Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.
Interpretation
Solitude allows for introspection and healing away from societal pressures.
In this quote, Abraham Joshua Heschel emphasizes the importance of solitude as a means of resisting the chaos and distractions created by society. He suggests that taking time away from the noise of everyday life is essential for personal recovery and reflection, allowing individuals to regain their sense of self in a world often filled with confusion and false concerns.
In practice
During a retreat, one might say, 'Remember, solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions of society's hysteria.'
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.
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 highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.
All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.
The chief problem about death ... is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought.
My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents.
A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists.
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