeling. His euphonious name was Meladin Keladin and I asked him, “Meladin, why are you carrying two buckets of mud when you only really need one?” He replied, “Because two pails keep me balanced. If I only carried one bucket, I would be pulled off to one side and it would hurt my back.” Since that moment I have used the concept and the technique of spiritual balancing to help people cope with their griefwork and depression. I have also lectured about spiritual balancing to psychiatrists and psychologists some of whom have adopted it as a therapeutic technique and others have told me politely to keep my day job. What I discovered is that if you ask people who are depressed or suffering, “Is there anything good still left in your life?” they will all answer yes, and they will all be able to name their blessings without hesitation. Their problem is that they are spending all their time thinking about what is going wrong in their life and almost no time thinking about what is still going right. They have become so fixated, so obsessed, with their suffering that the thoughts of their blessings are crowded out by their need to fixate on their burdens and they have therefore been spiritually strangled. So I ask them to spend five minutes recounting their burdens to me in excruciating detail. Then I ask them to spend exactly the same amount of time recounting to me their blessings. At the end of the session many of them feel more balanced. That is spiritual balancing and that is the topic of this episode. My absolute favorite rabbinic legend (midrash) teaches this point precisely. The rabbis ask, why was it that some of the people who crossed the Red Sea argued with Moses and God as soon as they went free on the other side? They answer, “Those people did not see the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea. But others asked, ‘How could they not have seen the miracle? They were walking through the middle of Sea themselves and their eyes were open?’ But the others answered, ‘They did not see the miracle because they never looked up, and so all they saw was mud.’”  They were so consumed by the dangers of the Exodus; they missed the miracle of the Exodus. All they needed to do was to look up and down and the journey ahead would have become balanced and easy. Spiritual balancing is taught in the wisdom of every world religion. Yin and Yang are the symbols of spiritual balancing in the I Ching. In Buddhism the eight fold noble path is the heart of Buddhist teachings, and its purpose is to teach those seeking enlightenment to walk a balanced middle path in their life between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. Says the Dalai Lama, "...the practice of Dharma, real spiritual practice, is in some sense like a voltage stabilizer. The function of the stabilizer is to prevent irregular power surges and instead give you a stable, balanced and constant source of power."Spiritual Balancing is the only spiritual wisdom that links the religions of the East and the West. 

Episode SummaryThis episode is about experiences we all share on our life journey; and one of those is hearing old sayings that are uncritically accepted as true. Unfortunately many of these bromides are false, and getting to t...

Episode SummaryAs to the question of whether there is life after death for our souls, there are only two options: either there is something or there are just the worms.Episode NotesI describe how I went from being a “worm guy” to being a “something guy”. I began as a worm guy because my teacher, Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, may his memory be blessed, was an extremely eloquent worm guy. Listen to how he describes what awaits us if there is no life after death, "I am convinced that I have arisen out of nothingness and am destined to return to nothingness. All human beings are locked in the same fatality. In the final analysis, omnipotent nothingness was lord of all creation. Nothing in the bleak, cold, unfeeling universe was remotely concerned with human aspiration and longing...Only death perfects life and ends its problems. God can only redeem by slaying. We have nothing to hope for beyond what we are capable of creating in the time allotted to us...In the final analysis all things crumble away into the nothingness which is at the beginning and end of creation." The belief that death is not the end of us is foundational to all faiths. It is first of all a useful belief because it brings us hope in the face of death and hope is the only real antidote to the poison of human finitude. Without the hope provided by a that death is not the end of us. We are forced to accept Rubenstein’s chilling vision, and also accept the fact that there is nothing to give us hope that the evil that is not punished in this life will be punished in the next life. Without a life after death there is also no hope that we will not be separated forever from those we love. These and other reasons considered in this episode are not merely useful. For believers of every community of faith they are true beliefs. I am with Albert Camus who wrote, "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and Heaven and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."This episode is about reclaiming the belief that our spiritual journey does not end at the grave.

Episode SummaryAre psychics and mediums real? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? This episode explores our need to deny death and our need to find a way to restore a connection of love that has been severed by death.Episode NotesThe core of this episode is a true story about how when my best friend and partner in the God squad, Father Tom Hartman was dying of Parkinson’s disease I asked him to send me a sign after he died that Heaven was real. Tommy agreed an asked me what kind of sign I wanted him to send. I told him that I would not specify a sign but that that he should send me a sign that was completely and totally unambiguous. Tommy died in 2016 and for two years after his death in I received no sign. Then one day on the second day of the Jewish New Year, when I was eating chicken salad in the Celebrity Diner on Long Island near my synagogue with Mike Pascucci, the dear friend who had supported our work from the beginning. Mike told me that the spirit of Tom Hartman had come to him while he was shaving that morning and told him to give me a message at lunch. This was the message: “Sol thinks he is in charge up here and Heaven is the most beautiful place you have ever seen.” Mike was obviously shaken and confused by this visitation and then he asked me, “Who is Sol?” I was stunned. I answered Michael, “Sol is my father who died in 2007.” Michael did not know my father’s name, but Tommy did. My dad Sol Gellman was never in charge of much in his life, but he always acted as if he was in charge of everything. Tommy knew that too.That was the sign. It was totally unambiguous. It had no explanation other than the obvious fact that Tommy’s soul was safe in Heaven along with dad and that one of the fundamental beliefs of all major faiths was true: death is not the end of us.

Episode SummaryThis episode is about learning how to pray. It is not about learning the words in some sectarian prayer book but rather about learning how to give thanks for our blessings and how to develop this spiritual gratitude even if you have some problems with praying because of the beliefs contained in the prayers.Episode NotesMore broadly, this episode is about learning how to do something new. It is about the amazingly useful common saying, “Fake it till you make it.” The feeling of awkwardness that blocks us is a universal feeling and this episode offers a way out of this spiritual blockage which I call pretend dancing. This phrase and this idea came to me during a book signing with Father Tom where there was a band booked for after the signing. I was uncomfortable with such hoopla for the opening of a children’s book about God. I was sulking at a table when Tommy asked me to get up and dance. I refused and he said, “If you can’t really dance, why don’t you try pretend dancing?” Reluctantly I agreed and then, after some desultory and uninspired foot shuffling, Aretha Franklin’s song “Respect” was played and by the end of it I was no longer pretend dancing. I was really dancing (well dancing for me). That is when I learned that to do something with conviction you first have to pretend to do it. That is true for so many things and it is definitely true for praying. Pretend to do it until you are no longer pretending. C.S. Lewis, the British philosopher, novelist, poet, Oxford don, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, Christian apologist, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, and prophet of pretend dancing wrote, "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him." Buddhism is a religion based upon pretend dancing. For Buddhism all existence is pretend existence. The Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh offered up the single best definition of pretend dancing. He taught, "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."This poem entitled, "Praying" is by my favorite contemporary poet, Mary Oliver and it also affirms the value of sincere prayer. It is from her book of poems entitled, Thirst, and it is perfect,It doesn't have to bethe blue iris, it could beweeds in a vacant lot, or a fewsmall stones; justpay attention, then patcha few words together and don't tryto make them elaborate, this isn'ta contest but the doorwayinto thanks, and a silence in whichanother voice may speak.Join me in this episode for some joyful pretend dancing.

Episode SummaryAre psychics and mediums real? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? This episode explores our need to deny death and our need to find a way to restore a connection of love that has been severed by death.Episode NotesThe core of this episode is a true story about how when my best friend and partner in the God squad, Father Tom Hartman was dying of Parkinson’s disease I asked him to send me a sign after he died that Heaven was real. Tommy agreed an asked me what kind of sign I wanted him to send. I told him that I would not specify a sign but that that he should send me a sign that was completely and totally unambiguous. Tommy died in 2016 and for two years after his death in I received no sign. Then one day on the second day of the Jewish New Year, when I was eating chicken salad in the Celebrity Diner on Long Island near my synagogue with Mike Pascucci, the dear friend who had supported our work from the beginning. Mike told me that the spirit of Tom Hartman had come to him while he was shaving that morning and told him to give me a message at lunch. This was the message: “Sol thinks he is in charge up here and Heaven is the most beautiful place you have ever seen.” Mike was obviously shaken and confused by this visitation and then he asked me, “Who is Sol?” I was stunned. I answered Michael, “Sol is my father who died in 2007.” Michael did not know my father’s name, but Tommy did. My dad Sol Gellman was never in charge of much in his life, but he always acted as if he was in charge of everything. Tommy knew that too.That was the sign. It was totally unambiguous. It had no explanation other than the obvious fact that Tommy’s soul was safe in Heaven along with dad and that one of the fundamental beliefs of all major faiths was true: death is not the end of us.

Episode SummaryThis episode helps to explain why angels are never too late. It takes up the universal religious belief that God communicates with us by sending real people who are the unwitting bearers of spiritually significant messages for our lives and it rejects the idea that angels are good dead people with wings and halos.Episode NotesThe title of this episode comes from a story told by the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel. When he was young, Heschel was in the synagogue with his father on the Jewish New Year and was listening to the biblical story of the binding of Isaac in Genesis chapter 22 where we read that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac as a sign of faith. At the last possible moment before the sacrifice an angel from Heaven calls out to stop Abraham because he has passed this gruesome and incomprehensible test. Heschel recalls that he was crying when he heard the story. His father asked him why he was crying and Heschel told him, “I am worried that the angel will be too late.” His father said, “Don’t worry my son. Angels are never too late. That is the way with angels, but people! People can sometimes be too late. That is the way with people." This episode helps to explain why angels are never too late. It takes up the universal religious belief that God communicates with us by sending real people who are the unwitting bearers of spiritually significant messages for our lives. It rejects the idea that angels are good dead people with wings and halos. Human beings can be used in the service of God’s mercy to convey messages to us that have the power to change our lives. This episode also reviews the religious teachings that in addition to human beings being used by God to help lead us into better lives, there are also angelic spiritual beings who were never human beings but who serve God as a kind of heavenly bureaucracy like Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. And then there are also angels that are not of the first rank and are not human beings but who are a more direct manifestation of God like the angel that stayed Abraham’s knife in the biblical story. The belief in angels helps us to bridge the gap between an unknowable and invisible and immaterial and transcendent God and our lives here on planet earth.  

Episode SummaryAs to the question of whether there is life after death for our souls, there are only two options: either there is something or there are just the worms.Episode NotesI describe how I went from being a “worm guy” to being a “something guy”. I began as a worm guy because my teacher, Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, may his memory be blessed, was an extremely eloquent worm guy. Listen to how he describes what awaits us if there is no life after death, "I am convinced that I have arisen out of nothingness and am destined to return to nothingness. All human beings are locked in the same fatality. In the final analysis, omnipotent nothingness was lord of all creation. Nothing in the bleak, cold, unfeeling universe was remotely concerned with human aspiration and longing...Only death perfects life and ends its problems. God can only redeem by slaying. We have nothing to hope for beyond what we are capable of creating in the time allotted to us...In the final analysis all things crumble away into the nothingness which is at the beginning and end of creation." The belief that death is not the end of us is foundational to all faiths. It is first of all a useful belief because it brings us hope in the face of death and hope is the only real antidote to the poison of human finitude. Without the hope provided by a that death is not the end of us. We are forced to accept Rubenstein’s chilling vision, and also accept the fact that there is nothing to give us hope that the evil that is not punished in this life will be punished in the next life. Without a life after death there is also no hope that we will not be separated forever from those we love. These and other reasons considered in this episode are not merely useful. For believers of every community of faith they are true beliefs. I am with Albert Camus who wrote, "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and Heaven and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."This episode is about reclaiming the belief that our spiritual journey does not end at the grave.

Episode SummaryThis episode helps to explain why angels are never too late. It takes up the universal religious belief that God communicates with us by sending real people who are the unwitting bearers of spiritually significant messages for our lives and it rejects the idea that angels are good dead people with wings and halos.Episode NotesThe title of this episode comes from a story told by the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel. When he was young, Heschel was in the synagogue with his father on the Jewish New Year and was listening to the biblical story of the binding of Isaac in Genesis chapter 22 where we read that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac as a sign of faith. At the last possible moment before the sacrifice an angel from Heaven calls out to stop Abraham because he has passed this gruesome and incomprehensible test. Heschel recalls that he was crying when he heard the story. His father asked him why he was crying and Heschel told him, “I am worried that the angel will be too late.” His father said, “Don’t worry my son. Angels are never too late. That is the way with angels, but people! People can sometimes be too late. That is the way with people." This episode helps to explain why angels are never too late. It takes up the universal religious belief that God communicates with us by sending real people who are the unwitting bearers of spiritually significant messages for our lives. It rejects the idea that angels are good dead people with wings and halos. Human beings can be used in the service of God’s mercy to convey messages to us that have the power to change our lives. This episode also reviews the religious teachings that in addition to human beings being used by God to help lead us into better lives, there are also angelic spiritual beings who were never human beings but who serve God as a kind of heavenly bureaucracy like Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. And then there are also angels that are not of the first rank and are not human beings but who are a more direct manifestation of God like the angel that stayed Abraham’s knife in the biblical story. The belief in angels helps us to bridge the gap between an unknowable and invisible and immaterial and transcendent God and our lives here on planet earth.  

Episode SummaryThis episode is about learning how to pray. It is not about learning the words in some sectarian prayer book but rather about learning how to give thanks for our blessings and how to develop this spiritual gratitude even if you have some problems with praying because of the beliefs contained in the prayers.Episode NotesMore broadly, this episode is about learning how to do something new. It is about the amazingly useful common saying, “Fake it till you make it.” The feeling of awkwardness that blocks us is a universal feeling and this episode offers a way out of this spiritual blockage which I call pretend dancing. This phrase and this idea came to me during a book signing with Father Tom where there was a band booked for after the signing. I was uncomfortable with such hoopla for the opening of a children’s book about God. I was sulking at a table when Tommy asked me to get up and dance. I refused and he said, “If you can’t really dance, why don’t you try pretend dancing?” Reluctantly I agreed and then, after some desultory and uninspired foot shuffling, Aretha Franklin’s song “Respect” was played and by the end of it I was no longer pretend dancing. I was really dancing (well dancing for me). That is when I learned that to do something with conviction you first have to pretend to do it. That is true for so many things and it is definitely true for praying. Pretend to do it until you are no longer pretending. C.S. Lewis, the British philosopher, novelist, poet, Oxford don, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, Christian apologist, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, and prophet of pretend dancing wrote, "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him." Buddhism is a religion based upon pretend dancing. For Buddhism all existence is pretend existence. The Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh offered up the single best definition of pretend dancing. He taught, "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."This poem entitled, "Praying" is by my favorite contemporary poet, Mary Oliver and it also affirms the value of sincere prayer. It is from her book of poems entitled, Thirst, and it is perfect,It doesn't have to bethe blue iris, it could beweeds in a vacant lot, or a fewsmall stones; justpay attention, then patcha few words together and don't tryto make them elaborate, this isn'ta contest but the doorwayinto thanks, and a silence in whichanother voice may speak.Join me in this episode for some joyful pretend dancing.

This episode is the story of a ditch walker. Being a ditch walker is a job almost nobody outside the Western United States and very few in the Western United States have ever heard about, but to me it is a truly profound job filled with both spiritual and environmental significance.Michael Kiernan is the ditch walker I know and he works for the Salvation Ditch Company. Every day except Sunday early in the morning for the last thirty years Michael has walked over ten miles along the Salvation Ditch in Aspen Colorado which diverts a precise amount of water from the Roaring Fork River and Woody Creek to help water the fields of ranches and farms and billionaire estates along its eighteen mile run. Michael, and his new assistant Tucker who will eventually be the next ditch walker of Salvation Ditch, make sure that nobody is stealing water and that no blockages have built up because of pesky beavers. Michael and Tucker cannot listen to music because they must listen to the “music of the water” of Salvation Ditch in order to know that the water is flowing properly at 57 cubic feet per second. The Salvation Ditch Company was founded a hundred and two years ago by twelve ranchers and farmers in the Roaring Fork Valley who needed water for their cattle and crops. Michael spoke to me about his wonder and joy even after all these years. He loves being a ditch walker because it takes him out into nature at a time of the day when he encounters all manner of wild beauty and wildlife. This episode uses ditch walkers as symbols of all the people who keep our civic life working properly. The episode then becomes a reflection on the need for more ditch walkers for our world. We need them in the form of umpires to play any game. We need them in the form of soldiers and police and EMS workers and fire fighters to keep us safe. We need them in the form of clergy to teach the ethical boundaries taught by faith. We need them in the form of politicians who will transcend personal privilege to sustain our government. Ditch walkers help to set the limits of our life. They prevent us from succumbing to greed and our desire to win at all costs. This episode is also a reflection on the terrible loss of trust and civic unity that is a consequence of not having good ditch walkers helping us to live together. It is my hope that the God Squad Podcast can hopefully become a kindly, non-judgmental, electronic ditch walker for our culture. The episode also uses a verse from Deuteronomy to remind us that common laborers were specifically included in the list of those who were present at the revelation at Mount Sinai of the laws of God. This story also teaches us a very important lesson--distrust beavers!