| Quotations |
| "I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived
code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we
live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should
live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure
in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence
on our willingness to explore and experience." |
courtesy
Art Hoffer |
| "I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book,
but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking
at me." |
| "A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human.
To become human, is what this individual person has been created for." |
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"This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation.
There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge
that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species
and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused. " I and
Thou: A Tree
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"Between you and it there is mutual giving: you say Thou to it and
give yourself to it, it says Thou to you and gives itself to you. You cannot
make yourself understood with others concerning it, you are alone with
it. But it teaches you to meet others, and to hold your ground when you
meet them. Through the graciousness of its comings and the solemn sadness
of its goings it leads you away to the Thou in which the parallel lines
of relations meet. It does not help to sustain you in life, it only helps
you to glimpse eternity." I and Thou
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"Why spirituality, why religiosity today? Have not post-modernism and it's philosophers taught us that the age of
metaphysics is over? Have we not become aware of the historicity and contingency
of our traditions and culture? - Because it re-enchants man. It makes his
existence more authentic, deeper." Georgetown 1997.
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"What does it mean: "God takes his dwelling place within man"?
At first, it means the actual annulment of the difference between religiousness
and secularity. Everyday life is no less imbued with belief than the "deified
high hours". It is only this way that the unity of life is achieved,
and only a religion which does not view religiousness merely in some kind
of sentimentality and rejects all reason can lead humans to this unity.
The human being does not fight against urges, he does not have to expel
evil out of him: he is supposed to live in the world and with God, he is
supposed to become the vessel of holiness within the world.
And by sanctifying the whole everyday life, Hasidism takes "the other
world into this world". The present time, the world, is the place
where faith is made real, where God reveals Himself. God is not the far-away
ruler of the world who will bring redemption some time (this is said against
the exaggerated messianic hopes), but God wants "to conquer the world
he created through the human being".
God does not want to complete his creation in any other way than with our
help." ... Religious Thought of Martin Buber by Andreas Schmidt. |
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