An Endless Pilgrimage of the Heart

“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”

                                        ―Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

One may challenge this statement. Seemingly, the former rendition of faith indeed fits for faith in a Being, the latter only to things that are able to be transformed, changed, cultivated: life, humanity, relationships, etc. 

Yet, obviously, Heschel is referring in both cases to faith in the Supreme Being. And yet both scenarios are possibilities, for one may remain stagnant and become stale by grasping on to an outgrown, comfortable mode of connection, not willing to constantly enhance, enrich and morph the bond because it is taken for granted as being a business like partnership with specific pragmatic goals to be achieved; or one is willing to make the endless pilgrimage and dedicate the large amount, quantitative and qualitative, of effort needed to continuously develop the connection by removing old forms and finding deeper and more intense ways of making the relationship not just a facilitator of life, but indeed life itself. The only thing, however, that motivates the latter scenario to be picked is the security that comes from knowing that this Being encourages reaching Him, His very Essence, and sets no limits to how totally passionate a fusion He longs for, so that although the outer layers and garments through which the relationship manifests might change and even at times seem unbearable, the objective, eternal truth and exclusivity of the relationship guarantees it's ultimate success and bliss that makes all the effort worthwhile.

The Hedgehog and the Fox...and Tu Bi'Shvat

"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes...."

                                                                       --Sir Isaiah Berlin

Is there such a distinction in one's connection with God? And how does this connect to Tu Bi'Shvat? Listen here.

"The kindness and special quality in G-d's making man upright, to walk erectly, is that though he walks on the earth he sees the Heavens; not so with beasts that go on all fours; they see only the earth."

                                          --Tzemach Tzedek





"Whenever he could, he sought out a new road to travel....The world was huge and inexhaustible; he had only to allow his sheep to set the route for a while, and he would discover other interesting things. The problem is that they don't even realize that they're walking a new road every day. They don't see that the fields are new and the seasons change. All they think about is food and water.

Maybe we're all that way, the boy mused."


                                   --Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist



Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?

                                     --Isaiah 40:26

The Greatest Love of All--PART 6

"We know much more about the universe than the ancient world knew, but the more we know about it the harder it becomes for our spirits to accept the visible universe as the ultimate and final reality. The cold and pitiless forces of nature are not less cold and pitiless when we succeed in discovering their laws and habits. One comes back from his study of the march of suns, and planets, and the spiral movements of world making nebulae with very little to comfort the longings of the heart. He sees that these curves are all irrevocable and inevitable and that each event unfolds out of the one which preceded. It is a wonderful and amazing system, but it offers no tenderness, no love, no balm for the wounds of the spirit. It rolls mercilessly on, and he may be thankful if its wheels do not ride over him — the midget of an hour, riding on one of the flying globes of this mechanical system.

"It is useless to expect tenderness and love and balm in a system of mechanical forces. That kind of world can reveal gravitation and electricity, attraction and repulsion; it can show us matter moving under law; it can exhibit the transformation of one form of energy into some other form; but from the nature of the case it cannot manifest a heart of tenderness or a spirit of love. Those traits belong only to a person, and a mechanical system can never reveal a person.


-----------------


"If religion is, as I profoundly believe, the essential way to the full realization of life, we, who claim to know about it, ought to interpret it so that its meaning stands out plain and clear to those who most need it to live by. I have always believed and maintained that the apparent lack of popular interest in it is largely due to the awkward and blundering way in which it has been presented to the mind and heart of those who all the time carry deep within themselves inner hungers and thirsts which nothing but God can satisfy. I do not want to write or print a line which does not at least bear the mark and seal of reality — and which will not make some genuine fact of life more plain and sure.

"The struggle for a conquering inner faith has in these strenuous days been laid upon us all. The easy, inherited, second-hand faith will not do for any of us now. We cannot stand the stern issues of life and death with any feeble, formal creed. We demand something real enough and deep enough to answer the human cry of our soul today. We need to be assured that we do not in the last resort fall back on the play of molecules but that underneath us are everlasting Arms. We want to know not only that there is law and order but that a genuine Heart of Love touches our heart and brings us calm and confidence.

"Robert Louis Stevenson has somewhere told of an experience that happened once to his grandfather. He was on a vessel that was caught by a terrific storm and was carried irresistibly toward a rocky shore where complete destruction was imminent. When the storm and danger were at the height he crept up on deck to look around and face the worst. He saw the pilot lashed to the wheel, with all his might and nerve holding the vessel off the rocks and steering it inch by inch into safer water. While he stood watching, the pilot looked up at him and smiled. It was little enough but it completely reassured him. He went back to his room below with new confidence, saying to himself, "We shall come through; I saw the pilot smile! " If we could only in some way catch sight of a smile on the face of the great Pilot in this strange rough sea in which we are sailing, we, too, could do our work and carry our burdens with confidence, perhaps with joy.


                                                                    --Rufus Jones, The World Within

"I soon found myself more isolated in my own land, than I had been in a foreign country. For a while I wanted to fling myself into a world which said nothing to me and which did not understand me. My soul, not yet worn out by any passion, sought an object to which it might be attached; but I realized I was giving more than I received. It was not elevated language or deep feelings that were asked of me. My only task was to shrink my soul and bring it down to society's level."
      
                                                                          --François-René de Chateaubriand, René



We feel the spiritual muteness.
            Woe, how much do we need to speak, how great is the measure of the light of justice and wisdom with which we are illuminated in the depth of our soul?
            But how shall we reveal this, how shall we explain, how shall we express it, how shall we make evident the tiniest part of this supernal radiance?
            In that regard, the gates are closed before us.
            We begin with prayer, we knock with petitioning, we give forth our voice with song and praise, and we speak with metaphor and logic.
            We stand attentive at the doors—perhaps they will be opened a hairsbreadth, and all of our mouths will be filled with a flood of speech and all of our tongues will become like streaming rivers, streaming currents of honey and butter.


                                                                            --Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook

ליבא לפומא לא גלי

The heart does not reveal to the mouth...

                                            --Midrash

Psalm 65

 Silence is praise to you,
    Zion-dwelling God...
    You hear the prayer in it all.

I have a tale to tell
Sometimes it gets so hard to hide it well
I was not ready for the fall
Too blind to see the writing on the wall

A man can tell a thousand lies
I've learned my lesson well
Hope I live to tell
The secret I have learned, 'till then
It will burn inside of me

I know where beauty lives
I've seen it once, I know the warm she gives
The light that you could never see
It shines inside, you can't take that from me

The truth is never far behind
You kept it hidden well
If I live to tell
The secret I knew then
Will I ever have the chance again

If I ran away, I'd never have the strength
To go very far
How would they hear the beating of my heart
Will it grow cold
The secret that I hide, will I grow old
How will they hear
When will they learn
How will they know

                             ---Madonna 

To seek Truth is to prefer Being above all else, even in a catastrophic form, simply because it exists.
                     
                                           --Jean-Paul Sartre

I am continually with you; 
    You hold my right hand....
25 Whom have I in heaven but You?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

                                            --Psalm 73

The Tzemach Tzedek writes: The love expressed in "And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You..."(Psalms 73:25) means that one should desire nothing other than God, not even "Heaven" or "Earth," the highest spiritual planes of the Garden of Eden, for these were created with a mere ray and drop of His Light...

The love is to be directed to Him alone, to His very Being and Essence.

This was actually expressed by my master and teacher, the Alter Rebbe whenever he was in a state of ecstatic clinging to God, unio mystica, he would exclaim as follows:

I want nothing at all! I don't want Your Garden of Eden, I don't want Your World to Come... I want nothing but You alone.

The Greatest Love of All--PART 5

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.   


     --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

                    

Students of the  Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi asked him:

"Which is the superior service of God, loving Him or loving others?"

He replied: "Scripture is explicit: `I have loved you, says the Lord.' (Malachi 1:2) It follows that loving others is superior - for you love whom your beloved loves."