Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Interpretation
Celebration is about acknowledging and finding deeper significance in our actions.
In this quote, Abraham Joshua Heschel emphasizes that celebration goes beyond mere festivity; it represents a confrontation with the deeper, often spiritual meanings behind our actions. By celebrating, we bring attention to and appreciate the transcendent aspects of our lives, allowing us to reflect on their significance and purpose.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the value of celebrating achievements in life.
Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.
Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
We worship God through our questions.
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God
The doors of Hell, insofar as they have locks, have locks on the inside.
My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.
The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
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