I have an unusually vivid memory of the first time that I ever heard the expression "get a life." It was almost twenty years ago. I remember it sounding very cool and with-it.

An old friend was visiting Vermont and wanted to take in the exhibit of decoys at the Shelburne Museum. She seemed to be a connoisseur of antique duck decoys. As often as I had visited the museum I had barely known that there was such an exhibit.

As we viewed the various decoys I was more interested in catching up on her life and her children. She told me about a recent episode with her teenage daughter. In this instance, my friend had apparently been over-parenting her daughter. The young girl let her know as much by saying: "Oh mother, get a life." My friend was enlightened enough not to be threatened. Rather than being hurt, she took it to heart.

Still I believe that there are certain times and contexts in which the expression "get a life" can be hurtful. When I ran this sermon topic past a friend of mine, he said it sounded condescending – like a person isn't good enough the way they are. He went on to say that everybody has a life; it may not be the life they want. But he thought that I ought to be speaking about loving your life – learning to love where you're at. If you want to make changes after that, that's okay he said. Hopefully the title "getting a life" sounds less condescending, less edgy than "get a life."

Two Sundays ago there was an article in the Living section of the Free Press entitled "Most Fascinating People of 2004." Free Press feature writers had revisited their favorite stories from the past year. I skimmed the article to see if I recognized any of them. I had a passing acquaintance with just one who happened to be a drummer.

Hopefully no one felt slighted for not having been included among the most fascinating people of 2004. There's always next year... In a weak moment someone could feel tempted to measure the value of their life by whether or not a reporter found it fascinating. In our celebrity culture, this could be a measure of success. There are all kinds of decoys out there for what constitutes a life or success.

I'm reminded of the words of a famous rabbi, Abraham Heschel, sometimes described as an earthy mystic. He once wrote in words addressed to God: "I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And you gave it to me." An anthology of his writings is entitled I Asked for Wonder. Heschel thought that the greater gift was to be fascinated by life, the mystery of our existence. One of his well-known sayings was "Just to be is holy."

Abraham Heschel died on December 23, 1972. He was a prophetic witness to this country throughout the fifties and sixties. I find his words strikingly relevant to our own times. Early on in the Vietnam war he was an outspoken critic saying that to speak about God and remain silent on the Vietnam war was blasphemous. I shared his sentiments then as I do now with regard to the Iraq War.

As with Gandhi, for Heschel religion and politics were inextricable. In his lifelong study of the Hebrew prophets he had learned "that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible."

Heschel spoke as a witness to the Holocaust, as someone who narrowly escaped genocide. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1907 he came from a long, distinguished line of Hasidic rabbis. Despite his family's wishes he chose to study philosophy and received his doctorate from the University of Berlin, in 1933. His religious and philosophical studies gave him the skills and incentive to navigate between the two worlds of Hasidism and humanism. He understood his vocation as helping to connect the mystical world of Hasidic Judaism with the secular world of "man in search of meaning".

In the same year that Heschel received his doctorate Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933. I find it ominous to think that during the Weimar Republic which immediately preceded Hitler's rise to power, the sciences, philosophy and the arts had flourished. Berlin had become almost a sanctuary to intellectual and artistic geniuses like Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Martin Heidegger and Bertolt Brecht. Genius seemed to be no deterrent to the evil of genocide.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Heschel's mother and sisters were driven into a walled district within Warsaw, where an average of 500 Jews died each day as a result of disease and starvation. In November 1938, Heschel had been expelled from Berlin, just one week before the Kristallnacht pogrom, when throughout Germany 191 synagogues were burned to the ground and 7500 Jewish-owned shops were destroyed. The pogrom became known as Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night because of the shattered windows. At the same time 20,000 Jewish men were arrested and shipped to Buchenwald. Close to 100 Jews were killed.

According to the notes taken at a meeting of high-ranking Nazi officials, that night's activities were described as a great success. The day after Kristallnacht there was little protest, either in Germany or abroad. Heschel's biographers say there is: "no way to fathom his pangs of moral responsibility and desolation," cut off as he was from his family. His mother and sisters were unable to obtain visas to join Jacob his brother in London, or to follow his sister's family in New York. At this time Heschel wrote to a colleague Eduard Strauss: "It is shameful that the world could not find another solution."

All the while Heschel's own faith was being tried in the fire. He had to hold as inseparable two irreconcilable realities: the destruction of all that had nurtured his spirit and cultivated his mind and his loyalty to a God of pathos. Out of this contradiction emerged his American mission. Years later, he wrote describing that mission: "This is the task, in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing, agony into a song."

In March 1940, after an agonizing waiting period, Heschel was finally able to obtain a visa to come to the United States. Thanks to an invitation to teach at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. The thirty-three years be had spent in Europe seemed to have prepared him for the religious philosopher and social activist that he ultimately became in this country.

His activism was fused and fed by his own Hasidic religious tradition. In response to the dilemma of when does ethical action become neglect of the Torah or religious observance, in other words where does one draw the line between activism and the spiritual life – he told this rabbinic story attributed to his ancestor: "Two Jews were condemned to death by a wicked king. But to amuse himself, the king devised a condition: if they would walk across a tightrope they would be saved. Anything but athletes, they nevertheless accepted. The first Jew crossed safely. The second one called across, 'How did you do it?' The first replied, 'Just remember one thing: when you feel yourself falling to one side, move to the other.' There are no simple answers in Hasidic teaching. 'We must decide by doing; insight may arise from the practice.' "

I became personally aware of Heschel as an author, teacher and activist in the sixties. He was a passionate advocate of interfaith dialogue and he challenged the Catholic Church to rid itself of the sinful legacy of anti-Semitism. As an official observer of the Second Vatican Council, he influenced the council's historic statement on the church's kinship with Judaism. He wrote that "no religion is an island. We are all involved with one another." And that "God is greater than religion."

There was no escapism in Heschel's practice of religion. Rather it deepened and sustained his feeling of responsibility to the world, to the questions and needs of his time. He stood side by side with Martin Luther King in the struggle against racism and became a close friend of the civil rights leader.

Another close friendship developed between Heschel and William Sloan Coffin, the protestant chaplain at Yale University at the time. They were both on the board of a protest organization, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. Coffin tells a story of how Heschel counseled him one evening in 1968 as they walked back to the rabbi's apartment, a story that illustrates the humanity of both men. Coffin had been arrested for draft resistance and he felt anguished by his impending divorce. The chaplain often addressed his friend as "Father Abraham." This evening Heschel slipped his hand under Coffin's arm and spoke gently: "I understand, my friend, that you have been through much suffering." "That's right, Father Abraham, it's been hell. It still is." "You should have called me," he said. "You were in Los Angeles all summer." "You still could have called me." "Well, I didn't want to bother you. Besides I had other friends I could talk to and I don't like talking about such things over the phone." "That was a mistake. I could have helped you." The rabbi said.

At this point Coffin became irked by Heschel's self-assurance. So he stopped and faced him. "All right, how could you have helped me?" Coffin describes what the rabbi did then. As he had seen him do so often, he raised his shoulders and his hands, palms up. "I would have told you about my father, the great Hasidic rabbi, blessed be his memory, who too was divorced. You see, you Christians are so vexed by your perfectionism. It is always your undoing."

He continued to talk in this vein and Coffin said "I felt the tears running down my cheeks. He was so right. And it was nice that a Jew was reminding a Christian that his salvation lay not in being sinless, but in accepting [God's] forgiveness. Without pausing, he wiped my face with his handkerchief. Then after again assuring me that God still loved me – " even as (Heschel said) "I do, and maybe more" – he said, "now we shall continue to my apartment, I have just been given some excellent cognac."

Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam was a mobilizing force in the peace movement. Heschel, Coffin & Daniel Berrigan were among the most visible clergy members. Berrigan had been a teacher of mine and we stood together at a peace vigil in front of the U.N. on the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. I was grateful for the vision of these three men.

When I was studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, I took advantage of the school's proximity to Jewish Theological Seminary, where Heschel was teaching at the time. The two institutions are almost across the street from each other on Broadway. I thought I had an interesting topic for a paper, something like "The Theological Ramifications of the Reconstitution of the State of Israel." The paper which never got further than the title may well have been an excuse I used to meet with one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and social activists of that time. The man was as accessible as he was genial and learned, which is about all I remember of our meeting, other than the aroma of cigars and an office stacked with books on all sides.

If only I had been more conversant with his life at the time, I would have taken the opportunity to ask him to expand on the interpretation of the parable attributed to his rabbinic ancestor, the one about the wicked king who condemned the two Jews to death. If you remember, the only way they could get a reprieve was to walk across a tightrope. What are we to make of the advice of the 1st man to the second? "Just remember one thing: when you feel yourself falling to one side, move to the other." Just as Hasidic wisdom supplies no simple answers, there are no simple answers to getting a life, or to what constitutes a life. Sometimes being guided by our faith and not our fear feels like walking across a wire in order to achieve freedom or maintain integrity.

On that afternoon in the rabbi's study, I wish that I had asked him about how he managed to hold as inseparable two irreconcilable realities: the destruction of all that had nurtured his spirit and mind and his loyalty to a God who cares passionately, who suffers with us, his God of pathos. Would he have been able to clarify for me the meaning that emerged out of this contradiction in his life?

Or would he have told me as he does in his writing that I have to press my own religious consciousness with questions to understand and unravel the meaning of what is taking place in my life as I stand at the edge of mystery or, as he says, at the 'divine horizon'. Would he have reminded me, as he wrote, that "this is the task, in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing, agony into a song."

These words have a prophetic ring for our own times. There is the unfolding tragic reality, the devastation, death and disease caused by the natural disaster of the tsunami in Asia and the on-going even greater moral disaster of the war our country continues to wage in Iraq. Heschel reiterated the message of the Hebrew prophets of his time. That message challenges people of conscience to this day: "morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible."

From his own study of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezechiel, Heschel learned that often the message of these prophets began with denunciation but ultimately concluded with hope, a hope motivated by love. This was true as well of the prophetic witness of this rabbi's own message. Not long before his death in 1972, Heschel taped a television interview. The concluding words were especially meant for young people: "Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power... Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art." Maybe this is how a contemporary prophet who struggled to turn a curse into a blessing says to young and old "get a life", a life filled with compassion and love.