Sense of Wonder

I'm reading a book titled "Man is Not Alone" by a Mr. Rabbi Abraham Heschel.  :)

Heschel is probably the most famous modern Jewish 'philosopher.'  In this book He speaks about how wonder and the unknown point us to the Lrd.  That He can not be found by only regurgitating the concepts and thoughts we have heard others say.  You have to lay down your thoughts and conceptions of who He is and find amazement.  Be amazed that you can think, be amazed that you can notice beauty, be amazed that you can thinking about thinking, be amazed that life continues, be amazed at pain and sorrow and joy and love, lay your mind bare and embrace the sense of being so small compared to the whole of the universe, yet still of imperceptible importance.

This book is beautifully written.  It not only challenges your thought process but draws your heart out.  It inspires while it corrects.  It not only tells you how you should think but helps show you the way to feel.

So, i just have to give you some quotes!

"Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement... We should not expect thoughts to give us more than what they contain."

"...if we must know in order to question, if we must entertain a belief in order to cast doubt upon it, then doubt cannot be the beginning of knowledge... A philosophy that begins with radical doubt ends in radical despair."

"To be implies to stand for, because every being is representative of something that is more than itself; because the seen, the known, stands for the unseen, the unknown...  At whatever climax of thinking we may arrive, we face transcendent significance."

"Man sees the things that surround him long before he becomes aware of his own self."

"We may, indeed, accept the idea that there is a supreme designer and still say: "So what?" As long as a concept of G-d does not overpower us, as long as we can say: "So what?" - it is not G-d that we talk about but something else."


Mmmm, that last on for sure got you going right?!?!  ok one or two more...

"Religion is more than a creed or an ideology and cannot be understood when detached from actual living.  It come to light in moments in which one's soul is shaken with unmitigated concern about the meaning of all meaning, about one's ultimate commitment which is part of his very existence; in moments, in which all forgone conclusions, all life-stifling trivialities are suspended; in which the soul is starved for an inkling of eternal reality; in moments of discerning the indestructibly sudden within the perishably constant."

"The question about G-d is not a question about all things, but a question of all things; not an inquiry into the unknown but an inquiry into that which all things stand for; a question we ask for all things...  The mind does not know how to phrase it, yet the soul sighs it, sings it, pleads it."


ok ok this is the last one, it's lengthy but well worth it!

"The sense of the ineffable does not give us an awareness of G-d.  It only leads to a plane, where no one can remain both callous and calm, unstunned and unabashed; where His presence may be defied but not denied, and where, at the end, faith in Him is the only way.
Once our bare soul is exposed to the omnipresence of the ineffable, we cannot bid it cease to shatter us with its urging wonder.  It is as if there were only signs and hidden reminders of the one and only true subject, of whom the world is a cryptic object.
Who lit the wonder before our eyes and the wonder of our eyes?  Who struck the lightning in the minds and scorched us with an imperative of being overawed by the holy as unquenchable as the sight of the stars?...
The root of religion is the question of what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder or fear.  Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.  It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man's answer is elicited.
Wonder is not a state of esthetic enjoyment.  Endless wonder is endless tension, a situation in which we are shocked at the inadequacy of our awe, at the weakness of our shock, as well as the state of being asked the ultimate question.
Endless wonder unlocks an innate sense of indebtedness.  Within our awe there is no place for self-assertion.  Within our awe we only know that all we own we awe.  The world consists, not of things, but of tasks.  Wonder is the state of our being asked.  The ineffable is a question addressed to us.
All that is left to us is a choice - to answer or to refuse to answer.  Yet the more deeply we listen, the more we become stripped of the arrogance and callousness which alone would enable us to refuse.  We carry a load of marvel, wishing to exchange it for the simplicity of knowing what to live for..."

"While in regard to other issues we doubt before we decide, in regard to G-d we sing before we say.  Unless we know how to praise Him, we cannot learn how to know Him.  Praise is our first answer to the wonder... To be overtaken with awe of G-d is not to entertain the feeling but to share in a spirit that permeates all beings. "They all thank, they all praise, they all say:  There is no one like G-d."  As an act of personal recognition our praise would be fatuous, it is only meaningful as an act of joining in the endless song.  We praise with the pebbles on the road which are like petrified amazement, with all the flowers and trees which look as if hypnotized in silent devotion.
When mind and soul agree, belief is born.  But first our hearts must know the shudder of adoration."


So, maybe i went overboard on the quotes... hopefully this isn't too much for people to read, but even if it is i really enjoyed posting it.