When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Interpretation
Authentic interactions between people create a powerful connection akin to a divine energy.
This quote by Martin Buber emphasizes the importance of genuine human relationships. When two individuals engage with sincerity and authenticity, their connection transcends mere interaction and becomes a profound and almost spiritual experience, symbolized by the metaphor of electricity that flows between them, suggesting that such relationships are vital to our human experience.
In practice
In a speech on the importance of genuine connections in our personal lives.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want? Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement? Of course not. What will matter then will be people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn't they matter most now?
It is astonishing that gay and lesbian Americans are still treated as second-class citizens. I am confident that, very soon, the laws of this nation will reflect the basic truth that gay and lesbian people - like all human beings - are born equal in dignity and rights.
If we don't know how to be alone, we'll only know how to be lonely.
When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.
Has there not been, sometimes, this temptation to do a great deal for Christ, but not to live a great deal with Christ?
Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.
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