THE SPACE ON THE CLOCK Between the Tick and the Tock. Have a good Shabbos!
Tag: It
… can’t really be named, only experienced.
“For My Next Trick, I Will Unite the Universe…”
A FUN WAY TO ENTERTAIN and enlighten early adolescents is via the following exercise: “What’s the first dimension?” you’d ask. They’d answer, “Length.” “The second?” “Width.” “Third?” “Height.” “Fourth?” “Time!” “That’s right. Now, for my next trick, I will unite…
To gain a yirah[awe]-inducing glimpse of the transcendent, you must sharpen your inner awareness to perceive divine Oneness wherever you look. You can practice shifting your inner vision to apprehend the scintillating divine presence in an apple, a table, a car, a baby’s eyes, anywhere in this world. When you make that choice and adjust your perception in this way, you have placed HaShem [that-which-some-people-call-G?d] before you, and yirah is sure to overtake your heart as if the floor beneath you had suddenly fallen away.”
–From the monthly YASHAR newsletter)
Pithyism #2=1
TRUE LOVE IS NOT AN emotion — it’s a dedicated series of related actions.
ORL Interview: Ivan Stang
INTERVIEWING ONE’S CULTURAL HEROES IS one of the greatest thrills of a career in journalism — even of amateur journalism. Such was the position in which I found myself while working for Obscure Research Labs in the early-to-mid-1990s. It gave…
Grudge Match
THE GOLDEN RULE OF INTERFAITH colloquy: Don’t Confuse The Levels. A few years ago, a “JewBu” (Jewish Buddhist) friend of mine told me a story that he felt illustrated the superiority of Buddhism over Judaism, or at least the limitations…
Backyard astronomers are a special breed. They savor their moments under the stars. They have an infatuation — a love affair — with the cosmos that grows and nurtures itself just as meaningful human relationships do. Of course, it is a less definable one-way relationship, but I have come to regard that feeling as the closest I can ever come to being at one with nature. After a night under the stars, I have a sense of mellowness, an amalgam of humility, wonder and discovery. The universe is beautiful, in both the visual and spiritual sense.”
–Terence Dickinson, Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe
365 Names (sort of): The Fragility
“THIS IS WHY SOME PEOPLE drink,” I told my friend, provoking him into loud laughter. We were talking about THE FRAGILITY: that immediate realization of the tenuousness of life, and its property of drastically changing in a cold heartbeat through…
“Free Moon Trips!”
THERE MAY BE NO QUICKER way to evoke reverent awe than by looking through a telescope at the night’s rich bounty. I was 13 when I first trained a small refractor, a gift from my parents, on the planet Saturn.…
Larry Niven Calls This “The Funniest Prayer in Literature”
TUCKED INTO MY INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH siddur (prayerbook) is the following supplication. It’s there to keep me riding the trail of Faith without falling into the trap of thinking I know everything — or, really, anything — about that-which-some-people-call-God. Ladies, gentlemen, friends,…
Lord, I’m walking Your way. Let me in, for my feet are sore, my clothes ragged. Look in my eyes, Lord, and my sins will play out on them as on a screen. Read them all. Forgive what You can, and send me on my path. I will walk on, until You bid me rest.”
—Shepherd Book
365 Names: “The Presence”
THE PRESENCE is a more experiential-than-otherwise Divine descriptor. It attempts to portray the ineffable (nameless/wordless) quality of that-which-some-people-call-God, or what Freud’s friend Romain Rolland termed the “oceanic feeling” of being One with the Universe. It has the advantage of being…