Sublime

I don’t quite know what to say, so I mostly listen. I’ve found during the past forty-eight hours with Gail and Colin that my role as their rabbi is less to dispense wisdom—I wouldn’t dare—and more to engage in the very holy work of not running away.

There is great strength to be found in opening to whatever is coming forth.

Martin Buber argued that God is found in relationship. We connect with God by connecting deeply to others—and not just humans, but animals and things in nature as well.

Debra Chamberlin-Taylor,

The late eighteenth-century Hasidic master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches us, “If you want to return to God you must make yourself into a new creation. You can do this with a sigh.”9

Asked about the highest level a person can achieve in this lifetime, Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz (Hazon Ish, 1878–1953) is purported to have responded: “To live seventy years without hurting another person.”

Gratitude becomes a way of being in the world.

Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, all human beings are endowed with three “intrinsic dignities”: infinite worth, equality, and uniqueness.10