“A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest of soft as a breeze may swerve a mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf.”
"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Faith is not a thing that comes into being out of nothing. It originates in an event. In the spiritual vacancy of life something may suddenly occur that is like the lifting of a veil at the horizon of knowledge. A simple episode may open sight of the eternal. A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest of soft as a breeze may swerve a mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf. God's willingness to call men to His service and man's responsiveness to the divine indications in things and events are for faith what sun and soil are for the plant.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Abraham Joshua Heschel 130
Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi 1907–1972Related quotes
Missionary Hymn ("Java" in one version); reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 487.
Hymns
"Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)
Context: I begin with observing, what all indeed will understand, that the likeness to God, of which I propose to speak, belongs to man's higher or spiritual nature. It has its foundation in the original and essential capacities of the mind. In proportion as these are unfolded by right and vigorous exertion, it is extended and brightened. In proportion as these lie dormant, it is obscured. In proportion as they are perverted and overpowered by the appetites and passions, it is blotted out. In truth, moral evil, if unresisted and habitual, may so blight and lay waste these capacities, that the image of God in man may seem to be wholly destroyed.
”New Vandals,” p. 65
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Warden with No Keys”
“To offer advice to an angry man, is like blowing against a tempest.”
The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
“your life can change in an instant. that instant can last forever.”
Source: The Life Before Her Eyes
"The escape", p. 309
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1
With Open Hands (1972)
Context: To pray means to open your hands before God. It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive. Above all, prayer is a way of life which allows you to find a stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God’s promises and find hope for yourself, your neighbor and your world. In prayer, you encounter God not only in the small voice and the soft breeze, but also in the midst of the turmoil of the world, in the distress and joy of your neighbor and in the loneliness of your own heart.