“Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel”

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.

The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

The task of life is to face sacred moments.

The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.

Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.

One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words.

God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.

The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.

The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.

But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.

Self-respect is the root of discipline

This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.

The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.

Good food is a celebration of life.

Celebrate the people in your life who are there because they love you for no other reason than because you are YOU.

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.

Let us rejoice at the many unexplored fields in which there is unlimited fame and fortune to the successful explorer.

It’s nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues.

We’ve never understood the hate you fear in us. Our love makes protests feel like celebrations.