Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

The title of this post is a quote by Rabbi Abraham Heschel.  As I have mentioned before in previous blogs, my habit continues of reading multiple books at a time.  I find though often that I am drawn to works in stages of life when I seem to need the wisdom or insight they contain.  So often, I have a picked up a book that I have previously read, yet I discover something on every page, like it is a brand new work.  Thus, Heschel's book God In Search of Man is currently being revisited.  The profound simplicity of his words and his ability to communicate  astound me every time I read him.  Below is something I read today:

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society.  It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats.  Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.  When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.