Blog Posts — Page 15

“We humans are both miracles and catastrophes. We must acknowledge both death and joy, horror and awe. It is an astonishment to be alive, and life calls on us to be astonished; but lifelong astonishment will take iron-willed discipline.  Wake – over and over. Weep for this world and gasp for it. Wake, and pay attention to our mortality, to the precise ways in which beauty cuts through us. Pay attention to the softness of Read More

In her newsletter on September 18, 2022, Heather Cox Richardson traced what happened between 1776 when the Articles of Confederation were written to 1787 when the Constitution was written.  The Articles of Confederation stressed independent thinking – states were sovereign and free to make their own decisions independent of the impact on the other 12 states.  As a result, some states clung to slavery, refused to contribute to the common good, and entered unilateral trade Read More

“There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe – imperishable, divine.”  George MacDonald “For every sentence (in the Upanishads) deep original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit.  In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads.  They Read More

“Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”  Norman Cousins “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?”  Jesus “Grief is in two parts.  The first is loss.  The second is the remaking of life.”  Anne Roiphe I recently returned to a classic book – Herzog by Saul Bellow.  It’s a strange Read More

“The significance of the cherry blossom tree in Japanese culture goes back hundreds of years.  In our country, the cherry blossom represents the fragility and beauty of life.  It’s a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful, but that it is also tragically short.”  —Homaro Cantu “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”  —Aristotle “A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or Read More

“It is only human supremacy, which is as unacceptable as racism and sexism, that makes us afraid of being more inclusive.” Ingid Newkirk Let’s start with a little perspective. There are about 400 billion Milky Way stars and as many as 10 trillion planets orbiting them. On our little planet, there are 8 billion people. Given those facts, how did we come to the conclusion that our planet reigns supreme and that any one of Read More

“This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make.”  —Christopher Alexander “There is an immense, painful longing for a Read More

Dear Annie and Ezra, You are almost 11 years old now, and you are citizens of several communities:  your synagogue, your school, your teams, your town, your state, your country, and the world.  You have responsibilities to all of those communities. A citizen is someone who has rights and responsibilities in a defined group.  Those rights are at risk when we don’t act responsibly.  In your Jewish community, your responsibilities are to learn the Torah, Read More

No justice; no peace!!! That has been the slogan of many protest movements going back as far as the 1986 killing of Michael Griffith, a Trinidadian immigrant assaulted by a mob of white youth in Howard Beach, NYC. Since then, it has been a rallying cry for each miscarriage of justice perpetrated on the disenfranchised. It implies, of course, that peaceful action is impossible without justice. I wholeheartedly agree. In this post, I’m proposing that Read More