May I suggest that our potential for change and growth is much greater than we are willing to admit and that old age be regarded not as the age of stagnation but as the age of opportunities for inner growth? The old person must not be treated as a patient, or regard his retirement as a prolonged state of resignation.
The Wisdom of Heschel
What is the purpose of knowledge? We are conditioned to believe that the purpose of knowledge is to utilize the world. We forget that the purpose of knowledge is also to celebrate God. God is both present and absent. To celebrate is to invoke God's presence concealed in God's absence.
One ought to enter old age [or the next stage of life] the way one enters the senior year at a university, in exciting anticipation of consummation. Rich in perspective, experienced in failure, the "advanced" person is capable of shedding prejudices and the fever of vested interests. He does not see any more in every fellow man a person who stands in his way, and competitiveness may cease to be his way of thinking.
Prayer is a perspective from which to behold, from which to respond to, the challenges we face. [Humans] in prayer do not seek to impose their will upon God; they seek to impose God's will and mercy upon themselves. Prayer is necessary to make us aware of our failures, backsliding, transgressions, sins.
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.
Prayer clarifies our hope and intentions. It helps us discover our true aspirations, the pangs we ignore, the longings we forget. It is an act of self-purification.... It teaches us what to aspire to, implants in us the ideals we ought to cherish. Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let God's will prevail in our affairs; it is the opening of a window to God in our will, an effort to make God the Lord of our soul. We submit our interests to God's concern, and seek to be allied with what is ultimately right.
The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era.
To celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves; in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing.
The world is aflame with evil and atrocity; the scandal of perpetual desecration of the world cries to high heaven. And we, coming face to face with it, are either involved as callous participants or, at best, remain indifferent onlookers....
We pray because the disproportion of human misery and human compassion is so enormous. We pray because our grasp of the depth of suffering is comparable to the scope of perception of a butterfly flying over the Grand Canyon. We pray because of the experience of the dreadful incompatibility of how we live and what we sense.
We do not know what to pray for. Should we not pray for the ability to be shocked at atrocities committed by man, for the capacity to be dismayed? Prayer should be an act of catharsis or purgation of emotions, as well as a process of self-clarification, of examining priorities, of elucidating responsibility.... Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehood. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.