Tag: Quotations
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Bread and Roses!
It’s International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day has taken on the character of a “women’s rights” holiday, but the history of the day is deeply embedded in the international labor movement. In that spirit, today is a good day to remember that The Catholic Worker is a contemporary as well as historic organization. And here’s…
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Presidents’ Day
A good day to think about history, and truth, and greatness, and complexity. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities…
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“Faith in the dawn …”
Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When one believes this, he knows that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. He can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for good for those that love God. Even the…
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Shabbat shalom
… it lies with yourself how much of the immeasurable becomes reality for you. Martin Buber, I and Thou, Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Classics, 2000 (1956), 42. Image: “The Synagogue,” Wacław Koniuszko, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Shabbat shalom
… I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. … I-It can never be spoken with the whole being. Martin Buber. I and Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. Scribner Classics, 2000 (1958). 20. Image: From “The Tribe of Levi,” Marc Chagall, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Shelomo [of Karlin] as none other accepted as his own the Baal Shem’s doctrine that before praying [a person] should prepare to die, because the intention of prayer demands the staking of one’s entire self. For him prayer was a stupendous venture to which one must give one’s self up so completely that thought…
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Shabbat shalom
It is significant that [the Maggid of Mezritch’s] favorite simile is that of the father adjusting himself to his little son who is eager to learn. He regards the world as God’s self-adjustment to his little son: Man, whom he rears with tender care to enable him to grow up to his Father. Martin Buber,…
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Shabbat shalom
Whenever this union [of heavenly light and earthly fire, of spirit and nature] appears incarnate in human form, this person testifies – with the testimony of life – for the divine unity of spirit and nature, reveals this unity anew to the world of man which again and again becomes estranged from it, and evokes…
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Shabbat shalom
There are various versions of how the Baal Shem won [Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polnoye] over, but they all have two traits in common: he does not reveal himself directly, but manifests himself through his particular manner of concealment, and he tells him stories (he always likes to tell stories) which stir the hearer just…
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Francis Bacon comments on today’s “Republicans”
… surely, the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that, when “Christ cometh,” he shall not “find faith upon the earth.” (Luke 18:8) Francis Bacon,…
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Shabbat shalom
In a crisis of faith, when faith is renewed, the man who initiates and leads the renewal is frequently not a spiritual character in the ordinary sense of the world, but one who draws his strength from an extraordinary union between the spiritual and tellurian powers, between heavenly and earthly fire, but it is the…
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Shabbat shalom
The soul must not boast that it is more holy than the body, for only in that it has climbed down into the body and works through its limbs can the soul attain to its own perfection. The body, on the other hand, may not brag of supporting the soul, for when the soul leaves,…
Matters of Interpretation 