On [Kashrut]
"...I have found myself thinking about what food I put in my body, and where that food has been-in whose hands, in what countries-before it got to my plate...this reflecting on and participation with my food leads ultimately back to Him who sustains, provides and feeds...The table is not only a place where we can become present to God. The table is also a place where he becomes present to us."
On [Avelut]
"...'Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is He, beyond any blessing or song.' [the Kaddish]...even in the pit, even in depression and loss and nonsense, still we respond to God with praise. You do not have to feel praise in intense moments of mourning, but the praise is still true, and insisting upon it over and over..ensures that eventually you will come to remember the truth of those praises."
On [hachnassat orchim]
"...We are not meant simply to invite people into our homes, but also to invite them into our lives...Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, is not an imposition, because we are not meant to rearrange our lives for our guests-we are meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are...Like my apartment, my interior life is never going to be wholly respectable, cleaned up and gleaming. But that is where I live."
On [tefillah]
"...Sure, sometimes it is great when, in prayer, we can express to God just what we feel; but better still when, in the act of praying, our feelings change. Liturgy is not, in the end, open to our emotional whims. It repoints the person praying, taking him somewhere else."
You know. I just need to buy this book. So I think I will. But in case it takes me awhile I'll have a few of the quotes stored in cyberspace. Thanks world wide web.
No comments:
Post a Comment