Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
We worship God through our questions.
Interpretation
Our inquiries and struggles in life are a way to connect with the divine.
In this quote, Abraham Joshua Heschel emphasizes that questioning and seeking understanding is a means of engaging with God. Rather than viewing faith as simply accepting answers, he suggests that our questions can be a form of worship, as they reflect our desire to understand the divine and our place in the universe. This approach highlights the importance of curiosity and dialogue in faith.
In practice
In a sermon, to encourage the congregation to embrace their questions about faith.
Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
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.
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
Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye must be proud of your foes.
Communism everywhere has paid the price of rigidity and dogmatism. Freedom has the strength of compassion and flexibility. It has, above all, the strength of intellectual honesty.
Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.
It is a truism to say that the dog is largely what his master makes of him: he can be savage and dangerous, untrustworthy, cringing and fearful; or he can be faithful and loyal, courageous and the best of companions and allies.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
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