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
It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.
It must really be a lonelier journey than anyone could imagine. Cutting through absolute darkness, encountering nothing but the occasional hydrogen atom. Flying blindly into the abyss, believing therein lie the answers to the mysteries of the universe.
When we grasp that we are unworthy sinners saved by an infinitely costly grace, it destroys both our self-righteousn ess and our need to ridicule others.
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
White privilege is the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.
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